acdream/docs
Erik 89db9a794c feat(ui): authored state media animates, so the unseen-text indicator blinks
The blink is not code. It is data, and we were throwing it away.

A retail UI state's media is a small program: images interleaved with timed
pauses, branches, and a terminal hand-off to another state. Our importer kept
the FIRST image per state and dropped the rest, so nothing authored could ever
animate — the indicator was correct in every other respect and simply sat
still.

Measured from the installed dats (LayoutDump --media 0x1000048C), the chat
unseen-text indicator's Normal state authors thirteen steps: two frames
alternating every half second, three times, then `State 13` — Ghosted, whose
authored 0x3B is Invisible.

So retail's indicator is a three-second attention FLASH that hides itself, not
a badge that stays lit until you scroll to the bottom. Nobody would guess that
from the code, because there is no blink code anywhere; the behaviour lives
entirely in the authored sequence. Our shipped version stayed lit, which is
the one thing the data says it must not do.

Sampling is a pure function of (steps, elapsed) rather than a playback object
holding a cursor, so an element only has to remember WHEN its state began and
the whole thing is testable without a clock, a GPU or a frame loop. One shared
UiMediaClock is advanced once per frame by RetailUiRuntime; a UI element has
no tick of its own.

The controller change is the other half: it starts the flash on the rising
edge ONLY. Re-setting Normal every frame would pin the sequence on frame zero
and it would never blink at all — which is the failure mode the second new
test exists to catch, and which no "is it visible?" assertion would notice.
When the sequence reaches its terminal step the controller follows it down
instead of re-lighting it.

Two guesses are refused rather than made, and both are registered: a Pause's
max duration (every sequence measured sets min == max, and what the range MEANS
is not in the decomp) and a sub-1 branch probability (falls through, the
direction where a malformed sequence stops rather than animates forever).
A jump-cycle with no elapsed time is bounded so a bad sequence cannot spin
inside a frame.

Kept `Other` steps in the list rather than filtering them, so a jump's authored
index still lands on the entry it names.

Register: CT-3, CT-4.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-21 11:14:53 +02:00
..
architecture feat(ui): authored state media animates, so the unseen-text indicator blinks 2026-08-21 11:14:53 +02:00
audit docs: update audit — Sprint 1 items verified (sequence counters + scenery LCG) 2026-04-13 13:51:39 +02:00
plans chore(chat): CT-D1/D2 — delete the dead ChatPanel, reconcile the stale digest 2026-08-21 10:27:43 +02:00
reference docs(reference): preserve local ACE command catalog 2026-07-27 00:03:58 +02:00
reports docs: the overnight consolidation report, open questions first 2026-07-29 03:54:43 +02:00
research docs: Campaign CT rescoped to complete chat parity, system + GUI 2026-08-21 07:13:55 +02:00
reviews docs: close r3 test cleanup 2026-08-18 17:02:15 +02:00
superpowers feat(launcher): complete Campaign LA11 pre-gate support 2026-08-15 00:02:04 +02:00
bugs.md docs: reconcile project status and navigation 2026-07-20 13:00:41 +02:00
ci-and-releases.md docs: note that docs-only pushes skip the pipeline 2026-08-19 16:15:04 +02:00
ISSUES.md fix #420: seed face-segment media states so character select stops crashing the client 2026-08-19 18:32:28 +02:00
README.md docs: point the documentation map at the Timing lane 2026-08-19 15:37:44 +02:00
release-gate.md test: introduce Lane=Timing for load-sensitive tests, and stop chasing them individually 2026-08-19 15:29:10 +02:00

acdream documentation map

This page is the entry point for project documentation. It distinguishes current sources of truth from implementation history so an old plan or issue banner cannot silently override the current program state.

Current snapshot — 2026-07-27

  • Milestone state: M3, “Cast a spell,” landed 2026-07-21. M4, “Live in the world,” is active.
  • M4 gameplay program: resume the pre-M4 world-interaction completion program. Favorite-spell overflow, status Use/Assess, and the complete assessment surface are user-accepted. Equipped-child picking and vendor browse/transactions remain Slices 46.
  • Structural/runtime state: all eight GameWindow decomposition slices, Modern Runtime Slices AJ, and the connected visual/lifecycle gates are complete. GameWindow is a 1,622-line composition/callback shell. AcDream.Runtime.GameRuntime owns canonical session, entity/object, gameplay, movement, physics, projectile, environment, and portal state; graphical and no-window hosts borrow the same owner graph.
  • Headless state: Slice K is complete. AcDream.Headless is a presentation-free Windows/Linux host with deterministic commands/events, shared immutable content, multi-session isolation, reconnect, resource telemetry, and 1/5/10/30-session gates. The final two-account native-Linux soak completed ten minutes, logged out through ACE, and converged every ownership ledger.
  • Linux graphical state: Slice L0 and the L1 implementation checkpoint are complete at 66f114b2 and 11501d52. Native Windows passes the active modern-GL/audio/window smoke. WSLg X11/Wayland correctly reject their missing GL_ARB_bindless_texture. Physical-Linux validation and L2L6 are explicitly deferred; resume at the supported AMD/NVIDIA L1 gate.
  • Completed gameplay gates: R6 locomotion/collision/projectile/teleport/ radar, two-client portal-out/materialization, indoor prepared collision, loot ordering, local/remote ground drops, and selection-marker lifetime.
  • Separate visual verification: issue #225, the shared-alpha lifestone/particle result; its connected resource-lifetime and performance routes pass.
  • Carried behaviour debt: issue #153 (far teleport onto an unstreamed edge), #116 (narrowed slide response), #235 (capped/RDP jump cadence), and the active temporary-stopgap rows in the divergence register.
  • Divergence audit: 189 active rows — IA 18, AD 38, AP 91, TS 38, and UN 4 — plus retained struck/retired historical rows such as TS-37.
  • Latest automated baseline: the Release build succeeds with the 17 test-project warnings tracked by issue #228; 8,826 tests pass and five are intentionally skipped. App passes 3,763 / 3 skips. The L1 Windows supported smoke and WSLg X11/Wayland negative-capability reports all end with zero window/GL/input/audio ownership.

Sources of truth

Read these in this order when deciding what to do next:

  1. plans/2026-05-12-milestones.md — the active playable outcome, freeze boundaries, and visual gates.
  2. plans/2026-04-11-roadmap.md — strategic phase ledger: shipped, active, deferred, and future work.
  3. ISSUES.md — tactical defects and small follow-ups. The status inside an issue is authoritative; physical order is not.
  4. architecture/retail-divergence-register.md — every known place runtime behavior can differ from retail.
  5. architecture/acdream-architecture.md and architecture/code-structure.md — ownership, dependency, update-thread, and extraction rules.
  6. architecture/worldbuilder-inventory.md — rendering/DAT code already owned in-tree versus mechanisms still ours to port.

If these disagree, milestones control the current outcome, the roadmap controls work ordering, the issue status controls the individual defect, and the architecture documents control implementation shape. Reconcile the stale document in the same change; do not leave both claims standing.

Research and implementation records

  • research/named-retail/ is the primary retail oracle: named pseudo-C, headers, symbols, and types from the Sept 2013 build.
  • research/decompiled/ is the older Ghidra fallback.
  • research/ contains focused pseudocode, traces, fixtures, and gate reports. A dated research note records evidence; it does not become a new roadmap.
  • superpowers/specs/ and superpowers/plans/ are per-slice design and execution records. Completed plans remain historical.
  • ci-and-releases.md is the SSOT for the Gitea CI pipeline, the self-hosted runners, and how alpha releases are published. Load-sensitive tests live in Lane=Timing; see release-gate.md before adding to it.
  • audit/ contains completion and conformance audits.
  • reference/ace-commands.md preserves the local ACE server's complete in-game command catalog and points to the authoritative per-command help surface.

Durable memory

  • ../claude-memory/MEMORY.md indexes the live subsystem memories and the render/physics digests. Read a domain digest before changing that subsystem, especially its DO-NOT-RETRY table.
  • ../memory/ contains stable engineering references such as the modern rendering pipeline, two-tier streaming, and toolchain notes.

Memory accelerates recall; it does not outrank the canonical documents above. When current truth changes, update the relevant canonical document and distill only the durable lesson into memory.

Historical and deprecated documents

  • bugs.md is the April 2026 bug snapshot. It is preserved for archaeology and is not an active ledger.
  • Dated plans and specs describe the decision at that time. Their completion wording is historical unless the current milestone/roadmap explicitly links the item as active.
  • Old R1→R8 architecture sequencing is superseded. Current execution comes from the milestones and strategic roadmap.

Documentation maintenance rules

  • Update milestone, roadmap, issue, divergence, architecture, and memory claims in the same commit when a shipped change affects them.
  • Keep one issue ID per defect. Narrow an issue in place; do not reuse another issue's number as a shorthand.
  • Mark automated, connected, and visual gates separately. An automated pass is not a visual acceptance, and an RDP throughput sample is not a local-display visual comparison.
  • Preserve research history, but remove stale “current/next” claims from living documents once the state advances.