Commit Graph
12 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
ReaperOfVeriod dc941a8eec Parse the collision container framing
Collision sits inside core_data at the offset the core index gives, behind
a 0x40-byte header that self-describes: it carries its own size and the
payload size. That pairing is the invariant -- the declared header size is
exactly 0x40 on all 27 levels and header + payload stays inside the lump.

41,481,520 payload bytes across the 19 levels that have any; 8 declare
zero length, which is present-but-empty rather than absent, so the two are
counted separately.

The cells inside the payload are not decoded. They do not walk as
fixed-stride cells, and treating faces as variable-length records stops
partway into the first cell on level 0 rather than tiling the payload. The
first cell reads as 11 verts and 33 faces under every hypothesis tried,
which is exactly the kind of agreement that looks like a result and is
not one -- three different strides all produce the same first cell and all
of them are wrong. Left open rather than committed as a guess.
2026-10-11 02:21:10 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod 2dcc6e9710 Parse the sound bank container framing
A level's sound extent is two regions: an `SBlk` descriptor table and the
sample data that follows it. Four u32 at the head describe the layout, and
the invariant that establishes it is sblk_offset + sblk_size == daw_offset,
which holds on all 27 levels. That is what pins the field meanings; the
numbers alone are ambiguous about which of them is the offset.

DAW is a format tag inside the SBlk header, not a region signature. It
occurs exactly once in the entire extent, at sblk_offset + 12, naming the
sample format -- the sample data itself starts at daw_offset with no
signature at all, roughly 19 KB away on level 0. Reading it as a region
magic is the obvious reading and it is wrong.

daw_size never reaches the end of the file. The tail is positive on all 27
levels, 232 to 1,848 bytes, so the field describes less than the region
it names; the test asserts that direction rather than inventing a size
that fits.

523,720 SBlk and 37,649,008 DAW bytes across the 27 levels.

The sample format inside DAW is not decoded. It looks like VAG/ADPCM from
the nibble packing, and it has no bearing on drawing anything, so it stays
open rather than getting a half-answer.
2026-10-11 02:15:33 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod 632505a6bd Parse the occlusion PVS grid
A z -> y -> x tree of u16 node offsets over 4x4x4-unit cells, each
populated cell naming one 128-byte mask of 1024 visibility bits that the
renderer fills from the camera's cell each frame.

Two sentinels carry meaning and one of them is easy to miss: a z or y
slot of 0 means "no subtree", and an x slot of 0xffff means "no cell".
Reading the latter as a mask index gives a grid whose highest mask is
65535 on every single level, which is the tell.

The check that makes this real is the mask array. It starts at
masks_offset and runs to (highest_mask + 1) * 0x80, and on every level
with a grid that ends at the block boundary exactly -- widest
unexplained tail across the disc is 0 bytes. A wrong tree shape or cell
size would leave the highest mask index elsewhere entirely.

412,521 populated cells over 140,939 masks, across the 24 levels that
have one.

An offset of 0 means the level has no occlusion data at all, which is
not the same as "at the start of the file" -- that is where the tfrags
block lives, and parsing it as a grid produces a mask array that fits
anyway, with 1600 bytes to spare. That is what made level 10 look
plausible on the first pass; three levels (10, 24, 25) carry none.
2026-10-11 02:11:30 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod 79025b22d6 Decode the tie class header prefix that RAC1 and RAC2 agree on
Tie is the easy one of the three geometry subsystems -- instanced
static props, no skeleton -- so it is the right place to start.

RAC1's class header is 0x80 bytes. RAC2 agrees with it over the first
0x48 and diverges after. From 0x48 the RAC1 layout does not describe
RAC2 data: lod_info at 0x50 reads back as noise, packet_count and
texture_count are zero on every class examined, and the normals offset
at 0x0c points 117,788,434 bytes into a 16.9 MB lump.

Only the agreed-on prefix is decoded. What makes it trustworthy:

* o_class at 0x44 equals the core index's class number for all 1,864 tie
  classes across all 27 levels. A field landing on the right number that
  often is not a coincidence, and it pins the header base.
* The LOD distances are ordered 0 < near < mid < far for 1,784 of 1,864.
  The 80 exceptions are real, unexplained, and are reported rather than
  asserted away.

Level 0's first tie class has distances 12.0 / 25.0 / 40.0, a plausible
prop LOD band, and packet offsets 256, 20,592 and 26,048.

The rest is deliberately not guessed at. A field order that produces
plausible output and is wrong is the specific failure this project keeps
recording, three times now: the gameplay extent, the tfrag record
framing and the class tables were all "reasonable" and all wrong.
2026-10-11 02:06:39 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod 90f02890f8 Decode tfrag normals from the overlay's sine table
Normals are per-vertex, and the tfrag's light records store them as an
azimuth and elevation *index* into a 256-entry sine table rather than as
angles. This decodes that table and builds normals for the renderer.

The reference reads the table from an ELF at BOOT_NORMAL_TABLE_VADDR
(0x165500) and notes every level overlay carries a copy. The overlay has
no ELF header -- it is a raw loadable image starting with code -- so there
is no program header to map a virtual address through, and the offset is
not fixed either: level 0 has the table at 0xb650c, level 5 at 0xcca30,
level 26 at 0xb6284.

So it is located by content. Every table starts with exactly (1.0, 0.0),
angle zero, and the scan then requires all 256 entries to match
cos(i*pi/128), sin(i*pi/128). Validating the whole curve is what makes the
search safe: a lone (1.0, 0.0) pair of floats occurs by accident in a
2.7 MB executable, and a test plants one as a decoy. The values are read
from the disc rather than recomputed, since those are the numbers the game
indexes.

A normal is (cos(az)cos(el), sin(az)cos(el), sin(el)) *negated* -- the
stored normals point into the surface -- and then given the same Z-up to
Y-up swap as positions, or the lighting comes out sideways. The azimuth
and elevation fields are stored signed but index 0..=255, so entry 200
must be read as 200, not as -56; there is a test for that.

Also frames and parses the level light bank from the gameplay extent, and
the pipeline now writes overlay.bin. The per-vertex lighting evaluation
is not written yet, so the renderer stays unlit by default. GC_ENGINE_LIT=1
substitutes a host directional light for inspection -- that is a stand-in,
not the game's lighting, and it is deliberately not the default.

The hash table is regenerated for the 27 new overlay.bin files: now 5,213
files and 5,762,497,559 bytes.
2026-10-10 03:09:07 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod 29fdf89f53 Decode level textures: 8-bit indices through a CSM1 palette
Adds texture.rs and makes the pipeline write gs_ram.bin, which it had
been skipping. Nothing could be decoded before this: the CLUTs live
there.

A level texture is not pixels, it is palette indices -- width*height
bytes at core_data[textures_base + data_offset], with colour coming from
a 256-entry CLUT at gs_ram[palette * 0x100]. gs_ram is a byte range in
the level's data extent header at offset 0x10, 518,656 bytes on level 0.

Two PS2 conventions have to be honoured and neither is a design choice:
within each 32-entry CLUT group the two middle 8-entry blocks are
swapped (bits 3 and 4 of the index are exchanged, an involution), and
alpha runs 0..=0x80 rather than 0..=255 with 0x80 fully opaque.

The mip chain splits across two buffers: levels 0 and 1 are in the
texture block with level 1 immediately after level 0, and levels 2 and 3
are resident in gs_ram at mipmap*0x100 and pad*0x100. Tfrag textures are
square so every level halves evenly.

Verification is two-layered, because every step here is a table lookup
and a wrong CLUT remap still produces a well-formed image of the wrong
thing. All 1,595 tfrag textures across all 27 levels decode; 96.8% are
fully opaque and 96.3% use more than eight colours. On top of that,
`gc-extract dump-texture` writes any texture or mip level as a PPM.
Level 0 texture 0 comes back as a clean bevelled metal panel with rivets
and specular highlights, and texture 74 as a vent grille whose punched
windows are fully transparent. That tool is worth keeping: it is the
cheapest way to tell a decode that is merely well-formed from one that
is right.

The hash table is regenerated for the 27 new gs_ram.bin files, now 5,186
files and 5,685,541,143 bytes.
2026-10-10 02:30:56 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod 48d9506cf1 Decode tfrag texture bindings, vertex colours and light records
Adds level_core.rs (the uncompressed core index header and texture table)
and extends tfrag.rs with the data a draw call needs beyond geometry.

An ad-gif is five A+D quadwords holding packed fields rather than GS
registers; the level load rewrites them in place before drawing. On disc
TEX0_1.data_lo indexes the level's texture table, TEX1_1.data_lo is the
LOD bias K and data_hi the minification filter, and CLAMP_1 holds both
wrap modes.

Three things are easy to get wrong here:

* K is a signed 12-bit value in 1/16 units, sign-extended by shifting the
  field up 4 and back down. Retail values are -137..-89 mip-scaled;
  reading it unsigned gives 1911 instead of -137.
* TEX1_1.data_hi is MMIN, and 4 decodes as LinearMipmapNearest, not
  LinearMipmapLinear as the raw bit layout suggests.
* RGBA and the light/normal records are not in the VIF lists at all. They
  sit at fixed offsets in the patch data block: rgba_size*4 colours at
  rgba_ofs, vert_count light records at light_ofs+0x10. The tfrag origin
  lives there too -- if no STROW row supplied one, the quadword at
  light_ofs is it.

The texture table checks out on its own terms: 93 entries at index offset
0x2900 on level 0, and 0x2900 + 93*16 lands exactly on the next range.

Verification: an ad-gif index outside the level's table would mean the
geometry and the textures were misread independently, so every one is
range-checked against real entries. All 27 levels: 47,950 ad-gifs over
18,102 patches, all in range, referencing 1429 of 1595 level texture
entries (90%). Each patch's light array is exactly vert_count records and
its RGBA array exactly rgba_size*4.

Still open: LOD selection and morphing, and the texel data itself.
2026-10-10 02:22:51 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod 36641b4cf8 Parse tfrag terrain blocks and decode all vertex positions
Adds gc-formats::tfrag and a gated real-disc test that decodes every
terrain patch on all 27 levels.

Two rules decide whether this works at all, and both were wrong on the
first attempt:

The vector format is encoded in the VIF command byte, not the immediate.
Bits 2-3 are vn (component count minus one) and bits 0-1 are vl, giving
element_size = ((32 >> vl) * (vn + 1)) / 8. Terrain positions are vn=2,
vl=1 (command 0x69) at 6 bytes. Reading the format from the immediate's
low nibble -- the more commonly quoted layout -- yields 12 or 16 bytes
and misaligns everything after it.

Unpack payloads pad to 4 bytes, and several non-unpack commands carry
inline data: STROW/STCOL 16, STMASK 4, MPG num*8, DIRECT/DIRECTHL
imm*16. Ignoring those desynchronises the walk, and a desynchronised
walk still finds code words that look like positions.

Positions are also not all in one list. vert_count is the total across
three tiers, the LOD-2 list precedes the common one in offset order, and
the LOD-0-only list starts at shared_ofs + lod_1_size*16 rather than at
an offset of its own. Scanning only the common list matches about a
quarter of patches, each exactly -- which is what made it convincing.

The invariant is that every patch yields exactly its own vert_count. It
caught both errors, so tfrag_positions returns None on a mismatch rather
than partial geometry. All 27 levels: 18,102 patches, 821,439 vertices,
zero mismatches.

Still open: strips, triangle indices and the RGBA vertex-info arrays.
Positions alone are not drawable.
2026-10-10 02:07:02 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod 16c04db559 Fix level extents read as bytes, and extract the level geometry
A defect in the Phase 1 extractor, found by reading the data extent's contents:
level extents are declared in sector counts, the generic G/ pair table uses byte
counts, and level containers were being routed through the generic path. So
LEVEL0.WAD's data extent -- 6,484 sectors -- was taken as 6,484 bytes. Every
test still passed, because a truncated file is still a file.

The extent's own header gave it away: it declares an uncompressed total of
13,277,920 bytes, and 13,277,920 / 6,484 is 2047.7. A ratio landing on 2048 is
a unit error, not a compression ratio. Across 27 levels this had been discarding
roughly 300 MB of level content.

Level containers now go through the typed LevelHeader instead. Level 0 yields:

  data.bin         13,279,232   the data extent
  core_data.wad     9,738,678   the geometry, compressed
  core_data.bin    16,969,296   the geometry, decompressed
  core_index.bin       31,600   the geometry directory
  gameplay.bin       659,456
  sound_bank.bin   1,503,232

core_data is a WAD LZ77 stream -- the format already implemented for the game --
and it decompresses cleanly. The first real level content this project has
recovered.

New: LevelDataHeader parses the data extent's own header, a table of byte ranges
naming the level overlay executable, the geometry directory, the GS RAM image,
the HUD banks and the geometry. Note this is a third meaning for a "size" field
on the same disc, after sector counts in the level header and byte counts in the
generic table; all three are documented together in level-data.md so the next
parser does not rediscover this the hard way.

The geometry directory's offsets were checked against the geometry rather than
taken on trust: all twelve land inside the 16.9 MB of decompressed core_data,
which is what confirms the header is being read correctly. The class tables
themselves do not yet decode under the documented layout, and that is recorded
as open work in plan/level-assets.md rather than papered over.

75 unit tests, 9 integration tests against the real disc. Hash table regenerated
at 5,159 files and 5,671,915,799 bytes -- hashes only, no content. Extraction
now writes to ~/Documents/gc-extracted rather than /tmp, which is 16 GB and did
not have room for a 5.3 GB output.
2026-10-09 16:28:26 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod a9e43e39c1 Parse the level container header, naming each level's four extents
The first typed structure read from real data. Every one of the 27 level
containers begins with the same 0x60-byte header, which turns the generic pair
table into named assets: data, sound_bank, gameplay and occlusion, plus three
chunk descriptors.

Two things about this header are worth stating because both are silent failures
rather than errors.

Sizes here are sector counts, not byte counts. The generic G/ pair table on the
same disc uses byte counts, so both readings type-check and the wrong one is off
by a factor of 2048. The tiling check settles it: read as sectors, the four
extents tile every one of the 27 containers exactly; read as bytes they overlap
each other.

Level id is not container order. LEVEL21.WAD reports id 30, so a level was cut
from the disc and its number left a gap. Anything keying off file order -- a
save slot, the planet select screen -- would mislabel that planet. There is also
a second trap in the same area: the ISO filesystem sorts names alphabetically, so
LEVEL10 precedes LEVEL2, and any tool needing order has to sort numerically.

The header's field at 0x04 is zero on all 27 levels. It is not the container
size despite looking like one, so the code reads it as a runtime field and takes
the container length from the ISO entry instead.

Measured across all 27 levels, three invariants now hold in tests: extents tile
in file order; extent coverage plus chunks reaches at least the end of the
container (21 levels land exactly on its length, 6 leave 134 to 689 sectors of
trailing data); and exactly one level's id differs from its container index. The
coverage assertion is >= rather than == on purpose -- 21 levels end one sector
past the file end because the header occupies sector 0, and asserting equality
would truncate a level's tail.

gameplay is left unparsed and that is recorded rather than hidden. It begins
"WAD" plus a per-level byte and does not decode with the WAD LZ77 decoder: all
27 levels produce plausible output for the first packet and then fail on a rule
the format's own encoder never breaks, which means the input is wrong rather
than the decoder. docs/plan/level-assets.md records what is ruled out and what
to try next.

66 unit tests, plus 7 integration tests against the real disc. The unpack hash
table is unchanged, so this adds parsing without altering the pipeline.
2026-10-09 16:20:25 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod 027373e65b Add the disc pipeline: identify, unpack and verify
Phase 1 of the roadmap. The disc is now turned into verified asset files, and
the result is checked against a committed hash table rather than against
whatever happens to be on disk.

  gc-extract identify disc.iso        SCUS_972.68 v1.01 NTSC, ELF SHA-1 matches
  gc-extract unpack   disc.iso out/   5135 files, 4,500,106,960 bytes, 10.8s
  gc-extract verify   out/ table.tsv  OK: 5135 files match

All 92 G/*.WAD containers parse. MPEG1 and MPEG2 are raw video and pass
through whole; the other 90 are indexed containers whose extents are extracted
individually.

Formats recovered and written up in docs/formats/:

- iso9660.rs. R&C2 lists its assets in the filesystem, unlike R&C1, so a
  directory walk is the primary asset index. Three details that all fail
  quietly rather than loudly: directory records store every 32-bit field twice
  (little-endian then big-endian), the CD001 signature is at sector offset 1
  rather than 0x8001, and the directory flag at record offset 25 is
  authoritative where the identifier's trailing slash is not.

- global_wad.rs. Container headers hold a table of extents. All 92 indexed
  containers use {offset in sectors, size in bytes}. Measured, not assumed: the
  sector-count reading places every entry of all 27 LEVEL<n> and all 27
  AUDIO<n> containers out of range, while the byte reading places all of them
  correctly. SCENE<n> is the one exception, a flat sector list whose extents
  are sized by the next value.

- wad.rs. Insomniac's LZ77 stream: four flag-selected packet classes, with 0-3
  trailing literal bytes per packet carried in unused low bits. This is not a
  bit stream, which is why it resists the usual LZ77 reading.

- buf.rs. A bounds-checked reader, so untrusted 2003 disc data produces typed
  errors rather than panics.

gc-extract carries the three stages and a SHA-1 implementation with FIPS 180-4
test vectors, so identification works without pulling in a crypto dependency.

Verification: 54 unit tests, plus four integration tests that run only when
GC_DISC names a disc. Those four check identification against the recorded
values, cross-check the Rust identifier against tools/identify-disc.py, parse
all 92 containers, and confirm a full unpack matches the committed table. The
committed table is 316 KB of sizes and SHA-1s for all 5,135 files: hashes only,
no game content, so it is safe to version and it turns "matches retail" into
something a test can assert.

docs/plan/disc-pipeline.md records two wrong turns, because both are easy to
repeat and both failed by producing plausible wrong output rather than an
error: the container table was read backwards, and the LZ77 stream was modelled
as a bit stream. The first survived because it happened to be correct on the
one container used for manual checking.
2026-10-09 16:08:30 +02:00
ReaperOfVeriod a02f79a6d1 Initialise native Rust port of Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando
Sets up the foundation for reimplementing the PS2 game in Rust rather than
emulating it. Nothing is implemented yet; this is the scaffold, the verified
target and the working agreements that keep a long project coherent.

Target disc, verified against a real image:

  SCUS_972.68 v1.01, USA Black Label, NTSC 60 Hz
  boot ELF 2,618,684 bytes, SHA-1 bacda860...d098a77, entry 0x00131AE8

The entry point independently matches the value recorded by the rac2-gc-decomp
community reference, which cross-confirms the identification. This is the exact
build the upstream research pins; Greatest Hits v2.00 is a different binary and
is not the target. NTSC matters beyond label compatibility: PAL discs run 50 Hz,
which would make chargeboots and other speed-sensitive movement run at 5/6
speed. Verifying the disc before writing movement code avoids discovering that
in Phase 5.

Contents:

- Five-crate workspace (formats, extract, game, video, engine) on Bevy 0.19.1,
  matching the version ReRAC uses so its Graphics Synthesizer and VU work stays
  portable. `cargo check --workspace` is clean.

- tools/identify-disc.py, which reproduces the identification against any
  disc image and distinguishes a truncated dump from a non-PS2 image.

- .githooks/pre-commit, refusing game data from entering git history: disc
  image extensions, asset directories, container signatures at offset 0, and
  files over 50 MiB. Verified against seven cases including a disc image
  renamed to look like source. Now that this pushes to a remote, this matters
  more than it would have locally.

- AGENTS.md, the operating agreements: no game data ever, reproduce the PS2
  float model rather than approximating it, bound every read, verify against
  the real disc.

- PROVENANCE.md, recording that this follows ReRAC (ISC) and learns from
  rac2-gc-decomp (MIT). Wrench is used as a written specification only and no
  GPLv3 code is copied, since that would relicense everything derived from it.
  RAC2Decomp is explicitly not used: its provenance is disputed in the upstream
  community reference, and it targets the wrong region.

- docs/roadmap.md, phased so the riskiest unknowns are retired early. The two
  that matter: overlay relocation transfers from ReRAC and makes 27 level
  overlays tractable, while VU1 microcode is binary and is the hardest single
  item. Phase 5 is a deliberately scoped Veldin vertical slice as the go/no-go.
2026-10-09 15:42:10 +02:00