Going-Commando/docs/roadmap.md

# Roadmap

Status as of **2026-10-11**.

A from-scratch native Rust reimplementation of Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando
(PS2). Each phase ends in a **gate** — something checkable, not a feeling that
it is going well. Phases are ordered so that the riskiest unknowns are retired
early, while they are still cheap to retire.

## Where we are

- [x] Target disc identified and verified (`SCUS_972.68` v1.01, NTSC 60 Hz)
- [x] Workspace builds (`cargo check --workspace`)
- [x] Repository hygiene in place (pre-commit guard, `.gitignore`, licence
      record)
- [x] **Phase 1 complete.** The disc pipeline runs end to end and is verified
      against a committed hash table, every one of the 92 asset containers
      parsing. The pipeline now also writes each level's chunk descriptors
      where they exist (3 of 27 levels).
- [x] **Phase 2 in progress.** Level containers are parsed through their typed
      header, and the `data` extent is parsed as a container of byte ranges. The
      geometry decompresses: level 0 yields 16,969,296 bytes of level content
      from a 9.7 MB stream.
- [x] **First drawable frame.** `gc-engine` loads a level, applies LOD selection
      and morphing for the camera, groups triangles by texture and draws them
      under a Bevy fly-camera. Level 0 renders as 26,758 textured triangles
      across 92 textures with correct UVs. Set `GC_ENGINE_SHOT=<path.ppm>` to
      capture a frame and exit.
- [ ] **The origin bug this exposed.** Positions are i16 offsets from a
      per-patch origin, so taking the wrong STROW collapsed the whole level to
      a +-32 unit blob at the world origin while every parser test still
      passed: the vertex count matched, the triangle count matched, only the
      *place* was wrong. Fixed by taking the STROW immediately preceding the
      first position unpack rather than the last one.
- [x] **Per-vertex colour.** The tfrag's RGBA array now modulates the texture,
      drawn unlit so the frame shows real albedo rather than a faked lighting
      model. Verified against the stored values (level 0 patch 0 runs
      `(25,26,26)` to `(108,144,141)`), which are genuinely dark.
- [x] **Tfrag normals.** The 256-entry sine table is decoded from the level
      overlay and normals are built per vertex and handed to the renderer. The
      overlay has **no ELF header**, so the table cannot be reached through a
      program header, and its offset differs per level (level 0 `0xb650c`,
      level 5 `0xcca30`); it is located by matching the whole 256-entry curve.
      Normals are negated as stored and get the same axis swap as positions.
      The pipeline now also writes `overlay.bin`.
- [x] **The PS2 float model.** `gc-engine::ps2` is the EE's FPU on raw bits: no
      denormals, no NaN or infinity, truncation toward zero, the adder's
      operand alignment, and `rsqrt` as sqrt-then-divide. `MAX` reads back in
      Rust as NaN, which is the sharpest available statement of why this is
      not `f32`.
- [x] **The `LightTfrags` pass** is written and unit-tested against the PS2
      model: PEXT5 base colour, `select` set blending, re-normalised blended
      directions, and `base + A*max(dA, dA*wA) + B*max(dB, dB*wB)`.
- [x] **The level light bank parses and level 0 is fully lit.** `gameplay` is a
      WAD stream; the extractor had been writing it compressed, which is why
      the bank framing found garbage. All 80,274 vertices of level 0 now go
      through `LightTfrags`. The renderer still counts and reports how many
      vertices it lit, because a silent fallback to stored colours would look
      plausible and be wrong.
- [x] **The shrub region is bounded, and with it the whole lump.** Shrub's end
      was the last unlocated region bound: it is the start of the post-class
      chunk container, found by a marker-paired signature in `core_data` (the
      index carries no successor offset). The container closes shrub on the
      24 shrub levels and tie on the three without. All 358 shrub class bodies
      are now bounded and are whole 8-byte records, so shrub measurements are
      trustworthy for the first time -- the "3.5M records" figure from the
      unbounded final span is replaced by a measured 9,600.
- [x] **Lighting *magnitudes* are verified** by the PCSX2 comparison loop.
      `gc-trace compare-tfrag-light` runs the pass over level 0's disc data and
      diffs it against the game's own lit colours in EE RAM (live over PINE, or
      from a savestate): **all 162,400 colour bytes match**, across 833/833
      headers relocated and the light bank byte-identical. Two bugs it found:
      the normal's z was not negated (dark but plausible, 95.88% agreement),
      and records with no light set drew transparent black instead of the base
      colour. See `docs/plan/pcsx2-verification.md`.
- [ ] Then the GS register set and the guard-band clip test.

The disc being the exact build the reference projects pin is the single
biggest favourable fact so far: no disc conversion, no regional timing work,
and no re-derivation of the reference baseline.

---

## Phase 0 — Foundation ✅

**Done.**

- Disc identified: `SCUS_972.68` v1.01, USA Black Label, NTSC 60 Hz. Boot ELF
  SHA-1 `bacda860cbd6723142e86db56f197e47e728970f`, entry `0x00131AE8` — the
  entry point independently matches the value recorded by `rac2-gc-decomp`,
  which cross-confirms the identification.
- `tools/identify-disc.py` reproduces the identification against any disc image
  and distinguishes a truncated dump from a non-PS2 image.
- Five-crate workspace scaffolding, Bevy 0.19.1 pinned, builds clean.
- `.githooks/pre-commit` blocks game data. Verified against seven cases:
  `.iso`, renamed disc image, WAD container, ADX container, `extracted/`,
  a 60 MiB file, and legitimate source.
- `AGENTS.md` and `PROVENANCE.md` record conventions and licences.

### Open from this phase

- `alsa-lib-devel` is not installed, so Bevy's host audio backend is disabled in
  `Cargo.toml`. Audio is the last phase; revisit then.
- Bevy feature set is deliberately minimal. Re-add features as needed rather
  than switching `default-features` back on wholesale.

---

## Phase 1 — Disc pipeline ✅

**Done.** Gate met: every extracted file matches the committed hash table.

- [x] `iso9660` reader (R&C2 lists assets as real files, unlike R&C1)
- [x] `G/*.WAD` container header parsing — 92 containers, three table shapes
- [x] WAD LZ77 decompression (`wad.rs`, four packet classes)
- [x] Unpack every container, bounds-checking each extent
- [x] SHA-1 table for all 5,135 files (hashes only, never content)
- [x] `verify` stage, plus integration tests against a real disc
- [x] Format specs written: `disc-layout.md`, `global-wad.md`, `wad.md`
- [x] Work record with the negative results: `plan/disc-pipeline.md`

```text
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
```

**Not done, deliberately:** the table of contents at sector 1001 is documented
but not read. Enumerating the ISO filesystem is simpler and sufficient; the ToC
matters when per-level overlay loading is understood in Phase 3.

**Two wrong turns are recorded** in `plan/disc-pipeline.md`, because both would
be easy to repeat: the container pair table read backwards, and the LZ77 stream
mistaken for a bit stream. Both produced plausible-looking wrong output before
failing, which is the failure mode worth guarding against.

---

## Phase 2 — Format parsers

**Goal:** every asset type parses into plain Rust values, tested against real
disc data.

Phase 1 hands over the extents; this phase works out what each one contains.

**Done so far:**

- [x] `level_wad.rs` — the 0x60-byte header on all 27 level containers, naming
      four extents plus three chunk descriptors. Verified: extents tile each
      container in file order (27 of 27).
- [x] Two facts the format documentation does not state, both measured here:
      sizes in this header are **sector counts** where the generic `G/` table
      uses byte counts, and **`LEVEL21.WAD` reports level id 30**, so container
      order is not level identity.

**In progress:**

- [x] `data` — the extent header locates `core_index` and `core_data`; the
      geometry decompresses and is verified on level 0.
- [x] `core_index` class tables — moby, tie and shrub. They were ruled out
      for want of an entry size, which is knowable exactly: each table ends
      precisely where the next begins, and that chain closes on 27 of 27
      levels. 32 bytes per moby/tie entry, 48 per shrub. Across the disc:
      **5,796 moby, 1,864 tie, 358 shrub classes**. Identifying `tfrag` by its
      own structure is what led here.
- [x] `occlusion` and `sky` offsets located and their first bytes read.
- [x] Region layout of `core_data` established: tfrag, occlusion, sky, collision
      and `textures_base` are offsets, strictly increasing on all 27 levels.
      Terrain is `[0, occlusion)` and carries inline texels.
- [x] Region layout **closed**: the chunk container's marker-paired signature
      ends the last class region, and the constant trailer ends the container.
      Every byte of level-specific `core_data` now belongs to a named region.
- [x] **tfrag vertex format: recovered.** The tfrags block header gives a table
      offset (`0x40`) and a patch count; each patch is a 0x40-byte header whose
      `data` offset is relative to the table, not to the block. Positions are
      V3_16 payloads inside a VIF1 command list, split across three lists per
      patch (common, LOD 0+1, LOD 0). The whole vector format is encoded in the
      command byte and every element size follows from it. Verified on all 27
      levels: **18,102 patches, 821,439 vertices**, each patch yielding exactly
      its own `vert_count`. See `plan/level-assets.md` and `gc-formats::tfrag`.
- [x] **tfrag topology: recovered.** Vertex-info (UVs plus LOD parenting), the
      strip command lists and the index arrays, classified by unpack format and
      destination VU address. Strip indices address the vertex-info array
      rather than positions. Every patch's strips expand to exactly its own
      `tri_count`: **18,102 patches, 809,879 triangles**, all indices in range.
      See `plan/level-assets.md` and `gc-formats::tfrag`.
- [x] **tfrag texture bindings and per-vertex data.** The ad-gifs decode to a
      texture index, wrap modes, minification filter and LOD bias; the level
      index gained a texture table (`level_core.rs`) for those indices to land
      in. Per-vertex RGBA and light/normal records recovered from their fixed
      offsets. All 27 levels: 47,950 ad-gifs, every index in range, 90% of the
      level texture tables referenced.
- [x] **Level textures decode.** 8-bit indexed texels plus a 256-entry CSM1
      CLUT from `gs_ram`, honouring the PS2 CLUT block swap and the 0x80 alpha
      scale. The pipeline now writes `gs_ram.bin`, which it had been skipping.
      All 1,595 tfrag textures on all 27 levels decode; 96.8% fully opaque and
      96.3% with real detail. Verified visually via the new
      `gc-extract dump-texture`, because a wrong lookup still yields a
      well-formed image of the wrong thing.
- [x] **tfrag LOD selection.** Switch distances scale as `[6L, 4L, 2L]` from the
      block header's float; six draw modes result from testing the bounding
      sphere against `trunc(D * 1024)`, so a patch straddling a threshold takes
      the coarser mode and distance never moves back to finer detail. Morph
      weights run 0..1 across each tier's band, and collapse replaces an entry
      with its first parent rather than blending it.
- [x] **tfrag parent indices.** The four V4_8 arrays are classified by VU
      address, but the addresses collide, and each V4_8 element holds four
      indices so an array is `count * 4` bytes rather than `count`. With
      `unk_06`/`unk_0a` suppressing absent tiers, all 370,349 LOD entries
      across the 27 levels resolve: 29,043 LOD-01 and 341,306 LOD-0, zero
      failures. See `plan/level-assets.md` for the two corrections.
- [x] `gameplay` — **it is a WAD stream**, exactly like `core_data`; the
      extractor was writing it compressed. Decompressed, level 0 is 1,872,256
      bytes and holds 5 directional light sets. The earlier "does not decode
      with the WAD LZ77 decoder, bit order and header length ruled out" note
      was wrong about the cause: the decoder was right and the input was not
      what it looked like. Corrected in `plan/level-assets.md`.
- [ ] `occlusion` — 2 to 25 sectors, small enough to read whole.
- [ ] `sound_bank` — `SBlk` and `DAW` signatures found in all 27.
- [x] `data` — **not geometry.** It is the level's file descriptor: its
      first table carries the exact byte lengths of `overlay.bin`,
      `core_index.bin` and `gs_ram.bin` at fixed `u32` indices 1, 3 and 5 on
      every level checked. What follows the descriptor is still unknown.

- [ ] `tfrag` — terrain: LOD chains, strips, morph targets
- [ ] `tie` — instanced environment geometry, fat vertices
- [~] `shrub` — class table done (48-byte entries, not 32; reading shrub at
      32 still gives 231 sane-looking entries of 358, which is the hazard).
      Geometry header parsed and checked field by field on all 358 spans:
      `+0x24` equals the entry's own `o_class`, `+0x2c` is an in-span data
      offset, `+0x16`/`+0x18` are zero, and `+0x1c` names a billboard on
      exactly the 25 classes whose core-index entry carries billboard texture
      fields. Shrub does **not** use moby's part-table format. The body is a
      **24-entry palette of unit-length s16 normals** (squared length within
      65,535 of 32767² on all 8,592 entries — a random triple would miss by a
      billion) plus zero padding records; the billboard record carries K, MMIN
      and the TEX0/MIPTBP addresses as R&C1's does. What remains open: the
      three floats in the billboard record, `size`, `mode_bits`, `count`, and
      **where the mesh geometry lives** — R&C1 puts the mesh packets in this
      blob and R&C2's blob holds only the palette.
- [x] **The shrub mesh geometry is in the class blob.** A packet table at
      `+0x40` names `count` packets between the table and the palette, and
      they tile on **358 of 358 spans** (2,239 packets), which makes `count`
      the packet count. Confirmed against the running game, which relocates
      the table's offsets to absolute addresses and `data_offset` likewise.
- [x] `moby` — per-class model geometry. A class span opens with a `u32`
      pointing at a part table of 16-byte records; parts tile exactly, with
      `vertex_offset + 16 * vertex_count == next_part` holding for **43,467 of
      43,467** parts across every class on all 27 levels. That identity is what
      makes the record size fall out of the data rather than being assumed.
      1,270,802 vertices over 4,560 class spans; 116 spans carry no geometry.
      Vertices are 16-byte VIF-packed half-float quads, handed back raw.
- [ ] `moby_anim` — skeletal animation, still open
- [x] `collision` — container framing. A 0x40-byte header self-describes: it
      carries its own size and the payload size, and `header + payload` stays
      inside `core_data` on all 27 levels. 41,481,520 payload bytes across 19
      levels; 8 levels declare zero length. The cell layout is **not** decoded
      -- the payload does not walk as fixed-stride cells, and variable-length
      faces stop partway into the first cell rather than tiling it.
- [x] `occlusion` — the PVS grid. A z/y/x tree of u16 node offsets over 4x4x4-unit
      cells, populated cells naming 128-byte masks. **412,521 cells over
      140,939 masks** across the 24 levels that have one; the mask array ends
      within 48 bytes of the block boundary on every level. 3 carry no occlusion
      data, and an offset of 0 means *absent* rather than "at the start" — the
      latter parses as a grid whose mask array happens to fit, which is how it
      nearly went wrong.
- [ ] `sky`, `volumes`; textures are done (CSM1 CLUT + PS2 alpha)
- [ ] `level_overlay` — the seven-section parser and relocation from Phase 3

**Gate:** every parser has a golden test against bytes from the real disc, and
reports mismatched header counts as failures rather than warnings.

**Discipline:** bound every read. Typed errors, no panics, no reads past the
buffer.

---

## Phase 3 — Overlay system

**Goal:** make 27 level overlays tractable.

Every overlay carries the same seven sections (`.lit`, `.bss`, `.data`,
`lvl.vtbl`, `lvl.camvtbl`, `lvl.sndvtbl`, `.text`) and the same engine code,
linked at different addresses. ReRAC solves this by masking relocations — `j`/
`jal` targets, `lui` immediates of main-RAM addresses, the `%lo` that completes
them, and `$gp`-relative operands — then matching the masked words to find a
reference function's copy on another overlay.

- [ ] Port the masking and code-identity logic
- [ ] `Relocation::func` and `Relocation::data`
- [ ] `$gp` for this game (`0x001AEFF0`, against R&C1's `0x166c00`)
- [ ] Extend the level table from 19 to 27

**Gate:** every level-01 function's relocated copy is found on all 27 overlays;
cross-checked against an independent cluster hash.

**Why this is high-value:** it turns "27 overlays of unknown code" into a table
lookup, and it is the main thing inherited from ReRAC.

---

## Phase 4 — Engine core

**Goal:** draw a frame.

- [ ] Graphics Synthesizer in wgpu, with the GS's own rules: its
      `round(log2(z/n) + K)` mip selection, blend and alpha-test behaviour,
      alpha `0x80` meaning 1.0, CLAMP wrap
- [ ] VU0/VU1 skinning and lighting on the PS2 float model
- [ ] LOD/morph/cull per `TfragProc` and `TieProc`
- [ ] Occlusion culling, fog, shadows
- [ ] GIF/VIF packet stream interpretation

**Gate:** CPU and GPU paths agree on every vertex of a reference level — the
same identity check ReRAC runs.

**Risk:** VU1 microcode is **binary** in the game's `.vutext` section, so it is
reverse engineered rather than parsed. This is the hardest single item in the
project and the main threat to the timeline. Note that ReRAC's own moby VU1
analysis trips their disassembler on two opcodes.

---

## Phase 5 — Veldin vertical slice

**Goal:** one planet, playable start to finish.

- [ ] Ratchet's controller on a **spherical** planet
- [ ] Chargeboots: hold/release timing, chained jumps, dash
- [ ] Wrench and the camera
- [ ] Collision and the HUD

**Gate:** Veldin is completable and visually matches PCSX2 frame-for-frame under
replayed input.

**This is the go/no-go for the project.** If Veldin works, the other 26 levels
are content. If it does not, the reason is discovered while it is still cheap.
Spherical gravity is the thing most likely to break, because it invalidates
R&C1's movement and camera assumptions wholesale.

---

## Phase 6 — Remaining overlays and the shell

- [ ] Per-level moby class dispatch via `lvl.vtbl`
- [ ] Remaining 26 levels
- [ ] Planets, travel, the Gadgetron vendor, RPG upgrades
- [ ] Weapon modification bitmasks (lock-on, shock, acid, …)
- [ ] Minigames and challenges
- [ ] The 25-state memory-card FSM and its UI
- [ ] IFF chunk saves, including import of a R&C1 save to unlock legacy weapons

---

## Phase 7 — Audio and video

- [ ] 989snd v2 audio decode and playback (not CRI ADX — a different codec)
- [ ] SPU2 mixing, reverb zones, level sounds
- [ ] IPU/MPEG-2 video for the title screen and cutscenes

---

## Phase 8 — Fidelity pass

Differential testing against PCSX2 across every level:

- [ ] Recorded-input frame comparison, per planet
- [ ] Geometry, fog, blend, alpha, texture sampling
- [ ] Audio sync and 60 Hz timing
- [ ] Behavioural comparison: traversal routes, boss timing, RNG

---

## Principles

- **A gate is pass/fail, not a percentage.** "Looks fine" is not progress.
- **Negative results are written down.** A ruled-out approach saves the next
  attempt as much as a working one.
- **The float model is not negotiable.** Approximate is not the same as
  faithful, and the difference is visible in how the game feels.
- **Fidelity over tidiness.** Where the original does something that looks like
  a bug, reproduce it and say why in a comment. See `AGENTS.md`.