Entry 91

Animations: logical numbers, the table's states, and the sequencer

2026-10-1514mengine

Filescrates/rugrats/src/actors/animator.rs crates/rugrats/src/actors/player.rs crates/rugrats/src/levels/golf.rs crates/rugrats/tests/play.rs docs/engine/gameplay.md

Worklog 90 left a question: are the port's animation numbers the game's logical ones played as table states? They are, and the oracle shows it.

The map. 0x800572a8 first calls 0x80056fe4, which turns its argument into a state of the character's table. The port indexed the table with the argument itself. Peeking the player's base track (+0xa8) on level 3 in the oracle:

The ANM frames match: state 3 is ANM 49 = frames 374..377 in DB03, the oracle's 375-377.

animator::table_state is now 0x80056fe4: the table, plus three computed cases:

• the climb (5): its rise picks 9-14 in bands of 128 (0x80056e44);
• 6: 28 or 32 (0x80056e10);
• 17: "as you were".

Animator::set takes logical numbers again, so golf's 29-31 stay as the game asks for them. The idle is logical 0, the state the oracle shows stopped.

The sequencer. At a state's last frame the word at 0x800b9c30 decides what happens (0x8005562c): ping-pong (4), loop (2), complete (1), or hold. On completion 0x80056484 picks the next state:

• walk 1 and 2 swap, run 3 and 4 swap, idle 17 and 18 swap, 34 and 35 swap;
• jump 5 goes to 6, 39 and 58 go to 40, 45 goes to 46;
• anything else returns to standing.

The base track now does this. The port's Fall after a jump keeps the jump's animation, as the original keeps state 5. set asks only when the logical number changes (the game asks on entering a state). start restarts it for actions.

Two fixes found on the way:

• 0x8008a42c's cases for bodies 9 (Reptar: 0x800ba754 / 0x800ba0d4) and 43 were missing, so Reptar used Tommy's table. His chomp (49) and fire (51) now play ANM 1030 and 1034.
• Climbs play the original's height animations (two boxes: state 14, 12 frames). The level 6 stack tests now allow 120 frames for the climbs.

New tests:

• the level 3 sequence (run 3/4, walk 1/2, jump 5/6, stopped 0);
• every level's body has frames for standing, walking, running and jumping.