Comparing every chunk record against the same record index in the other 26
levels, across all 74 signatures:
65 of 74 every record byte-identical in all 27 levels
9 of 74 level-specific
0 ragged no signature appeared with different record counts per level
The nine that vary:
[5d 44 13] [75 42 ef] [7f 44 ee] [82 c4 2f] [96 c3 37]
[a2 44 a5] [c6 c3 ef] [df c3 ea] [f3 c4 b9]
This reframes the container. 65 of 74 chunk types are static tables the game ships
unchanged in every level -- constants and lookups, not level content. The largest
by record count are all in that group: [38 c4 7e] stride 328 with 90 records per
level, [a9 c4 d8] stride 308 with 90, [3d c4 9e] stride 368 with 77.
The consequence is about method, and it is worth being blunt about. For a
level-specific type, comparing levels is the strongest lever available: a field
that moves with the level is identifiable by correlating it with something known.
For the other 65 there is nothing to compare -- one copy of the data, repeated 27
times -- so they must be decoded structurally, from what the bytes are. A future
decoder that reaches for per-level comparison as its first tool will find it
useless on the majority of the container.
[75 42 ef] is both level-specific AND the one signature with three strides. A
type that is both variable-length and level-varying is the most informative one
here, and is where per-type field decoding should start.
How this was found, including the wrong turn:
The first look at [53 c4 6c d7 9a 43] (stride 108) showed 45 of 108 byte positions
varying WITHIN a chunk and 810 records all distinct -- which reads like per-record
data. Counting distinct values per u32 slot across all 810 records contradicted
that: 29 to 30 distinct values across 27 levels, i.e. about one per level.
Both readings were wrong because they measure different things. The 45 positions
vary between records within a level; the u32 counts were low because the same 30
values recur in every level. Comparing record i across levels settled it: all 30
records are byte-identical in all 27 levels, and zero byte positions vary across
levels.
Had the u32 distinct counts been the only measurement, the conclusion would have
been "one value per level" -- the opposite of the truth, describing a per-level
parameter table that does not exist. The within-chunk and across-level views had
to be taken together to get a true one.
Asserted in most_chunk_signatures_are_level_independent. 242 tests, clippy clean.
ReaperOfVeriod
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