HearSpeech decoded 0x02BB and 0x02BC with one layout. They do not share one.
ACE's GameMessageHearRangedSpeech writes senderID, range, chatMessageType
where GameMessageHearSpeech writes only senderID, chatMessageType, and
holtburger's HearRangedSpeechData declares the same range: f32 that
HearSpeechData lacks. Two oracles, no ambiguity.
The consequence was quiet rather than loud. The tail is twelve bytes, our
guard demanded eight, so nothing ever failed to parse. We read the guid
correctly, then read range's float bits as the chat type and discarded the
real one. A shout at range 60.0f arrived with a chat type of 0x42700000
instead of 0x0B. Nothing downstream consumes ChatType for local speech today,
which is why this survived, but the record is public and any future consumer
would have inherited garbage.
TryParse now branches its tail size on the opcode and Parsed gains Range,
which stays zero for local speech because there is no such field on that
wire. The existing ChatTests ranged case was itself built on the misreading,
constructing a local-shaped tail; it is corrected to the oracle layout and
now asserts both range and chat type rather than only the ranged flag.
New golden tests drive both opcodes through AceWireWriter in ACE's write
order, covering empty strings, string lengths one through four so every
residue of the four-byte padding rule is exercised, CP1252 accented names,
and a regression pin asserting the chat type is not the range float's bits.
A ranged body four bytes short is now rejected instead of silently decoded.
Core.Net tests go 617 to 630, all green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three follow-up fixes from the 2026-04-25 live verify session.
1. CRITICAL: BuildTell wire field order. Our outbound layout was
[target_name, message] but ACE's GameActionTell.Handle reads
[message, target_name] (verified against
references/ACE/.../GameActionTell.cs:17-18 verbatim). Result: every
/tell since Phase I.3 has been failing with WeenieError 0x052B
(CharacterNotAvailable) because ACE was looking up the message
text as the recipient name. Swapped the field order in
ChatRequests.BuildTell so message is written first; updated the
pinned BuildTell test to expect the corrected layout. The
WorldSessionChatTests round-trip continues to pass since SendTell
delegates to BuildTell.
2. Retail-style FormatEntry. The user asked for the canonical retail
strings:
/say (own): You say, "text"
/say (incoming): Name says, "text"
/tell (own echo): You tell Caith, "text"
/tell (incoming): Caith tells you, "text"
channel: [Trade] +Acdream says, "text"
/shout (own): You shout, "text"
/shout (incoming):Name shouts, "text"
Discriminators: SenderGuid == 0 distinguishes our own outbound
echoes (set by OnSelfSent) from real incoming whispers (carry the
sender's player guid). Sender == "" or "You" distinguishes our own
/say echoes (OnLocalSpeech substitutes "You" when the wire sender
is empty per holtburger client/messages.rs:476-487).
ChatEntry gains a new ChannelName slot so Channel-kind entries
render with the friendly room name ("Trade") instead of "ch 3".
Falls back to "ch {ChannelId}" when ChannelName isn't populated
(legacy ChatChannel inbound or older callers).
3. Suppress optimistic Channel echo. The user saw duplicates per
/trade /lfg in the live trace:
[ch 0] Trade: hello <-- our optimistic
[ch 3] +Acdream: [Trade] hello <-- ACE's TurbineChat broadcast
ACE's TurbineChatHandler at Network/Handlers/TurbineChatHandler.cs
broadcasts EventSendToRoom to ALL recipients in the room including
the sender, so the canonical echo always arrives via 0xF7DE. Drop
the optimistic OnSelfSent for Turbine kinds in GameWindow's
SendChatCmd handler; trust the server. Legacy ChatChannel paths
(Fellowship / Allegiance / Patron / Monarch / Vassals / CoVassals)
keep the optimistic echo because the legacy 0x0147 broadcast may
not always come back to the sender.
Inbound TurbineChat also stops embedding "[Trade] " into the
message text — passes the friendly name out-of-band via the new
channelName parameter on ChatLog.OnChannelBroadcast.
11 tests updated for the new format strings (8 in ChatVMTests, 1 in
ChatVMCombatTests, 1 BuildTell, plus the format additions cover
incoming/outgoing variants per kind). Solution total: 1007 green
(243 + 114 + 650), 0 warnings.
Tells should now actually deliver. Channel echoes show as
[Trade] +Acdream says, "hello" without the duplicate.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>