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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 962cdb6981 tools: live screen wall + contact sheet for the five lab guests 
The lab went from one Windows guest to five and there was no way to see what
they were all doing without issuing a QEMU screendump per guest by hand.

- tools/vmwatch.py: always-on HTTP service serving an auto-refreshing wall of
  live guest screens. Runs on spicy as vmwatch.service; browse it at
  http://192.168.3.201:8140/. Click a tile for that guest full size. Guests are
  discovered from /etc/pve/qemu-server by matching sots-re, so clones appear and
  vanish on their own. A stopped, paused or unreachable guest gets a labelled
  placeholder tile carrying the monitor's own error, never a broken image or a
  500. Python 3 stdlib only.
- tools/vmwatch-install.sh: install/update/uninstall the unit on the host.
- tools/vmshot.py: one-shot contact sheet, and --one <id> for a full-size grab.
  Pulls frames from the vmwatch service when it is up (0.5s) and falls back to
  ssh + qm monitor when it is not (4s).
- guides/lab-screen-wall.md: how to use both, and why.

Capture goes over each guest's QMP socket rather than forking qm: qm is a Perl
program, and one fork per guest per tick cost ~90% of a host core and a 728 MB
cgroup peak. Direct QMP is 0.33 CPU-seconds per 88s and 23 MB RSS. QEMU 11 here
dumps PNG natively; the fallback PPM encoder was verified pixel-identical to
QEMU's own on a real framebuffer.

Read-only throughout: screendump does not perturb the guest (method-rule 19),
so reading VM 140's screen is not an experiment and does not take its lock.
2026-09-08 16:53:04 -04:00
campaign board: lane W3 - TShn closed 158/158, Status predicate settled, AI4 prediction confirmed with its falsifier 2026-09-08 16:45:56 -04:00
findings SV: what writes SvSctOb during a turn -- the script-object event bus 2026-09-08 16:46:44 -04:00
ghidra SV: what writes SvSctOb during a turn -- the script-object event bus 2026-09-08 16:46:44 -04:00
guides tools: live screen wall + contact sheet for the five lab guests 2026-09-08 16:53:04 -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 tools: live screen wall + contact sheet for the five lab guests 2026-09-08 16:53:04 -04:00
verify W3: NVO.TShn's writer trapped live, its gate named, and 158/158 on the corpus 2026-09-08 16:41:09 -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.