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.
- 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.
- Understanding: names, structures and rules in the hints, checked
by runs of the original (
doskit/tools/run.py).
- 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).
