vPOD impersonates a Tesla game client (rpl4opt.exe / btl4.exe) so the Red
Planet and BattleTech operator consoles can be exercised without real cockpit
hardware. New net48 WinForms project under Console\vPOD:
- MungaPodServer: the server half of the Munga control protocol (TCP 1501).
The vendored MungaSocket is client-only, so this reimplements the identical
framing ([16-byte header][12-byte base + body], dispatched by
ClientID+MessageID) for the listening side, reusing the vendored message
classes' WriteTo/BinaryReader serialization.
- PodSimulator: the ApplicationState machine driven by the console's messages -
answers StateQuery, reassembles the streamed egg and acknowledges it, and
walks WaitingForEgg -> LoadingMission -> WaitingForLaunch -> RunningMission
and back on Run/Stop/Abort/Suspend/Resume.
- VPodForm: live display of listening/connection status, the colour-coded
ApplicationState, an egg viewer (fields + summary), and a newest-first
protocol log. A Red Planet / BattleTech toggle changes which ApplicationID
the pod reports, live, so one vPOD stands in for either game.
- PodArguments: parses the real client's launch flags (-net/-app/-lc/-mr/
-host/-res).
Deployable from Manage Site -> Install Product: a catalog product in
RedPlanet\Apps.xml (Game Client / Live Camera / Mission Review entries) plus
pack.ps1, which builds dist\vPOD.zip laying out vPOD\vPOD.exe for the launcher
to extract to C:\Games\vPOD. CatalogTests updated to 5 products / 11 entries
with the four vPOD entry assertions (88/88 pass). TeslaConsole.csproj excludes
vPOD\** from its **/*.cs glob; the project is added to the solution.
Verified end-to-end over real TCP: a console-role client using the vendored
MungaSocket drives connect -> WaitingForEgg -> stream egg -> (ack) ->
WaitingForLaunch -> Run -> RunningMission -> Stop -> WaitingForEgg, with vPOD
reporting the correct state at each step. MungaGame (what the console's game
windows use) is a thin wrapper over MungaSocket, so this exercises the exact
wire behaviour.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
