Retail re-cells children when their parent crosses a cell, recursively, to
unbounded depth. acdream did it from a RENDER tick, so headless parented
children were cell-less forever and the canonical cell had two writers. This
slice makes Runtime the sole authority and demotes App's tick to
presentation-only. Contract:
docs/research/2026-08-04-c4-route-7-contract.md; the research that unblocked
it is docs/research/2026-08-04-retail-parent-cell-propagation.md (ca96ea5e).
Retail: SetPositionInternal @0x00515330 branches on `this->cell == curr_cell`
@0x0051536d; the changed branch reaches change_cell @0x00513390, whose
delegates leave_cell @0x00510f50 and enter_cell @0x00510ed0 self-recurse over
children and write the FULL identity (add_object @0x00510ee2, objcell_id
@0x00510f1e, part-array cell id @0x00510f2b, cell pointer @0x00510f35).
change_cell itself has no child loop.
THE TRAP, recorded because it nearly shipped: the depth-1 loop
@0x0051539c-0x005153d8 is the SAME-CELL fast path (objcell_id and part-array
id only, deliberately not the cell pointer), NOT the propagation. An
implementer who finds it first concludes "depth-1, id-only" and strands every
equipped item at a landblock boundary — the #184 class. The clincher against
that reading: update_object @0x00515d10 early-returns on `parent != 0`
@0x00515d40, so a child never runs its own physics tick and parent
propagation is the ONLY mechanism maintaining its cell.
Route 7 performs NO placement (DoPickupEvent @0x00452240 = unset_parent +
leave_world; DoParentEvent @0x00452290 = set_parent + SetPlacementFrame), so
it arms ConstrainTo nowhere — the leash rule INVERTS relative to routes
2/4/5, and both reviewers confirmed nothing arms.
Propagation is an ITERATIVE WORKLIST, not recursion. The first implementation
recursed with a depth-64 cap; both reviews independently found the cap left a
truncated tail at a stale NON-ZERO cell — permanently unrecoverable, logged
only under a probe flag, and on the withdraw path exactly the #184 shape
AP-142 clause (a) exists to reject. Shipping a fresh #184 instance inside the
slice that fixes stranded children was not acceptable, so the cap was removed
rather than tuned. The worklist retires the cap, the constant, its register
clause, and the failure mode together. Termination: every record on the stack
is already at the target pair, so nothing can be pushed twice and a hostile
A->B->A cycle collapses without a visited set.
The child write deliberately bypasses the public RuntimeEntityDirectory
.SetFullCell and calls the record method directly. This is LOAD-BEARING:
the public method re-enters PropagateFullCellToChildren, which opens with
_propagationWorklist.Clear() — routing children through it mid-drain would
wipe the shared stack and silently drop every unprocessed sibling. Any future
side effect added to the public SetFullCell must be mirrored by hand at that
call site.
Deliberate divergence, recorded not disguised: retail's removal path leaves
children with a null cell pointer but a STALE nonzero objcell_id @0x005133c1.
acdream does not reproduce it, because FullCellId != 0 is the liveness
predicate at 45+ sites — faithful porting would mark dead children live.
AP-142 records this; clause (d) records that acdream cannot gate propagation
on HasPartArray the way enter_cell gates on part_array @0x00510ed8, because
the flag's only writers are graphical and headless never sets it — the reason
is Slice J LAYERING, not a semantic difference (retail's part_array is itself
a mesh-construction product, single assignment site makeAnimObject
@0x0050e930 -> CPartArray::CreateSetup @0x0050e93e).
D7 adopts retail's unset_parent-before-leave_world order @0x0045227f ->
@0x00452286, applied to BOTH pickup paths including the dormant executor
replay. Its inertness was verified by reverting it and finding all 12
propagation tests still green — reported honestly rather than papered over
with a manufactured test, and independently confirmed by both reviewers.
ClassifyLeaveWorld and its request/cause types are DELETED: retail has no
classification here, and method-per-cause IS the retail dispatch shape.
Wiring it would have forced a vacuous teleport-sequence predicate with the
#307 shape.
Two review rounds plus a coordinator-required third pass; 5 MAJORs. One was a
handoff failure worth recording: enter_cell's part_array guard was correctly
identified as load-bearing by the research, dropped by the contract when it
enumerated the writes, and inherited as an omission by the code — a right
finding that evaporated across two handoffs with nobody re-reading the source.
Another was a test that survived deleting the entire behaviour it claimed to
pin, because its assertion read a field written unconditionally one line
earlier.
NoProjection is structurally unreachable from TickChild (TryResolveExactAttachment
performs a strictly stronger form of the same guard one call earlier). Kept as
a fail-safe, unit-tested directly, and documented in two places rather than
wrapped in a fabricated end-to-end test.
Headless regression test — the direct gate for this defect, which FAILED
before this work because no code path existed:
RuntimeLiveEntitySessionControllerTests
.DirectSink_D5_StandaloneParentEventCommitsChildToParentsExactCell.
Probe: ACDREAM_PROBE_CHILD_CELL=1 emits [child-cell] lines at all four write
sites (attach / headless-attach / propagate / withdraw / delete). TEMPORARY.
Complete Release suite MEASURED at 11,079 passed / 4 skipped / 0 failed
(baseline 11,063 at cff52c44, +16). An allocation flake appeared once under
load and was proven NOT this slice by reachability — RuntimeCollisionReportingState
contains zero SetFullCell and zero ParentAttachments references.
STILL OWED: the two-client connected gate (equip/unequip, carry across
landblock boundaries, pickup, loot, reconnect) with ACDREAM_PROBE_CHILD_CELL=1,
and a session counts only if [child-cell] cause=propagate lines appear.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Shipped-code defect affecting committed route-2 code, found while reviewing
route 4b-1.
RuntimeSetPositionState.ParkDeferred withdraws an entity from the world:
body.InWorld = false, TransientStateFlags.Active cleared, WithdrawCanonical,
SuspendObjectClock. CancelCoreDeferred then removed the operation and rewrote
the pending Withdraw into a Discard while restoring NONE of it. So cancelling a
wakeable park was strictly worse than keeping one — the park is wakeable, the
cancel destroys the only object that could ever wake it, and the entity is left
invisible AND intangible with nothing to bring it back.
Route 2's re-issue funnel masked this: re-issuing is correct for a one-shot
ForcePosition ACE never repeats, and wrong for a repeated remote stream, so the
hole was hidden rather than fixed.
Retail's own answer is a working park, verified in the decomp rather than
assumed: CPhysicsObj::SetPositionInternal @0x00515BD0, when AdjustPosition
yields no cell @0x00515C1D, calls prepare_to_leave_visibility @0x00515CDA,
store_position @0x00515CE2 (the DESTINATION pose is committed), GotoLostCell
@0x00515CF2 registering at m_position.objcell_id read AFTER store_position (so
the destination cell), clears transient 0x80 @0x00515CF7, and returns OK
@0x00515D07. InitObjCell @0x00508260 drains the lost list on cell load and calls
reenter_visibility @0x00516250, which re-places from the object's OWN
m_position with flags 0x11.
Two corrections to the direction I gave, both forced by evidence and both right:
The pose must NOT be rolled back — only the withdrawal. Three shipped route-2
tests capture positionAtPark AFTER the park and assert it survives the cancel,
and retail agrees: store_position commits the destination and nothing
un-commits it. Restoring residency at the body's committed cell is therefore
retail's own cell choice, not merely self-consistent.
The gate defaults to FALSE with four explicit opt-ins, rather than defaulting
true with opt-outs at the withdrawal callers. That keeps every one of the ~20
shipped Forget/ForgetExactPlacement sites at exactly its current behaviour
instead of depending on having correctly enumerated the withdrawal transactions.
Review had already found the broad version corrupting five of them
(TryApplyPickup, CommitAcceptedParent, CommitAcceptedParentCellless,
CommitWithdrawal, CommitPositionChannelUpdate): they hand-roll a partial
re-withdrawal that undoes the clock and FullCellId but not InWorld or the
_spatialRoots re-registration, leaving a picked-up item both in inventory and an
InWorld cellless spatial root in the physics workset.
ParkDeferred's restorableOnCancel is opt-in for exactly one of its four callers
— the plain unplaceable-destination park. Every quiescence and retirement park
is excluded deliberately: those entities are withdrawn because their world is
going away, and restoring residency inside a quiescing prefix blocks its
retirement.
VerifyPositionChannelCancellation now asserts InWorld and IsSpatialRoot per
channel — Position is a cancellation and must restore; Pickup and Parent are
withdrawals and must not. It previously asserted only !IsDeferred and counts,
which is why five green states hid this.
Register row AP-136 measured against GotoLostCell/reenter_visibility rather than
labelled "retail-shaped". Files #309 (the restore-on-cancel residual, with
park-survives recorded as the retail-faithful target and its two blockers named:
the NewerPositionPickupAndParentEachCancelExactLostOperation invariant and
teardown convergence) and #310 (an unbounded retirement stall — a retained
preparation retry pins its prefix through HasOldPrefixPlacementDebt forever, and
TickLostCellDeadlines has no production caller so the 25 s timer never fires).
This is a user-observable change to shipped paths: restorableOnCancel: true sits
in SubmitPreparedPlacementCore, the shared core behind every production
placement. AP-136 and #309 carry the proposed two-client check.
Gates: complete Release solution 10,973 passed / 4 skipped / 0 failed (baseline
10,938). Every new test discrimination-verified by reverting the fix.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The user typed @pklite and then walked straight through other PKLite players.
Root cause: ClientObject.PublicWeenieBitfield was written exactly once, from the
0xF745 CreateObject parse, and never refreshed. ACE's only PK-change message is
PropertyInt.PlayerKillerStatus (134) over 0x02CE/0x02CD, which we parsed and
stored into Properties.Ints[134] but never translated back into the bitfield —
and ACE never re-sends a PublicWeenieDesc at all (EnqueueBroadcastUpdateObject
has zero live callers), so that property is the ONLY signal a client can learn
from. Both sides of the collision test read the frozen value, so
CollisionExemption's "4c. both PKLite -> collide" rule could never fire.
Retail's missing port: PublicWeenieDesc::SetPlayerKillerStatus @0x005AC7C0
rewrites _bitfield in place — PK(4) -> (b & 0xfddfffff) | 0x20; PKLite(0x40) ->
(b & 0xffdfffdf) | 0x2000000; Free(0x20) -> (b & 0xfdffffdf) | 0x200000; else
b &= 0xfddfffdf. Mutually exclusive, verified byte-for-byte, with input values
confirmed against retail's own PKStatusEnum (acclient.h:6412-6427), not just
ACE's. Driven from ACCWeenieObject::OnStatUpdated @0x0058DF20 case 0x86.
The fix rewrites the value at its source rather than patching consumers. Two
review rounds were needed because the first pass missed that there are TWO
snapshot stores: InboundPhysicsStateController keeps its own private _snapshots
dictionary, and every untimestamped-field merge (ApplyAcceptedObjDesc and
friends) reads `old` from THAT store, not from RuntimeEntityRecord.Snapshot.
Refreshing only the active record left the target-side shadow flags correct
until the remote's next equip or unequip — ACE broadcasts an ObjDesc on every
one — at which point the appearance path rebuilt the registration from the
frozen spawn and dropped the bit permanently. The regression test demanded by
review is what surfaced that; it is verified discriminating (reverting gives
Actual: 8 instead of 33554440).
Five stores now hold this value, kept coherent from one source by two
ObjectUpdated subscribers plus the appearance-rebuild path. The two shadow-flag
writers are the same invalidation applied at the two edges that can invalidate
it, not competing authorities — review enumerated every drift path and closed
each. That coherence invariant is new as of this commit and is recorded as
register row AP-134, with AP-133 as the precedent for filing a row when the
danger is a future writer rather than current behaviour.
Also corrects TS-23's retirement narrative, which claimed every mover-flags call
site read the mover's "real" PK bits from 2026-07-30. The bits existed but their
source was frozen, so that only became true here; the site enumeration also
missed RuntimeSetPositionMoverPreparation, a seventh site that decodes the
snapshot directly.
Unblocks #298 (melee/missile admission needs the local player's own PKLite bit).
Follow-ups filed: #300 (Properties.Ints[134] vs bitfield mirror gap), #301 (same
defect class for radar blip colour and radar behaviour), #302 (a pre-existing
PortalProjection allocation-assertion flake, 1 in 6, found while verifying this
gate), #303 (LiveEntityPvpBitfieldSync is App-resident but Runtime-owned-state).
Gates: complete Release solution 10,895 passed / 4 skipped / 0 failed (baseline
10,887 including #299). Adversarial + retail-conformance review PASS after one
FAIL round. Every new test discrimination-verified by reverting the fix.
Connected acceptance NOT run — needs a live two-client PKLite session.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The admission checkpoint (30012361) sealed accepted updates behind a
pending initial placement; nothing could apply them, so AcknowledgeAdoption
refused any non-empty FIFO and the residence system had no path to
completion. RuntimeInitialCreateContinuationExecutor is that missing
mechanism: a synchronous, retry-idempotent Execute transaction that adopts
the acknowledged initial placement exactly once (consuming the retained
completion so later authored placements for the key can begin), emits the
AfterEnterWorld hook request for the local player, replays deferred
missing-parent raw Creates and queued parent relations by parent GUID
(retail ProcessObjectNetBlobs order: whole-bucket detach, FIFO dispatch,
cancellation-aware restore), and drains the mixed continuation FIFO
strictly by sequence with retail route decisions taken at execution time
via ClassifyAcceptedPosition on live inputs (server-asserted wire contact,
data-driven animation proxy, live distance/options).
Apply bodies are shared with the legacy fused paths through new gate-less
instance seams on InboundPhysicsStateController that keep the one snapshot
store in lockstep; SameIncarnationCreate envelopes apply atomically with
per-stage idempotency and buffered publication after the final stage;
every abandonment path retires the residence through the lifetime choke
point and converges the ownership ledger (executor progress, deferred
buckets, replay windows, placement watches all folded into IsConverged).
Position/placement side effects are exactly-once under retry, external
mutations are detected via a field-masked executor baseline, and
AwaitingContinuationPlacement yields keep the FIFO head retryable.
Production routes are deliberately untouched: graphical and headless
Create still use legacy RegisterEntity, and no host calls Execute. The
cutover is the next checkpoint; AP-1/AD-1 remain open until it lands.
Register rows AD-59/AD-60/AP-130/AP-131/AP-132/TS-62/TS-63 document the
slice's deviations in this commit.
Reviewed: retail-conformance PASS + architecture/adversarial PASS after
five implementation rounds (wire-contact source, snapshot lockstep,
WeenieDescription merge, abandonment convergence, reentrant retirement
windows, acknowledged-completion leak, baseline precision, replay
containment/restore, queue-by-parent-GUID relation deferral all fixed at
root cause). Runtime tests 903/903; complete Release solution 10,696
passed / 4 intentional skips; focused executor gate 161/161.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Move projectile component identity, prediction invalidation, spatial worksets, authoritative corrections, and the retail physics step into AcDream.Runtime. Keep App as the DAT-shape and presentation adapter so ACE outcomes and visible behavior remain unchanged.
Move the sole PhysicsEngine, production cache, collision admissions, canonical bodies and hosts, remote components, ordinary/remote worksets, simulation, cell commits, and shadow synchronization under RuntimeEntityObjectLifetime. Keep App as the prepared-asset, animation-input, and render-projection adapter while preserving the named-retail update and collision order.
Add exact-incarnation, object-clock, callback-reentrancy, GUID-reuse, two-runtime isolation, source ownership, collision publication, and graphical projection coverage. Release build and the complete 8,588-test solution pass.
Co-authored-by: Codex <noreply@openai.com>
Retain exact teardown receipts before terminal callbacks, preserve ordered re-entrant entity/object publication, publish committed facts across projection failures, and make direct disposal converge every canonical owner. Add a complete ownership ledger plus adversarial direct/graphical parity, callback, GUID reuse, reset, and resource-churn gates.
Co-authored-by: Codex <codex@openai.com>
Issue stable Runtime identities at canonical registration, publish entity and inventory commits through one generation-stamped synchronous stream, and make graphical adapters borrow the same direct views and events as a no-window host. Preserve exact projection teardown and retail mutation order while removing App-side event reconstruction.
Make the hard-recenter ordering fixture independent of the production two-millisecond frame budget so its injected-failure gate is deterministic.
Co-authored-by: Codex <codex@openai.com>
Introduce the presentation-free RuntimeEntityDirectory and RuntimeEntityRecord as the sole owners of server GUIDs, INSTANCE_TS incarnations, accepted snapshots, authority versions, retryable tombstones, session epochs, and local-ID allocation. Convert LiveEntityRuntime into an App projection sidecar host resolved through canonical record identity without a second GUID map.
Preserve the existing synchronous and reentrant projection lifecycle, including retryable registration/delete/session teardown. Add Runtime-only identity/lifetime tests and App ownership guards.
Validated by the Release solution build and 8,441 complete Release tests with five existing skips.
Co-authored-by: Codex <codex@openai.com>
