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fix: leveled NPC sync — shell conforms, durable pending, crash guards - #4

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absol89 merged 23 commits into
absol89:feat/leveled-npc-sync-v2from
DJLegends1011:feat/leveled-npc-sync
Jul 6, 2026
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fix: leveled NPC sync — shell conforms, durable pending, crash guards#4
absol89 merged 23 commits into
absol89:feat/leveled-npc-sync-v2from
DJLegends1011:feat/leveled-npc-sync

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@DJLegends1011

@DJLegends1011 DJLegends1011 commented Jul 6, 2026

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Summary

Post-playtest fixes from two absol+DJ sessions (2026-07-05). All changes are client-only except the server log demotion.

  • Shell-aware conform — actors whose placed base templates onto a LeveledCharacter (unresolved shells) were being skipped by the !IsTemporary() guard instead of conformed, leaving bosses invisible/headless. New IsUnresolvedLeveledShell() detection conforms them immediately and bypasses the 3D-existence gate (shells can never load 3D on their own).
  • Durable pending conforms — removed the 300-frame retry counter that melted at high FPS (~240fps ≈ 1.2s budget). Pending conforms now persist until 3D actually loads; cleared on disconnect.
  • Cross-project conform crash guard (559f0fbd, f609305e) — conforming an actor to a pick from a different behavior project (e.g. humanoid→canine) left a stale GraphDescriptorHash, corrupting the animation variable set on next sync. Fixed by zeroing the hash on conform + bounds-checking variable serialization loops.
  • Server log demotion — Stored/Relaying leveled pick lines demoted from info to debug to stop grid-edge critter churn from flooding the server log.

Known remaining items (NOT in this PR — need protocol bump, batch together)

  1. Claim-path ownership steal — RequestOwnershipClaim never carries LeveledNpcPickId; party-leader handoff via this path loses the pick.
  2. Level/stat sync — PC-Level-Mult actors evaluate against the LOCAL player level; fix requires syncing the owner's resolved level and conforming via per-actor temp NPC minted with fn 14375.

Test plan

  • OBIS stress test (mixed 12-mod / 21-mod load orders) — identity sync verified
  • Embershard Mine interior — shell-based boss conforms correctly on member end
  • High-FPS client (~240fps) — conforms no longer abandoned after 1.2s
  • Cross-project conform (humanoid actor → animal pick) — no crash
  • Server log clean at info level during grid-edge critter churn

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

absol89 and others added 23 commits June 18, 2026 20:22
@absol89
Hide location from player list; default to party menu tab (tiltedphoq…
5e8b5b8 
…ues#868)
@miredirex
CI: pin windows-2022 runner for now (tiltedphoques#876)
c50e592 
`windows-latest` and `windows-2025` are now defaulting to VS2026. VS2026 and the newer SDKs/platform toolsets currently can cause issues (like certain DLLs not loading for some reason); we'll migrate later, maybe

Also undo `MemoryLayout.cpp` change
@absol89
Allow party leaders to use the /settime chat command on private ser…
9d81ef0 
…vers (tiltedphoques#877)

* fix: IsPlayerLeader const-qualified for party-leader /setTime check

* fix: add const Player::GetParty() overload and use it in IsPlayerLeader

* fix: avoid sol2 overload ambiguity in Player_Bindings after adding const GetParty

* fix: use const-safe GetById() in IsPlayerLeader

* feat: /setTime party-leader allowed when bAnnounceServer is false; clean IsPlayerLeader conflict

* feat: allow party leaders to use /setTime on private servers
@DJLegends1011 @claude
chore: add leveled NPC resolution probe (temporary)
4fb53dd 
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
feat: add LeveledNpcPickId to character assignment and spawn messages
4e7e608 
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
feat: store and relay leveled NPC pick server-side
e37ce17 
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
feat: capture resolved leveled NPC pick on assignment
dd20290 
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
feat: conform remote clients to owner's leveled NPC pick
227c005 
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
fix: harden leveled pick capture against races and forced-pick bleed
b3f3ddd 
Guard the pick map with a lock (resolution can run on a loader thread),
consume the forced pick one-shot so neighbor resolutions in the same
enable window cannot inherit it, resolve the pick GameId once, and note
the client-authoritative trust model server-side.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
style: drop const prefix from mutable npc id lookups
970a772 
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
fix: relay leveled pick on assignment response and add sync diagnostics
47ce3e1 
The main co-op scenario (second client discovers an actor the host
already owns) resolves through AssignCharacterResponse, not
CharacterSpawnRequest, so the pick never reached remote clients. Carry
the pick on the response and apply it in the not-owner branch. Every
capture/apply path now logs at info so mismatches are diagnosable from
tp_client.log and the server log.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
fix: recover leveled pick from template chain when resolver hook miss…
daab680 
…ed it

Live cell attach can resolve leveled actors without passing through the
hooked fn 14375 (only observed firing during save load), leaving the
pick map empty for freshly spawned camp NPCs. Fall back to the first
static NPC in the temp base template chain, declining when that entry
is the placed shell itself (recognizable by templating off a leveled
list). Also log every hook fire so the actual resolution paths are
visible in tp_client.log.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
fix: conform leveled actors by base swap with frame-deferred re-enable
ca8d894 
In-game verification showed EnableImpl never re-runs leveled resolution,
so the forced-pick substitution could not work and the synchronous
disable/enable pair left actors invisible (the queued 3D teardown ate
the rebuild). Point the reference at the picked NPC directly, disable,
and re-enable one frame later via the runner queue. Drop the now-dead
forced-pick machinery and demote the resolver trace to debug.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
fix: defer leveled conform until actor 3D settles
cf2c6a9 
Mutating the reference while cell attach is still streaming its 3D
crashed the joining client. Poll loadedState through the runner queue
(bounded retries), then disable, swap the base to the pick, and
re-enable one frame later.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
fix: hold leveled conform while the loading screen is open
1a6dba9 
The loadedState gate alone still allowed the conform to run mid cell
attach, crashing the joining client during the loading screen. Poll the
Loading Menu state and only mutate the reference once the world is
interactive; waiting does not consume the retry budget.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
fix: apply leveled conforms from the service update tick
41c6b8d 
Root cause of the three joining-client crashes: message handlers queueing
to the runner executes TaskQueue::Add from inside TaskQueue::Drain, which
re-locks the drain mutex on the same thread (UB, silent death, no dump);
the first build additionally mutated references mid cell attach. Replace
the runner round-trips with a pending-conform map drained from
CharacterService::OnUpdate (the m_weaponDrawUpdates pattern), gated on
the loading screen and per-actor 3D state, with disable and re-enable
split across ticks.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
fix: prefer template chain over resolver map when capturing leveled pick
2aa1696 
The resolver map is keyed by temp form ids the engine recycles, and cell
attach resolves leveled actors without the hook, so a map hit can
describe a previous occupant of the id - which shipped a stale Dawnguard
thrall pick for a Forsworn and rendered it on the remote client. The
chain is derived from the live actor and cannot go stale; the map is now
a fallback for named leveled NPCs only.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
feat: reconcile leveled pick across ownership transfers
1779088 
When the party leader steals ownership of an already-managed actor, the
server kept the old owner pick and told nobody to conform, leaving each
client with its own roll. Adopt the new owner pick from the transferring
assignment request, carry it on NotifySpawnData, and conform the demoted
owner like any other remote client.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
fix: recompute graph descriptor when conforming leveled npcs
559f0fb 
The anim-var sync caches GraphDescriptorHash once per actor. A conform
that crosses animation projects (rabbit -> fox) kept the old project's
variable indices, so every remote update wrote the owner's values through
stale indices into the new graph's variable set; float bits landed in
words the new project reads as quad-variable indices, crashing on an OOB
load in hkbBehaviorGraph::update within seconds. Zero the hash after the
base swap so the next sync tick recomputes it from the rebuilt graph,
mirroring what the werewolf and vampire lord transforms already do.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
fix: bounds-check animation variable serialization
f609305 
The boolean apply loop validated indices against the variable set size
but the float/integer loops and all three serialize loops did not. Any
descriptor/graph mismatch (stale descriptor, modded behaviors) could
read or write out of bounds. Guard every loop so a mismatch degrades to
wrong animation values instead of memory corruption.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
chore: ignore local tooling and workspace files
fe27d18 
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
fix: conform shell-based actors and keep pending conforms until 3D ex…
a8065f4 
…ists

Two playtest-proven gaps: the 300-frame retry budget melts at high fps
and can never cover distant actors, abandoning conforms (Embershard
door bandit); and picks arriving while the local actor still carries
the unresolved placed shell were mistaken for already-conformed,
leaving shells invisible or headless (OBIS bosses). Pending conforms
now persist until the actor streams in (cleared on disconnect), and a
static base templating onto a leveled list conforms instead of
skipping, bypassing the 3D gate shells can never satisfy.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@DJLegends1011 @claude
tweak: demote leveled pick storage and relay logging to debug
200c5d4 
Grid-edge critter churn re-requests the same actor every half second,
each printing a relay line at info; the pipeline is proven, so keep
the diagnostics behind the debug level.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@absol89
absol89 merged commit d558877 into absol89:feat/leveled-npc-sync-v2 Jul 6, 2026
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3 participants

@DJLegends1011 @absol89 @miredirex