Entry 225

Mutation's town maps, its desktop, and the survey past the desktop

2026-09-27volumes

Filescrates/piney-world/src/map/town.rscrates/piney-world/examples/map_probe.rstools/test_map_rs.pycrates/piney-gen/src/syms.rscrates/piney-gen/src/manifest.rscrates/piney-desktop/src/acces.rscrates/piney-desktop/src/audio.rscrates/piney-desktop/src/dtmenu.rscrates/piney-desktop/src/mail.rscrates/piney-game/src/session.rstools/test_desktop_rs.pytools/test_save_init_rs.pytools/volume.py

The Mutation story survey stopped with "the town's map: not found: town 2's map" in Carmina Gade, and most of its starts sat idle at the desktop. This entry ports Mutation's town maps and fixes the desktop's differences that the harnesses showed. The survey's player now drives the desktop and the top page, and every Mutation start reaches The World.

The town maps

Mutation changed ROOTTOWN::DrawMap in three ways:

• The class layout. The map part of the class sits 4 bytes further on, from mapw at +0x80 to steph at +0x8c.
• Mac Anu. Its map is Infection's.
• Dun Loireag and Carmina Gade.
  • Each constructor makes two layers of its own. The map goes on a layer of priority 40 with mapLayer's frame. A fourth mask goes on a layer of priority 45 over the whole screen.
  • The arrow moves to mapLayer.
  • Carmina Gade's map (town03(d)::TEX_sr3map1, RT03ICONPOS, steps 1.02 and 1.013) is offset by (16, 46) before the scroll.
  • Its sign 3 draws its balloon mirrored and flipped (ctrl 0x60). Left of the middle, that sign's label is drawn 6 lower.
  • While the flag race runs in the town, the fourth mask shows the three racers. The race's check is 0x005ff790: the area is 0 and the race's state at 0x0038bd44 is set. The racers are at 0x00774a90, each with its fade at +0x1ec. No sign draws while the race runs, but each sign still fades in or out.

The port takes the race from its input. The world passes none, because the flag race itself is not ported. The map harness gives racers of its own, and it runs Mac Anu, Dun Loireag, Carmina Gade and the race against the game. It finds the race's globals from the code (the first unnamed callee of Dun Loireag's DrawMap, the state it loads, and the table built after the call).

The field map's harness ran WORLD::Generate's painting loop at Infection's addresses, carried by their offset in the function. Mutation's Generate has 0x28 more bytes before the loop. The harness now finds the loop by its code.

Two sidecar passes (piney-gen syms)

• code. The data pass had put Mutation's MailTbl 194 rows below the table the mailer reads, inside code. The new pass pairs the address builds of paired functions whose bodies build as many addresses. A global the data pass placed moves when every such vote agrees and there are at least two votes. It moves one global on Mutation (MailTbl) and one on Quarantine. The port's mail table was already right, because the generator finds it by the code.
• ctor. The overlays' static initialisers are now named from their constructor lists, which are paired by position with Infection's. No other pass named them, because their bodies are runs of copies. This names 21 on Mutation and 18 on each of the other two, among them __sinit_NameEntry.cpp. The name entry harness runs that initialiser.

The desktop

• Wallpapers. AddWallList's unlock bits count only the rows that are not originals. Mutation has rows after the originals (49-51), and its rows 52 on take bits 49 on. The port had used the row as the bit.
• Music. From Mutation on, AddWaveList walks Wave to its "NULL" row and skips the original (50). It lists each row by its bit, below a global that equals the table's rows (52 on each later disc). Mutation's row 51, "BGM 51", has category -1, so the generator now ends Wave at its "NULL" row rather than at category -1.
• The Controller page. Mutation moved one camera label from x 369 to 375. The matched functions hid this, because the exact pass masks immediates. The field's own ControllerMenuDisp keeps 369.
• The harnesses.
  • MailList_control holds 30 photos on Mutation (27 on Infection), so the fields from Tempstream (+0x7c) on are 12 bytes further on (volume.mail_at).
  • The save-init harness allocated at its record's own address. Mutation's ccSaveData constructor allocates the extension there, which wrote over the boot save that every desktop, board and field UI harness starts from.
  • The boot test compares the extension too.
  • Infection's Init cases are left to InitLaterVolumes on the later discs.

On Mutation the desktop, menu, name and save-init harnesses now pass, and they still pass on Infection.

The survey

The story player now drives the desktop and the top page:

• Mail. It reads each unread mail, opened from the list and then closed. On a mail with replies it takes the first reply and moves up to YES to send it.
• News. It reads each unread headline.
• Log in. It then goes to The World and logs in.
• Event blocks. While an event block plays, it presses OK for the block's windows.

Event 102's block 3 had been waiting on its window, because the player was pushing at the locked ring. Every start from 102 to 114 now reaches Dun Loireag. 115 opens in Carmina Gade with its map, and 116 plays the ending into the staff roll. PINEY_SURVEY_ONLY=N runs one start, and PINEY_SURVEY_TRACE prints the desktop's state.