Three root causes found via systematic debugging after the user reported
that the dc60405 texture fix and 4763b97 height table fix had no visible
effect on Holtburg.
## Heightmap transpose (LandblockMesh.Build)
Phase 1's LandblockMesh.Build indexed block.Height as y*9+x but AC packs
per-vertex heights in x-major order (x*9+y, matching ACViewer's
LandblockStruct: Height[x * VertexDim + y]). The bug was invisible on
flat landblocks (Phase 1 smoke test) but left buildings buried by 10-13
world-Z units on Holtburg, because building Frame.Origin positions
reference the un-transposed ground truth.
Diagnostic evidence (before fix, Holtburg 0xA9B4FFFF):
entity 0x020000A5 at ( 84.6,126.0) entityZ= 66.03 terrainZ= 78.15 delta=-12.13
entity 0x02000118 at ( 74.2,139.9) entityZ= 66.03 terrainZ= 78.92 delta=-12.89
After fix: deltas are 0.03 to 2.18 — buildings now sit on the ground
with small positive offsets for foundations.
Regression test added: Build_HeightmapPackedAsXMajor_NotYMajor asserts
asymmetric heights land at the correct world positions.
## Solid-color surfaces with Translucency=1.0 (SurfaceDecoder.DecodeSolidColor)
The "bright pink doors and windows" the user saw were 11 Holtburg
surfaces with OrigTextureId==0 — these carry a ColorValue instead of
a texture chain. Phase 2a's TextureCache dropped them into the magenta
fallback. All 11 turned out to be Base1Solid|Translucent with
Translucency=1.00, meaning "fully transparent placeholder surface"
(debug ColorValue is gray/green/red/blue/black, never displayed).
DecodeSolidColor now takes a translucency parameter and multiplies
alpha by (1 - translucency), so Translucency=1.0 → alpha=0, and the
mesh shader's existing alpha discard (< 0.5) makes the pixel invisible.
TextureCache honors Surface.Type.HasFlag(Base1Solid) and passes
surface.Translucency through.
Regression tests added: DecodeSolidColor_Opaque_PreservesAlpha and
DecodeSolidColor_FullyTranslucent_AlphaGoesToZero.
## Clipmap alpha-key (DecodeIndex16)
AC convention (per ACViewer TextureCache.IndexToColor): on surfaces
marked Base1ClipMap, palette indices 0..7 are treated as fully
transparent regardless of their actual palette color. Without this,
low-index pixels on clipmap surfaces (typically doorway cutouts and
foliage) render as opaque using whatever sentinel color is at those
palette slots.
DecodeRenderSurface now takes an isClipMap parameter. TextureCache
passes Surface.Type.HasFlag(Base1ClipMap). DecodeIndex16 forces
rgba=(0,0,0,0) when isClipMap && idx < 8.
Regression test added: DecodeIndex16_ClipMap_ZerosAlphaForLowIndices.
## Notes
- dc60405's PFID_INDEX16 palette decoder remains correct — no change.
- 4763b97's LandHeightTable wiring remains correct — real-table lookup
still runs, it just happens to be linear at Holtburg's height range.
The fix is forward-compatible with mountains elsewhere.
- All three bugs were invisible to the original unit tests. The new
regression tests pin them down.
## State
- dotnet build: 0 warnings, 0 errors
- dotnet test: 42 passing (was 38 + 4 new)
- Runtime: 126 entities hydrated on Holtburg, no exceptions, no
magenta fallback (counter was 11, now 0 via diagnostic confirmation)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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