ReaperOfVeriod
d56b439502
unblock Continuing on the verbatim payload with the grid known. Cells are not zero-separated. Counting maximal runs of non-zero u16 across the whole payload: level 0 363 cells 15,115 runs mean run 25.3 u16 level 1 384 cells 24,647 runs mean run 51.5 u16 level 2 53 cells 31,512 runs mean run 30.3 u16 Two to three orders of magnitude apart, so a zero run is not a cell boundary. Cells are not uniform blocks either: level 0 averages 2,488 bytes per cell and level 2 averages 43,684, which cannot both be one fixed-size record. The run lengths are not records. Their histogram has a long tail of near-power-of-two values -- 2,140, 1,184, 840, 816, 628, 604, 562 -- which is what you get when a run is bounded by a single zero byte inside otherwise dense data, not by a delimiter. With the 18%-zeros finding, the payload reads as dense data with sparse holes rather than a delimited sequence. So all three segmentation theories are now excluded on the full population rather than on a sample: not ascending u32 tables, not zero-run delimiters, not fixed stride. What would actually unblock this: overlay.bin IS the game's own code, and the collision parser is in it. Camera_CollPrimTest WARNING! - grid out of bounds! (RAR) was located in the debug string pool earlier, and that string is inside the collision routine. So the format is recoverable -- but not by measuring bytes. It needs disassembly of that routine, or an R&C2 reference for the collision cell record. Stating that plainly is worth more than another scan. The disc-side measurement space for collision is exhausted: the bytes are available, verbatim, the grid is known, and three independent segmentation theories have failed on the whole population. Further probing without the loader's own logic will not converge.
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.
PCSX2 is installed and working on this machine; the comparison loop that reads
the game's own memory over its debug protocol is up, and level 0's and level
1's tfrag lighting are verified byte-exact against it. See
docs/plan/pcsx2-verification.md for the
setup and how to run it.
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.