Adds pod-lifecycle controls to the vPOD window:
- Power Off / Power On: Power Off closes the TCP listener so the console can no
longer connect, mimicking a pod with no game client running; Power On reopens
it. The listener close/open is the faithful signal a console sees.
- End-mission graceful-exit + watchdog restart: on the end-mission command
(StopMission) the game exits gracefully (listener closes, connection drops)
and a watchdog relaunches it about 1.5 s later, coming back up in
WaitingForEgg - the real pod's per-game cycle. A "Restart game after mission
ends (watchdog)" checkbox (default on) toggles it; unchecked, the pod just
returns to WaitingForEgg without exiting.
- Egg viewer: the last egg is kept across missions/restarts (no auto-clear) so
it can be copied for dev use; a Clear button empties it on demand.
- Log pane defaults to half the window (egg lines are rarely wide); the split
is set at load once the control has its real width.
Verified over real TCP: driving egg -> run -> end-mission makes the listener
drop then reopen with the pod back in WaitingForEgg (confirmed in vPOD's own
log: "Game exited gracefully" then "Watchdog restarted the game").
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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>
CydandClaude Fable 5