Campaign V slice V6e, first of three. mesh_modern is the shader every world
static, every piece of scenery and every EnvCell surface draws through, and it
was one of the four production pairs the SPIR-V toolchain still refused.
The blocker was a varying. Since V2 the vertex stage looked a batch's table slot
up in the binding=9 handle table and forwarded the resulting 64-bit
GL_ARB_bindless_texture handle to the fragment stage as a `flat uvec2`. That
works on GL because a bindless handle is just a number a shader may carry
anywhere. It cannot work on Vulkan at all: the equivalent object is a descriptor
in set 2, and a descriptor is not a value a stage can hand to another stage. So
what travels between the stages is now the SLOT — a `flat uint` — and the
fragment stage does the lookup at the point of sampling.
That relocation needs one shared idea, because the two backends disagree about
what the lookup IS. `ACDREAM_SAMPLE_ARRAY(slot, uvw)` asks the dialect-neutral
question — "sample table slot N" — and expands to
`texture(sampler2DArray(gTextureTable[slot]), uvw)` under GL and to
`texture(uTextures[nonuniformEXT(slot)], uvw)` under Vulkan. It is deliberately
a SAMPLING macro rather than a sampler-returning one: `nonuniformEXT` belongs on
the indexing expression itself, and binding the result to a local
`sampler2DArray` first is exactly where an implementation is free to drop it.
That is the same shape V6d already used for the retained UI's 2-D reads, and it
now covers the array reads the world path needs.
`ACDREAM_TEXTURE_NONE` lands alongside it, unused here and used by the next
commit. GL can ask "does this slot hold a texture" of the payload, because an
unregistered slot holds the null handle; Vulkan cannot, because set 2 is opaque
and reading an unwritten element of a partially-bound array is undefined rather
than zero. The sentinel moves that answer into the index, where both dialects
test it identically.
On GL nothing about the sampled result changes — the same slot resolves to the
same handle to the same texel. The SSBO read simply happens one stage later,
and `flat` keeps it one scalar load per primitive rather than per fragment.
Also: RenderBootstrap has been loading mesh_modern without common.glsl since V2,
which cannot have linked — `ACDREAM_UBO_SET` sits inside a layout qualifier
there. The UI Studio path is the only caller. One argument, same pair, same way
WorldRenderComposition has always loaded it.
Gates: Release build clean; App tests 4,057 passed / 3 skipped (baseline);
offline pixel gate against 95f8c25f differing fraction 3.37e-05 (~19 px of
563,200), inside the documented 15–23 px same-commit noise band and ~30x under
the 0.001 threshold. mesh_modern is the shader that gate covers most heavily,
so this is the strongest automated evidence any V6e commit gets.
Manifest: 4/9 pairs compile (debug_line, mesh_modern, ui_text, vk_probe).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Moves the mesh/EnvCell draw path's per-batch texture representation from a
64-bit ARB_bindless_texture handle to a small integer table index, entirely
on the still-shipping GL backend, with zero pixel change. This is the CPU-side
half of the eventual Vulkan descriptor-array indexing model: a table index is
the backend-neutral form (Vulkan indexes a descriptor array with it directly),
while a raw bindless handle is GL-only. Landing the data-model change now, on
GL, under a strict self-differential pixel gate, keeps it separate from V4c's
much larger RHI-plumbing change (see docs/plans/2026-07-27-vulkan-campaign.md
section 5.2 for why the table cannot be device-owned yet).
Mechanism: mesh_modern.vert's BatchData struct carries `textureIndex` (a slot)
instead of `textureHandle` (uvec2); the vertex shader looks the slot up in a
new binding=9 storage buffer (GpuBindingModel.StorageTextureTable) and passes
the reconstructed uvec2 handle to the fragment shader exactly as before, so
mesh_modern.frag needed no change at all beyond the UBO-set macro below. The
16-byte std430 stride is unchanged (GpuBindingModel.GpuBatchDataStrideBytes);
textureLayer/flags keep their offsets, so every existing CPU writer's layout
is untouched.
The handle->slot table (GlBindlessHandleTable, new, pure C#) is owned
separately by WbDrawDispatcher and EnvCellRenderer rather than shared through
a single TextureCache-owned instance: EnvCellRenderer never had a TextureCache
dependency, and nothing requires index agreement between renderers since each
rebinds its own binding=9 buffer immediately before its own draw call. This
avoided threading a new constructor parameter through EnvCellRenderer (and its
six test call sites) for no behavioral benefit. TextureCache and
CompositeTextureArrayCache turned out to need no changes at all: they only
ever produce raw ulong handles, and that production path is unaffected -
the new indirection is entirely a WbDrawDispatcher/EnvCellRenderer-side
concern, added exactly where each already assembles its per-batch GPU struct
(ToInput, the copy-back loop, PrepareDeferredAlphaDraws for the
RetailAlphaQueue path, and EnvCellRenderer's ModernBatchData construction).
The table itself is a single non-ring buffer (unlike the per-frame
triple-buffered SSBOs) because a genuinely new handle is rare - new dat
surfaces/composite overrides, not every frame - so it flushes only when
GlBindlessHandleTable.Dirty is set, mirroring how the existing texture caches
already upload infrequently.
Shader-side, introduced Rendering/Shaders/common.glsl as the shared preamble
GL has no #include for: Shader.cs gained an `includeCommonPreamble` overload
that splices the file's text in after the leading #version/#extension block
(GLSL requires #version first). It declares the binding=9 table plus the
ACDREAM_TEXTURE_HANDLE(idx) lookup macro, and a scaffolding ACDREAM_UBO_SET
macro (a no-op under GL today, redefined to `set = 1,` when the Vulkan
toolchain compiles this same source at V6+, per the campaign doc's set-1 UBO
note) applied to both SceneLighting UBO declarations now so no later slice
needs to touch them again.
Tests: WbDrawDispatcherIndirectBuilderTests updated for the renamed
IndirectGroupInput/BatchDataPublic fields; new ModernBatchDataLayoutTests
(mirrors ClipFrameLayoutTests' role, but for EnvCellRenderer's GPU struct) and
GlBindlessHandleTableTests (pure-CPU allocator behavior, including the
zero-handle case, which is registered like any other handle rather than
special-cased, since that's what reproduces the pre-V2 sampling result
bit-for-bit).
Gate: dotnet build -c Release green, dotnet test
tests/AcDream.App.Tests -c Release green (3843 passed / 3 skipped, +9 over
the 3834/3 baseline), and tools/run-offline-pixel-gate.ps1 passed with a
2.84e-05 differing-pixel fraction against the parent commit - within the
documented ~33x same-commit noise margin. No divergence-register row: this
introduces no retail behavior deviation.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Port the retail high/low material-lighting cadence for successful world clicks, keep it instance-scoped in the modern renderer, and restore authored lighting after 0.8 seconds. Correct the selection oracle and pin timing plus per-frame buffer lifecycle with tests.
Co-authored-by: Codex <codex@openai.com>
Lands the fading-secret-door feature and fixes the door "flip-back" that
surfaced while testing it.
#188 — fading-wall doors (e.g. "Pedestal Weak Spot") fade their wall part
out via TransparentPartHook instead of swinging:
- TranslucencyHookSink consumes TransparentPartHook -> TranslucencyFadeManager
(per-(entity,part) linear translucency ramp; holds at End frame).
- WbDrawDispatcher: new per-instance alpha SSBO (binding 7); ClassifyBatches
takes opacityMultiplier (1 - translucency, per CMaterial::SetTranslucencySimple
0x005396f0) forcing AlphaBlend; fully-invisible parts skipped.
- mesh_modern.vert/.frag: binding-7 InstanceAlphaBuf -> vOpacityMultiplier ->
FragColor.a *= vOpacityMultiplier.
- Register AP-89: the fade multiplies sampled texture alpha, not a separate
D3D9 material alpha channel (observably identical for texture-alpha==1 surfaces).
Door flip-back fix (affected BOTH #188 fading walls AND #187 sliding doors): a
door/wall that finished opening holds a single unchanging frame, so the
uncommitted IsEntityCurrentlyMoving cache-bypass narrowing dropped it onto the
Tier-1 static cache -- which only remembers the REST pose + opacity 1.0 --
snapping it visually shut/opaque while physics stayed open. Reverted that
narrowing: every Sequencer entity stays on the per-frame path (live pose + live
fade opacity), the known-good pre-optimization behavior. The per-frame CPU cost
that narrowing chased was a Debug-build artifact -- Release is GPU-bound
(~200 fps in Sawato, measured), so the unconditional add is free where it
matters. Left a code comment barring re-introduction.
Tests: full Core suite green (2649 passed, 2 skipped). Live visual gate PASSED --
both fading-wall and sliding doors hold open.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The #176 gate-2 failure ("stripes/triangles flickering when the camera
is pushed into walls; nothing when zoomed out") is NOT a render defect.
Isolation apparatus added this commit:
- ACDREAM_LIGHT_DEBUG shader modes (mesh_modern.vert/frag + uLightDebug
upload in EnvCellRenderer/WbDrawDispatcher): 1 = ambient-only,
2 = dynamics killed, 3 = raw vLit field (texture ignored). The
pattern SURVIVES mode 3 -> not texture; lives above the light data.
- ACDREAM_CLIP_DEBUG=1 (RenderingDiagnostics.ClipDebugNoShellTrim +
the EnvCellRenderer slot-fill gate): shell pass draws cells WHOLE
(retail's shape). Pattern survives -> the per-cell clip trim is
exonerated.
With every render suspect dead, an autonomous visual loop (synthetic
back-into-wall input + GDI window captures + the [flap-sweep] probe)
pinned the mechanism numerically: at a compressed moving boom the
camera-collision sweep is BISTABLE - consecutive sweeps with ~1.4 mm
input drift flip the first-contact solution 0.27 m along the boom
(pulledIn 0.27<->0.53, every ~5-10 frames, all 368k sweeps ok=True),
and at ~1700 fps unsynced every monitor refresh tear-interleaves the
two views = the stripe/hatch patterns. Filed as #180 with the retail
anchor: viewer_sought_position is STATEFUL (SmartBox 0x00452d75 feeds
the CURRENT swept viewer into CameraManager::UpdateCamera 0x00456660
and assigns the return to the sought, 0x00452d84) - the target
converges to the collided position instead of re-rolling the full
knife-edge ray per frame like our RetailChaseCamera does. SweepEye
itself ports update_viewer 0x00453ce0 faithfully and is exonerated.
Also recorded in #176: the site-A weenie light-registration leak (a
portal's I100 light stacked x2->x4 over one session as re-CreateObject
re-registered it under fresh entity ids).
The #176 lighting fix (d8984e87) remains live-verified; #176 re-gates
after #180 lands. ISSUES: #180 filed, #176 updated. Suites: Core
2599+2skip; toggles inert by default.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The torch/point-light look was wrong two ways, both now fixed against the
named retail decomp (calc_point_light 0x0059c8b0) via our verified
LightBake.PointContribution port:
1. Per-PIXEL → per-VERTEX. accumulateLights moved from mesh_modern.frag to
mesh_modern.vert so point lights Gouraud-interpolate across each triangle
the way retail's fixed-function T&L does. The per-pixel eval made a tight,
hard-edged "spotlight" pool on flat walls; per-vertex is a soft, broad
gradient. frag now just consumes the interpolated vLit (+ fog + flash).
2. Simplified ramp → faithful calc_point_light shape. The live point/spot
branch was max(0,N·L) × linear(1−d/range) × cap — missing two terms our
LightBake.cs port already has:
• half-Lambert WRAP (1/1.5)·(N·D + 0.5·d), D un-normalised — a face
angled away from a torch still catches light (retail's soft terminator)
instead of snapping to black.
• distance-cube NORM branch norm = distsq>1 ? distsq·d : d — inverse-
square-ish soft far halo + punchy near field, vs the flat linear ramp.
Per-channel no-blowout cap (min(scale·color, color)) retained.
The per-channel cap was also added to the legacy mesh.frag for consistency.
A read-only retail-vs-acdream lighting audit (11-agent workflow) confirmed
these two as the cause of the "better but a bit off" look and cleared the
ambient/sun/terrain/color-space chain as already faithful. Remaining
confirmed divergences (per-object light selection; dungeon static vertex
bake) are filed as the next fixes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The dungeon/house/outdoor lights read as hard-edged blown discs ("spotlights")
because our point/spot shader used `atten = 1.0` flat inside a hard `d < range`
cutoff. The mesh.frag comment claimed this was retail-faithful ("no attenuation
inside Range... the bubble-of-light look relies on crisp boundaries", citing
r13 10.2) — that was a misread and the literal cause of the symptom.
Verified against the decomp (not guessed): calc_point_light (0x0059c8b0, the
PER-VERTEX point-light path that lights static walls) scales each light's
contribution by (1 - dist/falloff_eff) — a LINEAR ramp that fades to exactly 0
at the edge, eliminating the hard disc. falloff_eff = Falloff * static_light_factor,
and static_light_factor = 1.3 (0x00820e24), NOT the 1.5 config_hardware_light
rangeAdjust (that 1.5 is the D3D-dynamic path for moving objects, a different
path). The Ghidra port (acclient.c:808639) is more garbled — BN pseudo-C is the
oracle here; the exact normalization factor + a half-Lambert wrap (0.5*dist+N*L)
are x87-obscured (same artifact class as GetPowerBarLevel) and left unported.
Changes:
- mesh_modern.frag + mesh.frag: replace flat atten with clamp(1 - d/range, 0, 1);
Range now carries falloff_eff so the ramp fades to 0 at the cutoff. Fix the
false "no attenuation / crisp bubble" comment in mesh.frag.
- LightInfoLoader: Range = Falloff * 1.3 (static_light_factor), was * 1.5.
- LightManager: correct the stale class doc comment (Tick is now nearest-8
allocation-free partial-select with NO viewer-range slack filter).
- divergence register: AP-16 updated (slack filter removed), AP-35 added
(per-pixel vs per-vertex Gouraud; dropped half-Lambert wrap + normalization).
- test: LightingHookSinkTests Range 8*1.3 = 10.4.
Build + 20 lighting tests green. Visual gate pending (game-wide lighting change:
dungeon torches, house candles, outdoor braziers).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three root causes regressed the Holtburg lifestone since the WB rendering
migration (Phase N.5 retirement amendment, commit dcae2b6, 2026-05-08).
All confirmed via temporary [LIFESTONE-DIAG] instrumentation and visually
verified by the user through the +Acdream test character.
1. **Alpha-test discard** in mesh_modern.frag transparent pass killed
high-α pixels of dat-flagged transparent surfaces. Native AC
transparent surfaces routinely include effectively-opaque pixels —
e.g. the lifestone crystal core (surface 0x080011DE) — that compose
correctly under (SrcAlpha, 1-SrcAlpha) blending. The original N.5
§2 rationale ("high-α belongs in opaque pass") doesn't hold for
surfaces flagged transparent at the dat level: those pixels can't
reach the opaque pass at all. Fix: remove `α >= 0.95 discard` from
the transparent pass, keep `α < 0.05 discard` as a fragment-cost
optimization (skip totally-empty pixels).
2. **Cull state** for the transparent pass was unset by
WbDrawDispatcher after the N.5 retirement amendment deleted
StaticMeshRenderer.cs (which had the Phase 9.2 setup at commit
6f1971a, 2026-04-11). Closed-shell translucents — lifestone crystal,
glow gems — need GL_CULL_FACE + GL_BACK + GL_CCW in the transparent
pass; otherwise back faces composite over front faces in iteration
order under DepthMask(false). Fix: re-establish Phase 9.2's exact
GL state setup at the top of Phase 8.
3. **uDrawIDOffset uniform** was missing from mesh_modern.vert.
gl_DrawIDARB resets to 0 at the start of each
glMultiDrawElementsIndirect call, so the transparent pass — which
begins later in the indirect buffer — was fetching
Batches[0..transparentCount) instead of its actual section at
Batches[opaqueCount..end). The lifestone crystal ended up reading
the FIRST OPAQUE batch's TextureHandle every frame; as the camera
moved and the front-to-back opaque sort reordered which group
landed at BatchData[0], the crystal's apparent texture flickered to
whatever sat first — typically the player character's body parts.
Fix: add `uniform int uDrawIDOffset` to the vertex shader, change
Batches[gl_DrawIDARB] → Batches[uDrawIDOffset + gl_DrawIDARB], and
set the uniform per-pass in WbDrawDispatcher (0 for opaque,
_opaqueDrawCount for transparent). Mirrors WorldBuilder's
BaseObjectRenderManager.cs line 845.
Tests: 1688/1696 passing (8 pre-existing physics/input failures
unchanged). N.5b conformance sentinel 94/94 clean.
Visual: Holtburg lifestone now renders with the spinning blue crystal
correctly composed over the pedestal. Other transparent content (glass,
particle effects, NPC clothing) is unaffected — the same uniform fix
applies globally and is correct for all transparent draws.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Per Phase A.5 spec §4.9.2: ClipMap foliage uses binary alpha-cutoff.
At N₂=12 horizon distance the pixel-stepped silhouettes are visible.
A2C with MSAA 4x produces smooth retail-faithful tree edges.
GL context now requests Samples=4. WbDrawDispatcher's opaque pass
toggles GL_SAMPLE_ALPHA_TO_COVERAGE on/off around the multi-draw
indirect call. mesh_modern.frag's opaque pass now discards only
truly-empty (α<0.05) so the GPU derives sample mask from coverage;
transparent pass boundary logic is unchanged.
MSAA audit: no custom FBOs found — all rendering uses default
framebuffer. Sky/particles/ImGui are all MSAA-compatible.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Code quality review caught four issues:
- Unnecessary GL_ARB_bindless_texture extension in mesh_modern.vert
(vert doesn't use bindless types). Removed; only the frag needs it.
- SSBO binding=1 (BatchBuffer) and UBO binding=1 (SceneLighting) are
in distinct GL namespaces — added a comment in the vert documenting
this so Task 10's bind site doesn't get confused.
- Misleading "0=opaque, 1=transparent" comment expanded to spell out
the full Decision 2 two-pass alpha-test logic and what each discard
threshold protects against.
- BatchData.flags field is reserved; documented that N.5's dispatcher
owns all blend state, with a hook for future shader-side additive.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
New entity shaders for the WB modern rendering path. Modeled on WB's
StaticObjectModern.* but adapted to acdream's lighting model:
- Drops uActiveCells (we cull cells on CPU in WbDrawDispatcher)
- Drops uDrawIDOffset (full passes, no pagination)
- Drops uHighlightColor (deferred to Phase B.4 follow-up; field reserved
in InstanceData struct comment)
- Preserves mesh_instanced's SceneLighting UBO at binding=1 with 8 lights,
fog params, lightning flash, per-channel clamp — full visual identity
vert reads InstanceData[] @ binding=0 indexed by gl_BaseInstanceARB +
gl_InstanceID for the per-entity model matrix; reads BatchData[] @
binding=1 indexed by gl_DrawIDARB for the per-group bindless texture
handle + layer.
frag samples sampler2DArray reconstructed from a uvec2 bindless handle
+ uint layer. uRenderPass uniform picks two-pass alpha-test thresholds:
0 = opaque (discard alpha<0.95), 1 = transparent (discard alpha>=0.95
and alpha<0.05).
Not yet wired to the dispatcher — Task 6 sets up shader load + capability
detection in GameWindow; Task 7-10 rewrite the dispatcher to use SSBO +
glMultiDrawElementsIndirect.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
