Entry 221

Mutation's grown tables and its battle rules

2026-09-27volumes

Filescrates/piney-gen/src/manifest.rscrates/piney-gen/src/locate.rscrates/piney-gen/src/layout.rscrates/piney-battle/src/chara.rscrates/piney-battle/src/damage.rscrates/piney-battle/src/exp.rscrates/piney-battle/src/param.rscrates/piney-battle/src/party_ai.rstools/volume.py

The Mutation battle harness (tools/test_battle_rs.py with PINEY_VOLUME=mutation) failed six of its nine checks. All nine pass now, and they still pass on Infection. Some failures were tables the generator read with Infection's row counts. The rest were rules Mutation changed.

Tables that grew

Several manifest entries had fixed row counts. On a later volume that cuts the table short. The carry's gap to the next global showed which tables grew, and the rows past Infection's count were checked by hand. Outbreak and Quarantine have the same counts.

The weapon tables were the cause of calc_real's failures. spcAIParam stays at 18 on Mutation and Outbreak. Quarantine's gap fits 21; that waits for its turn.

Two generator changes came with the counts:

• Locating by Mutation's layout. The carry places Outbreak's and Quarantine's spcMsgPresent10 in text, and has no row for spcMsgPresent11. The Present menu changed there, so the code finder misses it too. locate::neighbour_candidates now adds one more candidate on those two volumes: Mutation's distance from a neighbour, applied to the volume's own place for that neighbour. A block that grew on Mutation keeps Mutation's spacing. The likeness vote picks among the candidates as before.
• Entry functions Infection lacks. gimmickTbl row 45's entry function has no carried symbol. layout::LATER_FUNCS names it ccEntryGimPgFlag, with its address on each later volume. That gives EntryFunc::GimPgFlag. The port does not build this gimmick yet (its construct returns None).

Rules Mutation changed

• ccChar::DispConditionEffect. A dead character, or a hidden party member, now gets conditionNum -1 even when it has no effect.
• Exdefense in CalcBattleDamage. On Infection an enemy is immune to every Exdefense kind while any defence the skill works against is unbroken. From Mutation on it is immune only to the kinds still held, and to none when the row has bit 0x100.
• Experience. ccExpDistributor and ccSpcCheckLevelUp loop over 21 characters, not 18. The port loops over the volume's chars. piney_battle::tables::CHARS is gone.
• ccSpcChar::CheckAction(0). From Mutation on it also holds during a normal attack (skill 0 or 1), whatever the skill's status.

SpcParam::from_save and store read only ccSaveData's own bytes, so characters 18-20, whose records are in the extension, panicked. They read the whole record now.

The harnesses' layouts

Two structs changed shape on Mutation. The harnesses write them with Infection's offsets, so tools/volume.py now maps those offsets:

• ccSkill (SKILL_SIZE, skill_at) grew from 0xb0 to 0xc0. _ccSkillRequest stores the target's position in a new vector at +0x70. The creator and everything after it move 0x10 on.

• ccAI (ai_at) keeps its size, but three fields are new:

  • an int at +0x24, which moves chatText to gDeg 4 bytes on;
  • two shorts at +0xa0, which move gRotSp to noTurnRange 8 bytes on.

  Nothing from posOld on moves.

The flow, items, party AI, chat, event, fellow and navi harnesses use these helpers. test_battle_flow_rs.py now passes on Mutation.