History

Erik cd3129e9d6 fix(physics): C4 route 7 — child cell propagation moves from a render tick into Runtime 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>		2026-08-04 23:53:05 +02:00
..
architecture	fix(physics): C4 route 7 — child cell propagation moves from a render tick into Runtime	2026-08-04 23:53:05 +02:00
audit	docs: update audit — Sprint 1 items verified (sequence counters + scenery LCG)	2026-04-13 13:51:39 +02:00
plans	fix(physics): C4 route 7 — child cell propagation moves from a render tick into Runtime	2026-08-04 23:53:05 +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	fix(physics): C4 route 7 — child cell propagation moves from a render tick into Runtime	2026-08-04 23:53:05 +02:00
superpowers	fix(world): remove non-retail portal exit fade	2026-07-15 23:20:52 +02:00
bugs.md	docs: reconcile project status and navigation	2026-07-20 13:00:41 +02:00
ISSUES.md	fix(physics): C4 route 5 — projectile authoritative placement (#276 partial)	2026-08-04 21:03:41 +02:00
README.md	docs: reconcile project state and refresh README	2026-07-27 12:53:31 +02:00

README.md

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 4–6.
Structural/runtime state: all eight GameWindow decomposition slices, Modern Runtime Slices A–J, 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 L2–L6 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:

plans/2026-05-12-milestones.md — the active playable outcome, freeze boundaries, and visual gates.
plans/2026-04-11-roadmap.md — strategic phase ledger: shipped, active, deferred, and future work.
ISSUES.md — tactical defects and small follow-ups. The status inside an issue is authoritative; physical order is not.
architecture/retail-divergence-register.md — every known place runtime behavior can differ from retail.
architecture/acdream-architecture.md and architecture/code-structure.md — ownership, dependency, update-thread, and extraction rules.
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.
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.

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