CydandClaude Fable 5
ed218483ec
Decoding the articulated run's fifodump settles it, and the answer is not in our code. 26133 vr_flush_dcs_artic records this run (was ~200), every one n=1 with a 12-byte body: [handle][sine][cosine]. Sample: handle 0x684, sine -0.04536 cosine 0.99897 = -2.60 deg, then -7.60 deg. That is the torso twist sweeping, authentically encoded -- our HingeRenderable emits exactly what the 1995 engine emits. vrboard's 0x1f parser accepts record widths 12, 2 and 5 floats but only applies the 12-float form: "joint sin/cos records: axis semantics unknown -- the flushed matrix stands (mech limbs won't articulate yet)". So the canopy's DCS never rotates in the bridge's scene while its camera picks the twist up by another route, and the two diverge -- the artefact. anim_abs reading 0 in the same run is innocent: the root only re-flushes when localToWorld changes, and this mech is deliberately stationary. The axis genuinely is not on the wire: dpl_SetDCSXAxis/YAxis/ZAxis all take (dcs, sin, cos) and all produce the same record (DPL_VPX.H:23-25), so the board carries it per node. A stream-only decoder cannot recover it. Two ways forward, both legitimate: tell the bridge the axis out of band (the .SKL's Type=hingex/y/z names it per node -- a handle->axis map at scene-build time, and this fixes the leg gait too), or use the engine's other hinge path (HingeRenderable::Execute is written both ways behind #if SINGLE_AXIS_HINGE; the #else branch writes a full matrix, producing the 12-float records the bridge already applies). Both are the shipped engine's own code. The reconstruction's articulation work is done and correct as of 5.3.80; what remains is a decoder gap in the viewing tool. 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).