Project IGI Studio

What's new

2.0 is the biggest update since the first release.

• The community (2.0). Share your missions with other players and play theirs: browse and search, look at a mission's map and 3D view without taking it, pull it into your studio, and share it back as a remix that credits everyone before you. Browsing needs no account; Google or an email signs you in.
• Cutscenes of your own (2.0). An intro and an outro made from the mission - a fly-over, a shot of each objective, the player taking over - adjusted shot by shot in a cutscene editor that takes the whole window, and played in 3D. One mission runs into the next.
• Vehicles that drive (2.0). An APC, a tank or a truck on a route you click, starting on the alarm or on an event; and any of the levels' recorded flights, in any mission.
• Soldiers that move with the story (2.0). Orders for any soldier: stand, patrol or follow you, then go somewhere else when something happens.
• A 3D view that works like Unreal Engine's editor (2.0). Fly with W A S D, move and turn things with a gizmo, and tilt them on all three axes.
• A tidier studio (2.0). A menu bar, the community a key away, your account and the settings at the foot of the side panel, and one look for every control.
• Your items (1.1). Keep a building, a guard or a whole area - from your missions or the original fourteen - and place it in any mission, on any level. An area brings its walkways, its guards' patrols, and its gates and doors working as they did.
• Music and a picture of your own (1.1). Give a mission another mission's music, the main menu's or the outro's, and the picture the game's mission list shows.

Before that: soldiers on your side, buildings that bring their doors and lifts, a team of AI agents, ground of any height, and your own textures (1.0.3 to 1.0.5). 1.0 was the first public release: one Windows installer, with its own compiler and nothing else to install. Everything since is in the changelog.

What's in the box

A look inside

Get started

1. Download the installer and run it. It installs for your account only, no administrator needed. Windows may warn that it does not know the publisher, as the installer is not signed yet: choose More info, then Run anyway.
2. Connect your game. The studio finds your copy of Project I.G.I., checks it and prepares the levels. A few minutes, once.
3. Build your first mission. Copy one of the originals or start from a blank map, place your guards, press Apply, and play it.

You need Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), your own installed copy of Project I.G.I.: I'm Going In, and about 650 MB of disk space, plus 300 MB in the game's folder for each mission you put in. An OpenAI key, or a model running on your own computer, is optional, for the AI designer only.

How it works

• Nothing of the game is shipped. The studio reads your own copy, keeps a checked reference copy of what a mission is built from, and builds everything the editor draws on your machine.
• Missions are compiled by the studio itself. studio/qvm reads and writes the game's QVM script format, tested byte for byte against every script the game ships.
• One gate for every write. studio/protect.py refuses any write that is not one of your own mission slots, so the built-in missions and the reference copy cannot be damaged.
• Nothing leaves your PC unless you use the AI designer or the community, or the studio asks GitHub for a new version. There is no telemetry. The code signing policy says exactly what goes where.

The compiler

The game keeps every mission as compiled bytecode, LOOP 8.5, and for twenty-five years the only way to read one was the IGI ToolKit. The studio reads and writes the format itself, in studio/qvm, so there is nothing to install.

It is held to the game's own files rather than to itself. The ToolKit's output was captured for every script the game ships, and then the ToolKit was retired. The reader must reproduce its decompilation byte for byte, and the writer must turn that back into the game's original file, byte for byte:

python -m studio check
read   884 of 884 identical
write  884 of 884 identical

docs/qvm.md has the format itself: the header, the 49 opcodes, the calling convention, how if and while are built out of jumps, and what reproducing the original bytes turns out to require.

Building it yourself

You need Windows, Python 3.12 or newer (releases use 3.14), Node 22 and your own copy of the game. Python needs nothing beyond its standard library.

git clone https://github.com/NaumanHSA/project-igi-studio
cd project-igi-studio

python -m studio            the studio in your browser, at http://localhost:8765
python -m studio --help     everything else it can do from a terminal

cd app
npm install
npm start                   the desktop window, around this checkout
npm run dist                the installer and the portable zip, in app/dist

npm run dist bundles the server with PyInstaller in a virtual environment of its own, so nothing is installed into your Python. Releases are built the same way by GitHub Actions from a tag: see docs/releasing.md.

Folder	What is in it
editor/	The editor: one page, plain JavaScript and Canvas, three.js for the 3D close-up. No build step
studio/	The Python package behind it: the QVM compiler, the mission builder, the readers of the game's files, the local server
app/	The desktop app: the Electron window, the bundled server, the installer, updates
docs/	How it all works, and the plans behind it

Documentation

If you want to	Read
Use the studio	The manual
Know what each part of the editor does, and what it builds into the game	docs/editor.md
See how the studio is put together: the app, first run, where things are kept	docs/architecture.md
Read the QVM script format: the opcodes, the calling convention, how it is tested	docs/qvm.md
Learn the engine's unwritten rules and the graph file format	docs/engine.md
Cut a release	docs/releasing.md

Contributing

Bug reports, missions that break, and pull requests are all welcome. CONTRIBUTING.md has the few rules this project does not bend (the original install is never written, and no game files go in the repository), and how to run the compiler's tests. Found a problem? Open an issue with the log from Help, Open the log folder.

Everyone taking part follows the code of conduct, and security problems are reported privately, as SECURITY.md says.

Thanks to everyone who has helped build it:

If the studio gave you a mission worth playing, a star helps other players find it.

Credits

• The QVM reader and writer are ported from the C++ parsers of project-igi-editor by HeavenHM (MIT), and tested against the game.
• three.js draws the 3D close-up, Electron is the window, and PyInstaller bundles the server.
• Barlow Condensed, IBM Plex Sans and IBM Plex Mono, under the SIL Open Font License.

THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.md has the details.

Made by

Licence

MIT. Project IGI Studio is an unofficial fan tool. Project I.G.I. is a trademark of its owners, and this project is not affiliated with them. The studio ships no game files and works only with a copy of the game you own.