Used the working section parser to reach something the decomp describes but does
not decode. lvl.vtbl is section 3 of the level program, records of three words:
[0] oClass the moby class identifier
[1] handler UpdateMoby_<oClass> in this level's .text
[2] auxiliary the same value for every record of a level, 26 of 27
Across 27 levels: 5,878 records, 1,163 distinct class ids, range 0..0x13BA (5,050),
median 38 new ids per level. The decomp independently notes 5,598 of 5,788 handlers
are preceded by a jr ra within three words, so the addresses are function entries.
WHY THIS RETIRES THE EARLIER BOUND
moby_classes.count is 238 on level 0. 1,135 of the 1,163 real ids -- 97.6% -- are
at or above that number. So "value < moby_classes.count" was never a test for "this
is a class id". It was a test for "this is a small number".
That is the mechanism behind the chunk class-ID artifact I retracted two commits
ago:
slot values 1, 3, 4, 5, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15
all below 238, so all scored as hits, giving 305x enrichment
The bound was wrong BEFORE the artifact was noticed, and the artifact was a
consequence of it. My retraction said "dominant values, not the field", which was
right and incomplete -- the reason those values looked significant is that the
test selected for smallness. Knowing the actual id set is what turns that from a
guess into a mechanism.
RE-SCORED AGAINST THE REAL SET
With the game's own 1,163 ids as the validity test, nothing separates:
best slot 0.375 (type f2ef4275 slot 34)
chance rate 0.018 (1,163 ids in 65,536 values)
a dozen slots 0.25 .. 0.38, no gap between them
Twenty times chance is not nothing, but a dozen slots packed into one band with
nothing above them is what a broad property looks like, not a field.
So the chunk class-ID question is closed with a positive result attached: the id
space is known and usable, and it is not the class count. That also unblocks the
documented dependency on the moby_anim item, which was waiting on class records.
Asserted in moby_class_ids_come_from_lvl_vtbl_not_from_the_class_count.
262 tests.
ReaperOfVeriod
199ce33dd8