Reverts dafc35f: free_cores = 1 in totk.ini lifts the virtual core gate again, as in 0.2.8. The mode stays as an
experiment, and every place a player meets it says the game crashes: totk.ini.example, a WARNING line in the start log,
and a line under every crash report and FATAL while the gate is off (kern_free_cores_note), so a log from #212 names
the cause at once.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Earlier settings menus wrote free_cores = 1 under the label "Virtual core gate", which promised the gate. Without it a
thread that holds no virtual core reports its ideal core to GetCurrentProcessorNumber, so the game's job workers all
report core 0 and run its per-core code at once. On 1.2.1 two of them add the same per-core NVN control memory, which
retires the command handle the other just recorded, and its CallCommands fails at start (#212); on 1.4.3 the game
corrupts a heap in main+0x82e00 or hangs at the title menu. A player with such a totk.ini crashed at every start and
the menu no longer shows the row.
free_cores is no longer a setting: only TOTK_FREE_CORES in the environment lifts the gate, and a free_cores value in
totk.ini is logged as ignored. The kernel probe asks the kernel whether the gate is on.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
