Entry 58

The World's top page (TOPPAGE.PRG): log in, the board, log out, and the hand-off to the field game

2026-09-23uiscripttest

Filescrates/piney-toppagecrates/piney-game/src/toppage.rscrates/piney-game/src/session.rscrates/piney-game/src/desktop.rstools/test_toppage_rs.pydocs/engine/toppage.md

The desktop's THE WORLD icon asks for mode 4, ccSetupToppage with TOPPAGE.PRG. Since 44 the runtime had answered by entering the desktop again. A helper agent ported the page as piney-toppage; I put it in the runtime. The reference is the top page.

What the page is

TOPPAGE.PRG is small: toppage.cpp (14 functions) and bbs.cpp (35), plus the board's tables. Each frame runs, in order:

• The system menu. The desktop's own ccThDtMenu. Its status tests compare against 1 (the title), so on the page (status 3) it behaves as on the desktop.
• The page's task.
  • A 151-frame log-in animation (ANM_xdttopst). Cancel skips it, except on frames 1 and 60.
  • A menu of LOG IN, BOARD and QUIT, with a NEW mark when a post is new. The event scripts lock the commands as operations 6-8 and 25-27.
  • The board: the threads and posts the scripts posted (bbsList: 1 new, 3 read, 7 the player's own, typed out two bytes every 6 frames), and the Time Idol ranking in thread 29.
• The fader and the menu, drawn on top.

Leaving the page. Each command fades to black over 31 frames:

• QUIT asks for mode 3, the desktop.
• LOG IN asks, in one frame:
  • ChangeRequest(5, 8): ccSetupNewGame, GCMN.PRG;
  • ChangeArea(0, lastTown): area 0 (a town) and saveData.lastTown, with the town's server from @1489;
  • ChangeRequest(6, 7).

There is no server or town choice on the page itself: the town is whatever the scripts last set with last_town.

Copied exactly. Three things the game does are ported as they are:

• _ChangeMode reads the idle animation's table at volumeNum - 1 through a stack offset, so Infection shows ANM_xdttop1a.
• The board's scroll bars divide 0 by 0 when a list is exactly one page long, and the data has such lists. The port uses the EE's result as PCSX2 models it.
• The key-repeat counters are main-executable globals, so they carry over between visits.

In the runtime

• The session.
  • THE WORLD now enters TopPageMode, and QUIT goes back to the desktop.
  • LOG IN records the area and town. Mode 5/6 (the field game) is not ported yet, so it enters the desktop again for now.
• The event task. It runs over the page as on the desktop:
  • the passes at phases 0 and 2 with ccGame.status 3, then the page and phase 4, then the event task before the page each frame;
  • the bridge gained a top-page target and a per-mode status, 2 on the desktop and 3 on the board;
  • a script asking for another mode during the passes abandons the page.
• The page's requests. They map to the runtime's events:
  • SqLoad(0) to sqDataToppage, whose sequence 0 is the board's music;
  • the system menu's requests as on the desktop.

Checked

• Against the game's code. tools/test_toppage_rs.py runs TOPPAGE.PRG's constructor and Main natively in eemu beside the port, frame by frame, over 6 scenario tests. Each frame it compares:

  • every call: animation steps, text draws with their bytes, mask cells, views, fader entries;
  • the sounds and requests;
  • the full state of both controllers, the scroll bars, every thread and post, the whole bbsList and the key-repeat globals;
  • the scene fields after LOG IN.

  The runs cover a fresh save, event 1's posts, the player's own posts, the Time Idol post, the longest and the one-page thread, a parody save with every thread, locked commands, the system menu over the board, and six random 900-frame runs. Two deliberate mutations were caught. I re-ran it in a clean worktree and all 6 pass.

• The crate. piney-toppage has 6 unit tests and 6 disc tests.

• The runtime. the_world_top_page_and_back goes from a new game's desktop to THE WORLD, past the log-in animation, QUIT back to the desktop, THE WORLD again, and LOG IN: the area (0, the save's last town) is kept. The workspace's tests pass, and clippy (also with trace) and fmt are clean.

• Shots. The CPU GS model draws the page (the logo, LOG IN / BOARD / QUIT) and the board with event 1's NEW posts.