CydandClaude Fable 5
c2b0a371ba
Asked what was next for the rebuild, went to measure it, and found I had told
the operator the wrong thing one turn earlier.
THE CORRECTION. I said mech2.cpp (the gait state machine) was the next
package. It sits on top of SequenceController's playback methods, and all
three of those -- SelectSequence, Advance, Reset -- were Fail() stubs. Advance
is the function that actually walks a clip's keyframes and writes each
animated joint. mech2 without it would have called straight into a Fail. So
the dependency runs:
Mech::AdvanceLegAnimation mech2.cpp -- the STATE MACHINE, still absent
-> SequenceController::Advance THIS -- keyframes -> joint writes
-> Joint::SetHinge / SetRotation / SetTranslation
-> the joint DCS flush fixed in 5.3.88
5.3.88 fixed the bottom link, this fixes the middle, the top is still missing.
WHAT THIS DOES NOT DO: make the legs move. Nothing calls any of it yet -- no
gait state is ever selected because mech2 is unreconstructed -- so a run looks
identical to yesterday's. This removes a blocker. Saying otherwise would be
easy and wrong.
RECONSTRUCTED (compile-verified, BT 50/50, links clean):
SelectSequence @004277a8 -- find + lock the clip, parse its layout. The
fetch is FindResourceDescription and NOT SearchList: the ID arriving here is
already resolved, and SearchList would treat it as a resource LIST and walk
the clip bytes as IDs.
Advance @0042790c -- snap through every keyframe the new time has passed
(writing authored poses), then interpolate the partial frame. Returns the
forward distance covered, which is what the gait feeds into mech motion.
Reset @004283b8 -- return every animated joint to neutral, so an abandoned
gait doesn't leave the skeleton frozen on a stale frame.
THE PART THAT CANNOT BE SEEKED. The pose block is packed BY JOINT TYPE -- 8
bytes hinge, 12 ball, 24 ball+translation -- so the root-translation table
behind it is not reachable by arithmetic on any stored count. SelectSequence
must walk the entire skeleton summing per-joint sizes to find it. Which also
means the parse depends on the mech's own skeleton agreeing with the clip: an
unresolvable slot returns NULL and contributes 0, keeping the walk honest
rather than drifting keyframeData onto garbage.
TWO CONTRACTS worth recording before mech2 is written against them:
move_joints == 0 is NOT "do nothing" -- it advances the clock and
accumulates distance while leaving the skeleton alone. That is how the body
channel measures a stride without fighting the leg channel over the same
joints.
The finished callback is RE-ENTRANT BY DESIGN. At end of clip it picks the
next state, re-arms this controller through SelectSequence (rewinding it to
frame 0), and advances the carryover itself -- so its return value is the
distance that carryover covered, folded straight into Advance's own return.
mech2's BodyClipFinished has to honour that or the gait double-counts.
NOT CARRIED OVER from the donor: its BT_HIP_LOG diagnostic and audio
footstep-broadcast path, neither of which is 1995 code. footStepThreshold IS
parsed -- the field is real and authored -- but nothing reads it yet.
AND A CAVEAT ON THE 91% I QUOTED: seqctl.cpp is not in the 50-TU BT census at
all (its code sits below the BT address range the census was built from), and
that figure counts a TU as done if the FILE EXISTS -- 18 files still carry 26
Fail() stubs between them. The census understates what "playable" needs.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Tesla Release 4.10 — Tesla:BattleTech & Tesla:Red Planet
Source code and game content for Tesla:BattleTech and Tesla:Red Planet, the two games that ran on the Tesla-generation simulator cockpits built by Virtual World Entertainment, Inc. (VWE). Source file headers are dated 1994–1996; this tree corresponds to release 4.10 of the Tesla software.
This repository is an archival snapshot. The tree is preserved byte-for-byte as
found (see .gitattributes — no line-ending conversion is applied).
See emulator/PLAN.md for the implementation plan to run these games on the surviving cockpits' Windows 10 computers via a VPX-board HLE device in DOSBox-X, with the cockpit RIO (COM1) and plasma display (COM2) passed through to the game's original drivers.
See HISTORY.md for findings from a recovered VWE developer hard drive that accompanies this tree (excluded from the repo), including Division renderer source, runnable game builds, unreleased prototypes (Star Trek, Hull Pressure, Renegade Legion, and the Starship Troopers pitch that became DisneyQuest's "Invasion!"), and an analysis of whether these games can be rebuilt from the sources in this repository (summary: the engine can, the games cannot — most game-logic sources are absent from this cut).
Target hardware
Each Tesla cockpit was driven by a server-class Pentium Pro machine running Novell DOS. Graphics were split across two adapters:
- The main (out-the-window) display was rendered by one of the first
pixel-pipeline 3D accelerator cards ever made, driven through Division Ltd.'s
dVS/DPL libraries (
libDPL— DPL, dsys, dvs, and the VPX headers; Division copyright 1995). - An S3 video adapter drove the other six cockpit displays (instrument
and gauge screens — see the
GAUGEcontent directories and thePCPIC.INC/L4GAU*gauge code).
Other hardware/OS interfaces:
- Audio: HMI SOS (Sound Operating System) —
sos/libraries, with variants for Borland (bc4) and Watcom (wc). - Networking: pods were networked over Ethernet using WATTCP (DOS TCP/IP, with BOOTP) via VWE's NetNub layer.
- Input: joystick/pedal/panel I/O in assembly (
JOYSTICK.ASM) and theL4CTRL*control modules.
Toolchain
- Borland C++ 5.0 (
BCC) with TASM32 for assembly — see the.MAKmakefiles (original build tree lived atD:\TESLA_RP\andD:\BC5\). - Precompiled-header discipline throughout (
.CSMheaders,#pragma hdrstop). VSSVER.SCC/MSSCCPRJ.SCCfiles are remnants of the original Visual SourceSafe source control.- File extensions:
.CPP/.HPPC++ source/headers,.TCP/.THPC++ template source/headers,.MAKBorland makefiles.
Repository layout
ARTTOOLS/ (empty placeholder — art tools were not included in this snapshot)
BORLAND/ (empty placeholder — compiler was not included in this snapshot)
CODE/ Game and engine source (~200k lines of C++/asm)
CONTENT/ Game data: models, animations, audio, maps, textures, gauges
HEADOFF/ Head/camera offset calibration configs for the cockpit displays
CODE/
Both games share the same architecture: a portable simulation engine (MUNGA, VWE's in-house engine) plus a hardware layer (MUNGA_L4, the "L4" Tesla pod platform layer), with game-specific code and a game-specific L4 layer on top.
CODE/BT/ Tesla:BattleTech
BT/ Game logic: mechs, weapons (PPC, Gauss, missiles),
damage tables, teams, missions, scenario rules
BT_L4/ BattleTech pod application layer (app modes, arena,
radar, playback, version)
MUNGA/ Engine bricks: math (matrices, angles, splines),
containers, file streams, audio manager, events
MUNGA_L4/ Pod hardware layer: video renderer manager, keyboard,
mouse, audio hardware, warehouse (resource loading)
LIBDPL/ Division Ltd. dVS/DPL graphics library (headers +
LIBDPL.LIB + VREND*.BTL renderer modules)
NETNUB/ WATTCP-based pod networking (headers + WATTCPLG.LIB)
SOS/ HMI Sound Operating System libraries + drivers
CODE/RP/ Tesla:Red Planet (same structure)
RP/ Game logic: VTV (hover racer) power/subsystems,
pickups (booster, blocker, crusher, thruster)
RP_L4/ Red Planet pod application layer
MUNGA/ Engine (fullest copy — 351 files incl. all .CPP)
MUNGA_L4/ Pod hardware layer (fullest copy, incl. JOYSTICK.ASM)
libDPL/, NetNub/, sos/ as above
*/opt/ Compiled Borland C++ 5.0 object files from the
original build (preserved as found)
Note: the BT copies of MUNGA/MUNGA_L4 are partial (69/68 files) while the RP copies are complete (351/231 files) — the BT tree appears to hold only the files that diverged from the shared engine.
CONTENT/
CONTENT/BT/ Tesla:BattleTech content
CONTENT/BT3025/ Parallel BattleTech content set (3025-era variant;
mostly identical to BT/ with a different mech roster)
CONTENT/RP/ Tesla:Red Planet content
Per-game content directories:
| Dir | Contents |
|---|---|
MODELS |
.MOD/.SUB/.DMG/.TBL — vehicle/mech models, subsystems, damage tables |
ANIMS |
.ANI — animations (BT only) |
AUDIO |
.MID MIDI music, .SCP audio scripts, .BNK/.BLD banks |
GAUGE |
.GIM — gauge images for the six S3-driven cockpit displays |
MAPS |
.MAP/.ZNE — arena/terrain maps and zones |
SOLIDS |
.SLD — collision solids |
VIDEO |
Division renderer data: GEO/ geometry, MAT/ materials, and TEX/ textures per environment (ARENA, DAY, NIGHT, DESERT, POLAR, CAVERN, …), .DZM skins, .BMF/.BGF binary geometry, BUILD/ sources |
SCENES |
Scene definitions (RP only) |
BTCAM |
Camera batch setups (BT only) |
DIVISION.SAV subdirectories inside VIDEO/ are backup saves written by
Division's tools. MTMCDAI.SYS (Mitsumi) and TAISATAP.SYS are DOS CD-ROM
device drivers used on the pod machines.
HEADOFF/
INI-style calibration files (.XST/.CAM/.BAK) defining viewing extents and
camera offsets ("head offset") for the cockpit's main display, including a
[LAB_ONLY] configuration.
The team
From a published VWE BattleTech credits page (scan supplied to this archive, July 2026). The roster matches the 1994–1996 source in this tree — see the cross-references below the table.
| Role | Name(s) |
|---|---|
| Producer and Designer | Jordan Weisman |
| Art Director | David McCoy |
| Technical Director | J.M. Albertson |
| Audio Director | Eric Huffman |
| Corporate Director of Technology | Bill Redmann |
| Software Engineers | |
| — Framework and Simulation Design | J.M. Albertson |
| — Secondary/Auxiliary Screens and Low Level I/O | Chris Brewer |
| — Low Level I/O Design and Programming | Marek Ciolek |
| — Framework and 3D Video Rendering | Greg Corson |
| — Animation Simulations and Tools | Jerry Edsall |
| — Macintosh Design and Programming | Garth Hermanson |
| — Framework and 3D Audio System | Eric Huffman |
| — Simulation Code and Cameras | Joanna Mason |
| — Graphics Research and Art Tools | Ken Olsen |
| — Simulation Code and 'Mech Internal Systems | Gabe Underwood |
| Artists & Animators | |
| — 3D Art and Animations | Tom Burlington, Duane Molitor, David McCoy, Lex Story |
| — Allen Workshop 2D Art | Victor Bonilla, Tom Peters |
| Software Tools Group Leader | Ken Olsen |
| Sound Samples/Designs | Bing McCoy, Tom Effinger, Eric Huffman |
Cross-references to this tree:
// Author:headers inCODE/name four of the credited engineers: J.M. Albertson (MUNGA math/debug bricks —LINE,SPHERE,DEBUG*), Jerry Edsall (TOOL,FILEUTIL, the BT/RP*TOOLmodules), Ken Olsen (NAMELIST,NOTATIONtemplate containers), and Eric Huffman (CSTR,MEMREG,SCHAIN).- The pod-lab per-developer update scripts on the recovered developer drive (see HISTORY.md) are named Chris, Gabe, Joanna, and Jordan — matching Chris Brewer, Gabe Underwood, Joanna Mason, and Jordan Weisman.
- Garth Hermanson's "Macintosh Design and Programming" credit fits the venue side: the operator console the pods connect to was a Macintosh application.
Provenance
- Copyright (C) 1994–1996 Virtual World Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide. Original headers mark the source as proprietary and confidential.
- Third-party components retain their own copyrights: Division Ltd. (dVS/DPL), Human Machine Interfaces (SOS), Erick Engelke / University of Waterloo (WATTCP).