The observed-design list is a MOVE-TO-BACK vector capped at 20 records per
DESIGN OWNER, and that is why lane CV's 55 odes leaves looked unrelated: a turn's
output is a permutation of its input, not an append.
rich turn ad-turn27 + BR's deep tcb vs bp-pinB-turn28 1092 -> 1058
36 closed / 2 regressed vs CV's run; 116 / 8 vs the 1166 baseline
canonical turn2-state + CB's tcb vs turn3-state 62 -> 61
1 closed / 0 regressed, set-differenced by leaf PATH
All five committed predictions held; P5 held in direction and was wrong in
magnitude (9 leaves, not 4 -- I predicted spurious records, not leaves).
CV's "no upstream dependency" is right for the design half and wrong for the
other 24 leaves of the 79, two separate ways, and both are named rather than
attempted: the otch/owep arms need three undecoded design->tech/weapon set
builders (the wire's own DOpts list covers 13 of the 18 tech names the turn
moves), and the design half is itself capped by SHIP CONSTRUCTION -- two designs
get their first ships that turn. Fed the true post-turn ship list the same code
leaves 1 leaf of 55 instead of 21, so the mechanism is not the residual.
Control, run: with the NPC-owner guard compiled out the canonical pair goes
61 -> 70 and the rich turn stays at 1058. The guard is load-bearing on one pair
and inert on the other, which is why both were run.
Coverage, stated as loudly as the divergence: 8 players swept, TWO produce any
record; the canonical pair offers 16 (player, ship) pairs of which the guard
drops 15, leaving one record call on one design. No foreign observation moves on
either pair, so the visibility gate -- a two-bit-per-player word at Ship+0x54
that is not on the wire, stood in for with ownership -- is entirely unexercised
and is labelled a hypothesis.
ghidra/addresses.d/dt.json: 10 entries (the sweep 0x007c2350, the recorder
0x007be340, RecordObservedWeapon, the vector helpers, sizeof(ObservedDesign) =
0x10, the vftable, and ServerPlayer +0x254 / +0xfb). gen_addresses.py merges it
clean at 1320 entries, no duplicate name or address.
|
||
|---|---|---|
| campaign | ||
| findings | ||
| ghidra | ||
| guides | ||
| notes | ||
| objects | ||
| scripts | ||
| tools | ||
| verify | ||
| .gitignore | ||
| 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(labelsstatus/*are the kanban columns;type/*,conf/*).campaign/board.mdis the editable mirror — publish withscripts/forgejo_campaign.py bootstrap(needsFORGEJO_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.