Maps ship outside the game, each one a content-addressed pack (.lmap: the .lpak format) downloaded to
the save root. The runtime already served reads from packs mounted at boot (packs.index); now one can
come and go while the game runs:
- Fs.mount(path) -> bool maps a pack over the ones mounted before it (searched first, as a later
packs.index line is); Fs.unmount(path) -> bool gives the mapping back (munmap, UnmapViewOfFile on
Windows) and closes the gap in the search order. Each slot keeps its length and path for it. A
FILE* still open over one of its entries (a baked_open_range) is closed first. Still 8 packs at most.
- baked_path(map, file) is assets/baked/maps/<map>/<file> for a map's bake - what its .lmap carries
and the game's own pack never does - and assets/baked/<file> for the rest.
The IR assembles for macOS and Windows (llvm-as). Compile-only: nothing mounted or run here.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
What is deterministic is made at build time by the game's own code (`ludic bake`) and read at run
time. baked.ludic, baked_hash.ludic, baked_stream.ludic:
- The header, 32 bytes little-endian: "LBAK" | u32 format (BAKE_FORMAT 1) | u32 generator version |
u32 payload offset | u64 inputs hash | u64 payload length | then the key (UTF-8, zero-padded to 8),
then the payload at its offset, whose layout is the bake's own.
- bake_write(path, key, version, inputs_hash, payload, n) makes the directories and writes it;
bake_inputs_hash(inputs) is FNV-1a 64 over each space-separated input: its path, a 0, its bytes.
- baked_open(path, key, version) -> []byte: the payload as a view of the file (no copy), or null for
a missing file or another format, key or version. The runtime never hashes inputs; `ludic bake
--check` holds a baked file to them at build time.
- baked_open_range(path, key, version) -> BakedFile kept open (header checked once),
baked_read(bf, at, n, into) -> count read into the caller's buffer from payload offset `at`
(held to the buffer and the payload), baked_len, baked_close: a streamed bake (placements by chunk,
terrain by tile) with nothing made per read. Pack-aware through file_open: on macOS a packed entry
is an fmemopen over the mapped pack (a seek is free), on Windows a temporary copy of the entry made
once when it is opened.
- baked_path(map, file), bake_missing(bake_st, key) (a dev build's line, once a key).
tests/baked_test.ludic: a payload round-trips for its key and version only, a streamed read at an
offset and one past the end, the inputs hash follows path and bytes. Written, type-checked, not run
(compile-only rule).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A load freed only the parsed trip's nodes (Json.free) and kept every string the parser made, because
a loader might keep one; free_all freed every string and every key, so on a tree a migration had
added a literal to (`Value.put(v, "sver", Value.str("2"))`) it freed the literal and aborted.
- The parser marks the string values it makes (JP_OWNED, in the node's otherwise unused num) and
interns object keys (a few names, never freed); free_all frees only marked strings, never keys,
and a list's spares too. A setter that gives a marked node other text (value_set_str/_strs,
value_into_str/_strs, value_become) frees the parser's text first. value_as_int / _as_float read a
string as 0 as before.
- ludic.base sv_str returns intern(...): every package load that keeps a text read from a section
(minimap labels, a Thing's look, photo tags and files, an effect's label, ...) holds its own copy.
Golden json_free_edited: parse, put a literal key and string in, set a string, keep an interned copy,
free_all - 1100 loads: the copy reads on and nothing grows (the toolchain before this aborts, 134).
Tests: ludic.save, base, settings, minimap, things, photo, effects; json_saves, value_list_regrow; the
36 ui examples.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
'@max(64) boxes: []Box' on a property's or a state's field is a promise: the grow path of a push to
that field (only the grow path, so nothing is paid until it doubles) checks it, and growing past n is
reported by the fence - 'PoolState.boxes grew past its @max(16) (it holds 16)' - counted under
count, said under warn, and under fail (a headless or dev build's default) the run ends with exit 87.
Mem.over("what") is the same for a package's own table: ludic.base's StrTable past its most
(sb_intern) and ludic.ui's memo past three quarters of MM_CAP no longer quietly copy per call. The
census counts overflows.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
thing_put and thing_spawn made a new record for every Thing placed, and the world places and removes
them all day (an animal's sign and bed, a drop, a fish), so play grew by a record per placement.
Removed records wait in a queue compacted in place; once 32 wait, the oldest is set back as new
with a new uid. ludic.base's grid_reserve makes the buckets for n rows now, since a rehash in play
leaves the old bucket array behind. Tests: a record comes back only past the lag, as new, with a
new uid, the indexes agree, and the spare queue stays bounded.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
dispatch lowered to ludic_act_push(k, new A { ... }): a fresh record every dispatch, and an input
system dispatches Move and FrameTime every frame. The queue now keeps a list per action
(kept<k>, used<k>); ludic_act_new__A hands out the next (made only when all are queued), new's
emitter fills it field by field as it fills a fresh one (every field, default or given), and
drain_actions sets every used<k> back to 0 once the queue is empty. A reducer only ever reads
its action during the drain, so nothing sees a record after it is reused. Actions are visible
to the program's file, where the queue lives, as reducers already were.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
wl_fact made a new WildFact per fact, about one a frame, and Ludic never gives one back. ludic.base's q_unheld(q, pool, out) lists the records a queue no longer holds: neither waiting nor handed out by its last drain, which is good until the next drain. ludic.wildlife and ludic.npc now keep a pool, hand out a free record, and make a new one only when every record is held. Taking a record writes the state, so wl_fact / np_fact and the few callers holding their state read-only take it mut. Tests: q_unheld's rules (an empty drain holds on, the safe side); 3000 prints drained frame by frame use at most 4 records; 500 arrivals drained turn by turn use at most 4. base 37, wildlife 27, npc 17; all packages 420.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Found with malloc_history over 1200 frames of play without the interface (the first Ludic function
on each allocating stack, live bytes at two marks): sh_loc built `name + "[0]"` per program per pass
per frame - 24.6 MB of 33 in the window; its callers pass both names as literals now. tick_set fills
the frame loop's one Tick instead of tick_new making one a frame. A ridden boat or horse said
VEHICLE_MOVED as a new fact every frame; the metres are added up in VehiclesState and taken once
(vehicle_moved_take / _kind / _x / _z). Play's growth without the interface: 92 -> 14.7 MB a minute
(maroon-lake tests/leakcheck.sh); what is left is phys_push (Physics' fix on lang/nav) and the HUD's
strings. Packages 407, ludic-dev test 305 pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The rest of the leak Physics found: a drain that carried facts gave its list away and made a new
one, every queue every frame something happened. The queue keeps two lists and hands one out while
the other fills; a drained list is good until the next drain of that queue (nothing in the game or
the packages keeps one past it). With ab34f82's empty drain and in-place clear, a queue allocates
nothing in steady state. queue_test holds the reuse; every package (403) and lab/unit (90) pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A streamed world loads and lets go of a chunk's entities together, so a chunk is a first-class
group: chunk_of(x, z, size) packs a chunk's cell into an int, tb_remove_all(tb, ix, v) removes every
row an index files under one value (the observers told of each). IntIndex kept one list per value
up to the largest, which a packed chunk number (hundreds of millions) turned into hundreds of
millions of empty lists and a 12 GB test run; a value past 1024 now gets its slot through an IntMap,
so a sparse value costs one list.
ludic.things files every Thing under its 256 m chunk (TH_CHUNK), kept by every move;
things_chunk_count and things_drop_chunk (the port and the facts told of each removal, as
thing_remove tells them) are what the memory budget's streamed chunks ask. The moves are their own
file (moves.ludic). Tests: ludic.base 35, ludic.things 8, all under a 2 GB cap (24 MB peak).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
tb_on_add / tb_on_remove take a fn(int) (its states supplied, like a system's) told each handle as
its row is made and before it goes (ecs_hooks.ludic), so what follows a table - a drawing, a
message - does so without a scan. Every row's tick now also stamps its 64-row block, and
tb_changed_since / tb_added_since skip the blocks nobody wrote since: a delta over a large table
costs the blocks that moved. A row moved into a removal's gap keeps its own tick (it was not
written); a removal is told by the hook. ecs_test holds both. The ludic.wildlife table
(5ac3d48, written while builds were held) now builds and passes its 19 tests.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Ludic frees nothing a safe program allocates, and every package's fact queue is drained once a
frame: q_drain handed back its list and made a new one each time, most often of an empty queue.
An empty drain now returns the queue's one shared empty list (never to be pushed to), and q_clear
clears in place - the live list is never one a drain handed out. A queue that held facts still
gives its list away, so what leaks is in proportion to what happened, not to the frame rate.
queue_test holds it (an empty drain is the same list twice; a drained list is untouched by later
pushes and clears).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A mechanic that keeps many of something keeps them as rows of a Table<T> rather than a list it
scans. Removal swaps the last row in; a handle (22-bit slot, 9-bit generation) goes stale when its
entity is removed. tb_set_f / tb_set_xz / tb_set_i stamp a change tick and refile the row in every
index over that column in O(1): tb_grid (a doubly linked spatial hash, rings outward for nearest,
rehashing as it grows), tb_index (a cached query: the rows of each value of a kind column, gated by
an active column), tb_nearest_of / tb_within_of (a rare kind from its own list), tb_nearest_where
(a predicate on the record), tb_within_recs (into the caller's list), tb_changed_since /
tb_added_since, IntMap. No question allocates or writes: Ludic frees nothing, and the old lists'
per-call copies leaked every frame.
ludic.things keeps its Things as a Table<Thing> with x, z, kind and active as columns; every verb
writes the record and the row together (a Thing carries its handle and table, so thing_hide(t)
still needs no state), thing_set_on / thing_set_xz / thing_place_at are the silent forms the game
used to do by assignment, and things_verify holds the columns against the records.
things_near(_of) fill a caller's list, thing_of_kind walks a kind, things_count_of counts one, and
things_tick visits only the kinds that tick. thing_find answers the first-placed by uid.
Against a []Record scanned (M4 Pro): nearest 0.37 / 1.5 / 7.2 us at 10k / 100k / 1M (list 30 /
307 / 3075), by id 0.09 us at 100k (list 17), a move refiled in 11-44 ns. ecs_fuzz_test holds the
grid, the kind index and the record queries against a scan through 9000 random changes.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ludic.base's Queue<T> carries a QueueTag (its name and pending count): queue_new(name), q_push(q, v),
q_drain(q), q_clear(q) take no BaseState, and core_undrained(tags) names the given queues still holding
facts. A reducer on a package's state can now call that package's verbs (wallet_earn(wallet_st, n)).
ludic migrate state --prune (ludicc --migrate-prune) takes out each state parameter a function no
longer uses, nor anything it calls, and the argument that fills it - including an argument for a
parameter the callee has dropped, which is taken out before the call is checked, so a generic's T is
told by the argument that says it. A reducer keeps its state. --dry-run now counts the edits it would
make. Every package was moved with it: 608 base_st parameters and their arguments, 1889 edits.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
It lowered to an i32 compare of two pointers, which the IR refused. Two strings with the same text
are equal now, a null only to a null, and a failure says expect_eq failed (got "camp", want
"lake"). examples/library/testing_strings.ludic (two tests fail on purpose, and the output is
checked); ludic.base's actions_test uses it again.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
action Name { fields } is a typed record; reducer State on Action(s: mut State, a: Action) { ... }
in the module that owns the state takes exactly that state and the action (a second state is
refused); dispatch Action { fields } queues one from anywhere, the queue supplied by the runtime.
The queue is drained at the end of every phase of the frame loop, after every phase of ludic.base's
core_tick_all, and by drain_actions(): in dispatch order, each action's reducers in the order of
their states' names, an action a reducer dispatches queued behind, a queue still growing after 64
rounds stopped with the action named. Examples actions/pack, phases, runaway; rejects for a second
state, a reducer on a non-action and an unknown dispatch; ludic.base's actions_test; LANGUAGE.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ludic migrate state packages <every example program> packages/ludic.lab/example/plate.ludic
1804 vars into 126 states, 64 into lets; 23498 edits in 460 files
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ludic.clock, .effects, .inventory, .wallet, .weather and .tracks say
'uses ludic_base' (ludic.base uses nothing). ClockWorld, PackRules,
WeatherWorld and TracksWorld are export ports whose defaults are the old
fallbacks; clock_bind, inv_bind, weather_bind and tracks_bind are gone,
and the tests bind their fakes. The base README's toy does the same.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The runner's list starts from the declared systems, in the order the
compiler gives an open registry, and core_add appends after them.
registry_test covers it; the README says ludic test runs the package.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
ludic.effects: effects_add / effects_add_after / effects_clear / effects_run,
effects_sum / effects_has / effects_at / effects_live, an EffectEnded queue
(ran out, pushed out by the bonus cap, crowded out of a full ring) and a
System with its own save section. Nine test blocks in tests/effects_test.ludic.
ludic.base: q_new collided with render3d's quaternion q_new the moment a game
imported both, so the queue constructor is queue_new.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A mechanic package depends on ludic.base and nothing else: ports (records of
function values for now) for questions, queues for facts, verbs for changes,
phases for order and its own versioned save section. The runner inits, resets,
saves and loads systems in the order added and ticks them phase by phase; a
missing save section is a reset. Tests for each piece and a worked route
between two toy mechanics live under tests/. The old ludic.core (engine ECS
components) is used by examples/library and stays.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
