Entry 141

"Data Drain's side effects on screen, and the areas' light group checked"

2026-09-26rendertest

Filescrates/piney-battle/src/drain.rscrates/piney-world/src/combat/mod.rscrates/piney-world/src/combat/stage.rscrates/piney-world/src/field_world.rscrates/piney-game/src/fx.rscrates/piney-game/src/session/tests/skeith.rscrates/piney-world/examples/world_probe.rstools/test_battle_drain_rs.pytools/test_lights_rs.pydocs/engine/field-ui.mddocs/engine/field-game.mddocs/engine/effects.mddocs/engine/battle.md

Data Drain's side effects were rules only. The party lost HP or exp, or took a condition, but the screen showed only the heals. This entry starts everything DataDrainMenu starts around a side effect. It then answers the question 136 left: whether the towns' and fields' light groups have the order the streams' needed.

What step 10 starts

DataDrainMenu step 10 (gcmn 0x005337a4-0x0053476c) starts these in order, each character's in turn (Kite, or the party's living members):

• Effect 0. effHeal(ch, 1) on each.
• 1-6 (Kite's stats down). effSkillStartEffect(Kite, 0, 1).
• 7-20 (the conditions). ccEntryFlyFontNewMiss(pos, ch) for a resisted one, then effSkillStartEffect(ch, 0, 1) either way.
• 21, 22, 28 (HP, SP halved; 1 HP and SP). effSkillStartEffect(ch, 0, 1) on each.
• 23-27 (exp lost). ccEntryFlyFontNewExp(23, -loss, pos, Kite), then effAfterDrain(Kite, 0).
• Step 11's frame 30. When the loss takes a level, ccEntryFlyFontNewLevelDown(23, pos, plw).

The world runs through step 11, so all of this plays before the window opens and the world sleeps.

The port

• The rules. piney_battle::drain::SideEffect keeps starts, a list of SideStart in the game's order: Heal, Miss, Effect, Exp and AfterDrain. It replaces the three separate lists. missed(), shown() and healed() still give them.
• The world. Combat::drain_side_effect turns each start into a Show::DrainSide. kite_level_down adds Show::DrainLevelDown.
• The effects. piney-game's fx.rs starts each through the effects already ported: fx.heal, fly_font_miss, skill_start_effect, fly_font_exp, after_drain and fly_font_level_down.

Checked

• The order. tools/test_battle_drain_rs.py's side-effect check now also compares the starts in the order the game calls them, with their arguments. 3000 random cases match.
  • Swapping the exp's number and the wave in the port fails 68 of 1000.
• The screen. piney-game's drain_side_effects_show drains Skeith through the menus with each kind of side effect forced.
  • The menu's roll is made to go to a side effect. Combat::force_side_draws gives the effect's two draws.
  • The effects' census (FieldFx::census) shows each start during step 11: effSkillStartEffect's ring -13 and rings 82-85, the heal's -19 and 130, the wave 12, and the words MISS, -600EXP and LEVEL DOWN.
  • drain_side_effect_resisted_shows_miss checks the MISS over Kite. His body tolerance in the arena is 40, so a roll of 0 is resisted.
• Shots. drain_side_effect_shots (ignored; PINEY_SHOTS) writes frames of step 11 for effects 0, 1, 9 (resisted), 16, 21, 25 (with a level lost), 28 and 29.
  • A first run drew a MISS into effect 16's frames. The drain's noise reads the last frame drawn, and the run had drawn only some frames, so the last one was the previous drain's.
  • The shots now use one renderer per drain, fed every frame from step 10 on.

The light group

• The game's rules.
  • ccCreateLight (0x001389b0) gives a distant light priority -1 and the other kinds 0.
  • ccLightGrp::AddGrp (0x00139060) puts a light after the last one of greater or equal priority.
  • ccDrawEnv::SetLightMatrix (0x00105900) keeps three (priority, slot) records. A light above the lowest record's priority is asked CheckRange, and on an answer takes its place by priority and the pushed-out record's slot.
  • In a descending group the first three that answer take slots 2, 1 and 0.
• The port already had it. chara::light_matrix sorts the lights stably by descending priority. Every area builds its lights with ccCreateLight's priorities: the towns, fields, dungeons, event areas, the gate's omni and the boss's ccLight(4, 1). So the towns and fields were right, unlike the streams in 136.
• The check. It had never been compared with the game. tools/test_lights_rs.py builds groups with the game's own ccCreateLight and AddGrp in eemu, then runs SetLightMatrix at a point. world_probe's new lights answers the same group through light_matrix.
  • 5000 random groups of distant, omni and boss lights, some out of reach or dark, match in slots, directions and colours.
  • With the port's sort taken out, 131 of 400 fail.
  • A town's order (the distant light named first) comes out with the omni lights in all three slots.
• A trap. The ctor sets matCalcSW, so CheckRange first copies a light's lwMatrix over its matrix. The check turns it off to hold the position and direction it sets.