Campaign CH round 4, user-gate items 1+2. Root cause: retail ships a
second (background) glyph atlas per font, dilated 2px on every side,
plus two border-pixel scalars (Font.NumHorizontalBorderPixels/
NumVerticalBorderPixels) that acdream's font reader never read — so
even the pre-existing outline parameter drew almost nothing once
enabled. Landed together (either half alone is a no-op or a
regression):
- UiDatFont carries BorderX/BorderY from the DAT font resource.
- UiRenderContext.DrawStringDat inflates the background blit's source
and destination rect by that margin and restructures into retail's
exact two-pass whole-string outline-then-fill model
(UIElement_Text::DrawSelf), plus the 8-neighbour +-1px fallback for
fonts with no background atlas. Corrects the stale "property 0xd"
comment to the real ids, 0x21 (Outline) / 0x22 (OutlineColor).
- LayoutDesc property 0x21/0x22 import (ElementInfo.Outline/
OutlineColor, LayoutImporter.ReadState, ElementReader.Merge/
ApplyCanonicalLegacyProjection, DatWidgetFactory.BuildText) so every
authored-outline element across the DAT set is correct at once.
- SpewBox: RetailFontId corrected from a round-3 heuristic
(0x40000025) to the actually-authored 0x40000001 (18px bold serif),
Outline=true set on the controller's UiText. Fill colour stays the
user-gate-round-1-pinned yellow — font atlases are alpha-only
(PFID_A8), so there is no baked shading that could explain the
screenshot's gold as anything other than the outline itself.
- Chat transcript: default fill now seeds from its authored
ARGB(255,204,204,204) instead of an unrelated color-table slot
(ChatTranscriptRenderer.BuildLines takes the transcript's own
DefaultColor as a parameter); the 34-entry LogTextType table is
untouched, and every existing CH1 conformance test stays green
unmodified.
Regenerated the committed chat_2100006f.json fixture from the real
installed DAT, confirming end to end (not by missing-field default)
that the transcript carries no outline.
Tests: font-reader border fields + inflation math pinned against the
real DAT font, two-pass draw ordering/tint/inflation via a new
TextRenderer.DebugSpriteSegmentVerts test seam, property 0x21/0x22
import at both the ElementReader.Merge and StateDesc-property layers,
SpewBox font/outline, and the chat default-shade seed with the color
table proven untouched.
Full Release suite: 12,610 passed / 4 skipped / 0 failed
(AcDream.slnx, complete solution).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
User-gate round 3 findings (a)-(c):
(a) SpewBox: TopOffset moves from the round-1 60px placeholder to 0 (flush
to the viewport top). SpewBoxController never wired DatFont/Font at all
before this round, so it silently rendered through the 15px debug
BitmapFont fallback; it now resolves retail dat Font 0x40000025
(MaxCharHeight=11px) through a new RetailUiRuntime.Assets accessor —
the smallest font id confirmed in use by any currently-imported retail
LayoutDesc fixture, cross-referenced against every
tests/AcDream.App.Tests/UI/Layout/fixtures/*.json dump and confirmed
against the installed DAT via AcDream.Cli dump-font-atlas. It is also the
chat window's own smallest font (the 0x2100006F floating-window 1/2/3/4
indicator badges), so both selection criteria the brief offered agree.
Both remain best-available approximations, not resolved retail values —
register row AP-178 updated accordingly.
(b)/(c) /help and /help death: round 2 extracted the individual retail
strings byte-exact but never traced ClientCommunicationSystem::DoHelp's
complete print sequence. Byte-swept DoHelp's own range plus the five
Summary-branch functions it calls into (HelpEmote/HelpSquelch/
HelpStatusGroup/HelpTextGroup/HelpAllGroup) against the PDB-paired
acclient.exe. Retail's real shape: bare /help prints exactly TWO scroll
entries (HelpPrefixNote, then the 13-item AvailableHelpListing built from
DoHelp's own literals and each group's Summary_HelpType branch, in exact
source order) — not the acdream-invented cheat sheet BuildHelpText()
built before. Any resolved /help <verb> gets the SAME two-entry shape:
HelpPrefixNote, then ForMoreInformationPrefix concatenated directly onto
the verb's own Detail text (retail's own unsubstituted "<command>"
literal, ported verbatim). ChatCommandRouter.EmitVerbHelp applies this
uniformly to every resolved verb, not just death. An unresolved verb now
shows retail's real "Unknown command" fallback text; that fallback types
0x1A (ClientLocal), which retail routes to the SpewBox exclusively — a
gap ChatVM's UI.Abstractions layer can't yet reach, filed as ISSUES #367
/ register AP-186 rather than left silently unregistered.
Jump-in-air (round 2's open item 1) was root-caused and fixed separately
at a5a7eb4f between rounds — recorded in the campaign ledger.
Debug suite (all projects): 12,329 passed / 4 skipped / 1 failed — the
one failure is issue #351, a pre-existing Debug-only streaming flake
confirmed reproducing identically on the pristine pre-round-3 commit via
git stash, not a regression. Release verification covers every project
reachable without rebuilding AcDream.App: a live client process (PID
15064) held its own Release binaries locked for the session and was not
killed per project policy — AcDream.UI.Abstractions.Tests (867/867, the
layer both /help fixes live in) plus every other non-App-dependent
project, all 0 failed. AcDream.App/AcDream.App.Tests/AcDream.Core.Tests
(the SpewBox fix's layer) are green in Debug only this session.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Applies the seven NITs from the CH2 re-review (verdict APPROVE-WITH-FIXES,
following the REJECT->rework at e0e78883):
1. SpewBoxController's centered Left was captured once via
AnchorEdges.Top and replayed forever on resize (UiElement.ApplyAnchor's
Left/Right-both-false branch pins a fixed margin). Anchors is now
AnchorEdges.None and Tick recomputes Left every frame against the
current root width.
2. OneLine=false was defaulting to UiText's bottom-pinned transcript flow
(VerticalJustify honored only via ConfigureDatState, which this
synthesized element never calls). Added UiText.HonorVerticalJustification
so a non-DAT controller can opt the scrollable path into
VerticalJustify without a full LayoutDesc binding; SpewBoxController
sets VerticalJustify=Top so lines flow from the top of the 450x72 box,
matching newest-at-top insert semantics. Noted as invented-pending-
measurement in AP-178's row (no new row).
3. Documented the deliberate inversion of UiText.LinesProvider's
oldest-first contract in SpewBoxController.Tick (SpewBoxVM.Lines feeds
newest-first, which is correct specifically because the box is now
top-aligned) and added a test pinning the rendered order (newer message
is the topmost line), driving root.Tick.
4. Fixed the stale "retail's code default, 1" comment in
SpewBoxControllerTests — MaxConcurrentItems is the shipped LayoutDesc's
AUTHORED value, 4.
5. Added the matching unmapped-id diagnostics line to
LiveSessionRuntimeFactory's ShowWeenieError sink, matching the pattern
GameEventWiring's WeenieError/WeenieErrorWithString handlers already
use.
6. Corrected the "EXHAUSTIVE Portal sweep found ZERO" overclaim in
SpewBoxLayoutDumpDiagnostic: the loop's id source was DatCollection's
top-level aggregate GetAllIdsOfType<LayoutDesc>(), not dats.Portal's
own (which reports a count of ZERO for this type), so querying those
ids against dats.Portal.TryGet established nothing about Portal either
way. Corrected the same overclaim echoed in SpewBoxState's
MaxConcurrentItems doc comment and in AP-178's register text (both the
table row and the section-header history line). What's actually
established: dats.Local hosts the SpewBox layout at 0x21000011; whether
Portal also carries a copy remains unestablished.
7. Added a test exercising the full ShowWeenieError -> AddText -> SpewBox
path for id 0x0561 (the 50-friends-cap refusal) in
LiveSessionCommandRouterTests, mirroring LiveSessionRuntimeFactory's
ShowWeenieError closure exactly since every other LiveSessionRuntimeFactory
test in this tree is a source-text conformance grep, not an
instantiation.
Ledger: CH2 ledger row's review column now reads REJECT -> reworked
e0e78883 -> re-review APPROVE-WITH-FIXES -> nits (this commit); Status
header flips CH2 to code-complete/closed pending the user gate, CH3 next.
Build green; touched-project tests green (19/19 new/changed,
4351/3354 App.Tests unaffected pass); full Release suite 11,916 passed /
4 skipped / 0 failed (baseline 11,914/4/0 plus the two new tests this
commit adds).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Reworks Campaign CH slice CH2 per the REJECT-review findings doc
(docs/research/2026-08-09-ch2-review-findings.md).
BLOCKER 1 — SpewBoxController never rendered a line and leaked its
pending queue. LinesProvider only ran through UiText.OnDraw, which
gates on Visible — and the box started invisible, so the provider (the
sole caller of SpewBoxState.Tick) never ran. Gave the controller an
explicit per-frame Tick(now) driven by UiRoot's global-message-3
broadcast (a zero-size GlobalTimeSink child, the same pattern
VendorUiController.DragOverGlobalTimeSink already uses), matching
retail's gmSpewBoxUI::Update. LinesProvider now only returns the
cache. Tests rewritten to drive root.Tick(...) instead of calling the
provider directly, plus new coverage for visibility-without-a-draw,
queue-drain-without-a-draw, and bounded-queue-across-many-ticks.
BLOCKER 2 — re-derived the HandleFailureEvent routing table from the
PDB-paired binary instead of the pseudo-C's ~33-char string previews.
tools/pdb-extract/sweep_weenie_strings.py sweeps every push imm32 in
VA 0x571990-0x575480, dereferences into .rdata/.data, and decodes the
full UTF-16LE literal. Added the 5 ids dispatched via else-if (missed
by case-label enumeration), resolved 0x4F8 (previously excluded),
fixed 18 wrong strings (16 the review flagged + 2 more — 0x4E9 and
0x518 — an automated diff between every swept literal and the landed
table found). Every changed row cross-checked against ACE's
WeenieError/WeenieErrorWithString enum doc comments; both oracles
agreed on every row, including a case where the review's own proposed
text for the new 0x4E8 row was itself wrong (it was 0x4E9's text) —
corrected via the else-if block's own instruction address plus the ACE
cross-check. Pinned table count: 344 (338 + 5 + 0x4F8).
SHOULD-FIX 1 — RuntimeCommunicationState.ResetSpewBox was dead code;
folded into the ChatIdentity generation-reset stage (same lifetime
boundary), with a reset assertion added to the existing populated-reset
test.
SHOULD-FIX 2 — AddText trimmed only the trailing end and invented an
empty-string early return; retail's AddTextToScroll trims both ends
(trim(&str, 1, 1, ws)) and has no empty guard. Both retired.
SHOULD-FIX 3 — ShowWeenieError bypassed the AddText chokepoint via
ChatLog.OnWeenieError (hardcoded LogTextType 0x00); routed through
Communication.AddText(Resolve(code, param)) instead, and
ChatLog.OnWeenieError is deleted — GameEventWiring's legacy no-router
fallback now resolves + calls OnSystemMessage directly.
SHOULD-FIX 4 — retail's HandleFailureEvent switch has no default case;
an unmapped id now resolves to a null Text (silence toward the
player) instead of the invented "WeenieError 0xNNNN" hex fallback,
with a diagnostics-only console log line for the id.
NITs — AP-TBD placeholders corrected to their real register rows
(AP-178, not the unrelated AP-177 lifetime row); filed AP-180 for the
windowId dual-destination gap and corrected three stale "lands with
CH2" comments; extended SpewBoxLayoutDumpDiagnostic from dats.Portal
to dats.Local and found the SpewBox element for real — LayoutDesc
0x21000011, element 0x10000048, size 450x72, MaxConcurrentItems
(ListBox property 0x10000028) = 4, not retail's code default of 1.
AP-178 narrowed accordingly; SpewBoxState.MaxConcurrentItems and
SpewBoxController's extent/anchor/OneLine are now authored rather than
placeholder (absolute screen position and colour remain open); fixed
the "19 ids... lists 18" miscount by retiring the stale paragraph in
the class doc rewrite; aligned the UseDone handler's silent-status
check with the other two WeenieError handlers.
Full Release suite: 11,914 passed / 4 skipped / 0 failed (build 0
errors).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Retail routes on-screen refusals ("You can't jump while in the air",
"You are too encumbered to carry that!") through a SEPARATE transient
screen surface (gmSpewBoxUI, ClientSystem::AddTextToScroll @0x00563C50)
that never touches the chat scroll — type 0x1A is exactly the bit every
ChatInterface window's default filter excludes
(ChatInterface::ChatInterface @0x004F4550). acdream had no such split:
every WeenieError rendered in chat at a single stand-in LogTextType
0x00 (CH1-era approximation, register AP-176), and locally-detected
jump refusals were silently discarded.
This slice ports the full mechanism per
docs/research/2026-08-09-chat-retail-interface-text.md:
CORE (AcDream.Core/Chat):
- WeenieErrorMessages.Resolve now returns (text, RetailLogTextType) from
a 338-row transcription of ClientCommunicationSystem::HandleFailureEvent
@0x00571990 (Appendix A's 339 cases minus one, 0x4F8, deliberately
excluded — its case body is a tangled decompiler artifact, not
resolvable with confidence). Spot-checked ~20 rows directly against
the raw decomp (case 0x2b/0x36/0x3a/0x4e/0x4ec/0x4f3/0x4f4 and the
jump family), beyond the ~10 the brief asked for, because the first
pass surfaced two transcription classes the research doc's markdown
silently ate: (1) 7 ids marked "shared string global" resolved by
reading the case bodies directly (0x24/0x48/0x49 reuse the jump-
refusal globals; 0x4DE/0x4DF/0x55A/0x55E are pure param passthrough);
(2) 19 "arg3 + literal" CONCATENATION ids whose leading space (and
therefore their %s marker) the markdown table's cell-trimming ate —
fixed by re-reading each case body, several requiring a SECOND
non-truncated data_XXXXXXXX dump elsewhere in the same oracle file to
recover text the ~33-char inline preview cut off. One retail typo is
preserved verbatim: 0x4F4's second placeholder is literal "$s", not
"%s" — only the first substitutes.
- ClientTextRefusals: the 11 process-lifetime string globals, all
byte-recovered from the PDB-paired C:\Users\erikn\Downloads\acclient.exe
(MATCH verified via check_exe_pdb.py) via raw UTF-16LE prefix search —
5 were truncated in the research doc's own transcription and all 5
turned out to end "...combat mode"/"...this position", not the
shorter "...combat" a truncated read would suggest.
- SpewBoxState: the gmSpewBoxUI pending/visible queue port (insert-at-0,
dedupe-against-index-0-only, MaxConcurrentItems overflow, per-entry
expiry, one-frame enqueue/drain decoupling). Placed in Core (not
Runtime as the brief's default) because AcDream.UI.Abstractions
references Core but not Runtime, and SpewBoxVM needs to wrap it
directly — the same constraint ChatVM already satisfies against
ChatLog.
- Folded the 4-entry WeenieErrorText.cs into the full table; deleted it.
RUNTIME (AcDream.Runtime):
- RuntimeCommunicationState.AddText(text, type, windowId): the
AddTextToScroll chokepoint. type == ClientLocal -> SpewBox only, never
chat; everything else -> the existing transcript, tagged with type.
- GameEventWiring gains an `onInterfaceText` delegate hole (Core.Net
cannot reference Runtime, so this follows the file's own established
pattern for every other Runtime-owned sink). Rewires 0x028A/0x028B/
UseDone through the full table + router; fixes 0x02EB
CommunicationTransientString's routing type from a CH1-era 0x00
guess to retail's hardcoded ClientLocal (Handle_Communication__
TransientString @0x0057D460).
- LiveSessionEventRouter's 0xF7E0 ServerMessage handler now routes
through AddText with the wire chatType verbatim instead of always
writing ChatLog directly.
- PlayerMovementController gains OnInterfaceText, applied by
RuntimeLocalPlayerMovementState to every controller it installs.
Reports ChargeJump/jump refusals exactly as ClientCombatSystem::
CommenceJump @0x0056AF90 / DoJump @0x0056B110 do — confirmed via
their compiled dispatch that ONLY 0x24/0x48/0x49 produce text;
0x47 (GeneralMovementFailure, fully-constrained/no-stamina) and any
other code are retail-SILENT (DoJump's jump table has exactly 4 real
targets), which contradicts this task's brief ("0x47 -> the
constrained/stamina row per §4.2") — the brief's reading of §4.2
described what jump_is_allowed COMPUTES, not what CommenceJump/DoJump
DISPLAY for it. Implemented the decomp-verified silent behavior.
APP (AcDream.App / AcDream.UI.Abstractions):
- The 5 composition sites that already used RetailLogTextType.ClientLocal
now call Communication.AddText instead of Chat.OnSystemMessage
directly, so they reach the SpewBox instead of the transcript.
- SpewBoxVM (UI.Abstractions) + SpewBoxController (App), modeled
directly on PortalWaitNoticeController. Position/font/colour/
MaxConcurrentItems are placeholders: SpewBoxLayoutDumpDiagnostic
exhaustively swept the installed client_portal.dat's entire LayoutDesc
id range (0x21000000-0x21000075, 101/118 ids populated, sanity-checked
against 3 known ids) and found ZERO elements of class 0x10000016 —
gmSpewBoxUI is mounted from C++ code, not any authored LayoutDesc, so
the dump cannot recover these values.
REGISTER: AP-176 retired (its WeenieError half is now the full table
port); its OnCombatLine half was never in this slice's scope and is
split out to AP-179 so that divergence keeps a row. AP-177 (invented
line lifetime) and AP-178 (invented position/font/colour/max-items)
filed for the presentation placeholders above. AP-175 (PopUpString ->
chat instead of modal) is untouched, not duplicated.
Suite: 11,890 passed / 4 skipped / 0 failed (was 11,835/4/0; +55 net
new tests, 0 regressions).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Erik