Initial commit — leak-hunt project complete

Five bugs identified and patched in retail Asheron's Call client:
- v3b: palette refcount over-increment (3-byte NOP at two sites)
- v5: RenderSurface PurgeResource no-op stub (vtable slot 2 thunk)
- v11: two dangling-pointer crash guards (NULL-check + reorder)
- v14: CEnvCell::Destroy ClipPlaneList leak (18-byte JMP to cleanup thunk)
- v22: unpacker stale-pointer SEH guard (whole-function __try/__except)

All five ship in leakfix.dll (117 KB, SHA d282f23c…) which is loaded
by acclient.exe at process start via PE import table patching by
tools/install_leakfix.py.

Controlled 15-client fleet soak: unpatched control died at 26h with
palette exhaustion; all 14 patched clients survived past that point
and reached ≥5-day uptime.

Residual ~15 MB/h growth traced to d3d9.dll's internal slab allocator
(260KB surface backing buffers retained after Release). See REPORT.md
§10 for the full investigation; conclusion is that it's unfixable from
outside d3d9.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.7 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

tools/patch_v8_test.py

@@ -0,0 +1,156 @@
+"""patch_v8_test.py <pid> [--revert]
+
+EXPERIMENTAL v8: comprehensive fix for UIElement_UIItem leak.
+
+Combines v7's two outer NOPs (so UpdateEmptySlots runs always)
+with a 1-byte change to the inner trim loop's break-3 (so the loop
+skips non-WAITING items instead of exiting at the first one).
+
+Sites:
+  Site 1 — 0x004e439d (v6/v7): NOP visibility guard
+    Original: 0F 84 F3 01 00 00   jz +0x1f3
+    Patched:  90 90 90 90 90 90
+
+  Site 2 — 0x004e43c0 (v7): NOP auto-fit guard
+    Original: 0F 85 CD 01 00 00   jne +0x1cd
+    Patched:  90 90 90 90 90 90
+
+  Site 3 — 0x004e4496 (v8 new): turn "break" into "continue"
+    Original: 75 0D                jne +0x0d → exit_loop
+    Patched:  75 08                jne +0x08 → inc_counter (continue)
+
+After site 3, when an item's state != WAITING, the loop skips the
+InternalDeleteItem call and advances the counter instead of exiting.
+Combined with sites 1 and 2, UpdateEmptySlots now runs always and
+iterates the entire array, calling InternalDeleteItem on every WAITING
+UIItem.
+
+Safety considerations:
+  - Break 1 (NULL item) and break 2 (not UIItem type) are KEPT — they
+    are real safety guards.
+  - The counter (ebx) increments for skipped items too, so the loop
+    may exit earlier than ideal if many items are non-WAITING. But
+    with width=0 (invisible) the delete_count is ~count+1 so most
+    items should still be visited.
+  - InternalDeleteItem defers actual deletion to a queue, so even if
+    we mistakenly delete an active item, the engine should handle it
+    on the next frame.
+"""
+import argparse
+import ctypes
+import ctypes.wintypes as wt
+import sys
+
+
+SITES = [
+    ("visibility guard (jz) ", 0x004e439d,
+     bytes([0x0f, 0x84, 0xf3, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00]),
+     bytes([0x90] * 6)),
+    ("auto-fit guard (jne)  ", 0x004e43c0,
+     bytes([0x0f, 0x85, 0xcd, 0x01, 0x00, 0x00]),
+     bytes([0x90] * 6)),
+    ("trim break-3 (jne)    ", 0x004e4496,
+     bytes([0x75, 0x0d]),
+     bytes([0x75, 0x08])),
+]
+
+
+PROCESS_VM_READ           = 0x0010
+PROCESS_VM_WRITE          = 0x0020
+PROCESS_VM_OPERATION      = 0x0008
+PROCESS_QUERY_INFORMATION = 0x0400
+PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE    = 0x40
+
+
+k32 = ctypes.windll.kernel32
+OpenProcess = k32.OpenProcess
+OpenProcess.argtypes = [wt.DWORD, wt.BOOL, wt.DWORD]; OpenProcess.restype = wt.HANDLE
+CloseHandle = k32.CloseHandle
+CloseHandle.argtypes = [wt.HANDLE]; CloseHandle.restype = wt.BOOL
+WriteProcessMemory = k32.WriteProcessMemory
+WriteProcessMemory.argtypes = [wt.HANDLE, wt.LPVOID, wt.LPCVOID, ctypes.c_size_t,
+                               ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_size_t)]
+WriteProcessMemory.restype = wt.BOOL
+ReadProcessMemory = k32.ReadProcessMemory
+ReadProcessMemory.argtypes = [wt.HANDLE, wt.LPCVOID, wt.LPVOID, ctypes.c_size_t,
+                              ctypes.POINTER(ctypes.c_size_t)]
+ReadProcessMemory.restype = wt.BOOL
+VirtualProtectEx = k32.VirtualProtectEx
+VirtualProtectEx.argtypes = [wt.HANDLE, wt.LPVOID, ctypes.c_size_t, wt.DWORD,
+                             ctypes.POINTER(wt.DWORD)]
+VirtualProtectEx.restype = wt.BOOL
+
+
+def read_bytes(h, addr, n):
+    buf = (ctypes.c_ubyte * n)()
+    sz = ctypes.c_size_t(0)
+    if not ReadProcessMemory(h, addr, buf, n, ctypes.byref(sz)):
+        raise OSError(f"read 0x{addr:08x} err={ctypes.get_last_error()}")
+    return bytes(buf[:sz.value])
+
+
+def write_bytes(h, addr, data):
+    old_prot = wt.DWORD(0)
+    if not VirtualProtectEx(h, addr, len(data), PAGE_EXECUTE_READWRITE, ctypes.byref(old_prot)):
+        raise OSError(f"VirtualProtectEx 0x{addr:08x} err={ctypes.get_last_error()}")
+    sz = ctypes.c_size_t(0)
+    ok = WriteProcessMemory(h, addr, data, len(data), ctypes.byref(sz))
+    err = ctypes.get_last_error() if not ok else 0
+    restored = wt.DWORD(0)
+    VirtualProtectEx(h, addr, len(data), old_prot.value, ctypes.byref(restored))
+    if not ok:
+        raise OSError(f"write 0x{addr:08x} err={err}")
+
+
+def apply_or_revert(h, label, site_va, orig, patched, revert):
+    cur = read_bytes(h, site_va, len(orig))
+    print(f"  {label} @ 0x{site_va:08x}: current {cur.hex()}")
+    if revert:
+        if cur == orig:
+            print(f"    already original")
+            return
+        if cur != patched:
+            print(f"    UNEXPECTED — refusing")
+            sys.exit(3)
+        write_bytes(h, site_va, orig)
+        after = read_bytes(h, site_va, len(orig))
+        print(f"    reverted; now: {after.hex()}")
+        return
+
+    if cur == patched:
+        print(f"    already patched")
+        return
+    if cur != orig:
+        print(f"    UNEXPECTED — bytes don't match expected original. refusing.")
+        sys.exit(4)
+    write_bytes(h, site_va, patched)
+    after = read_bytes(h, site_va, len(orig))
+    print(f"    patched; now: {after.hex()}")
+    if after != patched:
+        print(f"    MISMATCH — write didn't take")
+        sys.exit(5)
+
+
+def main():
+    ap = argparse.ArgumentParser()
+    ap.add_argument("pid", type=int)
+    ap.add_argument("--revert", action="store_true")
+    args = ap.parse_args()
+
+    h = OpenProcess(
+        PROCESS_VM_READ | PROCESS_VM_WRITE | PROCESS_VM_OPERATION | PROCESS_QUERY_INFORMATION,
+        False, args.pid,
+    )
+    if not h:
+        print(f"OpenProcess({args.pid}) err={ctypes.get_last_error()}")
+        sys.exit(2)
+
+    print(f"PID {args.pid}")
+    for label, va, orig, patched in SITES:
+        apply_or_revert(h, label, va, orig, patched, args.revert)
+    print("  OK")
+    CloseHandle(h)
+
+
+if __name__ == "__main__":
+    main()