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Original startup menus

Main now has Single Player, Multi Player, Options, Scores and a PC-only Quit row, in that order. Rows start at74 with16-pixel spacing, so the fifth row stays on the160-pixel canvas. Quit is localized as Quit/Beenden/Quitter and supports keyboard and mouse. Selecting Quit opens a localized Yes/No warning with No selected by default. Enter on No or Esc returns to Main with Quit selected; only explicitly confirming Yes sets the separate quit_requested result. It never enters the new-game/level handoff; the host leaves its loop and uses normal cleanup.

Pause-menu Quit still asks Yes/No, then returns to Main. The frontend records the current game counter on every menu entry and checks that it stays frozen. The old startup-only counter-zero check incorrectly rejected a return from gameplay on the next tick, closing the window. Native menu checks now pass73072 assertions; Windows verifies12pause paths, six Main-menu Quit paths and six completion routes in both renderers and all3languages, including40menu ticks after each pause return. The settled menu rows and hover/click regions share the same positions; the menu startup/credits/options/map/restart check also passes. The current quit warning tests cover all3languages, keyboard/mouse Yes/No, default-No confirmation, Esc from Yes and blank-area clicks. Previews are at build/intermission-tests/quit-confirmation-0.bmp and quit-confirmation-1.bmp. See menu-validation.json, quit-confirmation-validation.json and the earlier windows-intermission-validation.json.

play-native.cmd now begins directly with the title prompt, main menu, Single Player, New Game and difficulty selection. All three languages and difficulty tiers work. Arrows/WASD navigate, Enter/Space confirms, or hover and click a menu entry. Mouse hit testing follows the localized text and sliding animation, with the same letterbox transform as rendering. Blank space and black borders cannot activate the current selection. Hover only changes selection when the pointer moves, so it does not override keyboard navigation. The Win32 pointer adapter now immediately plays original menu command12 (sound1) when hover or a direct click changes selection, matching keyboard cycling. Same-row movement, leaving into blank space and returning, and clicking the already selected row do not replay that cue. Confirmation retains its separate existing sound. The cue is delivered at the pointer event because the following menu tick clears its command queue. This applies to all shared menu hit targets; the portable menu state machine and original keyboard behavior are unchanged. Title/menu music continues across Press Start and returning to Main. Single Player now inserts Select Level between New Game and Password. It uses the original localized campaign names, saved previous-level completion unlocks, and no multiplayer maps. Options → Clear Data confirms Yes/No before resetting progress and language. Full behavior/storage/tests are in profile.md. Options has five rows: Settings, Graphics, Extras, Clear Data, and Credits. Language cycles at the top of Settings. Graphics contains Display mode, Renderer and Aspect ratio. FOV and audio remain in Settings. Both pages return to their own Options row and preserve mouse/keyboard operation and saved choices. The split adds page20 (Graphics) without changing settings/save formats. The2026-10-21 layout moves Settings/Graphics items down one8-pixel tile, with Music style a second tile lower. Titles remain at Y0 and Back at Y144. Settings labels are at Y24/48/80/96/120, and its FOV/music/sounds bars at Y56/104/128. Graphics rows are at Y24/40/56. Mouse regions share these positions. The updated menu suite passes76,459 checks on MSVC and GCC ASan/UBSan/leak checking; the Settings suites pass39,878 portable checks and23,778 Windows input/persistence checks. All eight focused CTests pass. Generated English and German Settings/Graphics previews were visually inspected. No campaign replay was required for this menu-only change. Keyboard and mouse follow that visible order; Credits is last. Internal IDs remain stable for existing Settings/Clear Data return paths. The row removal and reordering are requested PC UI changes; historical original Options-callback comparisons below describe the earlier layout, not this five-row screen. Extras holds Jump (moved from Settings), Third-person, and In-game NETRICSA toggles. Jump defaults to Off; Third-person and In-game NETRICSA default to On. They persist in settings.dat and accept keyboard or mouse changes. Disabling in-game NETRICSA leaves pre-level briefings enabled. See Settings and Extras. Enter, click or Right cycles English/German/French in place; Left cycles backward, wrapping at either end. All menu labels change immediately. The chosen language carries into maps, new games, password starts and R restart. Fresh profiles default to English; subsequent launches restore the saved language. The dedicated language list is no longer part of startup or reachable through Options. Esc goes back. The redundant Music On/Off row is removed; Settings provides the music volume slider (0% silences music) and sound volume/music style controls. Preferences persist through maps, level advancement and restart. M remains a separate PC mute control. Options → Credits now shows the original credits. Hold Up/W to pause or Down/S to scroll faster; Enter/Space/click or Esc returns to Options. An explicit --level 0..7 launch bypasses startup menus for diagnostics. Single Player → Password supports direct case-insensitive keyboard typing. The first typed character replaces the original A_______ template. Backspace, Delete, Home/End and Left/Right edit the bounded eight-character field. Enter or a click submits; letters including WASD/M type rather than navigating/muting. The original editor is also retained. Left/Right changes the selected character and Up/Down cycles letters, digits and underscore. Holding Up/Down repeats after the original delay; Enter/click submits and Esc goes back. A valid password supplies difficulty and starting weapon/ammo inventory. The frontend supports the eight admitted maps; valid later-map passwords display an unavailable-level notice and stay in the editor.

The menus use original artwork, glyphs, metrics, colors and localized strings. The green background scrolls in the original steps; the logo slides into place. The original transparent BG1 grid tile at080AAEEC now overlays the scrolling stone layer from the first title/main-menu visit. The grid stays fixed while the stone scrolls, and sits behind text and logo. Original cold startup enabled BG0+OBJ only (1141), while subsequent menu entries enabled BG1 too (1341); the user's requested PC behavior shows the grid on startup as well. The port previously omitted BG1 entirely. The title prompt observes its original90-frame input gate and blinking rule. Main-menu entries slide in from alternating sides. New Game uses the original screen/audio fade before the pre-level map. No gameplay simulation runs during either menus or map. The map music remains confined to the map, and the level soundtrack starts when gameplay begins.

Difficulty selects the already recovered combat damage rules: easy halves incoming enemy damage and increases outgoing damage; normal applies its original two-thirds incoming scaling; hard increases incoming damage and reduces outgoing damage. The chosen difficulty and language persist on level advancement and R restart. Initial continue values5/3/2 are selected, but the original continue screens and finite continue progression are not implemented yet. R still follows the documented PC checkpoint policy. Language affects menus and map screens; existing simple host gameplay notices remain English.

Recovery and boundaries

The Main-menu Scores destination now runs the original1737C viewer natively. It displays the18 original seeded entries in three localized groups, with the original scrolling, arrow blink, fonts and colors. Arrow keys and mouse arrows change group; Enter/Esc or a center click leaves. Original16F70 ranking and16F98 name entry now connect Quit-run/campaign-ending records, keyboard typing and the separate scores.dat file. See scores.md.

src/menu.c reconstructs the1862C outer loop and page callbacks16A34 (main), 17BBC (language),17CD0 (title),17DB8 (difficulty),17F7C (single-player) and180D4 (music/credits options), plus179DC (credits) and16BE4 (password). It preserves input ordering, edge navigation, selection clamps, sound commands, state markers, title counter reset and the final fade boundary. Rendering uses the same shared ROM font/palette canvas as map_view.c. Title-first startup and inline Language are requested PC changes to the original flow. The recovered Language handler remains available only to recovery fixtures. The first Title tick starts menu music; Press Start preserves sequence position. It retains the old page's final submitted frame when an input changes pages, as the original callback does. The background uses tiles0A8368 and the original 64x64 tilemap construction; the logo's three64x64 sprites use0B5434. No ROM CPU instructions execute in the port.

Frontend pages are0,1,4,8,9,11,12; page10 is a recovery-only diagnostic. Multiplayer and scores remain unfinished. Their entries give a clear unavailable notice and keep the current menu usable. These guarded destinations are PC prototype boundaries, not recovered original behavior or completed features. Publisher/boot screens, remaining menu pages also remain. Pause Continue/Quit/Yes/No now connects to the frontend, alongside persistent saved options and original chapter panels; see pause and completion. The full game is not claimed feature-identical by this milestone.

Validation

tests/test_menu_rom.py compares8,694 original-ROM menu frames: page/selection, marker/offset, language/difficulty/music, fade state, command order, glyph submissions and15,552,000 independently composed OAM/VRAM pixels. All three languages and difficulty tiers, early title input, music toggles, navigation boundaries, back and repeated confirmation during fade are covered. ARM runs only in that isolated test oracle. Shared map/font regression also passes864 submission cases,4,147,200 background pixels,691,200 composed pixels and8,976 fade/input frames after extracting the shared composition stage.

The pixel reference now also samples original BG1 tile/map VRAM, enabling that layer after Language to reflect the requested startup correction. Thus the startup grid is an explicit PC addition to the original cold-boot display state, with exact original artwork and priority, rather than a claim of identical cold-boot pixels. A first-visit native check proves transparent grid holes retain the stone background and nonzero grid samples replace it before any gameplay. Malformed grid data is rejected at initialization. The current title-first/inline-language tests pass70,367 checks over9,242 frames and18 new games under ASan/UBSan/leak detection. They verify first-tick menu music, the original title input gate, backward/forward wrapping, full cycles by mouse clicks, immediate localization, unchanged music state, and language carry through New Game. The ROM fixture explicitly enters the recovered old Language page and uses original16748 to submit the added Language label, preserving independent original glyph/VRAM pixel comparisons without claiming the changed startup/options flow was original behavior.

Credits include2,670 compared frames and three complete scrolls, all89 source lines/88 newline advances, entry/re-entry, Up/Down priority, acceleration and release, manual confirm/back, and automatic return. String246 currently resolves to the same original ROM data for all three languages. The0.5-pixel/tick scroll becomes2 pixels while Down is held; Up takes precedence and freezes it. The 16-pixel line advance preserves the original empty-line behavior. A leading asterisk selects the highlighted palette, not another font:16748 always receives font0. The logo retracts while the background and music keep running. Manual exit suppresses text immediately and changes page on the next tick. Natural completion returns that tick. Extra draws do not advance scroll or input.

ssa_menu_step_input separates held keys from pressed edges; the existing step entry remains available. The Win32 adapter tracks Up/W and Down/S separately, including simultaneous alternate keys, key releases, and focus-loss clearing. ROM text is bounded; lines that would overflow the original32-byte stack buffer are rejected in the native port.

Password coverage adds4,830 ROM frames: all36 table matches and complete fades, all three languages, cursor wrap/highlight, invalid submission, character cycles, hold repeat and byte-counter overflow. Up/Down counters wrap255 back to32; repeat requires counter>30 and a multiple of4. Down takes priority. Right/Left wrap the eight-position cursor; Right takes priority. The editor starts at A_______. The original measures password width with spacing0 but draws with spacing1; the selected character is submitted first in palette1, then the complete string in palette2, preserving OAM priority. The default library level limit is12; the frontend sets9, guarding later-map passwords before fading or changing state.

One original data quirk is table entry12, the seven-character MEDIUM_. The eight-character cycling editor cannot produce that terminating NUL. The ROM comparison supplies this memory state explicitly to validate the original match; The new PC typing path accepts it directly, while the original cycling path and its independent ROM comparison retain the original behavior.

Typed password submission now ignores trailing underscore placeholders on both the entered text and ROM code. The display already pads a short typed field to eight slots; validation previously compared the shorter NUL-terminated buffer against the ROM's underscore-filled string, incorrectly rejecting ordinary words until arrow editing materialized the padding. EASY, EASY_ and EASY____ now select the same entry directly. MEDIUM, MEDIUM_ and MEDIUM__ also work despite the ROM's seven-byte entry. Internal underscores, wrong characters and incomplete words remain invalid. Cursor/editing state is not changed by normalization. The original arrow-only comparison still uses exact ROM matching.

The shared menu regression now passes72577 ASan/UBSan/leak checks over9547frames, including all36codes with every permitted suffix-padding length, lowercase typing, Enter/click submission without any arrow edits, and negative prefix/word cases. Windows password automation now types only the bare word in both renderers, using real WM_CHAR delivery plus backspace correction, then Enter in reference mode or a letterboxed mouse click in PC mode. The Windows password test also runs the full MSVC menu checker and compares every summary field with GCC.

ssa_native_game_init_loadout connects accepted settings1..36 to the recovered 1240C startup table. Setting0 preserves the existing ordinary initialization. Nonzero settings must correspond to the requested level. Native game instances are allocated at stable addresses; the frontend replaces its initial instance after the password fade, binds audio, captures entry inventory, then starts the map view. Menu music remains during editing; map music belongs only to the map. Restart uses that captured inventory and advancement uses earned inventory.

tests/test_menu.c passes70,367 checks across9,242 frames and18 new games under GCC ASan/UBSan/leak detection and MSVC. It covers all3x3 language/difficulty combinations with music on/off, real rendering, output sentinels, invalid API arguments, malformed artwork/credits, unsupported destinations, complete credits, idempotent drawing and complete fades. PC cases type all36 actual passwords in lowercase, edit/full-buffer/invalid-character cases, hover/click localized labels, reject old-page click-through and verify letterbox edges in both aspect ratios.

tests/test_password_start.py and the MSVC checker agree on1,975 assertions, 24 password starts (eight maps × three difficulties),24 fresh normal level starts, 24 existing-progress starts and672 native gameplay/render frames. Another24 fresh-loadout restarts complement the24 password entry restarts. GCC uses ASan/UBSan/leak checking. Fresh entries are checked directly against ROM words; existing progress retains its complete weapons/ammo/selection/history and inventory. These are startup/integration checks, not campaign completions or admission of another map. The recovered loadout suite still passes12,979 ROM comparisons. scripts/test-password-start.ps1 also enters passwords using normal Windows messages, starting maps2/5/8 across all three difficulties and languages in both renderers, with music enabled/disabled, pre-level map transitions and R restart. The PC-renderer cases retain original arrow entry; reference-renderer cases send keyboard/WM_CHAR text, including correction before typing the complete password. The middle test selector adjusts to preserve language1 as the campaign grows; the first/final selectors cover languages0/2. Six additional direct-launch cases cover maps1/4/8 and both renderers. The live Windows entry snapshot is checked against the ROM's starter weapons, ammo and selection after restart. The new level selector uses the same explicit ssa_native_game_init_loadout API as password entry. Each case verifies the entry inventory at both level reveals and real muted audio-device operation. Reports: password-start-validation.json and windows-password-start-validation.json.

scripts/test-native-menu.ps1 exercises all nine language/difficulty combinations through the actual Windows launcher. It uses normal window messages for language cycling in Options, title, mouse hover/click on Main (including a blank-space click), options, music toggling twice, credits with held keys/releases/focus loss, new game, difficulty and map confirmation, then verifies native difficulty/language and R restart. Both renderers, music enabled/disabled and real muted audio devices are included. Each case freezes gameplay for288 menu ticks (including72 credits checks) and140 map ticks. Standard startup follows the direct new-game route in187 menu ticks. Enabled-music cases compare the complete music player and pending/fade state across repeated command8 under the audio mutex; title-to-main and Options-to-main preserve sequence positions and voice ownership. The original menu still emits command8; the Win32 adapter makes an already active menu song request idempotent. Off/on retains its original stop/restart semantics. Physical input/listening remain untested.

The Main mouse checks now hold the audio mutex while delivering actual window messages and require exactly one new mixer start for each changed highlight. Same-row motion, blank-space motion/reentry and clicking the current row require zero additional starts; the music player must remain byte-identical. These checks run on both Main visits in every language/difficulty case, with music on/off and both renderers. Pointer input uses the normal audio backend and original cue.

ssa_ui_viewport/ssa_ui_pointer and ssa_ui_text are reusable helpers for future NETRICSA mouse navigation and score-name typing. Those screens themselves remain unimplemented; these helpers do not claim their feature parity.

Use .\decomp.ps1 test-menu-rom, .\decomp.ps1 test-menu, and powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts/test-native-menu.ps1 -SkipBuild. Reports: menu-rom-validation.json, menu-validation.json, windows-native-menu-validation.json. Byte-matching catalogue progress is separate from these behavioral ports; no new exact matches are claimed here. The actual decomp.wtf claim and two compiler comparisons of179DC reached96.8% with recovered/menu_credits.c; this is NOT an exact match. Remaining differences include load/register scheduling, line-loop literal placement and return block orientation. The claim was released with recovery and matching notes. The password candidate recovered/menu_password.c reached78.5% after two actual decomp.wtf compiler comparisons; this is also NOT exact. The claim was released with the editor/graphics findings and remaining scheduling/control-flow notes.