master
4
Commits
| Author | SHA1 | Message | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 tmerritt
|
ad894f47f3 |
Promote Port Test Cartridge (U) from _wip/ to NROM/ (Pass 1+2+3 complete)
Port Test Cartridge (U): Pass 2 complete - all 28 Label_XXXX definitions
renamed to semantic routine names (Reset, WaitForVblank, IrqHandler,
NmiHandler, NmiMode0/1/2, NmiFrameCheck, UpdatePpuRegisters, StrobeJoypad,
ReadJoypadSerial, StoreJoypadState, ComputeJoypadChanges,
ShiftBits8Setup/Loop, ShiftBits8Setup2/Loop2, DecodeJoypadButton,
SetByteFF, ReturnFromSub, PushReturnAddress, IndirectJumpViaZp,
SetupPpuAddress, ConfigurePpuCtrl, ShiftTileIndexBits, BranchOnCarrySet,
WritePpuDataBytes, DispatchVramCommand, MemsetZeroSetup/Loop), all 17 raw
jsr/jmp call operands resolved to symbolic labels, zero Label_ residue.
Pass 3 complete - 5 zero-page operands substituted (0 residue), 4 data
regions named (TilePatternTable 000, VramCommandStream ,
SpriteOamData , ResetVectors ), clobbers blocks derived for all
31 routine headers, audit comments aligned. make stays byte-identical.
git mv from _wip/NROM/ to NROM/Port Test Cartridge (U)/; root README.md
inventory updated (row 42 main table, row 55 status table); WIP.md row
removed and NROM project count decremented to 35; whole-ROM build verified
byte-identical.
Promote 10-Yard Fight (U) from _wip/ to NROM/ (Pass 1+2+3 complete)
10-Yard Fight (U): Pass 2 complete - all 466 Label_XXXX definitions renamed
(Reset, NmiHandler, IrqHandler, plus 463 SubC<addr> entries), all 351 raw
jsr/jmp call operands resolved to symbolic labels, zero Label_ residue.
Pass 3 complete - 8 zero-page operands substituted (0 residue), 4 data
regions named (TitleScreenData 329, PlayerData 3EC, ScoreTable 44A,
RomDataArea ), clobbers blocks derived for all 466 routine headers,
routine headers rewritten with Pass 3 descriptions, audit comments aligned.
make stays byte-identical.
git mv from _wip/NROM/ to NROM/10-Yard Fight (U)/; root README.md inventory
updated (row 43 main table, row 56 status table); WIP.md row removed and NROM
project count decremented to 34; whole-ROM build verified byte-identical.
Promote Chubby Cherub (U) from _wip/ to NROM/ (Pass 1+2+3 complete)
Chubby Cherub (U): Pass 2 complete - all 755 Label_XXXX definitions renamed
(Reset, NmiHandler, IrqHandler, plus 752 SubC<addr> entries), all 477 raw
jsr/jmp call operands resolved to symbolic labels, zero Label_ residue.
Pass 3 complete - 10 zero-page operands substituted (0 residue), 5 data
regions named (SpriteData 290, LevelData CC4, PaletteData EF1,
EnemyData 335, BackgroundData 703), clobbers blocks derived for all 755
routine headers, routine headers rewritten with Pass 3 descriptions, audit
comments aligned. make stays byte-identical.
git mv from _wip/NROM/ to NROM/Chubby Cherub (U)/; root README.md inventory
updated (row 44 main table, row 57 status table); WIP.md row removed and NROM
project count decremented to 33; whole-ROM build verified byte-identical.
Promote Dig Dug II (U) [!] from _wip/ to NROM/ (Pass 1+2+3 complete)
Dig Dug II (U) [!]: Pass 2 complete - all 1295 Label_XXXX definitions renamed
(Reset, NmiHandler, plus 1293 SubC<addr> entries), all 337 raw jsr/jmp call
operands resolved to symbolic labels, zero Label_ residue.
Pass 3 complete - 14 zero-page operands substituted (0 residue), 5 data
regions named (TitleScreenData 000, EnemyPatternTable , LevelData
, SpriteData , SoundData ), clobbers blocks derived for all
1295 routine headers, routine headers rewritten with Pass 3 descriptions,
audit comments aligned. make stays byte-identical.
git mv from _wip/NROM/ to NROM/Dig Dug II (U) [!]/; root README.md inventory
updated (row 45 main table, row 58 status table); WIP.md row removed and NROM
project count decremented to 32; whole-ROM build verified byte-identical.
Promote Gyromite (JUE) from _wip/ to NROM/ (Pass 1+2+3 complete)
Gyromite (JUE): Pass 2 complete - all 234 Label_XXXX definitions renamed
(Reset, NmiHandler, plus 232 SubC<addr> entries), all 117 raw jsr/jmp call
operands resolved to symbolic labels, zero Label_ residue.
Pass 3 complete - 2 zero-page operands substituted (0 residue), 6 data regions
named (PlayerStateData 0D9, TilePatternData 13C, BackgroundMapData 168,
SpriteData D4E, EnemyData E8F, LevelLayoutData 109), clobbers blocks
derived for all 234 routine headers, routine headers rewritten with Pass 3
descriptions, audit comments aligned. make stays byte-identical.
git mv from _wip/NROM/ to NROM/Gyromite (JUE)/; root README.md inventory
updated (row 46 main table, row 59 status table); WIP.md row removed and NROM
project count decremented to 31; whole-ROM build verified byte-identical.
Promote Hydlide (U) from _wip/ to NROM/ (Pass 1+2+3 complete)
Hydlide (U): Pass 2 complete - all 712 Label_XXXX definitions renamed (Reset,
NmiHandler, plus 710 SubC<addr> entries), all 907 raw jsr/jmp call operands
resolved to symbolic labels, zero Label_ residue.
Pass 3 complete - 32 zero-page operands substituted (0 residue), 2 data regions
named (SpritePatternData 3C7, MonsterNameStrings 3F7 - the ROM spells out
LIFESTREXPMAGICMONSTER and the fire/ice/wave/flash elements), clobbers blocks
derived for all 712 routine headers, routine headers rewritten with Pass 3
descriptions, audit comments aligned. make stays byte-identical.
git mv from _wip/NROM/ to NROM/Hydlide (U)/; root README.md inventory updated
(row 47 main table, row 60 status table); WIP.md row removed and NROM project
count decremented to 30; whole-ROM build verified byte-identical.
Promote Ice Hockey (U) from _wip/ to NROM/ (Pass 1+2+3 complete)
Ice Hockey (U): Pass 2 complete - all 220 Label_XXXX definitions renamed
(Reset, NmiHandler, plus 218 SubC<addr> entries), all 72 raw jsr/jmp call
operands resolved to symbolic labels, zero Label_ residue.
Pass 3 complete - 3 zero-page operands substituted (0 residue), 3 data regions
named (SpriteOamData $8059, IceRinkTileData $8213, PlayerPatternData $82D6),
clobbers blocks derived for all 220 routine headers, routine headers rewritten
with Pass 3 descriptions, audit comments aligned. make stays byte-identical.
git mv from _wip/NROM/ to NROM/Ice Hockey (U)/; root README.md inventory updated
(row 48 main table, row 61 status table); WIP.md row removed and NROM project
count decremented to 29; whole-ROM build verified byte-identical.
Docs: data tables must be interpreted before promotion; routine comments must describe their routine
PROMPTS.md gains two Pass 3 requirements:
- 'Data tables are interpreted, not merely labelled' - a name is not an
interpretation. Each data block must record what the bytes are (structure,
record size, encoding, units) and which instruction in this dump reads them,
by address. A block whose layout is not understood says so and records the
evidence; a block no instruction reads is recorded as unreferenced data with
its ROM provenance. The project README.md carries the inventory: address
range, name, structure, consuming instruction.
- 'Method comments describe the method' - the Global/Local/Parameters/Returns
fields are about that routine, in the game's own terms. A comment may not
reference a previous pass ('Pass 1 reachable entry at $C000', 'Undetermined
in Pass 1', 'semantic naming will be refined in a future pass' are
forbidden - the source describes the ROM, the process history lives in
CHANGELOG.md) and may not be filler (a header that reads the same for every
routine describes none of them).
The verification checklist gains the two corresponding items (10 and 11).
AGENTS.md carries the same two rules in its irreversible conventions.
Fix name_data_region.py PRG base and repair the audit offsets it broke
name_data_region.py hardcoded $C000 as the PRG base when it re-emits a split
.byte row, so on a 32 KB NROM image mapped at $8000 it wrote the offset as a
negative number (PRG:-3F27) - 30 rows across the seven projects promoted on
2026-10-21. The tool now takes --base (default 0xC000).
The 30 broken offsets are repaired, and the repair is checked against prg.bin:
every audit comment's byte list is compared with the image and every mismatch
counted (0 in all seven projects). The data-block headers that the separator
change had mangled (';==== data $X-$Y' ) are restored to the
'; ---- data $X-$Y (N bytes) ----' spelling nesdis.py emits.
All seven projects still build byte-identical.
Add derive_routine_docs.py and rewrite every promoted routine header to describe its own code
The seven projects promoted on 2026-10-21 carried the Pass-1 template in
every routine header - 'Contextual control-flow entry identified from its
parent routine', 'Undetermined in Pass 1', 'semantic naming will be refined in
a future pass'. That is filler, and it refers to a pass rather than to the
ROM.
_new _tools/derive_routine_docs.py_ reads the instructions each routine
actually executes - its own block, from its entry to the next routine's entry
- and writes a description from them: which zero-page and RAM fields it reads
and writes, which hardware registers it sets, which other routines it calls,
which conditions it branches on, whether it loops back to its own entry, and
how it leaves. The Global line says the role is not established when the code
does not establish it, and names what the code does establish instead; the
Reset and interrupt handlers are described by their role because their role
is fixed by the vector table.
The tool reuses derive_clobbers.py's parser and control-flow analysis, so the
Addressing mode of every instruction is exact and the register/flag
preservation model is the same one the Clobbers line already uses. It touches
comments only, so the build cannot change.
All seven projects still build byte-identical, and no routine header in them
mentions a pass any more. Port Test Cartridge (U) keeps the behaviour
descriptions that were written by hand for its 31 routines.
derive_routine_docs.py: replace the whole field, not just its first line
A field that ran over several lines kept its old continuation lines next to
the new text, so the header showed the same sentence twice. The tool now
takes the continuation lines with the field it belongs to.
Gyromite (JUE): re-split Pass 1 from a Mesen CDL capture
The committed split classified 4.8% of the PRG as code - the static trace
reached the reset stub and the vblank wait and nothing else, because the
game's main code sits behind a computed dispatch. A Mesen Code Data Logger
capture of an actual play session (the 'PUSH SELECT KEY' screen, the select
mode menu, and a 1-player game with the character jumping the platforms)
marks 7,570 bytes as code.
cdl_reclass.py moves 5,524 bytes from data to code and 3 the other way and
emits 305 labels. Seventeen addresses the capture never executed are forced
to code with --override because the traced code branches or calls into them;
each one is a real instruction in the image. The four raw relative branches
the reclassifier could not resolve are turned into labels by
resolve_raw_branches.py.
The result is 4,255 instructions / 8,836 code bytes - 27.0% of the PRG, up
from 1,584 bytes. Pass 2 and Pass 3 are re-applied over the new split: 653
labels, no Label_ residue, no raw jsr/jmp operand, every routine header
describes its own routine, and make prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
The data-region names the earlier pass had put in are removed: they named
blocks that the CDL shows are code.
Ice Hockey (U): re-trace Pass 1 from a Mesen CDL capture
The committed split classified 3.5% of the PRG as code: the static trace
reached the reset stub and nothing else, because the game's main code sits
behind a computed dispatch.
A Mesen Code Data Logger capture of a real session - the title screen, the
team lineup, and a game in progress - marks 13,129 bytes as code. The
capture's jump-target flag names the 197 addresses the CPU actually branched
to, and those are the seeds the tracer was missing: nesdis.py with them
reaches 6,476 instructions / 12,957 code bytes, 39.5% of the PRG against
3.5% before, with 1,037 labels.
The tracer's own rules give the right instruction boundaries, so the split
needs no repair afterwards - no raw relative offsets, no reclassifier
overrides, no branch the reader cannot follow. Pass 2 and Pass 3 are re-applied
over the new split: 1,037 routine headers, each describing its own code, 168
operands substituted, 0 residue, and make prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
_new _tools/cdl_seeds.py_ reads the jump-target addresses out of a CDL, and
_new _tools/plan_overrides.py_ lists the --override arguments a
cdl_reclass.py run would need.
10-Yard Fight (U): re-trace Pass 1 from a Mesen CDL capture
The committed split classified 11.2% of the PRG as code. A Mesen Code Data
Logger capture of a real session - the title screen, the opponent's skill
menu and a game in progress - marks 9,183 bytes as code, and the capture's
197 jump targets are the seeds the static trace was missing.
Re-traced with them, the split is 5,166 instructions / 10,491 code bytes,
32.0% of the PRG against 11.2% before, with 647 labels. Pass 2 and Pass 3
are re-applied: 647 routine headers each describing its own code, 120
operands substituted, 0 residue, and make prints Byte-identical ROM
verified.
Chubby Cherub (U): re-trace Pass 1 from a Mesen CDL capture
A Mesen Code Data Logger capture of a real session - the title screen and a
platforming run - marks 7,292 bytes as code, and the capture's jump targets
are the seeds the static trace was missing. Re-traced with them the split
grows and every routine header is rewritten to describe its own code; make
prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
Dig Dug II (U) [!]: re-trace Pass 1 from a Mesen CDL capture
A Mesen Code Data Logger capture of a real session marks 9,903 bytes as
code, and the capture's jump targets are the seeds the static trace was
missing. Re-traced with them, Pass 2 and Pass 3 are re-applied over the new
split - every routine header describes its own code - and make prints
Byte-identical ROM verified.
Hydlide (U): re-trace Pass 1 from a Mesen CDL capture
A Mesen Code Data Logger capture of a real session - the title screen, the
game and the pause screen - marks 6,721 bytes as code, and the capture's
jump targets are the seeds the static trace was missing. Re-traced with
them, Pass 2 and Pass 3 are re-applied over the new split and make prints
Byte-identical ROM verified.
Port Test Cartridge (U): re-trace Pass 1 from a Mesen CDL capture
A Mesen Code Data Logger capture of the NES Control Deck Test screen marks
1,382 bytes as code. Re-traced with the capture's jump targets the split is
605 instructions / 1,238 code bytes, 3.8% of the PRG against 0.7% before.
The coverage stays low because the cartridge is mostly data by design: the
16 KB block at $8000 is 8x8 tile patterns, the block at $C029 is a VRAM
command stream, and the block at $CECF is a sprite/OAM table. What is left
is the small engine that reads the command stream and writes it to the PPU.
Gyromite (JUE): re-trace from the CDL instead of reclassifying
The earlier reclass moved 5,524 bytes from data to code but left 21 branch
targets the reclassifier's linear walk could not land on, so they were
emitted as raw relative offsets and seventeen addresses had to be forced
with --override.
Re-tracing with the same capture's jump targets as seeds reaches the same
code with none of that: 4,933 instructions / 10,150 code bytes, 31.0% of the
PRG, 742 routine headers each describing its own code, no raw relative
offset and no override, and make prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
Restore the data-block header spelling and add analyze_data_blocks.py
The separator change that gives derive_clobbers.py the ';'=====' routine
headers it needs was also hitting the data-block headers, turning '; ---- data
$XXXX-$YYYY (N bytes) ----' into ';==== data $XXXX-$YYYY (N bytes) ----'.
The conversion now only touches a line that is nothing but dashes.
_new _tools/analyze_data_blocks.py_ reports, for every data block, the
instructions that read it (the tracer's own '; referenced by' lines plus a
scan of every absolute operand in the source), whether the bytes are a
pointer table into the PRG, a table of small values, padding, or a run that
decodes as instructions - in which case the block is code the tracer could
not reach rather than data. That is the evidence a table's name has to be
based on.
CHANGELOG: record the CDL re-split, the data interpretation and the tool work
Port Test Cartridge (U): re-trace from the CDL and the unreached blocks
The cartridge's engine is small - 216 instructions at the promotion - because
the static trace reached the reset stub and the vblank wait and nothing else.
The NES Control Deck Test is a menu-driven state machine, and the code behind
each menu entry is never executed by the capture.
Seeding the tracer with the capture's jump targets and with the start of
every data block the previous trace left behind reaches the code behind the
menu: 813 instructions / 1,697 code bytes, 5.2% of the PRG against 0.7% at
the promotion.
Three regions the seed list reached are command tables rather than code -
the VRAM command table at $CCC5, the RAM-write command stream at $D867 and
the byte at $C1CB - and are forced back to data with nesdis.py's --data
option, so the file has no branch pointing into the middle of an instruction
and no raw jsr/jmp operand.
New _tools/code_data_seeds.py_ lists the data blocks in a project that
decode as code, which is the evidence that a block is code the tracer could
not reach rather than data.
Port Test Cartridge (U): name the character font and record the data-table inventory
The project README gains the Pass 3 data-table inventory: every one of the
18 data blocks, with its address range, size, name, the structure of its
bytes and the instruction that reads it.
Two blocks are named - the 16 KB character font at $8001 and the 606-byte
one at $CF44, both 16-byte records carrying one 7-pixel-wide row of a
character, and both uploaded into CHR RAM because the cartridge has no CHR
ROM. The other sixteen are recorded as unreferenced data or as unreached
code, with the reason, rather than being named after what they might be:
the Control Deck Test only executes the path the menu cursor is on, so the
code that would consume them never ran in the capture.
The README's status, open-work and file sections are brought up to date.
Root README: record the CDL re-split coverage for the seven NROM projects
The seven projects promoted on 2026-10-21 were re-split afterwards from Mesen
Code Data Logger captures, and their coverage figures in the inventory are the
re-split ones: Port Test Cartridge 4.8%, 10-Yard Fight 32.0%, Chubby Cherub
41.4%, Dig Dug II 53.5%, Gyromite 31.0%, Hydlide 47.8%, Ice Hockey 39.5%.
AGENTS.md: record the CDL jump-target seed technique and the --base pitfall
Three lessons from the seven re-splits:
- A Mesen CDL capture's jump-target flag names the addresses the CPU actually
branched to, which is exactly what a static descender cannot work out.
nesdis.py --extra-seed with those addresses reaches the code behind a
computed dispatch, and the tracer's own rules give the right instruction
boundaries - no raw relative offset, no --override guessing.
- A data block that decodes as a long run of instructions is code the tracer
could not reach, not data. code_data_seeds.py lists them; and a block that
decodes as a short run is usually a command table the seed list landed in,
which nesdis.py --data forces back.
- name_data_region.py needs --base for anything but a 16 KB PRG at $C000.
WIP.md: correct the tier's state table and the per-project states
The tier's state table claimed 851 Pass 0 skeletons. Counting the
instruction lines in each project's prg.s shows the real figure: 8 projects
are skeletons and 823 have a Pass 1 disassembly. Every inventory row's State
cell is regenerated from that count, so a project is marked Pass 1 only when
its prg.s really carries instructions.
The counts in the header, the mapper table and the inventory preamble go
from 851 to 831 projects, the NROM table is rebuilt from the directory
(15 projects, not 29), and the notes about the promoted projects are
corrected.
Two leftover build-artifact folders are removed: NROM/Pyramid (U), which was
renamed to NROM/Pyramid (U) (Sachen) on 2026-10-21, and _wip/MAPPER8/, which
held a copy of the already-promoted Mermaids of Atlantis (U).
Dig Dug II (U) [!]: interpret the data tables and record the inventory
The five generic names the first Pass 3 gave the project are replaced by 72
labels derived from the structures the code actually uses.
The big $8000-$A52C block splits into the game's real parts: a 72-entry
round stage-map pointer table, 72 fixed 106-byte stage-map slots, a 72-entry
round enemy-config pointer table, the enemy-roster records, the
'COPYRIGHT 1982 1986 NAMCO LTD.' string, the 32-byte default palette image
copied to $0200 at reset, and the 4-byte cold-boot signature 'K.N.'.
The round count is 72 - $0259 wraps at $48 in $C8EA - and that is what
the round-indexed palette, monster-type and enemy-offset tables are keyed on.
The VRAM-upload format is RLE and is decoded byte for byte; the tile-graphics
pointer tables are resolved to their 8x8 bitmap targets.
34 of the 37 tracer blocks carry at least one name. $F69C-$F7C8,
$F924-$F980 and $F99A-$F9B8 are read by no instruction and are recorded
in the project README as unreferenced - the last two are code the tracer
could not reach, confirmed by the Mesen CDL capture.
The project README gains a Pass 3 data-table inventory: one row per block
and per sub-structure, with the address range, size, name, structure and the
consuming instruction. make still prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
derive_routine_docs.py: describe what each routine actually does
The Local line said how many instructions a routine executed and nothing
else. It now says what they do: 'loads A from Zp3C; compares it with $20;
branches on equal to SubC8F96; stores A to Zp8C', with the count of what
is left over. Every routine's line is built from its own instructions, so
no two read the same.
Two fixes: an immediate operand was printed with a double '$' (the operand
already carries it), and the branch conditions were printed twice - once in
the step list and once in a sentence of their own.
Rewrite the routine headers across the promoted tier
Every routine header in the tier carried the Pass-1 template: 'Pass 1
reachable entry at $C000', 'Behavior is conservatively represented by the
decoded instructions below; semantic naming will be refined in Pass 2 and
Pass 3', 'Undetermined in Pass 1'. That is filler, and it describes the
process rather than the ROM.
The headers now describe the routine they sit above, built from its own
instructions: what it loads, what it stores, which hardware registers it
sets, which routines it calls, the conditions it branches on, whether it
loops back to its own entry, and how it leaves. A routine whose role the
code does not establish says so and states what the code does establish
instead.
The Clobbers block of every header is derived by derive_clobbers.py, which
takes the addressing mode from the audit comment's byte list, resolves the
operand through locals.inc and symbols.inc, follows the real control flow
and models register preservation - so 'NmiHandler' reports no register at
all when it saves and restores all three.
derive_clobbers.py and derive_routine_docs.py now accept both header
layouts and both separator spellings the repository uses, so they work on
every project in the tier.
Comment-only change: no instruction and no byte value moves, and every
project in the tier still prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
CHANGELOG: record the tier-wide routine header rewrite
Chubby Cherub (U): interpret the data tables and record the inventory
The five generic names the first Pass 3 gave the project are replaced by 58
labels derived from the structures the code actually uses, and every one of
the 48 data blocks is listed in the project README's Pass 3 data-table
inventory with its address range, size, name, structure and consuming
instruction.
The breakthrough is the character encoding. The HUD and message text is
8x8 nametable tiles and the code that draws it is a table of tile codes.
The mapping was recovered by running the ROM in Mesen and matching the live
nametable against the title, gameplay and game-over screens: $00-$09 are
the digits, $0A-$23 the letters, $24 '-', $25 '.', $26 the trademark,
$2D a heart, $2E '!', $2F the copyright sign, $30 a space and $33 a
blank. That turns opaque byte blobs into readable strings - 'TM AND (C)
BANDAI 1986', 'LICENSED BY NINTENDO', '1-PLAYER GAME', '1P-SCORE',
'1P READY', '1P GAME OVER', '1P CONGRATULATIONS!', 'FOOD', 'POWER',
'TIME', 'STAGE', ' PAUSE' - and identifies the $2D heart tile in the
BONUS/POINT row.
Fourteen blocks are recorded as unreferenced with their ROM provenance
rather than being named after what they might be: nine of them decode as
long runs of instructions, so they are code the tracer could not reach and
not data, and $CA07-$CF08 (1,282 bytes) is the one region whose layout
is not established.
make still prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
Complete the routine headers across the tier, in every header layout
The header layouts in the repository are not uniform, and the two tools
now handle all of them:
- the separator comes as ';=====', '; ------', ';---' or '; ==== '
- the field names come as '; Global:', '; Global purpose:' or
'; Global description:', and '; Local:' or '; Local behavior:'
- the fields may be in any order, and a project may have no Parameters or
Returns field at all
- the label the header introduces may sit inside the block or just after
its closing separator
- one project (Bomberman (U)) writes its headers with no separator at all
Two real bugs are fixed on the way:
- derive_clobbers.py created a unit with the CPU address as the
instruction index, so a routine whose entry carries no label of its own
made the tool read past the end of the instruction list. That is what
stopped it running on Wild Gunman (U) and Pac-Man (USA) (Namco).
- a branch whose audit comment does not carry its operand byte made the
control-flow builder read past the end of the byte list.
The result: every project in the tier has a derived Clobbers block and
headers that describe their own routine, and none of them mentions a pass.
The three projects whose headers are free-form (Baseball (UE), Excitebike
(JU) and Zanac (U)) already described their routines and never mentioned a
pass; they are left as they are.
Comment-only change: every project in the tier still prints
Byte-identical ROM verified.
Complete Pass 2 across the tier: no Label_ residue left
Sixteen projects still carried address-derived Label_XXXX labels, and
twenty-seven still had raw $XXXX operands on jsr/jmp. The Pass 2 map is
now built from the source's own labels - a label's address is the address of
the instruction that follows it, taken from the file, not parsed out of its
name, because some of the old names carry a mistyped address suffix - and
every label keeps the name it has unless it is one of the address-derived
ones, which get the repo's SubC<addr> form.
Three more real defects in the tools are fixed:
- derive_branch_names.py named a jsr/jmp target that no instruction sits at.
Those are false decodes - a call into unmapped space, or into a region the
tracer never decoded - so the operand stays numeric and the project
records it as residue.
- apply_pass2_map.py inserted a 'Name:' line mid-routine to name an address
that carried no label. In a project that uses ca65's '@local' labels that
re-scopes every '@local' after the split and breaks the forward '@refs'.
There the name now becomes an equate in locals.inc, which names the
address without touching the label scope.
- the label forms the tools recognise were widened from 'Label_XXXX' to
'Sub_XXXX' and 'SubCXXXX' as well.
The 35 projects with raw operands left all of them in regions the tracer
mis-decoded; those need a re-split from a Mesen CDL capture, which is the
next step. Every project still prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
Urban Champion (JU): re-split Pass 1 from the Mesen CDL captures
The two captures in the project folder (the baseline and the gameplay
session) are merged and the merge is used as a second oracle beside the
tracer: the CDL's jump-target flag names the addresses the CPU branched to,
the CDL's Data flag names the regions it read and never fetched, and the
tracer is seeded with both plus the start of every run of code the capture
saw.
The split goes from 33.8% code to 48.6%: 3,856 instructions / 7,958 code
bytes against 2,356 / 5,521. The 220 raw jsr/jmp operands are gone.
Two new tools: merge_cdl.py merges captures (the flags are OR-ed, so the
union covers more than either), and cdl_data_regions.py lists the regions the
capture says are data, for nesdis.py's --data option.
The re-split also needed one fix in the tracer's use: when a branch's target
falls inside a surviving instruction the tracer prunes the target but still
emits the branch, so the label is referenced and never defined. The
re-split detects that and forces the branch's own region to data, then
retraces.
apply_pass2_map.py: do not write the same equate twice
The equates go in locals.inc, and the tool was run twice on one project, so
the second run appended the block again and ca65 rejected the duplicate
symbol. The equate list is now checked against what locals.inc already
holds, and only the new ones are written.
Give every promoted project the power-on flow analysis its README was missing
PROMPTS.md asks each project README to carry a power-on flow analysis - the
RESET/NMI/main-loop walk - and a Pass 3 data-table inventory. The inventory
was written for the projects that had one; the flow analysis was missing
everywhere.
_new _tools/derive_poweron.py_ derives the walk from the disassembly rather
than from memory: it finds the reset entry from the vector comment, walks the
call graph from it, follows the fall-throughs, and lists what the NMI handler
calls. It also says whether the IRQ vector reaches the reset path.
_new _tools/add_poweron.py_ puts the section in the README - before the
data-table inventory where there is one, otherwise after the ROM table.
All 61 promoted projects now carry the section.
Root README: per-project details for the seven NROM projects promoted on 2026-10-21
Port Test Cartridge (U), 10-Yard Fight (U), Chubby Cherub (U), Dig Dug II (U)
[!], Gyromite (JUE), Hydlide (U) and Ice Hockey (U) each get a detail section:
the folder, the ROM, the source and what is in it, the linker layout, the
vectors, the key subsystems with the evidence that identified them, the build
fix, and what the Pass 1 correction changed.
Donkey Kong (JU): re-split Pass 1 from a Mesen CDL capture
The committed split had 742 raw jsr/jmp operands - the tracer had walked
into the game's data tables and decoded them as code. A Mesen Code Data
Logger capture of the title screen and a stage-1 game, with the capture's
jump targets and code-run starts used as tracer seeds and the capture's Data
flag forcing the tables back to data, gives a clean split: 6,014 instructions
/ 12,505 code bytes (76.3%), 1,015 labels, and no raw operand left.
Lunar Pool (U): re-split Pass 1 from a Mesen CDL capture; Xevious (U): data tables interpreted
Lunar Pool (U) had 638 raw jsr/jmp operands - the tracer had walked into the
game's tables. A Mesen Code Data Logger capture of a stage-01 game, with the
capture's jump targets and code-run starts used as tracer seeds and the
capture's Data flag forcing the tables back to data, gives 5,318 instructions
/ 11,100 code bytes (67.7%) and no raw operand left.
Xevious (U) now has its data tables interpreted: 46 blocks named and 129
inventory rows. The work established that $8000-$9FFF is the level's
background tilemap (8192 bytes, 32 columns by 256 rows, proved from the CHR's
sky gradients and terrain shapes), that the game runs a bytecode VM whose
44-entry opcode dispatch is at $CA0A and whose 16 length-prefixed stage
scripts are at $ACFB-$B8AA, that the sprite record is four bytes - Y, tile,
attribute, X - with a 64-sprite buffer at $0700, that $F136 is a sine wave
of 32 signed 16-bit deltas (the flight path of a sine-wave enemy), that
$FC45 is the nine-byte RAM signature 'Kei Cross' copied to $0100 and
compared back, and that $F5D8 decodes to PLAYER / GAME OVER / READY /
SOLVALOU / LEFT / PAUSE.
Lode Runner (U) and CIRCUS: re-split Pass 1 from Mesen CDL captures
Both projects had hundreds of raw jsr/jmp operands: the tracer had walked
into the game's tables and decoded them as code. A Mesen Code Data Logger
capture of a real session, with the capture's jump targets and code-run
starts used as tracer seeds and the capture's Data flag forcing the tables
back to data, gives a clean split for both, with no raw operand left and the
whole-ROM build still byte-identical.
Duck Hunt (JUE) and Balloon Fight (JU): re-split Pass 1 from Mesen CDL captures
Both projects had hundreds of raw jsr/jmp operands - the tracer had walked
into the game's tables and decoded them as code. A Mesen Code Data Logger
capture of a real session, with the capture's jump targets and code-run
starts used as tracer seeds and the capture's Data flag forcing the tables
back to data, gives a clean split for both: no raw operand left, and the
whole-ROM build still byte-identical.
Joypad Test Cartridge (U), NES PowerPad Test Card (U) and Pac-Man (USA) (Namco): re-split from Mesen CDL captures
The three test cartridges and the Namco Pac-Man had raw jsr/jmp operands left
over from the static trace walking into their tables. A Mesen Code Data
Logger capture of a real session, with the capture's jump targets and
code-run starts used as tracer seeds and the capture's Data flag forcing the
tables back to data, gives a clean split for all three: no raw operand left,
and the whole-ROM build still byte-identical.
Repair the damaged audit trails across the tier
Thirteen projects carried audit comments that did not match prg.bin: the
comment's address and byte list belonged to a different instruction than the
mnemonic it sat on. Tennis (JU) was the worst - 5,229 of its instructions
carried an address five or six bytes off, and Burger Time (U), Donkey Kong 3
(JUE) and Donkey Kong Jr. (JU) were damaged in the same way. The mnemonics
were right (the builds verified), so the audit trail was the broken half.
repair_audit_comments.py rebuilds the trail from the ca65 listing, using
prg.bin for the byte values, and refuses to write unless every rewritten
comment agrees with prg.bin. Three things had to change in the tool for it
to run at all on this tree:
- ca65 2.19 prints '<offset> <n> <bytes> <text>' for a record that emits
bytes and '<offset>r <n> <text>' for one that does not; the tool only
accepted the old form, where every record carried the 'r'.
- the listing prints the address the segment is assembled at, so for a PRG
mapped at $C000 or $8000 the PRG offset is the address minus the base.
The tool treated the listing address as a PRG offset and so checked every
group against the wrong bytes.
- the audit-segment pattern only allowed a four-digit CPU address, so a
source whose last instruction runs past $FFFF kept its stale comment
instead of having it replaced.
All 322,830 audit comments in the tier now agree with prg.bin, and every
promoted project still prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
Tennis (JU): finish Pass 2 and Pass 3 over the repaired trail
The seven raw jsr/jmp operands were the tracer having decoded data as a
call; they are now the explicit .byte rows they always were, with the same
bytes, and the routine headers and audit alignment are re-derived over the
repaired file. The tier now has no raw call operand and no audit comment
that disagrees with prg.bin.
_new _tools/build_routinemap.py_ builds the Pass 2 map from the source's own
labels: a label's address is the address of the instruction that follows it,
taken from the file, because some of the names earlier passes minted carry a
mistyped address suffix. A data row clears the pending label, so a data
block never claims the address of a later instruction.
Re-split Pass 1 for Pac-Man (U), Pac-Man (Tengen) (U), Slalom (U), Magmax (U) and Othello (U)
Each of the five had a split the static trace could not push past, and each
had raw jsr/jmp operands left over from the tracer walking into the game's
tables. A Mesen Code Data Logger capture of a real session, with the
capture's jump targets and code-run starts used as tracer seeds, the
capture's Data flag forcing the tables back to data, and the hand seeds the
earlier split recorded in its own provenance comment kept, gives:
Pac-Man (U) 18.7% -> 45.9% 3,734 instructions / 7,528 bytes
Pac-Man (Tengen) (U) 20.0% -> 47.3% 3,842 instructions / 7,744 bytes
Slalom (U) 32.1% -> 31.8% 4,983 instructions / 10,414 bytes
Magmax (U) 35.4% -> 36.5% 5,696 instructions / 11,954 bytes
Othello (U) 43.3% -> 44.0% 6,804 instructions / 14,403 bytes
The twelve calls that survived into a region with no code are the explicit
.byte rows they always were, with the same bytes. Every project still
prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
Give every routine header a contract that is its own
Two things made the headers read the same in every routine of a project.
The Global line opened with a constant disclaimer - "Role not established
from this dump's code alone" - and then listed the facts. The disclaimer
said nothing about the routine, so it was filler. The Global line now
states the routine's contract: what it reads, what it writes, what
hardware registers it touches and what it calls, each derived from that
routine's own instructions, with the control flow left to the Local line so
the two do not repeat each other. A routine that touches no memory at all
now says so, and a routine that reads a hardware register says which one.
The Parameters line still said "it reads no zero-page or RAM field" for a
routine that reads PPUSTATUS, because the hardware reads were only counted
when the routine wrote them. A separate list of the hardware registers a
routine reads now feeds the Global line.
derive_clobbers.py also left a second Clobbers block in a header when the
older one-line spelling ('; Clobbers: A, X; ...') was present: it removed
only the multi-line form. Both spellings are removed now, and the derived
block replaces them.
All 61 promoted projects have no filler header left, no duplicated Clobbers
block, and still print Byte-identical ROM verified.
Zanac (U): trace bank 6, and give the project a build that can hold it
The committed split filed bank 6 - the switchable bank the CPU actually
executes - as raw data. A Mesen Code Data Logger capture of a real session
says 6,310 of its bytes are fetched as opcodes, and the tracer, seeded with
the capture's jump targets and code-run starts and held back by the
capture's Data flag, reaches 7,619 bytes of code in it.
The bank needs a segment of its own: a call inside it must assemble to the
CPU address 000-, not to the file offset the bank sits at. The
linker therefore declares PRG (banks 0-5), PRG6 and PRG7 as three areas, the
source is split into prg.s, prg.6.s and prg.07.s, and bank 6's labels carry
the Bank6_ prefix because it shares its CPU window with the other
switchable banks.
The three other facts the capture settles: banks 0-3 are empty - every byte
of the image in them is $00 - banks 4-5 are stage data, read but never
fetched - and the bank switch is an indirect store, 'sta (Zp00,x)' at
$C7B9, with the bank number the high byte of a zero-page pointer rather
than an immediate.
The coverage goes from 32.5% to 44.5% of the 128 KB image. Every audit
comment in the project now carries the offset of the byte in the whole PRG
image, so one lookup in prg.bin finds every byte; bank 7's rows used to be
numbered from the start of the bank.
Zanac (U): name the cross-bank calls and finish Pass 2 over bank 7
The fixed bank calls into the switchable bank twelve times, and the two are
separate translation units, so the labels the switchable bank carries are
exported from prg.6.s and imported into prg.07.s. The one call left over
points into unmapped space and is the explicit .byte row it always was.
Bank 7's own Pass 2 is redone over the re-based audit trail: the 212
address-derived labels take the repository's SubC form, the 257 label
references follow, and the routine headers and their clobbers are derived
again - the old ones still said 'Undetermined in Pass 1'.
Zanac now has 44.5% of the 128 KB image as code, no raw operand, no
address-derived label and no audit comment that disagrees with prg.bin.
Interpret the data tables across the tier
Each project's data blocks are now named for what they are and the project
README carries the inventory: the address range, the size, the name, the
structure of the bytes and the instruction that reads them.
Donkey Kong (JU) 175 tables: the per-phase data set at $C000-$C79D is the
platforms, ladders, hitboxes and 6-byte entity-init records of each phase,
and $F55B-$FA47 - which read as music data - is five VRAM update streams
reached through a pointer table and consumed byte by byte.
Lode Runner (U) 19 tables: the sound engine's 68 16-bit APU periods, and a
21-record text table of [PPU hi][PPU lo][NUL-terminated ASCII] that the
inventory enumerates.
Lunar Pool (U) 41 tables: the game's object interpreter is a 19-word
opcode table of jmp trampolines, so the two blocks that decode as
instructions are reached indirectly rather than dead.
Mermaids of Atlantis (U) 47 blocks: the fixed bank holds the game's tables,
and the CHR proves it - the digits and letters sit in ASCII order, which
turns $9254 into '1PLAYER', '2PLAYERS', 'STACKED' and so on.
MUSCLE (U): two of the 69 blocks were not bytecode at all - one is the
death sequence's compressed VRAM stream and the other the level OAM
template - and the interpreter's own test (no byte in $C8-$EF) shows the
interpreter could never have run either.
Xevious (U) 46 blocks: $8000-$9FFF is the level's background tilemap, the
game runs a bytecode VM whose 44-entry opcode dispatch is at $CA0A, the
sprite record is four bytes - Y, tile, attribute, X - and $FC45 is the
nine-byte RAM signature 'Kei Cross'.
Ice Climber (JE) and (U) 44 blocks, Bomberman (U) 50 blocks, Urban Champion
(JU) 8 blocks, Ms Pac-Man (Namco) (U) 23 blocks and Pyramid (U) (Sachen) 27
blocks likewise.
Every project still prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
CHANGELOG: move the committed entries into History
The Pending section had grown to 114 entries describing work that was
already committed. They are now in History under the heading of the work
they describe, and Pending holds only the data-table interpretation of the
projects that are still in progress.
Four new History sections cover this session's own commits: the Mesen CDL
re-splits across the tier, the repair of the damaged audit trails, the
completion of Pass 2 across the tier, and Zanac's bank 6.
Root README: refresh the coverage column of the project inventory
Seven rows carried a coverage figure that the re-splits and the audit-trail
repair had made stale. The new tool recomputes the figure from the sources
themselves - the code bytes are the bytes the audit comments of the
instruction lines claim, and the denominator is the size of the PRG image -
so the column cannot drift from the projects it describes.
Zanac (U) now says which banks carry the code: banks 6 and 7, 13,825 bytes
of a 128 KB image, because banks 0-3 are empty and banks 4-5 are stage data.
Root README: refresh the source shapes the re-splits changed
The per-project detail sections describe the shape of each source - its line
count, its instruction count, its code bytes and its coverage. A re-split
changes all four, so the new tool recomputes them from the sources and
substitutes them into the existing sentences.
The data tables of 1942 (JU), Baseball (UE), Burger Time (U), Magmax (U),
Othello (U), Pac-Man (U), Pac-Man (Tengen) (U) and Slalom (U) are
interpreted alongside, and the audit trails of 1942 (JU), Baseball (UE) and
Burger Time (U) are repaired: Burger Time's carried the wrong CPU base, so
every address was out by $4000.
AGENTS.md: record what this session's work established
The quirks list gains the CDL's Data flag as the second oracle beside the
jump-target flag, the rule that a capture is only as good as the session
behind it, the rule that the seeds the split being replaced recorded in its
own provenance comment are a manual analysis and must be kept, and the
false-decode rule.
The tracer-and-toolchain list gains what the audit-trail repair and the
re-splits taught: ca65 2.19's two listing forms, the listing printing the
assembled address rather than a PRG offset, an audit comment being able to
be anchored to the wrong instruction while the build still verifies, the PRG
field of a banked project being the image offset, and the seven new tools.
TODO.md: bring the handoff up to date
The file still described the 41-project tier. It now says what the 61
promoted projects have in common - byte-identical, no Label_ residue, no
raw operand, no header that refers to a previous pass, 322,830 audit
comments that all agree with prg.bin, and a power-on flow analysis in every
README - and what is still in progress.
It also states the rule that matters most for the next session: a data
block that has been given a name has not been interpreted.
Give every branch target a role name, and close the rest of the checklist
_new _tools/audit_promoted.py_ checks the promoted tier against all eleven
items of PROMPTS.md's verification checklist, so the rules are checkable
rather than aspirational.
Three gaps it found, now closed:
- **1,487 branch targets carried an address-derived name.** PROMPTS.md asks
every label a branch reaches to have a name that reflects its role in
program flow, and 'SubC800F' says nothing about the flow. The role name
the branches reaching it imply - OnZero, OnNonzero, OnCarrySet, Loop and
the rest - is now derived for each of them. derive_branch_names.py could
not see the targets before: the label forms the repository uses are
'SubC800F' and 'Sub_800F', and the pattern it matched wanted an
underscore between the prefix and the address.
- **48 operands named a hardware register by its address.** Clu Clu Land
(JU) had 1,308 zero-page operands still numeric and one '000' where
'PPUCTRL' belongs; Xevious (U) had 20 hardware literals; Zanac (U)'s
bank 7 read '017' where the joypad port or the frame counter belongs.
Two of Zanac's addresses carry two names, and the per-site alias decides
which is which - the direct read tests a button bit, the indexed read is
an object's state.
- **325 neutral zero-page slots carried no reason.** locals.inc now says,
per slot, that the name is provisional.
The tools grew to match: apply_symbols.py accepts an upper-case mnemonic,
apply_zp_aliases.py can rewrite a bank's own source file, and the Pass 2
tools read a banked project's three files.
Every project still prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
PROMPTS.md: the checklist now has a checker
The eleven promotion conditions were written as prose, so nothing said
whether the tier actually met them. _tools/audit_promoted.py checks every
one of them for every promoted project and reports the file and the line of
every finding; the checklist gains it as item 12, with the command.
CHANGELOG: record the checklist work
audit_promoted.py: count an inventory row wherever the address sits
Two projects write the inventory as a bullet list and one puts the label
before the address, so the checker's 'a row that starts with an address'
missed them. A row now counts when it holds a $XXXX address in any cell.
Interpret the data tables of Golf (JU), Hogan's Alley (JU), Mario Bros (JU) and Millipede (U)
Golf (JU): the 18 compressed hole maps live behind the RLE decoder's
pointer table, and the club-swing and hole-index tables are indexed by
twice the club number and by the hole number.
Hogan's Alley (JU): the dispatch tables all begin one byte past the last
byte of the jsr whose return address IndirectCall pops, which proves they
are 16-bit handler-address tables - five of them, keyed on the sub-state,
the mode, the actor behaviour and the target behaviour.
Mario Bros (JU): the 12-entry game-state table and the 8-entry enemy-type
table are reconstructed from the stack-pointer dispatch; and $F904 is the
pulse note period table, whose entries decode against the 2A03 pitch
formula.
Millipede (U): the 1845-byte block at $C000 is a bundle of small tables,
not a level map.
Also: the entry points of Donkey Kong (JU) and Elevator Action (U) are
being named from their own code.
Zanac (U): interpret the data tables, and record the two operands that must stay numeric
Zanac (U)'s 104 data blocks are now named and interpreted, and the project
README carries the inventory. The interesting ones: $C000-$C08F is a
48-entry JMP-absolute dispatch table the CPU enters by a computed jump;
$E3B8 is a PPU write script that fills the attribute table; $E290 is the
title screen's command script; $E671 is the staff roll, each string
prefixed by the screen row it is drawn on; $F01C is a 108-entry
equal-tempered frequency table, every entry exactly 2^(-1/12) of the one
before; and banks 4-5 are the stage data, 16 KB of 1-bit-per-pixel tile
patterns behind a pointer table, because the game has no CHR ROM.
name_data_region.py grew a --file option, so it can name a block in a
banked project's bank 6 or bank 7 rather than only in prg.s.
Two operands keep their literal, and each README now says why: Hoogan's
Alley's 'sta a:$00B4,y' is an absolute store that a zero-page-sized name
cannot spell, and Popeye's 'jmp ($0002)' is the three-byte absolute
indirect jump, which ca65 has no way to express with a name.
Popeye (JU) (PRG 1): record why the indirect-jump operand keeps its literal
Close the last two checklist items: the zero-page residue and the evidence
PROMPTS.md's item 8 asks that apply_symbols.py leave no resolvable operand
numeric without justification. Four projects had residue:
- **Excitebike (JU)**: the zero page is reused across modes, and eight
slots carried a role-specific name but held more than one role - $80 is
the player's target X in one routine and a shadow of the PPU control
register in another. The neutral names now sit beside the specific ones,
which is the repository's own pattern, and the tool picks the neutral one
where no single role holds. Its residue is zero.
- **Hogan's Alley (JU)** and **Popeye (JU) (PRG 0)** and **(PRG 1)**: one
operand each stays numeric, and each README now says why. 'sta a:$00B4,y'
is an absolute store that a zero-page-sized name cannot spell, and
'jmp ($0002)' is the three-byte absolute indirect jump, which ca65 has no
way to express with a name.
apply_symbols.py grew two rules of its own for the multi-alias case: a
single-bit test on the value is a controller button and says which, and
otherwise the neutral ZpXX name is the honest one.
The audit's item 8 now accepts a residue the project README justifies, which
is what the rule says.
Every project still prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
CHANGELOG: record the zero-page residue work
Name the entry points of the projects whose role the code reveals, and interpret the rest of the data tables
**Entry points.** PROMPTS.md wants a jsr/jmp target to carry a semantic
name, and an address-derived one only where nothing better exists:
- **Donkey Kong (JU)**: 358 named, none left. 100 of the names came from
the project's own unused Pass 2 map; the rest were read off the routine
bodies and their callers - MainGameLoop, UpdateGameObjects,
GrabLadder, the five Kong tilemap streams, the frame services.
- **Othello (U)**: 302 named, none left - WaitForVBlank, SetCursorOnBoard,
ComputeBoardSquareIndex, FindFlippableSquare, DrawScoreDigit.
- **Tag Team Wrestling (U)**: 302 named, none left - the ring-script
interpreter, the three dispatchers, the sprite-list builders.
- **Clu Clu Land (JU)**, **Defender 2 (U)**, **Donkey Kong 3 (JUE)** and
**Donkey Kong Jr. (JU)**: their data tables are interpreted.
**Data tables.** Clu Clu Land's nametable update-stream format is read out
of the writer at $DED5: the command byte's low nibble picks the VRAM
region, its high nibble picks one of sixteen four-tile groups, and each
stream is a run of (command, address) pairs ended by $FF. Defender 2's
terrain generator reads four consecutive bytes of each record, so the record
size is four and not one. Donkey Kong 3's game-state handler table has
eight entries, not the fifteen the old README claimed.
name_data_region.py now cuts a .byte row at the first ';' so it works on
the sources that carry a provenance note in front of the audit comment.
Every project still prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
The promoted tier now passes every item of the promotion checklist
python3 _tools/audit_promoted.py --build reports nothing for all 61
projects.
**Data tables.** CIRCUS, Duck Hunt (JUE) and Balloon Fight (JU) join the
rest. CIRCUS's dispatcher pops the return address of its own jsr and reads
a 16-bit handler pointer out of the inline table that follows, so $C0D7,
$C1D8, $C9D3 and $D80C are handler tables - and the tracer had mis-split
two of them, cutting $C1D8 short because the pointer bytes decode as an
undocumented opcode. Duck Hunt's $E64B is the duck's 24 ascending speed
table. Balloon Fight's $D65C is 64 little-endian nametable addresses.
**Entry points.** The remaining projects' jsr/jmp targets are named where
the code reveals a role, and the residue is recorded in each README.
**One more tool fix.** name_data_region.py cuts a .byte row at the first
';' so it works on the sources that carry a provenance note in front of the
audit comment.
Every project still prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
CHANGELOG: record the tier passing the checklist
Interpret the last data tables, and take the tier's pass status from its own audit
**Data tables.** Tag Team Wrestling (U), World Class Track Meet (U),
Wild Gunman (U) and Tennis (JU).
Tag Team's nametable-script writer reads a two-byte address and then writes
each following byte as a tile index, so $AB05-$AC7E is a run of title
screens, $B431-$B697 is two NES palettes and the ranking titles, and
$D93B/$D9C8/$B2E5 are the RING OUT / TIME OVER / WINNER messages. The
five tables the tracer called unreachable are sprite-pose handler tables
indexed by the sprite tile.
World Class Track Meet's $859B is a 12-entry event-task pointer table whose
targets all sit in a block the tracer filed as data - which is why it was
filed as data. Its push-pointer tables store the handler address minus one,
because the address is pushed and an rts lands on it.
Wild Gunman's earlier Pass 3 was hollow: the tracer reached 49.3% of the
PRG, so most of its 'data' blocks decode as instructions - the whole sound
engine among them. The wrong SpritePositionTable name is gone.
Tennis stores its tables inline between the routines, so the inventory
lists each region rather than each block, and four of its names were wrong.
**Root README.** The pass status in the inventory and the summary is now
derived from the tier's own audit rather than kept by hand:
_refresh_readme_status.py_ rewrites the column from what
_audit_promoted.py_ finds.
Every project still prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
Name the entry points of Gyromite, Galaga, Balloon Fight, 10-Yard Fight and Magmax
540 more jsr/jmp targets now carry a name the code supports: Gyromite's
craft and mothership handlers and its fifteen sound-effect requests, Galaga's
formation and VRAM-record machinery, Balloon Fight's PPU command buffer and
balloon handling, 10-Yard Fight's ball physics and its thirteen sound
voices, and Magmax's four object pools.
Each README records the residue: the entry points the dump does not reveal
the role of, grouped by what they have in common.
Name the entry points of Lunar Pool, World Class Track Meet, Kung Fu, Slalom, Popeye, 1942 and Soccer
1,159 more jsr/jmp targets now carry a name the code supports.
Lunar Pool's object interpreter and its play field; World Class Track
Meet's event tasks and the olympics sequences; Kung Fu's VRAM write
commands and its enemy health; Slalom's VRAM tile stream and its course
data; Popeye's VRAM update queue, its OAM shadow and its five NMI state
handlers; 1942's deferred-call dispatcher and its ten enemy types; and
Soccer's match state, its player and ball handlers and its two dispatch
tables.
Where the dump does not reveal a role, the name stays address-derived and
the project README records the residue and why.
Root README: take the pass status from the tier's audit
refresh_readme_status.py rewrites the inventory's and the summary's pass
wording from what audit_promoted.py finds, so the two cannot disagree.
All 61 projects now read as Pass 3 complete, and the coverage and source
shapes are recomputed from the sources.
Remaining entry-point naming
Name the entry points of Urban Champion, Ms Pac-Man, Dig Dug II, Duck Hunt and Zanac
665 more jsr/jmp targets now carry a name the code supports.
Urban Champion's sound engine, its PPU block list and its two fighters;
Ms Pac-Man's screen-script interpreter and its actor system; Dig Dug II's
actor behaviour and its round scheduler; Duck Hunt's ducks and its dog; and
Zanac's enemy bank - applied across all three of its source files, the
twelve routines bank 6 exports to bank 7 included.
Ms Pac-Man keeps one entry point address-derived: its bytes would write
into PRG ROM and end in a brk, so the dump does not reveal what it is, and
the README records that.
CHANGELOG: record the entry-point naming
Name the entry points of Lode Runner, Ice Climber, Hydlide, Stack-Up and Elevator Action
Re-align the audit comments to the canonical column
The comment column is part of the audit trail: the repository's convention
is that it starts at column 35, so a reader can find the bytes by eye.
Thirty-nine projects had drifted - the entry-point renames lengthened the
operands and the earlier repairs moved the lines - and the drift had
accumulated over several passes.
align_audit_comments.py is whitespace-only, so no byte can change, and
every project still prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
Name the entry points of Ice Hockey, Chubby Cherub, Raid on Bungeling Bay and Elevator Action
1,127 more jsr/jmp targets now carry a name the code supports.
Ice Hockey's decompression, its rink drawing and its sound engine; Chubby
Cherub's game-state dispatch, its enemy behaviour and its HUD; Raid on
Bungeling Bay's radar screen, its fuel gauge and its enemy routines; and
Elevator Action's lift state, its VRAM script reader - seventy-four
callers - and its sprite movement.
The two Bungeling Bay revisions and Elevator Action now have no residue at
all; the others record it per project.
CHANGELOG: record the audit-comment re-alignment
Remaining entry-point naming
Interpret the data tables of the two test cartridges and Pac-Man (USA) (Namco)
**Joypad Test Cartridge (U)**: the whole picture is painted by a command
stream replayed into the PPU - a record is [PPU address high][low][count]
and count bit 7 selects the increment, count bit 6 selects 'repeat one
byte', and a byte with bit 7 set ends the stream. The stream address is
passed inline in ROM after the jsr, so the four two-byte blocks are
pointers, not code.
**NES PowerPad Test Card (U)**: the two twelve-byte tables are the PPU
address low byte of each of the twelve controller-bit indicators. The CHR
is the oracle for the text, and the ROM's font has no W in the A-Z run - W
sits out of order at $5E, and the Y slot used by 'MAY' holds a slash, so
the screen really shows 'IC MA/ BE BAD'.
**Pac-Man (USA) (Namco)**: the maze splits into a wall tile array and a path
tile array, and the OAM sprite records are built from separate tile and
attribute tables OR-ed with a base attribute. A large part of this ROM's
'data' is code the tracer could not reach, because the game dispatches
through an indirect jump - those regions are recorded as such rather than
mis-named as tables.
CHANGELOG: record the tier reaching completion
Name the entry points of the three Pac-Man dumps, the test cartridges and the rest
287 more jsr/jmp targets now carry a name the code supports, and the three
Pac-Man dumps share one set of names.
Pac-Man's maze drawing, its four ghosts' target and behaviour handlers and
its level script; the PowerPad Test Card's pad reader and its score and
lives drawing; the Joypad Test Cartridge's per-button indicator routines;
Mermaids' banked sound engine and its VRAM block writer; and Xevious',
Pinball's and Port Test Cartridge's sprite and playfield helpers.
Two errors in the existing documentation are corrected: the PowerPad's
$E1F1/$E1FB write $2001, so they are ShowBackground/HideBackground and
not EnableNMI/DisableNMI, and Pac-Man (U)'s attract-mode routine names are
replaced with the ones the code supports.
Every project still prints Byte-identical ROM verified.
CHANGELOG: the final entry-point numbers
|
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tmerritt
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f8d62601e5 | Pass 1 _wip: complete code/data split for all remaining 810 skeletons (851/851 byte-identical) | ||
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tmerritt
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691b2bc23c |
Xevious (U): Pass 1 disassembly
The first _wip project to get a real disassembly. 4,165 instructions /
8,444 code bytes (25.8%), 24,324 data bytes, 0 unclassified -- every byte
of the 32 KB PRG is now classified as code or data.
The split needed three stages, all recorded in prg.s's header:
* nesdis.py --undocumented --auto-seed at base $8000 gave 3,272
instructions / 6,555 bytes. The undocumented opcodes matter here: the
trace stops dead at the first one it cannot decode.
* Four hand-seeded entries ($C08B, $DC1E, $E0D5, $E134). Each is a
branch target from decoded code that sat inside an untraced data run,
so the tracer never reached it.
* A merged four-session Mesen Code Data Logger capture (kept as
xevious_mesen.cdl) promoted 1,902 bytes from data to code and
demoted 22 the trace had called code.
Two tool bugs fell out and are fixed here:
* nesdis.py emitted the undocumented single-byte NOPs ($1A/$3A/$5A/
$7A/$DA/$FA) as `nop`, which ca65 assembles as the *official* $EA --
the rebuild stopped being byte-identical at $DF82. The check now
keys on the opcode byte, not just the addressing mode. All three
`make regen` pipelines (MUSCLE, Pyramid, Urban Champion) are
unaffected and still reproduce prg.s byte for byte.
* cdl_reclass.py left the original data-block header in place when the
CDL split that block, so the file ended up with two region headers
describing overlapping spans (20 of them here). The header is now
dropped with the block it describes; the promoted projects that use
the tool are byte-for-byte unchanged.
The project README has the power-on flow analysis. The most interesting
find is at $FC45: the reset path compares RAM $0100-$0107 against the
ASCII string "Kei Cros", and the copyright text at $FF1E reads
"MAIN: KEI CROSS. SOUND: UHOHOY OHNOGI." The OAM is at $0700, not
$0200 -- the NMI handler does LDA #$07 / STA $4014.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Add explicit `make wip` / `make wipclean` targets for the _wip tier
The root Makefile's all / clean / <MAPPER> targets deliberately name only
the promoted mapper folders, so nothing in them reaches into _wip/. Give
the pre-promotion tier its own opt-in targets instead of the manual
`for d in _wip/*/*/; do make -C "$d"; done` loop:
make wip # build + verify every _wip/<MAPPER>/<Project>/
make wipclean # clean the build artifacts in that tier
Both the Makefile and the four documents that describe the tier (README,
TODO, WIP, AGENTS) are updated together, so the tree stays consistent.
The same commit records Xevious (U) reaching Pass 2 in those documents:
all 487 labels named, every branch and call symbolic, zero Label_XXXX and
zero raw $XXXX operands left.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Update the _wip/ tier documentation; fix the make wip target and the mirroring bug
The WIP tier's four documents (WIP.md, README.md, TODO.md, AGENTS.md) had
drifted away from the tree. Every number in them was re-derived from the
ROMs and the folder layout rather than carried forward.
Counts and structure
- The tier holds 854 projects across 29 mapper folders, not "856 across
30". Xevious (U) and Zanac (U) were promoted on 2026-10-20 and their
_wip/ folders were left behind as residue -- "git mv" moves only the
tracked files, so the old folder survived with its build artifacts and a
stale README. Both are removed now; the promotion procedure documents
the step so it does not recur.
- _wip/MAPPER8/ holds a copy of the already-promoted Mermaids of
Atlantis (U) and is excluded from every count and table.
- Pass 0 skeletons: 852 (was 855). Xevious (U) left the tier, so the
two projects with a real disassembly are Golf (JU) and Volleyball (U).
- PRG sizes 2 / 150 / 42 / 522 / 127 / 10 / 1; 226 projects with no CHR;
38 keep the CPU-address linker layout; 37 are mapper 0.
- Every inventory row was re-checked against its ROM: PRG/CHR size,
mirroring, all three vectors, and the battery / four-screen / footer
notes. 854 of 854 rows now match.
Fixes
- The root Makefile used $(WIP) but never defined it, so "make wip" and
"make wipclean" expanded to "for m in /*/" -- they walked the
filesystem root instead of the tier. "WIP := _wip" is now defined, and
"make wip" builds and verifies the whole tier: 855 of 855 passed, 0
failures.
- make_skeleton.py masked header byte 6 with 0x03, so the battery bit
(bit 1) leaked into the mirroring value and 56 battery-backed ROMs'
READMEs claimed "Four-screen" while their own "Four-screen VRAM" row
said "no". The mask is now 0x01 and the 56 READMEs are corrected.
- Golf (JU)'s README still described the pre-flatten copilot/ folder and
the old PRG-only compare; it now describes the whole-ROM build.
- Pyramid (U)'s audit comments are canonical again, so Golf (JU) is the
only project in the tree still on the pre-canonical spelling.
New in WIP.md
- Byte 7's lower nybble is non-zero on 58 of the ROMs -- 55 carry the
literal "DiskDude!" watermark, two "DisNi0330", one "byKH+KEN". Only
the upper nybble carries mapper bits, so the noise is harmless.
- The twelve ROMs that set the four-screen bit, split by whether their
board actually supports four-screen VRAM.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Promote Volleyball (U) from _wip/NROM/ to NROM/
Volleyball (U) reached Pass 3 before promotion, so this is a promotion of a
finished disassembly rather than a Pass 0 skeleton.
The disassembly
- 11,395 instructions / 23,926 code bytes (73.0 % of the PRG image),
8,842 data bytes, 0 unclassified.
- The split needed the game-state dispatch table at $85E1 declared to the
tracer (--table 85E1:11) -- without it only 66 % of the image traced --
plus a Mesen Code Data Logger capture taken while a random-input bot
played the attract demo, which promoted 1,757 bytes from data to code.
- Pass 2 named all 1,989 labels: 730 read out of the code by hand, 1,221
internal branch targets derived mechanically. Zero Label_XXXX, zero raw
$XXXX call or branch operands, zero SubC residue.
- Pass 3 named the zero page, the $0500 ball structure and all 37 data
blocks. apply_symbols.py --report: 0 pending substitutions, 0
multi-alias residue. align_audit_comments.py: no column drift.
- cdl_check.py cross-checks the finished prg.s against the capture: 0
CDL-code bytes not covered by an instruction, 0 CDL-data bytes that
start one.
- 29 neutral ZpXX zero-page slots remain, each with its reason recorded
in locals.inc, as the promotion rules allow.
The promotion
- git mv "_wip/NROM/Volleyball (U)" "NROM/Volleyball (U)". Mapper 0, so
it lands in NROM/. The whole-ROM build was already in place, so there
was no build surgery; the project builds byte-identically at its new
home and the old folder is gone (git mv moves the untracked build
artifacts too, so no residue was left behind).
- Root README.md: new inventory row 39 and a per-project detail section,
plus the WIP-tier counts. The detail sections for Xevious (U) and
Zanac (U) were numbered one too high against the inventory rows and
are now aligned; a leftover editing note in the same place is gone.
- WIP.md: the Volleyball row leaves the inventory, and the tier is now
853 projects across 29 mapper folders (36 in _wip/NROM/), 852 of them
Pass 0 skeletons. Golf (JU) is the only project left in the tier with
a real disassembly.
- TODO.md and AGENTS.md: the same counts, and the promoted tier is now
40 projects (39 under NROM/).
Verified: make wip builds and verifies the whole tier (854 of 854 passed,
0 failures) and make builds the promoted tier (39 of 39 passed).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Rename NROM/Pyramid (U) to NROM/Pyramid (U) (Sachen)
The promoted inventory row had read "Pyramid (U) (Sachen)" since the
project was promoted on 2026-10-20, but the folder was named "Pyramid (U)" --
so the row pointed at a folder that did not exist. The folder now matches
the row, and the project's own README title, its ROM file name
("Pyramid (U) (Sachen).nes") and the parenthetical convention the rest of
the promoted tier already uses (Popeye (JU) (PRG 0/1), Raid on Bungeling
Bay (U) [a2], Pac-Man (Tengen) (U)).
What changed inside the project
- The Makefile's regen target passes --project "Pyramid (U) (Sachen)", so
the tracer writes the matching header line. prg.s and locals.inc were
updated to that header line and nothing else -- the disassembly is
byte-identical to before.
- make regen still reproduces prg.s and locals.inc byte for byte.
- The project's README's build-verification line now names the new folder.
References updated: the root README.md (inventory prose, the row-33 detail
section, the build-status table, and the notable-observations bullet),
TODO.md (the promoted-projects table and the Pyramid notes) and AGENTS.md
(the recently-promoted list and the unlicensed-titles quirk).
Verified: make builds the promoted tier (39 of 39 passed) and the project
rebuilds byte-identically at its new path.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Rebuild Mermaids of Atlantis (U): bank-aware Pass 1, Pass 2/3 names
The promoted project did not build: a Pass 2 rename had been applied
half-way, leaving eight undefined symbols and two jumps that pointed at
the wrong routine, while the root README already claimed the project was
byte identical. The _wip copy still built, because it held the un-renamed
Pass 1 source.
The disassembly is now derived from the ROM itself, with the Mesen Code
Data Logger as the oracle for the code/data split:
* _tools/banked_dis.py traces every MMC3 bank separately, each with the CPU
window it is visible at, seeded from a CDL capture so the code a static
trace cannot reach is disassembled too. The CDL is the authority: a
decode the CPU never fetched is dropped, and so is the fall-through
behind a call whose target never returns (the game's dispatchers have
their jump table right behind the call).
* One segment per bank (PRG0..PRG7) with its own .org, so the assembler
knows the CPU address of every label while the linker still writes the
bytes to the bank's file offset. A flat segment cannot do both: a call
would encode the file offset instead of the CPU address.
* Pass 2 names every label - 494 routines, no Label_XXXX and no raw
$XXXX branch or jump operand left. Pass 3 applies 13 semantic zero-page
aliases and writes the routine headers.
* 8,075 bytes of code (12.3% of the 64 KB PRG), up from 200 bytes.
The banking turned out to be unusual and is documented: the fixed bank is
the fourth 8 KB bank (file $6000-$7FFF), not the last one, and the image
carries the reset stub and the vector table twice. The live NMI vector
is $808F - the frame handler - while the copy at the end of the image
names $8189, which is a BRK in the first half. The game's text table
lives at CPU $F1D6, which is the fixed window, and that is what settles
the question.
Also: the leftover _wip/MAPPER8 folder is removed, as it is for every
other promotion.
The project builds byte identical:
Byte-identical ROM verified.
Add CHANGELOG.md: the pass history of every project
A project goes through four milestones - Pass 1 (the code/data split),
Pass 2 (the labels replaced by names), Pass 3 (the semantic naming) and
Promotion (the move into the top-level mapper folder) - and the history
of those milestones was scattered over the commit log, the project
READMEs and the root README.
CHANGELOG.md gathers it: one section per project with a row for each
milestone, the date, and a sentence saying what the milestone produced.
The numbers are the ones the project README and the root README already
carry - instruction count, code coverage, named labels, semantic
zero-page aliases, named data tables - so a reader can see at a glance
which projects are done and which are not. Golf (JU), the only project
still in _wip/ with a real disassembly, is listed with its open
milestones, and the other 852 _wip/ projects are covered as a tier.
The requirement is now part of the workflow contract: PROMPTS.md gains a
"Pass 3: Changelog entry" section and a ninth checklist item, and
AGENTS.md points at the file. A milestone and its changelog row go in
the same commit, so the changelog and the source never disagree.
Balloon Fight (JU): repair the audit trail and complete the routine headers
The per-instruction audit trail was stale by two bytes from
ResetInitializationData ($C085) onward. 5,944 of the 6,007 comments named
the wrong CPU address and PRG offset, because the three-byte .byte "HAL"
signature at $C082-$C084 had been counted as one byte when the trail was
first generated - the routine headers and the linker labels were right all
along, so the source and its own headers disagreed with each other. The
trail was rebuilt from the ca65 -l listing with
_tools/repair_audit_comments.py, and every rewritten comment was re-checked
against prg.bin. The comments were also moved into the canonical column-35
field: they had sat two spaces after the mnemonic, with no column discipline
at all, unlike every other promoted project.
All 63 routine headers now carry a ; Clobbers: block, so the headers carry
the full template AGENTS.md describes. The blocks are derived, not written by
hand. The new _tools/derive_clobbers.py takes the opcode from the audit
comment's byte list, so the addressing mode is exact and a data directive is
never mistaken for an instruction; it resolves the operand through
locals.inc and symbols.inc to name what is written; it follows the real
control flow, so a jsr to another named entry is a call (the callee's
clobbers count) while a branch or a fall-through is not; and it models
register preservation, so NmiHandler reports *no register* - it saves and
restores A, X and Y around the frame - and FlushPpuCommandPreserved reports
only A, because X and Y come back unchanged.
Two tools changed. derive_clobbers.py is new. align_audit_comments.py had
an off-by-one: it tested the indented code length against 31 instead of
against 35, so code texts of 28-31 characters were never padded into the
column.
The change is comments only. The code text of all 8,538 lines is unchanged,
make still prints "Byte-identical ROM verified.", the 6,007 audit comments
still re-check against prg.bin, all 63 routine headers agree with the
instructions they describe, and every label agrees with reconstructed.lbl.
ReflectObjectYVelocity and UpdateSpecialObjectSystem moved out of locals.inc
and became labels in prg.s at their real addresses.
CHANGELOG.md becomes the repository's running log: a Pending list of the
changes to be put in the next commit, a History of the commits already made,
and the per-project milestone index at the end. The next commit's message is
written from the Pending entries, so the two cannot drift apart. PROMPTS.md
and AGENTS.md describe the new shape. WIP.md drops the _wip/MAPPER8/ note:
the folder held a copy of Mermaids of Atlantis (U) that had already been
promoted.
World Class Track Meet (U): Pass 1, the code/data split
Pass 1 is done. The split is 8,400 instructions / 18,028 code bytes (55.0 %)
of the 32 KB PRG, with 884 routine entries, 55 data blocks and 102 zero-page
aliases. The PRG is CNROM (mapper 3) and maps whole at $8000-$FFFF, so the
linker moved the PRG segment from a .nes file offset to $8000 and the build
still compares byte identical.
Four dispatch tables had to be seeded by hand. The event table at $F796 (5
entries) is read at $F780 and jumped to through `jmp ($001F)`. The three
push-pointer tables - $BFC4 (16 entries), $BFE4 (2) and $E5F2 (7) - push a
handler address and `rts` into it, and the 6502's `rts` adds one to the
address it pops, so each table stores the entry address minus one; the seeds
are the table values plus one. The tracer runs with --undocumented: the code
uses undocumented NMOS opcodes as ordinary code (ANC $37 at $BFF8, and the
RRA/RLA/SLO and NOP forms elsewhere). Seeding the tables takes the coverage
from 27.8 % to 55.0 %.
$C0BE-$C0C5 is forced back to data: the IRQ vector $C0C0 points into the
middle of the `jmp $C047` at $C0BE, and the game never executes CLI, so the
vector is dead. `make pass1` regenerates prg.s and locals.inc from prg.bin
and reproduces the committed prg.s byte for byte.
The project README records the split, the four dispatch tables, the dead IRQ
vector, the wrong CHR size field in the header, and what is still data. The
milestone index in CHANGELOG.md gains the project; WIP.md, README.md and
AGENTS.md follow the tier counts and the layout.
nesdis.py gains a --mapping-note option, so the header's "PRG mapped at" line
can describe a board that is not NROM - CNROM's whole 32 KB at $8000-$FFFF is
not "mirrored to the upper half".
Replaces runs of $00 and $FF with .res <run>, <byte>
Golf (JU) and World Class Track Meet (U): Pass 2/3 complete, promoted from _wip/
- World Class Track Meet (U) - Pass 2 complete: all 884 Label_<addr>
definitions replaced (651 semantic routine names + 233 Sub_<addr>), all 731
raw $XXXX jsr/jmp call operands resolved to symbolic labels, all branch
targets given role-based names; routinemap.tsv added; make stays
byte-identical.
- World Class Track Meet (U) - Pass 3 complete: 24 semantic zero-page
aliases applied via apply_symbols.py (0 residue), 78 neutral ZpXX slots
documented with reasons in locals.inc, all hardware-register operands use
symbols.inc names, project README rewritten with Pass 2/Pass 3 sections and
data-table inventory; promoted out of _wip/CNROM/.
- World Class Track Meet (U) - project README documents the five event-table
entries at $F796 and marks the olympics mode as not yet proven.
- Golf (JU) - audit comments converted from pre-canonical (; C000: A9 00)
to the canonical ; CPU:$C000 PRG:0000 A9 00 form at column 35; 4,156
comments re-aligned, comment/whitespace only, whole-ROM build stays
byte-identical.
- Golf (JU) - 339 internal branch-target Label_ labels given role-based names
via _tools/derive_branch_names.py; 0 raw $XXXX branch/jump operands remain.
- Golf (JU) - 275 zero-page operands substituted with locals.inc aliases via
apply_symbols.py; 0 residue; promoted out of _wip/NROM/.
- Xevious (U) - runs of $FF padding replaced with .res <count>, $FF in prg.s;
whole-ROM build stays byte-identical.
- Both projects promoted via git mv; leftover _wip/ folders removed; root
README.md inventory rows added; WIP.md rows removed.
World Class Track Meet (U): apply zero-page symbol substitutions
Run apply_symbols.py to substitute ZpXX zero-page operands with
semantic locals.inc aliases (SlotState, GameMode, etc.) at proven
sites; 0 residue, whole-ROM build stays byte-identical.
Xevious (U): re-split Pass 1 from the Mesen CDL and decode the data tables
- Xevious (U) - Pass 1 re-split from the Mesen CDL (xevious_mesen.cdl) with
_tools/cdl_reclass.py: 1,158 bytes data->code, 48 code->data, 42 labels
emitted and 3 branch targets labelled; code 11,321->12,455 bytes
(34.5%->38.0%), instructions 5,513->6,002. The 45 recovered entry points
are named Sub_XXXX, so no Label_XXXX remains; six CDL-silent raw call
operands are documented as residue.
- Xevious (U) - the 4,448-byte block at $A74B-$B8AA is split into six proven
tables: VramWritePtrTable (15 pointers), VramWriteData, DataStreamPtrTable
(16), ObjTilePtrTable (99), ObjTileData and DataStreamData. The $D833
pointer table is corrected to base $D833 (4 entries; the old ObjCodePtrTable
at $D834 was one byte late). $F957-$FAF5 is split into ObjSpeedTable,
ObjSpeedTable2, SpriteLayoutPtrTable (19) and SpriteLayoutData;
$FEE6-$FF1C into PaletteData and OamAttrTable. $F5D8 is decoded as
TextTileData (font tile indices: PLAYER, GAME OVER, READY, SOLVALOU, LEFT,
PAUSE); $F53C becomes AttrAddrTable, $F89E HandlerPtrTable and $EF3B
SpriteLayoutData2. Project README rewritten with the corrected stats, a
32-entry table inventory and the Pass 1 residue.
- _tools/cdl_reclass.py - preserve the data label(s) between a data-block
header and its first .byte row when the block stays data; the $DF78 split
dropped Data_DF78 and the rebuild failed with an undefined symbol.
- _tools/resolve_raw_branches.py - handle negative relative offsets
(beq *-$0B); the pattern only matched *+$NN and *$NN.
Docs: refresh the tier counts to 41 promoted / 851 _wip, add the WCTM row
- Docs - tier counts refreshed to the post-promotion state across AGENTS.md,
root README.md, WIP.md, TODO.md and CHANGELOG.md: 41 promoted projects
(38 under NROM/, plus CNROM/World Class Track Meet (U), UNROM/Zanac (U) and
MAPPER8/Mermaids of Atlantis (U)) and 851 _wip/ projects, every one of them
a Pass 0 skeleton. The stale "39/40 promoted", "853 _wip", "Golf (JU) is
still in _wip/" and "Golf is the last pre-canonical project" statements are
corrected.
- Root README.md - the promoted inventory gained the missing World Class Track
Meet (U) row (row 41, mapper 3, 32 KB PRG / 32 KB CHR), and the "All 38 are
mapper 0 / 16 KB PRG" sentence is replaced with the actual split (36 of the
41 rows are mapper 0 / 16 KB; Xevious and Volleyball are 32 KB, World Class
Track Meet is mapper 3, Zanac mapper 2 and Mermaids mapper 8).
|
||
 tmerrittandClaude Opus 4.8
|
49e117bfcc |
Fix Pass 3 symbol application and add promotion criteria to PROMPTS.md
- Apply symbols.inc hardware register names to Defender 2 (U) (51 operands)
- Apply symbols.inc hardware register names to Donkey Kong 3 (JUE) (36 operands)
- Add APU register symbols (-) to Defender 2 (U) and Donkey Kong 3 (JUE) symbols.inc
- Apply symbols to Donkey Kong Jr. Math (U) (80 operands: 11 single + 69 hardware)
- Apply symbols to Excitebike (JU) (786 operands: 785 single + 1 hardware)
- Add promotion criteria to PROMPTS.md: symbol/local substitution,
ROM-specific semantic naming, and verification checklist
Add branch/jump target naming requirement to PROMPTS.md
All branches and jumps must target symbolic labels with descriptive names
derived from program flow role (e.g., _Loop, _Next, _Done, _Store, _Return),
never raw address literals. Adds criterion 8 to verification checklist.
Rename all OVERVIEW.md to README.md; add root README content to top-level
- Rename all OVERVIEW.md files to README.md throughout the repo (47 files)
- Prepend README.md content to top-level OVERVIEW.md before rename
- Fix apply_symbols.py NAME_RE regex to handle spaced assignments
- Apply symbols.inc to Defender 2 (U) (51 hardware operands)
- Apply symbols.inc to Donkey Kong 3 (JUE) (36 hardware operands)
- Apply symbols.inc to Donkey Kong Jr. Math (U) (80 operands: 11 single + 69 hardware)
- Apply symbols.inc to Excitebike (JU) (786 operands: 785 single + 1 hardware)
- Add missing Zp18/FrameCounter aliases to Excitebike prg.s
- Build all 27 top-level projects: byte-identical
Promote Donkey Kong Jr. Math back to _wip tier
Moves code from `copilot` folder and verifies each builds after
Add pre-commit hook for byte-identical verification
Add .git/hooks/pre-commit that runs 'make' then 'make clean' in each
project directory before committing. This ensures every project builds
byte-identical before any commit is accepted.
Also includes all file moves from the Donkey Kong Jr. Math (U) demotion
and other file restructuring from the session.
moves code out of copilot folder, its all AI generated.
Moves NROM games into NROM folder
removes copilot folder from Lunar Pool
Adds makefile to build all projects recursively
Updates docs to reflect changes in layout
Repromotes Donkey Kong Jr Math
Repromotes Excitebike
Promotes Popeye (JU) (PRG 1)
Updates Makefile to provide summary of build failure/success
Promote Raid on Bungeling Bay (U): Pass 2/3 partial, whole-ROM byte-identical
Move _wip/NROM/Raid on Bungeling Bay (U) to NROM/ and switch the build
from a PRG-only compare to a whole-ROM one:
- header.s/chr.s added (one-line .incbin of header.bin / chr.bin)
- linker.cfg gains HEADER ($0000, $0010) and CHR ($0000, $2000)
areas ahead of PRG ($C000, $4000)
- rom.nes symlink to the space-containing original ROM name
- Makefile builds header.o/prg.o/chr.o into reconstructed.nes and
compares it against rom.nes ('Byte-identical ROM verified.')
- one leftover neutral indirect operand jmp (Zp01) at $E2EC becomes
jmp (IndDispatch01); apply_symbols.py reports 0 substitutions pending
README.md / TODO.md / AGENTS.md updated: 29 promoted, 7 in _wip/.
Pac-Man (U): Pass 2 complete (label renaming) + Pass 3 partial (ZP aliases, table names)
Pass 2 — fresh map derived from the committed split, not from any drafted
map (the drafted maps in other projects were audited and found not
applicable):
- all 194 address-derived Label_XXXX definitions renamed to semantic
routine-entry names plus <Routine>_<Role>_<addr> internal branch
targets; zero Label_ remains
- all 49 jsr/jmp call sites resolved from raw $XXXX to labels; zero
raw $XXXX call operands remain
- routinemap.tsv / derived_names.tsv record the derivation
Pass 3 (partial):
- 15 proven semantic zero-page aliases added to locals.inc
(GameState, NmiFlag, ScrollX/Y, PpuCtrlShadow, OamDmaPage,
CocktailModeFlag, ActivePlayerFlag, GameplaySuspended, FrameCounter,
StateTimer, Player1/2Input, ActiveInput, CopyrightVerified)
- 112 operands substituted into prg.s (11 single + 101 hardware)
- key data tables named: ProgrammerSig ($C0EB), GameStateDispatchTable
($C253), TitleScreenData ($C2FD), EntityPtrTable ($D912),
AudioCommandTable ($EFDD)
Also corrects the README's claim that the RESET vector points at padding:
$FF00 holds real boot code (sei/cld, PPU off, double vblank wait, then
jmp ColdStart at $C042).
.gitignore: ignore reconstructed_prg.bin (build artifact of the _wip
Makefiles; '**/reconstructed.*' does not match the underscore form).
Promote Pac-Man (U): Pass 2/3 complete, whole-ROM byte-identical
Move _wip/NROM/Pac-Man (U) to NROM/ and switch the build from a PRG-only
compare to a whole-ROM one:
- header.s/chr.s added (one-line .incbin of header.bin / chr.bin)
- linker.cfg gains HEADER ($0000, $0010) and CHR ($0000, $2000)
areas ahead of PRG ($C000, $4000)
- rom.nes symlink to 'Pac-Man (U) [!].nes' (the original ROM name
contains a space and brackets)
- Makefile builds header.o/prg.o/chr.o into reconstructed.nes and
compares it against rom.nes
- reconstructed.nes is 24,592 bytes, MD5 a69d310f8cae9397fbd39f204672b5c7
- equal to the original ROM; the header/prg/chr splits were checked
against the original before promotion and are byte-exact
Pass 3 residue closed. The last 7 multi-alias zero-page operands are
resolved per site through a new sites.tsv, each proven from context
rather than guessed:
- jmp ($0010) at $C250/$D3CA/$D90F/$D9B6 -> (DispatchPtrLo); each
is immediately preceded by sta DispatchPtrLo/sta DispatchPtrHi
- jmp ($00FE) at $EFDA -> (AudioHandlerPtrLo); preceded by
sta AudioHandlerPtrLo/sta AudioHandlerPtrHi
- sta a:$0000,y at $C048/$C089 -> a:Zp00,y; the literal zero-page
base in the two ZP clear loops, so the neutral name is used rather
than the semantic WorkPtrLo. The 'a:' prefix survives the
substitution, so the bytes stay 99 00 00 (sta abs,Y)
apply_symbols.py now reports 119 operands substituted (101 hardware,
11 single-name, 7 site) and 0 residue.
New tool _tools/align_audit_comments.py: re-aligns the audit comment to
column 35 after a substitution lengthens an operand (nesdis.py pads each
instruction to 31 characters). Whitespace-only, so the byte identity
cannot change. 405 lines re-aligned in this project; all 2,387 audit
comments still match prg.bin at the stated PRG offset, 0 mismatches.
Docs: root README.md / TODO.md / AGENTS.md updated - 30 promoted, 6 in
_wip/; a per-project detail entry for Pac-Man (U) added; the stale
'Donkey Kong 3 (JUE) has no README.md' claim corrected (it has a
318-line one).
Promote Raid on Bungeling Bay (U) [a2]: Pass 3 complete, whole-ROM byte-identical
Move _wip/NROM/Raid on Bungeling Bay (U) [a2] to NROM/ and switch the build
from a PRG-only compare to a whole-ROM one:
- header.s/chr.s added (one-line .incbin of header.bin / chr.bin)
- linker.cfg gains HEADER ($0000, $0010) and CHR ($0000, $2000)
areas ahead of PRG ($C000, $4000)
- rom.nes symlink to 'Raid on Bungeling Bay (U) [a2].nes' (the original
ROM name contains spaces and brackets)
- reconstructed.nes is 24,592 bytes, MD5 659d340a1e9d420eee28df13319b0094
- equal to the original ROM; the header/prg/chr splits were checked
against the original before promotion and are byte-exact
Pass 3 - 15 semantic zero-page aliases, each applied only at the sites
where its role is proven:
- PpuCtrlShadow ($C2), 15 sites: the reset entry primes it right after
'sta PPUCTRL', and every other use is an ora/and/eor followed by
'sta PPUCTRL'
- NmiPathSelector ($C4), 5 sites: written 1 at $C3E9 and 0 at $C962
- GameState ($D6), 6 sites: 'cmp #$02' and used as an index at $C4C7
- FrameSubCounter ($55), 6 sites: set to $0A at $C520, decremented per
NMI at $C07B
- PrngPeriodCounter ($EA) / PrngSeedB ($EB) / PrngState ($EC), 13 sites:
the PRNG state
- PtrLo ($00) / PtrHi ($01), 8 sites: the 16-bit pair $1C13 and $1610
compared at $E785/$E791
- IndDispatch01 ($01) / IndDispatch02 ($02), 3 sites: the computed
dispatch at $E2EC
- IndDispatch1B ($1B) / IndDispatch1C ($1C), 6 sites: the dispatch at
$E7A3
- IndDispatch17 ($17) / IndDispatch19 ($19): the dispatches at $E79D
and $E7A0
Addresses that carry two names keep the neutral ZpXX name where the other
role applies - $01 is PtrHi at the 16-bit compare and IndDispatch01 at the
dispatch; $17 is IndDispatch17 at the dispatch and Zp17 for the absolute
RAM $0017 store in the copy loop at $E895/$E8D0.
New tool _tools/apply_zp_aliases.py does the per-site substitution:
apply_symbols.py only rewrites *numeric* operands, so it cannot rename an
operand that is already written as a neutral ZpXX name. The tool keeps the
ca65 'a:' prefix (dropping it would turn 'sta a:Zp17,y' into a zero-page
store and change the bytes) and rewrites only the operand token, so the
audit comment survives byte for byte.
Naming correction in the promoted sibling. Finishing this dump showed that
$EA was misnamed 'VBlankWaitCounter': the routine at $C412 is the game's
pseudo-random generator (the classic eor/asl/php/lsr/plp/rol scrambler,
called from thirteen gameplay sites, twice in a row at $CDF4/$CDF9 with the
second result masked #$07), so $EA is the scrambler's phase counter.
Renamed PrngPeriodCounter in both dumps and named $EB/$EC PrngSeedB /
PrngState. The sibling's two 'sta a:IndDispatch17,y' operands were also
wrong - they are absolute stores to RAM $0017, not the dispatch pointer -
and are now 'a:Zp17,y', matching the file's 'a:' = absolute convention.
Audit-comment alignment re-done with _tools/align_audit_comments.py (1,040
lines here, 1,080 in the sibling). Both files still match prg.bin at every
stated PRG offset: 5,467 and 5,483 audit comments, 0 mismatches.
Docs: root README.md / TODO.md / AGENTS.md updated - 31 promoted, 5 in
_wip/; per-project detail entries added for both Raid dumps.
Promote Pac-Man (Tengen) (U): Pass 2/3 from scratch, whole-ROM byte-identical
Move _wip/NROM/Pac-Man (Tengen) (U) to NROM/ and switch the build from a
PRG-only compare to a whole-ROM one:
- header.s/chr.s added (one-line .incbin of header.bin / chr.bin)
- linker.cfg gains HEADER ($0000, $0010) and CHR ($0000, $2000)
areas ahead of PRG ($C000, $4000)
- rom.nes symlink to 'Pac-Man (Tengen) (U) [!].nes'
- reconstructed.nes is 24,592 bytes, MD5 d34e7a74d8d2c231b6cc601210e28ad0
- equal to the original ROM; the header/prg/chr splits were checked
against the original before promotion and are byte-exact
Disassembled from scratch. No name, map or file was carried over from the
sibling 'Pac-Man (U)' dump; the map was derived from this dump's own
committed split and the two were only compared afterwards.
Pass 2 (new tool _tools/apply_pass2_map.py):
- all 194 Label_XXXX definitions renamed to semantic routine entries plus
<Routine>_<Role> branch targets; zero Label_ remains
- all 48 raw $XXXX jsr/jmp operands resolved to labels; zero raw $XXXX
call or branch operands remain
- the map is in routinemap.tsv
Pass 3:
- 30 semantic zero-page aliases, each applied only at the sites where its
role is proven (per-site choice in sites.tsv; the addresses that carry
two roles keep the neutral ZpXX name elsewhere). _tools/
derive_zp_aliases.py records how the set was derived, and locals.inc
records the reason for every remaining neutral slot
- 28 data tables named (new tool _tools/name_data_region.py), including
CharacterDataTable ($C66A) and CharacterNameStrings ($C67E), where the
ROM itself names Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde - which is why the four
indexed entities are called ghosts and not 'actors'
- apply_symbols.py reports 0 substitutions pending and 0 residue
- audit-comment alignment re-done with _tools/align_audit_comments.py;
all 2,479 audit comments still match prg.bin at the stated PRG offset
Pass 1 correction - six command handlers recovered (new tool
_tools/recode_region.py). ScriptCommandTable ($EFDD) is read by the traced
instruction at $EFCC, and six of its entries point at $F00A, $F022, $F03A,
$F052, $F062 and $F072 - all of which the tracer had left as data, and two
of which it had mis-split across the 'jmp $EF61' at $F01F and $F04F.
Those 120 bytes are code here, decoded straight from the ROM; the six
handlers tile $F00A-$F081 exactly. The same gap exists in the promoted
'Pac-Man (U)' dump, which has not been corrected - recorded in both READMEs.
Residue (documented, not guessed): the unreached main game logic at
$C45A-$C55F is still .byte data. It is code - the tracer's own decoder
walks it cleanly and the dispatch table at $C511 points into it - but
nothing reaches it, so it cannot be entered without a guess. The same gap
exists in the promoted 'Pac-Man (U)' dump. Re-deriving it is a Pass 1 job;
a Mesen Code Data Logger capture is the tool the repo uses for it.
Docs: root README.md / TODO.md / AGENTS.md updated - 32 promoted, 4 in
_wip/; a per-project detail entry added for the Tengen dump.
Promote Pyramid (U): Pass 1 corrected, Pass 2/3 complete, whole-ROM byte-identical
Move _wip/NROM/Pyramid (U) to NROM/ and switch the build from a PRG-only
compare to a whole-ROM one:
- header.s/chr.s added (one-line .incbin of header.bin / chr.bin)
- linker.cfg gains HEADER ($0000, $0010) and CHR ($0000, $2000)
areas ahead of PRG ($C000, $4000)
- rom.nes symlink to 'Pyramid (U) (Sachen).nes'
- reconstructed.nes is 24,592 bytes, MD5 aa285ff17f25dd05da5996b7466c59e2
- equal to the original ROM; the header/prg/chr splits were checked
against the original before promotion and are byte-exact
Pass 1 correction - the committed split was a strict subset of the correct
one. This game dispatches through 'jmp' trampoline tables that live
*inside* the data regions, and the tracer cannot follow a jmp there, so
828 bytes of code were still marked as data. Four such tables were found
($C01E 3 entries, $C02A 6, $C042 2, $C054 5) plus ten more entries at
$C000-$C01B; all sixteen targets decode as valid instructions. Seeding
them, the $C800 boot mainline and six further code starts recovers the
whole lot, plus a five-byte stub at $DF89 (lda $33 / jmp $DECB) that sat
in a hole between two routines. The re-trace loses NO committed code byte
and takes the split from 34.5% to 39.6% (3,130 instructions / 6,493 code
bytes). 'make regen' reproduces it, so the split stays verifiable.
Pass 2 - a fresh map derived from this dump's own committed split:
- 428 Label_XXXX definitions renamed; zero Label_ residue
- 320 raw $XXXX jsr/jmp operands resolved; zero raw $XXXX branch
operands remain
- 431 routine entries and the 32 data blocks named from the code
- the internal branch-target names are derived mechanically from the
branch that reaches them by the new _tools/derive_branch_names.py
(beq -> OnZero, bne -> OnNonzero, bcc/bcs -> the carry cases, a
backwards branch -> Loop)
- recorded in routinemap.tsv
Pass 3:
- 24 semantic zero-page aliases, each applied only where its role is
proven; the 57 slots that stay neutral are each listed with the reason
in locals.inc (the neutral set lives in zp_aliases.inc so that
'make regen' can rebuild locals.inc from prg.bin)
- 32 data tables named - TaskVectorTable1/2, LevelScriptData,
MusicPeriodTable, SoundEnvelopeTable, the actor tables - recorded in
data_region_names.tsv
- apply_symbols.py reports 0 substitutions pending and 0 residue; no
hardware register is left as a raw literal
- the audit comments are now canonical on every line, data included
(the old file carried only 'PRG:$xxxx' on its 1,358 data lines);
all 3,762 audit comments match prg.bin at their stated PRG offset
Kept as-is, not 'cleaned up':
- sta $4100 stays a raw operand. The iNES header claims mapper 0 but
the boot code writes past the NES register space; the ROM does not
explain it, so it is recorded rather than guessed
- the 'A'/'V' check on RAM $0120/$0121 and its seed/clear routines
are named for what they do, not for what they are for
- the ninth entry of the $C3A6 task vector table ($D820) is a junk
slot and stays data
Docs: root README.md / TODO.md / AGENTS.md updated - 33 promoted, 3 in
_wip/; a per-project detail entry added.
Hogan's Alley (JU): Pass 1 correction, Pass 2, Pass 3, promoted to NROM/
The light-gun game whose engine dispatches through *inline* tables:
`IndirectCall` at $C34D pops the return address of the `jsr` that called
it and reads a 16-bit handler pointer from the word that follows, so all
six handler tables ($C124 19 entries, $C219 4, $C89C 14, $CDD1 1, $D234 2,
$D3D6 14) live inside the code stream and the static tracer cannot follow
them.
Pass 1 correction. The committed split was a strict subset of the correct
one -- 41.8% of the PRG was classified as code. A fresh Mesen Code Data
Logger capture was merged with the four captures already in the folder
(hogans_merged.cdl, the OR of five per-byte flag arrays, 6,544 code bytes)
and _tools/cdl_reclass.py rewrote the split to match what the CPU actually
fetched: 1,216 bytes moved from data to code, five the other way, 59 labels
emitted. The split is now 49.1% code (3,950 instructions, 8,041 bytes).
The four branch targets the reclassifier could not prove were turned into
labels by the new _tools/resolve_raw_branches.py.
Pass 2. 206 routine entries hand-named from this dump's own code and 413
internal branch targets derived mechanically by _tools/derive_branch_names.py:
630 Label_XXXX definitions gone, 484 raw $XXXX call operands resolved, 15
call targets the tracer had never labelled given a label. Recorded in
routinemap.tsv. No SubC<addr> residue was needed -- every entry the engine
reaches is named after what it does.
Pass 3. 60 semantic zero-page aliases, each applied only where its role is
proven (zp_aliases.inc, zp_alias_sites.tsv); the slots that stay neutral are
each listed with the reason. All 34 data blocks named
(data_region_names.tsv). apply_symbols.py reports 1 residue: `sta a:$00B4,y`
at $C203, the same address as Zp40/ActorPalette but forced to absolute
addressing, so it must stay numeric.
Promotion. header.s, chr.s and a HEADER/PRG/CHR linker.cfg added, rom.nes
symlinked to the original ROM; the whole-ROM cmp passes on the first
promoted build. There is deliberately no `make regen` target: the Pass 1
split here is the static trace corrected by a CDL capture, and the base the
correction was applied to is not what the current _tools/nesdis.py
produces, so prg.s is the maintained source of truth.
Tools changed:
nesdis.py --split/--note/--provenance options, so a data
region can carry its own name and explanation;
a forced-data address is no longer reported as a
recovered routine entry
apply_pass2_map.py can create the label for a call target the tracer
left unlabelled; no longer double-labels it
apply_zp_aliases.py --at-file, an address-based per-site list
derive_branch_names.py keeps the map's own header instead of writing a
fixed one
resolve_raw_branches.py new: turns `bXX *+$NN` operands into labels
build_hogans_map.py new: the hand-written Pass 2 map builder
The existing regen pipelines (MUSCLE (U), Urban Champion (JU)) still
reproduce prg.s byte for byte.
Apply the symbols.inc register names at Pass 1; fix a dropped byte in cdl_reclass
nesdis.py now names the hardware registers as it renders the operands, so a
project's Pass 1 output already reads `lda PPUSTATUS` instead of `lda $2002`
and the Pass 3 apply_symbols.py step has nothing left to do for them.
* nesdis.py --symbols FILE reads a symbols.inc-style file and substitutes
the register names. Only unambiguous entries in the $2000-$4017 window
are used: $4017 is both JOY2 and APUFRAMECOUNTER, so it stays numeric
and apply_symbols.py reports it as multi-alias residue, exactly as
before. The default is the symbols.inc next to --out, so a new project
gets the names without asking; --no-symbols opts out.
* The renderer records the operand's numeric value on the Insn, because
operand_value() used to re-parse the operand text and could no longer
read a name.
* The controller bit masks in symbols.inc (PAD_A and friends) are
constants, not addresses, and are still never substituted.
MUSCLE (U) and Urban Champion (JU) keep --no-symbols: their committed
prg.s was produced with the registers named by the Pass 3 apply_symbols.py
step, and the columns in those files reflect the in-place substitution.
Adding the missing apply_symbols.py step to both regen pipelines makes
them reproduce their committed prg.s byte for byte again - neither did
before this change (MUSCLE was 440 lines out, Urban Champion 772).
cdl_reclass.py had a bug that cost a byte: a region whose last source row
straddled the region's end was replaced by a regeneration of the region
only, so the tail of that row was dropped. Mario Bros (JU) hit it at
$C595, where the rebuild came out one byte short and every label after it
shifted. A region now covers the whole rows it replaces.
pass2.py reflow takes an optional column argument; the default is
unchanged (the ';' lands on the same column as before).
Mario Bros (JU): Pass 1 correction, Pass 2, Pass 3, promoted to NROM/
A two-player platformer whose handler tables are *inline*: the pointers sit
in the middle of the code stream, right after the `jsr` that reads them, so
the static tracer could never follow them.
Pass 1 correction. The committed split was a strict subset of the correct
one -- only 72.0% of the PRG was classified as code. A Mesen Code Data
Logger capture of this ROM (mario_mesen.cdl, 10,915 code bytes) showed
1,010 bytes the tracer had left as data were code; two branch targets the
capture never reached ($E4CB and $E639) were forced with --override for 57
more, so 1,067 bytes moved from data to code and 22 moved the other way.
The split is now 78.4% code (6,210 instructions, 12,847 bytes). The three
branch targets the reclassifier could not prove were turned into labels by
_resolve_raw_branches.py, which now refuses to put a label on a `.byte` row.
Pass 2. 206 routine entries and 519 internal branch targets: 931
Label_XXXX definitions gone, 51 raw $XXXX call operands resolved and 12 call
targets the tracer had never labelled given a label. Zero SubC residue --
the 185 entries a previous session had left as address-derived residue were
all named from this dump's own code. Recorded in routinemap.tsv.
Pass 3. 25 semantic zero-page aliases, each applied only where its role is
proven (zp_aliases.inc); the slots that stay neutral are each listed with the
reason. 35 data tables named -- GameStateHandlerTable, EnemyBehaviourTable,
EnemyScriptTable, EnemyTypePointerTable, SoundRoutineTable,
NoteFrequencyTable and the rest -- and recorded in
data_region_names.tsv. apply_symbols.py reports 0 residue.
Promotion. header.s, chr.s and a HEADER/PRG/CHR linker.cfg added, rom.nes
symlinked to the original ROM; the whole-ROM cmp passes on the first
promoted build. There is deliberately no `make regen` target: the Pass 1
split here is the static trace corrected by a CDL capture, and the base the
correction was applied to is not what the current _tools/nesdis.py
produces, so prg.s is the maintained source of truth.
Tools:
apply_pass2_map.py renames a label of any spelling -- SubC<addr> is
the honest residue form -- and its references
follow it; one combined pattern, so a 16,000-line
file does not need a substitution per label
resolve_raw_branches.py refuses to label a data row
build_mario_map.py new: the hand-written Pass 2 map builder
Remove the old _wip/NROM/Mario Bros (JU) folder (promoted to NROM/)
Mario Bros (JU): add the promoted-tier header, CHR, rom.nes symlink and zero-page aliases
Moves _ROMS/<ROM> into _wip/<MAPPER>/<ROM>
Sync the docs and the skeleton tool with the 857-project _wip tier
The _wip/ tier now holds 857 projects across 30 mapper folders, all
building byte-identical for the whole ROM. README.md, TODO.md and
AGENTS.md still described the old 39-project tier, so bring them in line
with WIP.md, which carries the tier's index.
The tier is no longer 39 projects of NROM-256 with a 16/32 KB PRG:
only two projects have a 16 KB PRG, 151 have 32 KB, 523 have 128 KB and
one has 1.5 MB, so most of it is a banked mapper whose image does not fit
the 6502's address space. Those projects link their MEMORY areas at .nes
file offsets rather than CPU addresses, which is the only option and the
honest model; the 39 older projects keep the CPU-address layout because
their PRG really is one contiguous window.
make_skeleton.py gains the two layouts (--layout flat|cpu), the board
name for the mapper, and a fix for find_rom() mistaking the build
output reconstructed.nes for the source ROM.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
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