Going-Commando/AGENTS.md

# AGENTS.md — working agreements for this repository

Guidance for coding agents and for anyone picking this up cold. Read this
before changing anything.

## What this project is

A from-scratch native PC reimplementation of **Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando**
(PlayStation 2, 2003), written in Rust. The game is **reimplemented**, not
emulated and not translated: there is no MIPS interpreter and no CPU
emulator anywhere in this repository.

The goal is a build that plays the game the way the original does. "Close
enough" is not the bar — the point is that it feels like the game you remember.

## Hard rules

### 1. No game data in this repository. Ever.

Not the ISO, not extracted assets, not textures, not models, not audio, not
BIOS dumps, not SDK binaries. Not in a branch, not in a stash, not "just for a
test".

- Everything is covered by `.gitignore`.
- `.githooks/pre-commit` blocks disc images, asset directories, container
  signatures and files over 50 MiB. It is activated via
  `git config core.hooksPath .githooks` — **check that this is still set** in a
  fresh clone, or run `git config core.hooksPath .githooks`.
- To undo the hook for a legitimate source change: `git commit --no-verify`.
  Legitimate source changes should not need it.
- Game data is an **input**, supplied by the user from their own legally
  obtained disc. Repositories that need the disc state its serial and hashes.

### 2. Reproduce the PS2 float model.

The Emotion Engine's FPU is not IEEE-754. It has **no denormals**, and rounding
and exception behaviour differ from x86 in ways that are visible in gameplay.

Gameplay and animation maths must model this deliberately rather than using
Rust's native `f32` and hoping. When porting a routine, find out how the
original computes it and reproduce that, including the odd cases — ReRAC's
reference implementation deliberately reproduces a "post-scale list bug" in the
moby animation evaluator because doing so is what makes the result match.

Do not "fix" something that looks like a bug until you have confirmed the
original does the same thing. Fidelity beats correctness.

### 3. Never report a number without its bounds and its method.

Any size, count or distribution quoted in a commit message, a doc or a test
comes with two things attached: **which byte range it describes**, and **how
it was measured**.

This is not ceremony. Four separate numbers in one session looked
load-bearing and turned out to be artifacts:

- a format identified as VIF-packed, from a handful of recurring byte
  patterns, where a control put it on the random baseline;
- a body size computed over a span whose bounds were wrong, so the last
  class absorbed most of the lump's tail;
- a "6.2 MB of unidentified data" region that was texture data;
- "3 unexplained blocks" that were an artifact of sampling too coarsely.

All four shared one cause: measuring before bounding, and naming bytes before
looking at them. None of them errored, which is why they survived long enough
to be believed.

### 3a. Partition the measurement, or you have not measured it.

A number computed over a heterogeneous population describes nobody. Report a
measurement **per partition** -- per level, per chunk type, per record size --
before reporting it in aggregate.

Three errors in one stretch were all of this kind, and all three survived the
control check that rule 3 asks for, because a matched control bounds
*significance* while saying nothing about *scope*:

- a 368-byte "period" attributed to a whole region, when it was the stride of
  one chunk among ~15; averaging them put the peak at the noise floor, which
  read as "no structure" rather than "wrong scope";
- a ten-entry table disconfirmed, when it existed at a fixed stride among
  several;
- a moby class array reported at `u16` slots 129-140, which was simply the
  largest-stride chunk type dominating a pooled scan. Per type, every one of
  the 26 places its array somewhere else.

In every case the aggregate number was arithmetically correct and the
conclusion drawn from it was wrong. The re-run that caught all three was the
same each time: group by the thing that varies, then look.

- State the partition before the number, not after.
- If a claim is made over a pooled set, also report it for each partition, or
  say explicitly that it is pooled and unverified.
- A structure found in one partition is not a property of the whole until
  every partition agrees.
- When a result changes under partitioning, the pooled result was not a weak
  version of the truth. It was a different and wrong claim. Retract it rather
  than soften it.

### 4. Controls, and heuristic counts that are not identifications.

Concretely:

- Derive ranges from `gc_formats::regions::core_layout`, not by running from
  one known offset to `core_data.len()`. Where a bound is unknown it is `None`,
  not a guess.
- Before calling a byte pattern a format, test it against a control. If a
  statistic cannot tell your format apart from uniform random, it cannot tell
  you anything.
- A heuristic count is not an identification. Count distinct byte values, then
  *look* at the blocks that stand out before naming them.

### 5. Verify against the real disc, not against a guess.

A parser is correct when it round-trips your own disc's bytes, checked by hash.
Commit size-and-hash tables (never content) so a test can assert "this matches
retail" rather than "this matches whatever was on my disk".

### 6. Bound every read.

Asset data is untrusted input from a 2003 disc format. Parsers return typed
errors; they never panic and never read past the end of a buffer.

## Orientation

Read these before working in an unfamiliar area:

| Path | What it is |
|---|---|
| `docs/disc-identification.md` | Which disc we build against, verified |
| `docs/roadmap.md` | Phases, gates, and what is done |
| `docs/plan/` | One file per subsystem, written **as work proceeds** |
| `docs/formats/` | Format specs, written **as formats are reversed** |
| `PROVENANCE.md` | Upstream projects we build on, and their licences |
| `vendor/reRAC/` | Pinned reference checkout (not tracked) |

## Crates

| Crate | Responsibility |
|---|---|
| `gc-formats` | Parse asset formats into plain Rust values. No I/O beyond the caller's buffer. |
| `gc-extract` | Disc pipeline: identify, unpack, verify. |
| `gc-game` | Game logic: hero, weapons, classes, progression, saves. |
| `gc-video` | IPU/MPEG-2 decode. |
| `gc-engine` | Bevy app: GS, VU0/VU1, renderer, frame loop. Also owns the **hardware models** — `ps2.rs` is the Emotion Engine's FPU, and the tfrag lighting pass runs on it. |

The dependency direction is `gc-formats` ← `gc-extract`; `gc-formats` ←
`gc-game` ← `gc-engine`; `gc-video` ← `gc-game` ← `gc-engine`. `gc-formats`
depends on nothing of ours. Do not invert these — a format parser that can
reach into the engine cannot be tested in isolation.

A hardware model belongs in `gc-engine`, not `gc-formats`. `gc-formats`
decodes *inputs* — including the data a hardware model consumes, such as the
overlay's sine table — but arithmetic that reproduces how the PS2 computes
something is an engine concern. `tfrag_light.rs` (formats) holds the normal
table and the light bank framing; `tfrag_light.rs` (engine) holds the pass
that uses them.

## Conventions

- Rust 2021 edition, workspace inheritance for all shared config. Do not
  hardcode a version in a member crate.
- `rustfmt` defaults. Clippy warnings are errors in spirit; do not silence them
  without a comment explaining why.
- Error types: `thiserror` for library errors in `gc-formats` and `gc-game`,
  `anyhow` at the binary/`xtask` boundary.
- Comments explain **why**, especially for anything that looks like a bug. The
  `.githooks` and crate docs deliberately have few inline comments; match the
  surrounding density rather than adding noise.
- Tests live beside the code (`#[cfg(test)] mod tests`) for unit-level checks,
  and in `tests/` for golden-file checks against real disc data.

## Working rhythm

This is a long project. Keep it navigable:

1. Work in small, coherent commits with a substantive body explaining what was
   non-obvious. Match the existing style in `git log`.
2. **Update `docs/roadmap.md`** when a phase advances or a gate is met.
3. **Write the `docs/plan/*.md` file for a subsystem when you start it**, and
   update it as you learn. The reasoning is more valuable than the code; the
   code is in git.
4. **Update this file** if you change a convention.

## When you get stuck

Reverse engineering means long stretches of not knowing. That is normal, not a
failure. Write down what you tried and what it ruled out in the relevant
`docs/plan/` file before moving on — the next attempt (which may be you, in
three months) needs the negative results as much as the positive ones.

If something is genuinely blocked, say so plainly and say what would unblock
it. Do not paper over a gap with an approximation that looks like it works.

## Legal

Ratchet & Clank is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment, developed by
Insomniac Games. This is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or
endorsed by either. We redistribute no game content. Upstream projects we learn
from keep their own licences — see `PROVENANCE.md`, and keep those notices
intact when porting their code.