Entry 350

"The console wraps, scrolls with the mouse and lists its help in columns; render scale, vsync and an FPS cap"

2026-10-02uirendertooling

Filescrates/piney-game/src/console.rscrates/piney-game/src/main.rscrates/piney-game/src/session/tests/side_events.rscrates/piney-gs/src/lib.rscrates/piney-gs/src/convert.rscrates/piney-gs/src/shadow.rs

None of this is the game's. These are player requests for the port's window: issues #27, #28 and #29, and the user's asks for a scroll bar and a fixed help.

The console

• Wrapping (#27). An answer wider than the window ran off its edge. Console::wrapped now breaks each answer into rows at its spaces, and a word wider than a row at its letters. A help line's second column wraps under itself. The typed line scrolls sideways to keep the cursor in view. Page Up / Down count rows as drawn.

• Help columns. The description column sat at a fixed 140 pixels. pad_log [FILE|stop] is wider than that and ran into its own text, and deflicker [on|off] had one space where the split needs two, so it never split. The column now starts past the widest command, up to half the window. The window's commands are one list, APP_HELP, each line split by two spaces.

• Tab. It took the first word of every help line as a command. At the title, where there are none, the line "no console commands here" made no one. Commands now come only from lines that split. help also left the recorded path: each F1 press used to write a help line into the pad log.

• Scroll bar. A track on the band's right edge, with a thumb as tall as the visible share of the history. The mouse wheel scrolls three rows a notch, the thumb drags, and a click on the track pages.

• History. Picking a part on the four-part selector (App::boot) made a new Console, so the answers and the lines typed went with the scene. It now keeps the console and only swaps the fonts (set_fonts). The lines typed are also kept between runs, in console_history.txt in the build's folder (the last 200).

long_answers_wrap, tab_completes_the_commands, the_scroll_bar_scrolls and the_history_is_kept hold these. The by-hand console_picture now draws a long line and enough history for the bar.

The window

• vsync [on|off] (#29), --no-vsync: the surface's present mode, AutoVsync or AutoNoVsync, reconfigured on the spot.

• fps_cap N (#29), --fps-cap N, 0 for none: about_to_wait holds the next redraw until 1/N s after the last picture (ControlFlow::WaitUntil). The game's frames keep their own clock (tick's vblank count), so the cap and vsync change only how often the picture is shown.

• render_scale N (#28), --render-scale N, 1 to 8: Gs::set_scale. The frame buffer is N times 512 x 448. The draws keep the frame's coordinates, since convert maps them to clip space by the frame's size and normalizes texel coordinates by the logical size. Five things had to follow the scale:

  • the scissor rectangles;
  • the frame-buffer copies, both their regions and their textures, and the previous frame;
  • the shadow packet's Z copy and composite, which read frame pixels (the uniform's spare slot now carries the scale);
  • the composite's scissor;
  • the half-pixel move that makes the GS's corner rule meet the GPU's centre rule (PIXEL_CENTRE, now 0.5 / scale). Without it every sprite edge fell one pixel out at scale 2, which the first run of the new test caught.

  a_scaled_frame_buffer_draws_the_frame_bigger draws a frame at scale 1 and 2: flat sprites, a scissored one, a frame-buffer copy drawn back and a shadow packet. At 2 every pixel is the scale-1 pixel doubled, within 2 of 255, except along the shadow's bilinear edge, which is checked inside. Story 19's start shot at both scales lines up, sharper at 2. The other 22 GS tests are unchanged at scale 1.

the_tutorial_statue_s_glow_ends read DATA.BIN a second time for its GS. Under the full suite's 8 GB cap, in parallel, that read failed now and then: a read_path unwrap, later a 76 MB allocation abort. It now uses the session's archive.