Elder ENB

Elder ENB begins with a transactional profile core: one ProfilePackage binds an overlay ID, a preset ID, and an ordered list of value operations. The engine validates and stages the complete package before changing observable state, so callers cannot accidentally apply only the overlay or only the preset and still receive success.

What This Slice Guarantees

• Apply rejects malformed packages before mutation.
• Every valid package stages from the immutable baseline, preventing additive or multiplicative accumulation across selections.
• Values, active package identity, and generation commit together.
• Every API path returns a structured result and one or more stable diagnostics.
• Reapplying the exact active package returns ALREADY_ACTIVE without mutation or a generation increment.
• RemoveActive restores the baseline in one commit; removing with no active package returns NO_ACTIVE_PROFILE.

The current operation kinds are Set, Add, and Multiply. Multiply operands must be finite and strictly greater than zero.

Build and Test

Requirements:

• CMake 4.2 or newer
• Visual Studio 18 2026 with the x64 MSVC toolchain

cmake --preset vs2026-x64
cmake --build --preset vs2026-debug
ctest --preset vs2026-debug --output-on-failure --no-tests=error

The preset selects Visual Studio 18 2026, x64, C++23, and the static MSVC runtime (/MT, or /MTd for Debug).

API Shape

#include <elder/profiles/TransactionalProfile.hpp>

using namespace elder::profiles;

TransactionalProfile profiles{{
    {"exposure", 1.0},
    {"saturation", 1.0},
}};

ProfilePackage package{
    "elder.overlay.cinematic",
    "elder.preset.twilight",
    {
        {"exposure", OperationKind::Add, 0.25},
        {"saturation", OperationKind::Multiply, 1.1},
    },
};

const ProfileReport report = profiles.Apply(package);
if (!report.committed()) {
    // Inspect report.result and report.diagnostics; failure is never silent.
}

Stable Diagnostic Codes

Code	Meaning
PROFILE_APPLIED	A complete package committed.
PROFILE_ALREADY_ACTIVE	The exact package is already active; no state changed.
PROFILE_REMOVED	Active state was removed and baseline restored.
NO_ACTIVE_PROFILE	Removal was requested with no active package.
EMPTY_OVERLAY_ID	The overlay ID is empty.
EMPTY_PRESET_ID	The preset ID is empty.
EMPTY_OPERATIONS	The package has no operations.
UNKNOWN_TARGET_KEY	An operation targets a key absent from the baseline.
DUPLICATE_TARGET_KEY	More than one operation targets the same key.
NON_FINITE_VALUE	An operand or staged result is NaN or infinity.
INVALID_MULTIPLY_OPERAND	A multiply operand is zero or negative.

See docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for the state transition and failure model.

Legacy KreatE Binding Compiler

elder_binding_compiler validates the recovered overlay ↔ preset relationship against config/legacy-kreate-bindings.csv. The reviewed catalog contains 37 selected bindings, 18 retired divergent duplicates, and four explicit aliases. It locks exact source filenames/directories and SHA-256 values; runtime selection never uses timestamps.

The scanner captures only [OVERLAYINFO] UIName, UIGroups, and UIOrdering, plus the five identity fields in PresetInfo.ini. Source files are otherwise handled only as opaque SHA-256 byte streams. Generated manifests contain IDs and hashes, never legacy operation bodies.

cmake --preset vs2026-x64
cmake --build --preset vs2026-debug
ctest --preset vs2026-debug --output-on-failure --no-tests=error

The integration CTest runs the CLI against the configured read-only roots and writes its deterministic manifest/report under out/build/vs2026-x64/artifacts/task-02/. Any missing, changed, ambiguous, duplicate, orphaned, unaccounted, or unbound entry fails closed.

The normal build contains no workstation-specific source path. To enable the read-only recovery integration test, configure both external roots explicitly:

cmake --preset vs2026-x64 `
  -DELDER_LEGACY_OVERLAY_ROOT="<absolute overlay directory>" `
  -DELDER_LEGACY_PRESET_ROOT="<absolute KreatE preset directory>"

If neither root is supplied, the portable unit-test suite remains enabled and the recovery-only integration test is omitted. Supplying only one root, or a relative root, fails configuration.

Legacy KreatE Record Auditor

elder_preset_auditor recursively validates only the 37 preset directories selected by the binding catalog. It tokenizes UTF-8 INI structure, validates record identity and typed values, detects duplicate keys/sections and record identities, and hashes every INI plus a normalized per-preset tree. Its manifest and report contain only relative identities/paths, hashes, counts, line numbers, and stable diagnostic codes; legacy record bodies are never copied into generated output.

Content findings do not abort the default audit. --fail-on-findings provides an explicit strict mode for release gates, while I/O, UTF-8, and structural parse faults always fail. The large read-only corpus integration is Release only; Debug retains the fast unit and binding suites:

cmake --build --preset vs2026-debug
ctest --preset vs2026-debug --output-on-failure --no-tests=error
cmake --build --preset vs2026-release
ctest --preset vs2026-release --output-on-failure --no-tests=error

Against the current recovered corpus, the integration accounts for 37 presets and 49,358 INIs. It reports 1,077 INVALID_NUMERIC_TOKEN findings across four presets and 481 SUSPICIOUS_DUPLICATE_FILENAME findings (13 per preset), with zero fatal errors. These are repair inputs rather than silently ignored load failures.

First-Five Paired Improvement Bundles

elder_profile_bundle_compiler turns the guarded rules in config/first-five-improvements.csv into complete one-selection bundles for 10.28.16, 11.11.11, Arrival of Autumn, Jötunheimar, and Neutral. Each bundle contains exactly one overlay and its full KreatE preset tree. They are not independent menu choices.

The compiler verifies the selected binding, source file SHA-256 values, preset tree SHA-256, exact old values, semantic types, and numeric bounds before it copies anything. It repairs only the exact fused form Tint = r,g,b,a[DepthOfField]; near matches fail closed. Generated trees are then re-audited for malformed or non-finite values, invalid numeric tokens, record identity drift, unsupported overlay keys, and pairing drift. Source roots are re-hashed after compilation and are never modified.

For every changed OVERLAYPARAM, the compiler also resolves the source section's existing Category, Name, and Operation fields into an exact target filename, category, key, and operation type. Missing, duplicate, malformed, or unsupported bindings abort publication. These verified binding strings are written to provenance.csv; each artistic rationale is explicitly classified as INTENDED_OUTCOME and is not treated as proof of shader-runtime semantics.

When the two external legacy roots are configured, the real-corpus integration test emits ignored build artifacts under out/build/vs2026-x64/artifacts/task-04/<configuration>/first-five-bundles/:

• five complete paired profile directories;
• bundle-index.csv with hashes, byte sizes, repair/change counts, and debt;
• provenance.csv with every guarded transform and repair;
• report.txt with deterministic aggregate and per-profile results.

The tracked manifest intentionally preserves suspicious duplicate export names as debt instead of conflating them with duplicate record identities. The five current bundles carry 65 such filenames (13 each); the complete 37-profile legacy corpus retains the previously audited total of 481.

Five-Profile Weather Themes

elder_weather_theme_compiler matures the complete weather set for the same five paired bundles. It first reproduces the guarded first-pass bundle and then transforms every selected weather record as one transactional publication. The tracked theme registry separates profile intent from six weather-family targets and four time-of-day targets. The project-owned world-weather layer owns physical scene color; the overlay remains the photographic response layer.

The emitted profile and weather content is self-contained. The current adapter preserves the recovered KreatE directory shape only for one-time offline migration and evidence. The validated result is a seed corpus for Elder's own typed native profile format; it is not a runtime compatibility promise. KreatE, Extender, and Silent Horizons are not runtime requirements and none of their shader payloads are shipped here. The finished Elder distribution's only true external runtime requirements are ENBSeries and Address Library.

The pass covers sky upper/lower, horizon and far fog, sunlight, ambient and directional ambient, cloud LOD, and all 29 authored cloud layers. It validates every cloud component with the authored alpha contribution (412,380 checks in the current five-profile corpus), preserves alpha tokens, and does not alter effect lighting, water multipliers, volumetrics, precipitation, or ImageSpace references. Publication fails on missing fields, changed source trees, non-finite or out-of-range values, temporal inversion, fog/horizon divergence, lost cloud/sky separation, unreadable nights, clipped snow, protected-field drift, a profile's cross-layer tint budget, a mismatched expected count, or any unlisted bundle/file outside the exact first-pass payload contract. Every successful package carries input-tree-manifest.csv, a deterministic manifest of every snapshotted input file, byte count, and SHA-256.

The tracked shader semantic registry is a clean-room manifest. It contains only project semantic IDs, opaque evidence IDs, artifact and span fingerprints, span lengths, flank-context fingerprints, paraphrased meaning, and the exact profiles that require each typed binding. Each tuple is checked independently in every listed profile; bindings from one overlay cannot satisfy another. Raw source paths, symbols, and source spans live only in an ignored protected sidecar outside this repository. Structural registry validation is a non-publishing dry run and never creates a compile capability. Weather publication requires the protected evidence pass, which re-hashes the protected artifacts and re-checks every exact span and its context before minting the opaque capability. The unresolved Vignette intensity binding remains explicit uncertainty, so the compiler does not guess or emit a mutation for it. External evidence is read-only, is not shipped, and is neither a runtime nor ordinary-build dependency.

Weather publication uses an exclusive destination lock and unique owned stage, backup, snapshot, and scratch trees. The source is copied into an owned snapshot, the snapshot hash is checked against the initial source hash, and all validation and transformation reads only that snapshot. The original source and snapshot must match during snapshot creation, and the immutable snapshot is re-hashed before publication. Existing output is replaceable only when it carries the exact versioned Elder ownership marker. Canonical, final-path, case-insensitive, file-identity, ancestor/descendant, and reparse-point checks reject aliases before staging. A failed swap rolls the owned backup back into place. Backup-cleanup failure is also rolled back before failure is reported; if rollback is impossible after a committed swap, the transaction reports the commit explicitly. Cleanup verifies the original marker and never recreates or "repairs" ownership evidence. All --expect-* gates run before the final swap, so a mismatch leaves an absent or pre-existing destination byte-identical.

Enable the full read-only integration by supplying the recovered shader source root and its separately protected evidence sidecar in addition to the two legacy roots:

cmake --preset vs2026-x64 `
  -DELDER_LEGACY_OVERLAY_ROOT="<absolute overlay directory>" `
  -DELDER_LEGACY_PRESET_ROOT="<absolute KreatE preset directory>" `
  -DELDER_SH2_SOURCE_ROOT="<absolute protected shader source directory>" `
  -DELDER_SH2_EVIDENCE_SIDECAR="<absolute protected evidence sidecar>"
cmake --build --preset vs2026-release
ctest --preset vs2026-release -R elder_five_profile_weather_theme_integration `
  --output-on-failure --no-tests=error

Generated bundles and their index, per-record provenance, and validation report are written only under out/build/.../artifacts/task-05/<configuration>/weather-theme-bundles/.

License

Elder ENB is licensed under the MIT License. See LICENSE.

Prior shader-author attribution is a hard constraint and is not waived by the license: every credit in the shader headers and native/NOTICE.md stays in place, in this repository and on any public surface.