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Sword of the Stars (2006) reverse-engineering worklog. Infra docs live in trikilli services/re-lab.md.
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alex 2e7ed8f288 lane AC: the tail DOES draw under active contents -- the trade-raid gate, decoded and fired 
TradeManager::Slot13RngCalleeA, entered 0 times in every measurement any lane
had taken, is entered 1x/turn once a player fleet is parked on a trade-sector
node, and OnAllCombatDone_Tail's RNG word delta goes 0 -> 1. Lane W3's open
risk is realised, not retired: the RNG ledger and the standalone's generator
model need extending by one draw site.

The gate is neither freighters nor a deployed spy. It is a fleet whose LocID
resolves to a node of kind 2 (TradeSector), positioned bit-equal to the
sector, whose owner's bit is set in the sector's tscr mask -- which the
CCC_ComRaid tech sets, taking tscr from 252 to 253 and setting ServerPlayer
CnRad. Before the tech the game refuses in as many words: 'Alpha Fleet cannot
raid trade sector.'

Control: same guest, same build, same shim.cfg.l3probe, one End Turn on lane
L3's turn-15 save -> all three inner callees 0, tail delta 0. Guest adoption:
ref-turn2 hooks=off reproduces the published determinism oracle exactly.

Corrects lane L3 §3.5 (the turn-15 save already had a freighter in service --
the AI's -- so 'freighters' was falsified before this lane started) and lane
V2's 'trade slot 13 is draw-free'. The spy half is decoded but NOT reached:
no AI system in that game has an asteroid belt, so a deploy was impossible,
and spies2 is therefore still untested and stays a rule-6 hypothesis.

Two new corpus saves; expect the coverage ratchet to break on CnRad,
tscr=253, three rt records and a fleet whose LocID is a TradeSector.
2026-09-08 21:32:27 -04:00
campaign dashboard refresh 2026-09-08 20:58:58 -04:00
findings lane AC: the tail DOES draw under active contents -- the trade-raid gate, decoded and fired 2026-09-08 21:32:27 -04:00
ghidra lane AC: the tail DOES draw under active contents -- the trade-raid gate, decoded and fired 2026-09-08 21:32:27 -04:00
guides rule 24 amended: exclude local build dirs from the transfer too; a moved denominator means a broken build 2026-09-08 20:34:00 -04:00
notes init commit 2026-09-07 12:31:56 -04:00
objects regenerate both headers (669 addresses); track objects/generated so the shared clone stops sitting dirty 2026-09-08 07:36:16 -04:00
scripts lane V2: vtable inversion — resolve indirect call edges image-wide 2026-09-08 12:05:05 -04:00
tools lane ID: one id allocator on sixteen node counters, and techId is a sorted index 2026-09-08 20:22:24 -04:00
verify lane AC: the tail DOES draw under active contents -- the trade-raid gate, decoded and fired 2026-09-08 21:32:27 -04:00
.gitignore lane D: automated struct recovery from the IStreamable serializers 2026-09-08 05:51:37 -04:00
README.md guides: RE how-to for 2000s MSVC/DX9 games (98 sources); queue replay-checksum, class recovery, apitrace/TTD 2026-09-07 18:05:58 -04:00

README.md

sots-re

Reverse-engineering worklog for Sword of the Stars (2006, SOTS1) — the 32-bit DX9 original + expansions. The nitty-gritty: static/dynamic analysis notes, Ghidra & ReVa scripts, function/struct maps, D3D9 call traces, decomp progress, findings.

Where this runs

Analysis lab on spicy (PVE, 192.168.3.201):

  • CT111 sots-re — Linux workspace: Ghidra + headless ReVa server, radare2/rizin/cutter, binwalk. Hosts the Samba share and this repo's working tree at /srv/re-lab/notes.
  • VM140 sots-re-win10 — Win10 runtime + dynamic analysis (x64dbg, Cheat Engine, RenderDoc/apitrace, DXVK→CPU-Vulkan for GPU-less rendering).

Infra (guests, storage, network, share, ReVa endpoint) is documented from the system-maintainer POV in trikilli → services/re-lab.md. This repo is everything else.

Layout

  • findings/ — the running findings log (append-only), one file per subsystem.
  • ghidra/ — exported scripts, data-type archives, struct definitions.
  • traces/ — D3D9 / Win32 API call captures + analysis.
  • scripts/ — helper tooling (loaders, extractors, parsers).
  • notes/ — session notes, scratch, hypotheses.

Ownership / legality

Game binaries come from the owner's own GOG/Steam copy. RE is for personal interoperability, bug-fixing, and preservation. Binaries themselves are not committed here (see .gitignore) — they live on the lab's Samba share /srv/re-lab/samples.

Campaign (how this repo is run)

A 4-agent crew (defined in ~/.claude/agents/re-*.md) runs the exploration: re-quartermaster (backlog + board) → re-analyst (maps via ReVa) → re-verifier (proves vs real data; old-vs-new differential once reimpl starts) → re-scribe (files the note, links it, commits).

  • campaign/board.md — live status board (start here).
  • Live tracking = Forgejo issues on alex/sots-re (labels status/* are the kanban columns; type/*, conf/*). campaign/board.md is the editable mirror — publish with scripts/forgejo_campaign.py bootstrap (needs FORGEJO_TOKEN).
  • campaign/backlog.md — prioritized target queue.
  • campaign/open-questions.md — unresolved threads.
  • findings/_template.md — the record format every finding follows.
  • findings/{objects,control-flow,subsystems}/ — the growing engine map.
  • verify/{parsers,traces,harness,results}/ — validation: struct parsers now, golden-trace replay + shim compare-mode for reimplementation.
  • ghidra/ — exported scripts + datatype archives.

Approach & north star: findings/00-strategy.md. Binary facts: findings/01-fingerprint.md.

Sibling repo

alex/sots-engine — the from-scratch engine source (clean-room, public-capable). This repo keeps the evidence + planning for both; binary facts cross over only via ghidra/addresses.json → tools/gen_addresses.py.

  • guides/re-windows-2000s-howto.md — annotated bibliography + how-to for RE of mid-2000s MSVC/DX9 Windows games, with our-experience call-outs.