Quark system

Quark system is a global table allowing game subsystems to communicate with each other without having them as hardcoded dependencies (see Dependency injection). At the start of game quark system table is populated with Quark instances, which are references to all classes in the game. Initialization happens in tpp::gm::QuarkInitialize (1505 entries total) and tpp::gm::GameCoreModule::Init. QuarkSystemTable is a struct, all elements have fixed positions and consistent across exe versions.

Pseudocode:

struct QuarkSystemTable {
    GimmickUtility gmUtil = nullptr;
    TppSoldier2 tppSolly = nullptr;
    TppPlayer2 tppPlayer = nullptr;
    ...
}

auto hash = StrCode64("TppSoldier2");
auto creator = QuarkCreatorCollector::GetCreator(hash);
auto quark = creator();
auto collector = QuarkCollector::GetInstanceForCreatorId(hash);
collector->AddQuark(quark);
quark->initialize();
return {&quark, hash};

StrCode64 is a hashing function (see Hash Wrangling).

Quark instances are reused later like this (pseudocode):

// tpp::gk::GimmickUtility::EnableDynamicCoverPoint

auto container = fox::GetQuarkSystemTable();
container.GimmickUtilty->SetSomeFlag(param_1, param_2 + 1.5, param_3);

Decompiled form (Ghidra):

pQVar1 = fox::GetQuarkSystemTable();
(**(code **)(**(longlong **)(*(longlong *)(pQVar1 + 0x98) + 0x1b8) + 0x30))
            (*(longlong **)(*(longlong *)(pQVar1 + 0x98) + 0x1b8),param_1,param_2 + 1.5,param_3);

0x98 is a QuarkSystemTable struct offset, 0x1b8 is a base class vtable offset for GimmickUtility implementation, 0x30 is an offset for SetSomeFlag function in GimmickUtilty vtable. Struct offsets and creator keys are not documented.

Resources

• List of quark hashes/keys (quark_hashes.txt): mgsv-lookup-strings.