PHLEGM v8 — Checkpoint 79 — CHOP Runtime Bake Independence

Investigation: the screenshots display the exact old black GDI fallback silhouettes, not the CHOP raster. The screenshot cannot on its own establish why the CHOP bake returned zero. In v78, ChopLoadAndBake() performed a mandatory 256-glyph CHR font bake *before* parsing any icon model. Failure loading data/chr/Packard Bell Font 2024.bin, or failure reconstructing any glyph, disabled all nine 3D icons regardless of whether their geometry was valid.

Changed: bake the nine data-defined CHOP icon meshes and all 16 metallic frames FIRST. The optional CHR glyph bank is attempted afterward and reports a nonfatal warning rather than zeroing the iconic raster. A failed blueprint remains a fatal icon-bake diagnostic and is explicitly reported at MAIN startup; no more silent black fallback without a console error.

Existing v78 metallic near-coplanar area-weighted normals, front-facing black visible feature edges, minimum relative material thickness and v76 End-User archive retention remain unchanged. Existing bootstrap remains unchanged.

Verification: independent static source checks and comparative geometry checks; native Windows/FreeBASIC compilation and screenshot parity MUST still be confirmed on the user's machine. For diagnostics, inspect the startup line 'CHOP: 9 3D models baked and active' vs 'ERROR: CHOP 3D ICONS INACTIVE' and the reported blueprint path.
