stern-event-agent

A passive gameplay-event logger for Stern Spike 2 pinball, developed against King Kong LE 0.97. It records the game's own events with RFC 3339 UTC timestamps (millisecond precision) — the game is not modified, nothing scores, nothing blocks.

The logger is a PAD mode: a small shared object (mode.so) that the game process loads via LD_PRELOAD. It hooks function sites inside the game, and every hook is verified against the first two machine instructions of that function before it is touched — a wrong or missing port hooks nothing, logs why, and the game runs stock.

Status (as of 2026-10-12)

Part	State
Bus events (EV): game/ball/bonus start/end, tilt, all players' scores at bonus end	deployed on the machine, verified in play
Shots (SHOT): every named shot dispatched while a ball is up	deployed on the machine, verified in play
Stock modes (gamelog: MODE START/END): the game's own 22 modes with score delta	deployed on the machine, verified in play (mode_score is approximate)
Award screens (AWARD id=…): every award the game shows, extra-ball tracking	deployed on the machine, verified in play — except the extra-ball award id is not yet confirmed (below)
Switch/button log (/dump/switch.log, SW lines with generated names)	deployed on the machine, verified in play (flippers on both edges; sites located with portswitch.switch_source and added to the port)

The machine currently runs the v3 build (events, shots, modes, awards, switch log). The v3 work needed more than a rebuild: the port had no switch_edge / switch_drain sites or switch_* values, so the runtime's edge logger could never arm. They were located in the King Kong LE 0.97 ELF with the decryptor's pinball_decryptor.plugins.stern.portswitch.switch_source() (generation-B framework) and added to ports/king_kong_le-0.97.port.

Files

File	What it is
gamelog.c	the logger: a passive PAD mode. It never pm_begin()s, never blocks, allocates nothing — it only watches and writes [GAMELOG] lines
pad_mode_runtime.c	the PAD Modes SDK runtime, patched: (a) a GAMELOG section — passive stock-mode and award watching, exporting gl_award_seq() / gl_last_award_id() to modes; (b) the per-edge switch logger to /dump/switch.log; (c) the Insider Connected gate made passive. Our exact changes vs upstream: docs/runtime-patch.diff
switch_names.inc	King Kong LE 0.97 switch id → name table (104 entries, ids 1–104), #included by the runtime's switch logger. Generated from the game's own data (method: swnames.py in the decryptor repo); fix names here if any are wrong
pad_mode.h, pad_stock.h	unmodified SDK headers (needed by the build)
build_mode.sh	unmodified SDK build script: compiles the runtime + your mode into one -nostdlib shared object and refuses banned libc calls
event_probe.c, event_read.py	the event-bus measurement instrument and its log reader — how bus event ids are identified for another game (MODE_SDK.md, "Measuring events on another game")
ports/king_kong_le-0.97.port	the King Kong LE 0.97 port: 121 verified sites, 55 named shots, 6 bus events. Installed on the machine as /usr/local/padmode/game.port
docs/runtime-patch.diff	this project's changes to the upstream runtime (base: pinball-asset-decryptor commit 7faf8f08, the last upstream change to that file)

What gets logged

/dump/mode.log (deployed)

Append-only, RFC 3339 UTC stamps with millisecond precision, survives reboots:

[pad] port ...: king_kong_le 0.97, 121 sites, 55 shots          <- runtime armed (all hook words verified)
[GAMELOG] 2026-10-12T20:45:12.123Z up: game king_kong_le 0.97, 55 named shots; event ids 77/37/52/40/200/198; extra_ball_award=13
[GAMELOG] 2026-10-12T20:45:12.123Z EV game_start - GAME START
[GAMELOG] 2026-10-12T20:45:12.123Z EV ball_start player=1 ball=1 score=0
[GAMELOG] 2026-10-12T20:45:12.123Z SHOT X1 player=1 ball=1 score=7,349,830    <- all 55 named shots
[GAMELOG] 2026-10-12T20:45:12.123Z EV ball_end player=1 ball=1 score=91,153,090
[GAMELOG] 2026-10-12T20:45:12.123Z EV bonus_end
[GAMELOG] 2026-10-12T20:45:12.123Z SCORES P1=95,421,190 P2=0 P3=0 P4=0
[GAMELOG] 2026-10-12T20:45:12.123Z EV tilt_warning player=1
[GAMELOG] 2026-10-12T20:45:12.123Z EV tilt player=1 ball=2
[pad] gamelog: 2026-10-12T20:45:12.123Z MODE START 5 (Island Scene Escape the Swamp) player=1 score=...
[pad] gamelog: 2026-10-12T20:45:12.123Z MODE END 5 (Island Scene Escape the Swamp) player=1 score=... mode_score=... dur=...ms
[GAMELOG] 2026-10-12T20:45:12.123Z AWARD EXTRA BALL (id=13) player=1              <- next ball logs as "ball N (EXTRA BALL)"
[GAMELOG] 2026-10-12T20:45:12.123Z AWARD id=<n> player=1 score=...                <- every award screen

Bus event ids (King Kong 0.97): game_start=0x4d, ball_start=0x25, ball_end=0x34, bonus_end=0x28, tilt_warning=0xc8, tilt=0xc6. This build has no bus id for game over (the last ball_end/bonus_end is the close) or for bonus start.

Extra balls: the game re-fires ball_start for an extra ball. The runtime's award-screen hook counts the awards, and one whose id matches extra_ball_award (default 13, overridable with a value extra_ball_award line in the port file) makes the replayed ball log as ball N (EXTRA BALL) instead of advancing the count.

Mode detail: the runtime polls each of the game's 22 mode objects' ACTIVE state per tick and logs START/END with the player's score at each edge — mode_score= is the score delta across the mode (approximate when other scoring runs simultaneously).

Insider Connected: stock. The upstream runtime vetoes score/session reports whenever modes are installed; this build makes that gate passive — reports flow exactly as stock (and are logged once), and the logger adds no scores of its own. Known cosmetic issue: the boot banner still prints the upstream "score reports stay on this machine" line — the later passive gate line is the truth.

/dump/switch.log (deployed)

The runtime's switch-edge handler writes every edge of the human-activated buttons to /dump/switch.log — the lockdown/action button (34), the start button (36) and the two flipper buttons (62/63), attract included. Names are quoted; the upper-flipper button switches (64/65) are wired in parallel with the main flipper buttons on this cabinet, so they are left out:

2026-10-12T20:45:12.123Z SW <id> "<NAME>" level=<0|1> hit=<0|1> game=<0|1>

level is the switch's raw state after the edge, hit is the game's own "counts as a hit" verdict, game whether a player is up. The logged ids are the gl_buttons[] list in the runtime's switch-edge handler; names come from switch_names.inc.

Build

Cross-compile on macOS in a Debian container (armhf, hard-float, -nostdlib):

docker run --rm --platform linux/arm64 -v "$PWD:/work" -w /work debian:12 \
  sh -c 'apt-get update -qq && apt-get install -y -qq gcc-arm-linux-gnueabihf >/dev/null \
  && bash build_mode.sh -o mode.so gamelog.c'

build_mode.sh compiles pad_mode_runtime.c + gamelog.c into one object (~228 KB) and fails the build if any pm_ symbol does not exist or any banned libc call is made (allocation, threads, sleeping, stdio, processes). The few libc calls that are used (clock_gettime, open, write, close, …) resolve from the game's own libc when the object loads.

The event probe builds without the runtime: build_mode.sh -p -o event_probe.so event_probe.c

Install / deploy (the machine)

The machine (hostname stern-spike2) has root SSH (key-only, port 22). The logger lives on the rootfs, which is normally read-only:

Path on the machine	From this repo
/usr/local/padmode/mode.so	the built mode.so
/usr/local/padmode/game.port	ports/king_kong_le-0.97.port
/etc/init.d/game_monitor	boot hook: preloads mode.so into the game only if it exists (stock script kept at game_monitor.stock)

Deploy a new build:

scp mode.so root@stern-spike2:/tmp/
ssh root@stern-spike2 'mount -o remount,rw /; cp /tmp/mode.so /usr/local/padmode/mode.so;
  chmod 755 /usr/local/padmode/mode.so; sync; mount -o remount,ro / || true; reboot'

Live view: ssh root@stern-spike2 'tail -f /dump/mode.log'

Housekeeping: /dump is a 532 MiB rw partition shared with crash dumps and connectivity logs; mode.log grows a few MB per long session (a few hundred SHOT lines per ball is normal). Pull it over SSH and rotate as needed; : > /dump/mode.log truncates it safely while running (same for switch.log once deployed).

Rollback: rm -rf /usr/local/padmode, restore /etc/init.d/game_monitor.stock, reboot — the machine is stock again (SSH remains).

Measuring events for another game

event_probe.c hooks the game's event bus (subscribe / dispatch) and its tick, and logs every registration and per-window dispatch counts to /dump/event.log. Procedure (the full version is MODE_SDK.md, "Measuring events on another game"):

1. build_mode.sh -p -o event_probe.so event_probe.c
2. Put the target's subscribe / dispatch / tick sites (address + first two instruction words) in /dump/event.sites — the SDK's port_words.py (in the decryptor repo) fills and checks those words from the game's ELF.
3. Preload event_probe.so with PAD_MODE_SO (beside the stock runtime — its trampoline keeps the moved words where the runtime still verifies them).
4. Play; at interesting moments echo <label> > /dump/event.mark to close a window (and open the next); echo <id> > /dump/event.force starts/stops a stock mode the way a rule does.
5. event_read.py /dump/event.log — which ids fired in which window, with handlers, priorities and callers.

The ids you name that way become the event lines of a port (the six in king_kong_le-0.97.port were found this way, in the SDK's emulator).

Unfinished work / known issues

• The extra-ball award id is unconfirmed. Default 13 is a static guess from the game's object-name tables; every award id is logged, so earn an extra ball, read the AWARD line, and pin it down (or override it in the port).
• The master SD image does not contain the logger — it was installed over SSH onto the card in the machine. Making it survive a re-flash needs a debugfs inject of mode.so + game.port + the hooked game_monitor into the master image.
• No network streaming yet. Logs are pulled over SSH; the plan is for the mode to ship them itself (socket() is not on the build's banned list).
• Cosmetic: the boot banner still prints the upstream "score reports stay on this machine" line (see Insider Connected above).
• mode_score is an approximation (see above).

Provenance

Built on the PAD Modes SDK (pinball-asset-decryptor/tools/spike2_emu/modes/sdk/ — the mattlqx/pinball-asset-decryptor Gitea repo, itself a fork of davidvanderburgh/pinball-asset-decryptor; the SDK docs there — MODE_SDK.md, MODE_PARAMETERS.md, MODE_LIMITS.md — apply to everything in this repo). Everything in this repo is unmodified SDK content except:

• gamelog.c (new)
• switch_names.inc (new)
• pad_mode_runtime.c (upstream runtime + the patch in docs/runtime-patch.diff)
• README.md

ports/king_kong_le-0.97.port, event_probe.c, event_read.py, build_mode.sh and the headers are the SDK's, unmodified (the port is emulator-proven by the SDK repo authors).

The machine's SSH setup (dropbear + sftp-server on the Spike 2) is documented separately in the local pinball-assets/README.md and is not part of this project — this logger uses that SSH, it does not provide it.