Drew T
e9449ef0fe
parallel_gate.py — the per-binary byte gate was serial BY HARNESS, not by nature. Each binary already
compiles into its own build/<bin>/, links its own .ld and checks its own SHA; what serialized it was
shared mutable state in the ONE checkout (the splice, assert_write_set's GLOBAL git status, and the
deliberately-broad `git add -u src/` that must stay broad). Measured: a 109-binary sweep ran ~1
min/binary on a 32-core box at load 1.4 (~4% utilisation), and an xargs -P 4 attempt over the shared
tree CORRUPTED it earlier today.
Fix is ISOLATION, not locking: one git worktree per worker (own index, own src/, own build/). Workers
gate and NEVER commit; the orchestrator adopts only drafts the gate ACCEPTED, and only where the main
tree still matches the pinned baseline (otherwise REFUSED, never clobbered), then ONE commit and ONE
R22 clean-fleet sweep verifies the merged whole.
Measured on 85 binaries / 234 candidates: 178 banked in 12m19s wall for 127m40s CPU = 10.4x
parallelism, ~7x end-to-end vs serial, 99 files merged, 0 refused, check-all 213/213.
Five things a fresh worktree does NOT have, each found by measurement and each first appearing as
"the draft failed": splat-generated include/*.inc, the EMPTY tools/maspsx submodule, gitignored
tools/bin (cc1) + tools/psyq, build/{<bin>,assets/<bin>} outputs, and extracted/retail. Dirs mixing
tracked and untracked content cannot be symlinked wholesale (ln -s nests INSIDE them) — hence
link_missing(). The negative control that catches all of it: an UNMODIFIED binary must build
BYTE-IDENTICAL in the worktree. Before that control, the first parallel run reported a clean,
plausible "0 banked across 4 binaries" that was pure environment artifact.
twin_sweep.py — enumerate every open stub that has an ALREADY-BANKED structural twin, remap it
mechanically, gate it. Yields measured today: h_exact 139/157 = 88.5%, h_norm 36/45 then 178/234
= 76-80%. h_seq stays refused (Phase-26) and is not used. THE POOL REFILLS: each bank becomes an
exemplar for its siblings — 165 fresh candidates existed immediately after banking 178. Run it
BEFORE drawing any wave; t5_cards does not build seed_ref, so cards assert "no banked twin" for
these and agents redraft answers we already hold (a t5u Opus slot ground ov_SC03_023:func_8017BEBC
to closeness 45 while ov_SC02_004 held a byte-identical banked copy).
BFM-decomp
A matching decompilation of Brave Fencer Musashi (PlayStation, SLUS-00726, USA 1998) — the first public decompilation effort for this game.
What "matching" means
The goal is C source code that, compiled with the original-era toolchain (PsyQ 4.x / GCC 2.7.2-family + ASPSX via maspsx), produces a byte-for-byte identical SLUS_007.26 and, eventually, byte-identical overlay binaries. SHA1 checksums are the ground truth; "functionally equivalent" does not count.
No ROM content
This repository contains no game assets, no disassembly output, and no ROM-derived data — only source code, build configuration, symbol names/addresses, hashes, and documentation. To build or contribute you must provide your own dump of the game disc (4-track BIN/CUE, redump layout). See .gitignore for the firewall.
Project status
Latest (Phase 19, 2026-06-20): the project builds 136 binaries byte-identical from a clean tree (the EXE + the resident engine + all 134 location overlays);
make check-all→ 136/136. Fleet byte-identical-from-source is 58.0% (function-instance-weighted; see the PhaseEnds for the byte-weighted ~30% figure and what it includes). Shared engine functions are matched once inov_SC01_077and propagated ×134 viatools/dedup_propagate.py. (The narrative below is Phase-11/12-era; a full refresh is part of the public-flip prep.)
Gen1 (foundation) complete — the matching pipeline is proven end-to-end. make extract && make build && make check rebuilds SLUS_007.26 byte-for-byte identical (SHA1 143dbb89…) from C + assembly, reproducibly across many sessions.
- Compiler pinned by evidence:
gcc-2.7.2-psx -O2 -G0 -mips1 -mcpu=3000+maspsx --aspsx-version=2.56 --expand-div. - 52 functions hand-matched to byte-identical machine code — including the LZSS streaming decompressor — with a decomp-permuter + matching-cookbook "flywheel" to accelerate the next.
- 959 PsyQ SDK functions linked byte-identical (libcd, libgs, libgte, libspu/libsnd, libgpu, libc2, libmcrd, libapi/libcard, libetc) straight from the real PsyQ 4.0 libraries instead of re-decompiling them — bringing byte-identical-from-source coverage of the EXE to ~50%.
- File-loader / overlay system reverse-engineered, with the resident engine blob + location overlays' load addresses proven byte-identical against a live PCSX-Redux RAM dump.
About half the EXE is still INCLUDE_ASM stubs (correct bytes, not yet C), and the bulk of the game lives in compressed overlays inside the .CD archives — Gen2 (overlays & engine at scale) is underway:
- The build toolchain is binary-agnostic (one parameterized pipeline builds any binary), and the always-resident engine blob rebuilds byte-for-byte from source (SHA1
8e17e02f…) — the second binary reconstructed exactly, after the EXE — and is now 86% hand-matched C (123 / 146 functions, up from 0): its scripting turned out to be compiled-MIPS state/mode dispatch, not a bytecode VM, and the save-file + sound (SQV) formats are documented. The harvest used a reusable swarm-of-agents + bit-for-bit byte-gate method (a wrong match can't be accepted) —tools/harvest_verify.py+tools/match_one.py, which carry straight into the overlay phase. - A cross-binary deduplication pipeline is live: a Ghidra-free signer fingerprints all 134 location overlays, and the report finds ~9,000 byte-identical function groups shared across binaries (~28 MB of collapsible code) — a single engine function is byte-identical in all 134 overlays. This is "one match unlocks many": each engine match will be auto-credited across the overlay fleet.
Current phase and detailed progress live in phase-ends/ (newest PhaseEnd_*.md = current state); methodology, rules, and the full roadmap are in PROJECT_CONTEXT.md; environment setup in docs/SETUP.md.
This project is developed primarily by Claude Code driving Ghidra through an MCP server; see CLAUDE.md.
License
Private repository for now. AGPL-3.0 is planned at public release, modeled on sotn-decomp. tools/brave-CUE/ is CUE's BRAVE extractor (GPL, source included) and retains its own license.