ReaperOfVeriod 2c7555fe16 Decode the shrub class blob: a 24-normal palette and a billboard record
The shrub body's payload encoding was the open question after the span-bound
work, and it answered itself once the R&C1 reference was in view: R&C1's shrub
class header keeps the field offsets R&C2 shows (o_class at 0x24, a count at
0x28, the data offset at 0x2c), which says which bytes to look at, and the disc
says what they hold.

Range measured: all 358 shrub class spans over the 24 levels that have them,
each bounded by its successor class or the located chunk container. Nothing
outside the spans is read.

Result. The body is a palette of 24 unit-length s16 normals -- s16 x, y, z and
a zero pad word per 8-byte record -- followed by all-zero padding records.
Three independent measurements, each of which fails for any other reading:

- all 8,592 live entries have squared length within 65,535 of 32767^2, and
  the bound is tight (the largest observed deviation is exactly 65,535). That
  is 32768^2 - 32767^2, which is what a unit vector scaled by 32768 produces
  when an axis-aligned normal quantises to -32768 and the positive axis clamps
  to 32767; components run the full s16 range and 1,765 entries are
  axis-aligned. A random s16 triple is off by about a billion, so one entry in
  fifteen thousand would pass by chance: all 8,592 pass.
- the padding records are always at index 24 or later and always all zero,
  never a live entry. That is what separates the palette from geometry, and it
  is the observation the three earlier stride-fitting attempts were missing.
- 17 classes carry a palette of 24 identical (0, 0, 1) entries. A position or
  index table cannot produce that; a normal palette for a flat-facing class
  must.

The header decodes as: sphere at +0x00 (centre + radius, radius positive on
all 358 spans, 1.72..41.57), size at +0x10, mode_bits and scratch at +0x14,
a zero word at +0x18, the billboard offset at +0x1c, and scale at +0x20. The
parser asserts the two invariants that hold without exception (scratch and the
reserved word are zero on all 358) plus a positive radius and scale, and
reports mode_bits rather than asserting it: it is 4 on 16 of the 358 spans.

The billboard offset is the strongest self-identification after o_class
because it is confirmed from a second file: it is non-zero on exactly the 25
classes whose core-index entry carries billboard texture fields, pairing
correctly both ways. At the offset sits R&C1's ShrubBillboard shape, register
block and all -- fade_distance, then TEX1_1 (K -233..-168, MMIN 4, address
0x14), TEX0_1 (index 1..4, address 0x06) and MIPTBP1_1 (address 0x34), all
three register addresses checked in the disc test.

Two corrections this produces, both recorded in docs/plan/level-assets.md
because the old readings were confidently wrong rather than merely
unverified:

- "reserved is 0 or a denormal" had the two u16 halves the wrong way round:
  the 16 non-zero spans are mode_bits = 4 with scratch = 0. As an f32 the word
  is still a denormal, so the PS2 reads zero either way -- but the field is a
  flag word, not a magnitude, which is exactly the FPU point worth making.
- "bounds" was tested as a min.xyz/max.xyz box, which holds on only 146 of
  358 spans, and the field was left unnamed as a result. It is a bounding
  sphere: the fourth float is positive on all 358 spans and the centres
  cluster near the class origin. The 146/358 figure was a property of the
  wrong question.

Still open: the three floats in the billboard record (they repeat
byte-identically across levels -- 16 distinct triples among 25 records, one on
four classes across levels 1, 4, 12 and 21 -- so they are shared art data
rather than dimensions), size, mode_bits, count, and where the shrub mesh
geometry lives. R&C1 puts the mesh packets in this blob; R&C2's blob holds
only the palette, so the 333 classes without a billboard must draw meshes from
somewhere else.
2026-10-11 13:33:37 +02:00

Going Commando

A native PC reimplementation of Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (PlayStation 2, 2003), written in Rust.

The game is reimplemented, not emulated. There is no MIPS interpreter here and no CPU emulator: the systems are ported to Rust so they run as ordinary native code.

Status: initial scaffold. The disc is identified and verified, the workspace builds, and nothing else is implemented yet. See docs/roadmap.md for where things stand and what comes next.

The target

Game Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando
Platform PlayStation 2
Disc SCUS_972.68 v1.01, USA Black Label
Video NTSC, 60 Hz
Boot ELF SHA-1 bacda860cbd6723142e86db56f197e47e728970f

Verified against a real disc — see docs/disc-identification.md. This is the build the reference projects pin; Greatest Hits v2.00 is a different binary and is not the target.

No game content

This repository contains no game assets, no disc images, no BIOS dumps and no proprietary toolchains. You supply your own legally obtained copy of the disc as an input, the way the upstream reference projects do.

A pre-commit hook enforces this, blocking disc images, asset directories, container signatures and files over 50 MiB. If you clone elsewhere, enable it:

git config core.hooksPath .githooks

Layout

crates/
  gc-formats/    asset format parsers (pure, no I/O beyond the caller's buffer)
  gc-extract/    disc pipeline: identify, unpack, verify
  gc-game/       game logic: hero, weapons, moby classes, progression, saves
  gc-video/      IPU / MPEG-2 decode
  gc-engine/     Bevy app: Graphics Synthesizer, VU0/VU1, renderer, frame loop
docs/
  disc-identification.md   which disc we build against, verified
  roadmap.md               phases, gates, current status
  plan/                    one file per subsystem, written as work proceeds
  formats/                 format specs, written as formats are reversed
tools/
  identify-disc.py         identify any Going Commando disc image
vendor/
  rerac/                   pinned upstream reference checkout (not tracked)

Building

Requires a Rust toolchain via rustup.

cargo check --workspace
cargo test  --workspace

The host audio backend is disabled in Cargo.toml (see the comment there) so that the workspace builds without system ALSA development headers. Audio decode is the last phase of the port and lives in gc-video; re-enable it and install alsa-lib-devel when that work starts.

Identifying a disc

python3 tools/identify-disc.py <your-disc.iso>

Reports the serial, version and video mode from SYSTEM.CNF, hashes the boot executable, and warns when the disc is not the supported build. Reads only a few megabytes, so it is near-instant.

How it will be verified

Visual and behavioural comparison against PCSX2, replaying recorded input and comparing frames, level by level. The PS2 float model is reproduced rather than approximated — see AGENTS.md.

Credits and licensing

This project learns from and is built on the work of others. Licences are recorded in PROVENANCE.md and notices must travel with any code derived from them.

  • ReRAC — a native Rust/Bevy port of Ratchet & Clank (2002), the first game. ISC. The architecture this project follows.
  • OpenRAC / rac2-gc-decomp — matching decompilation research for this game. MIT. Source of verified struct layouts and engine documentation.
  • Wrench — community documentation of Insomniac's container formats. GPL, used as a specification reference only; no code is copied.

Ratchet & Clank is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment. This is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Sony Interactive Entertainment or Insomniac Games.

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