battle-isle

Battle Isle (DOS) taken apart, with the aim of a native compatibility implementation requiring an installed copy of the original game: our own C code, which runs the game with the data of the player's GOG release. See PROVENANCE.md.

1. Source from the programs (src/*.hints): doskit/tools/build.py makes each program's assembly source from the player's copy and checks that it assembles back to the same bytes.
2. Understanding: names, structures and rules in the hints, checked by runs of the original (doskit/tools/run.py).
3. The port (port/): C on doskit's runtime.

No game files go into this repository, and no bytes of them.

Use

git submodule update --init          # doskit
git config core.hooksPath hooks      # once per clone
python3 doskit/tools/isox.py /path/to/game.gog   # -> game/
python3 doskit/tools/build.py src/NAME.hints
python3 doskit/tools/check.py
sh port/build.sh                     # port\build.bat on Windows

Python 3 with capstone (pip install capstone).

Layout

• src/*.hints: what is known about each program.
• tools/NAMEfiles.py: a tool for each data format (tpwmfiles.py: the packed files; palfiles.py: the palettes; ifffiles.py: the pictures; libfiles.py: the graphics libraries; mapfiles.py: the maps and their overviews; datfiles.py: the tables of unit types, ground, maps' codes and AMOK.DAT; txtfiles.py: the texts and the small font; sndfiles.py: the songs and the sound effects, played again into the AdLib's registers and compared with a run's; screens.py: the game's screens drawn from a run's memory and compared with its video memory), and for the rules: fight.py (a fight's outcome), scene.py (the fight scene, a pass at a time: its values and its picture), moves.py (where a unit can move and fire, the path it takes), turn.py (a move carried out, the change of phase, a map's end) and computer.py (the computer player's assessment, plan and commands, and the keys it carries them out with), each done again from a run's memory and compared with what the game made of it.
• port/: the implementation in C (its README says how far it is).
• docs/HANDOFF.md: state, what was learned, what is next.
• AGENTS.md: the rules for working on this; PROVENANCE.md: where the code comes from.
• doskit/: the tools and the runtime (a git submodule).