Widget Workshop
A decompilation and native port of Widget Workshop: A Mad Scientist's
Laboratory (Maxis, 1995) to Rust, for Linux, Windows, macOS and
WebAssembly.
Play it in your browser: https://doridian.github.io/WidgetWorkshop/ (the
page asks for the CD image, docs/web.md), or download it for
Linux, Windows or macOS from the
releases
(Packages).
The port opens straight into the editor (the original's intro and main
menu are left out): the parts tray, wiring, the worksheets, undo and the
parts' own settings dialogs; the logic, number, science, sound and time,
input and display parts; puzzle mode; widgets loaded and saved in the
original's .WGT format; recording and WAV import; and the help viewer
for WIDGET.HLP. It's a non-matching decompilation of the Win95 build's
WIDGET.EXE: the code behaves like the original, but doesn't compile to
the same bytes. The stack is winit, wgpu and cpal, with a resizable
window, fullscreen and UI scaling.
This repository contains no game data files or original code. You
need your own copy of the game's CD.
Getting the game
The port reads the Mac/PC CD (volume WIDGETS), as an .iso or as
a folder with its files. The Internet
Archive has the .iso:
widget-workshop.
It also reads the much smaller OS/2 Warp CD (WW1_01A.ISO, game folder
WIDGET/): its modules are OS/2 executables whose dialogs, menu, strings
and pointers the port turns into the Win95 build's
(docs/os2.md).
The OS/2 CD has no Windows fonts, so the port bundles free stand-ins
(crates/engine/fonts): Wine's MS Sans Serif and Small Fonts, and Widget
Sans, rendered from Liberation Sans, for the gadgets' Arial. When the
Mac/PC CD's own fonts (WIN31/SVGA) are there, they win.
Packages
Every push builds the port as one file per platform
(.github/workflows/build.yml); a v* tag publishes them on its release:
widget-workshop-linux-x86_64.AppImage, widget-workshop-linux-arm64.AppImagewidget-workshop-windows-x86_64.exe (the C runtime linked in)widget-workshop-macos.dmg: Widget Workshop.app, for Apple silicon and
Intel (signed ad hoc only: the first start needs a right click, Open)widget-workshop-web.zip: the browser build, as on the Pages site
None of them carries game data. Started without a CD (from its icon) and
with no .iso or orig in the working directory, the port asks for the
CD image with the system's file dialog and keeps its path in its data
directory (cd-path.txt in ~/.local/share/widget-workshop,
%APPDATA%\Widget Workshop, ~/Library/Application Support/Widget Workshop);
it doesn't ask again while the file is there. On Linux the dialog is the
desktop's (xdg-desktop-portal, else zenity). The icon is the port's own
(tools/make-icon.py).
Running
cargo run --release -p widget # the .iso here, else orig/
cargo run --release -p widget -- CD.iso MY.WGT # a CD and a widget to open
cargo run --release -p widget -- CD.iso 'https://…/widget.html#w=…' # a widget link
cargo run --release -p widget -- --help
Options: --no-audio, --window-size=WxH, --fullscreen, --windowed,
--ui-scale=N|auto (remembered in the settings file), --overrides=DIR
(resources that replace or add to the CD's) and --export=DIR (writes
every resource there in that layout and quits). On Linux the sound needs
ALSA's headers to build (libasound2-dev).
Options ▸ Settings, the port's own, changes the UI scale on the spot
(Automatic, or 1× to 4× in quarters) and switches the port's
enhancements of the original on or off, all of them at once
(original=true in the settings file turns them off). The
enhancements: the parts tray shows a whole folder at once, its pages one
under the other, without the page arrows; and the toolbars, dialogs and
message boxes are dragged whole, not as an outline.
Its Change CD... button, after "Save changes?", picks another CD
image and starts the game again on it (in the browser, the page's start
form comes back).
Widgets travel as links too (docs/web.md):
File ▸ Copy Link to Widget puts one on the clipboard, which opens the
widget in the browser build for anyone with the CD, and File ▸ Open
Widget Link (Ctrl+V) opens the one on the clipboard, natively too.
The browser build: tools/build-web.sh, docs/web.md.
Tools
tools/gh, tools/ghidra/: headless Ghidra setup and CLI for the decompilation.tools/build-web.sh: builds the browser version into web/.tools/make-icon.py: draws the port's icon.
Docs
Legal
The port's code is under the AGPL-3.0-or-later (LICENSE).
Widget Workshop is © Maxis; this is an unofficial port, and no game data
is included.
