acdream/docs
Erik df6e2a7918 feat(render): Campaign V slice V6i-1 - one descriptor set per renderer scope
Plan section 5.5.8 recorded, and deliberately did not fix, that pointing one
binding at a second buffer within a frame silently corrupts the draws already
recorded against it: the backend rewrote the descriptor in place, and a
descriptor set's contents are read when the command buffer EXECUTES, not when it
was recorded. Nothing fired it while the Vulkan frame held only the retained UI.
Section 5.5.11 handed it forward as the first thing the world arm would hit,
because WbDrawDispatcher, EnvCellRenderer and TerrainModernRenderer each own
their own instance, batch and indirect buffers and all three bind set 0 in one
frame.

It is closed here, as its own commit and BEFORE the world arm, so that a blank or
corrupt first Vulkan world frame cannot be this defect wearing another face. That
sequencing is the point: sections 5.5.1 to 5.5.3 cost this campaign three days
because an instrument that was "usually right" sat underneath the thing being
measured.

What changed. There is no longer one (set 0, set 1) pair per flight slot; there
is an arena of them. VulkanBindingScopeArena - pure bookkeeping, no Vulkan
handles, nine unit tests - answers two questions per bind: which pair, and do its
descriptors need writing. VulkanFrameBindings keeps the Vulkan half: allocating
pairs from a growable pool list and writing the twelve descriptors when told to.

The scope key is the descriptor state itself - the ten storage buffer identities
and ranges, the plain bindings' offsets, and the two uniform buffer identities
and ranges. Deriving it is a decision, not an economy. The pinned contract has
nowhere to name a scope: BindStorageBuffer takes a buffer, an offset and a size,
and section 3.3 is frozen. Deriving also gives two properties a declared scope
would not: a renderer cannot forget to declare one, and two renderers that
genuinely share every buffer correctly share one pair rather than being told to
differ. A renderer's buffers are stable for its lifetime, so "distinct descriptor
state" is exactly "renderer scope".

Dynamic offsets stay free. A ring allocation moving between draws rides
vkCmdBindDescriptorSets's dynamic-offset array, so it costs neither a new pair
nor a descriptor write - section 4.4's "zero descriptor writes per frame"
property survives a frame having more than one binding state in it. Entries are
not invalidated at BeginFrame either, because the slot's previous submission has
retired and its descriptors still say what this frame is about to say; a steady
frame therefore rewrites nothing at all. An entry matched from the previous frame
is swapped below the live cursor so the rest of the frame cannot take it for a
different state - the ordering property the sixth test pins, where two renderers
swap submission order between frames.

What this does NOT do is draw a world. The captured Vulkan frame is still V6h's
retained UI over the fog clear, so the arena's multi-scope path is exercised by
its tests and not yet by a frame. That is recorded in the plan rather than
implied.

The plan's section 5.5.12 also records two blockers measured while scoping the
world arm and not fixed here: terrain_modern.vert declares TerrainClip without
ACDREAM_UBO_SET, so under the Vulkan dialect it lands at set 0 binding 2 where
the layout declares a storage buffer - the same class of gap 5.5.8 recorded for
UniformSkyParams, invisible until a terrain pipeline is created; and the offline
gate's scene takes the retail PView path rather than the flat safety path,
because ClipRoot falls back to Buildings.OutdoorNode, which puts
RetailPViewPassExecutor on the critical path to the first Vulkan Dereth frame and
makes the "terrain only" intermediate no cheaper than the whole arm.

Gates. Strict GL offline pixel gate against b9ab5890: 1.60e-05, 9 differing
pixels of 563,200, at the low end of the documented 9-31 px band and 62x under
the threshold - expected, since no GL file is touched. GL connected
run-repeat-connected-gate.ps1 -Runs 3: 3/3 RENDERED on the desktop witness and
3/3 on the client capture. One offline Vulkan run with VK_LAYER_KHRONOS_validation
proven inserted by the loader: zero errors, zero warnings, captured frame, no
[shutdown] diagnostic on either stream. App tests 4,086 / 3 skips (baseline 4,077
plus nine); complete Release suite 9,149 / 5. Issue #250's
SurfaceOverrideFingerprint_DictionaryHotPathAllocatesNothing failed once in a
whole-suite run and passed run alone, as that issue documents.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-28 13:17:25 +02:00
..
architecture docs: reconcile project state and refresh README 2026-07-27 12:53:31 +02:00
audit docs: update audit — Sprint 1 items verified (sequence counters + scenery LCG) 2026-04-13 13:51:39 +02:00
plans feat(render): Campaign V slice V6i-1 - one descriptor set per renderer scope 2026-07-28 13:17:25 +02:00
reference docs(reference): preserve local ACE command catalog 2026-07-27 00:03:58 +02:00
research docs(linux): park Slice L at L1 checkpoint 2026-07-27 12:35:47 +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 feat(render): Campaign V slice V4t-1 — terrain crosses to GpuTextureSlot 2026-07-28 12:22:45 +02:00
README.md docs: reconcile project state and refresh README 2026-07-27 12:53:31 +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.
  • 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.