War Action is an open source implementation of Fireglow Games' Sudden Strike Gold from 2000, with the 1.2.1 patch.
There are multiple goals this project tries to achieve:
- Learn how games were made in an era when things had to be done in the code, and not through fancy game engines like today.
- Have a fully playable game implemented end-to-end, including resource management, audio, and video rendering, as well as support of large screen resolutions.
- Eventually, to support 64-bit compilation for modern systems, and provide an avenue for development of modern renderer implementations such as DirectX or Vulkan, and, eventually, to port to Linux or Mac.
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/americusmaximus/WarAction
- I used GOG.com's Sudden Strike Gold 1.2.1 version 13578 of the game.
- The game is structured in a way where the executable is just a glue for separate menu and game modules, which are in their turn can use different renderer modules.
- The GOG.com's version of the game uses Ogg Vorbis for the game's music. It looks like this was a recent change and a requirement for the game publishing, I believe original game shipped with mp3 files. In order to support Ogg Vorbis, the games has its own WinMM.dll library to support the file format, otherwise it is mostly a wrapper of the system library.
- The original game used zlib version 1.1.3, which I upgraded to 1.3.1 for proper 64-bit support.
- The original game uses RAD Game Tools' binkw32 library version 1.0q.
In order to be able to run the code not only in the modern operating systems, but also in legacy environments, such as Windows XP, the code base has to abstain from usage of modern C++ language features.
Modern Visual Studio makes the binary dependent on modern runtime libraries that are not available in the legacy systems, therefore the game won't work. In order to make the code work on legacy systems please see detailed instructions on compatibility.
The launcher module is the game executable. It's purpose is to do initial setup, read some settings, load proper renderer module, and transition control to the menu module.
The game ships with 3 renderer modules. THey have essentially the same codebase, the only difference is the size of the game screen that they support. Available options are: 640x480, 800x600, 1024x768.
The menu module is responsible for guiding user through all kinds of options and activities such as starting a new campaign, loading a game, or setting up a multiplayer game. Once that is done - it transfers the control to the game module, andd the game module can transfer control back to the menu module.
The game module is responsible for the actual gameplay, associated resource management, game state, etc, and can pass the control back to the menu module for video playback, showing mission statistics, and so on.
- Hifi for the original implementation of WinMM.dll with the Ogg Vorbis support. Even though the game's version is very customized, access to the original code was very useful.
- elwray for the initial research of the rendering modules.
- This is not a complete game. Please purchase software you like!
- The source code in this repository is mostly produced by reverse engineering the original binaries. There are a couple of exceptions for reverse engineering under DMCA -- documentation, interoperability, fair use. See goals section for the interoperability and fair use cases. The documentation is needed to support those. Also please see an article about software preservation.
- Sudden Strike, Fireglow Games, CDV, RAD Game Tools, Bink, Ogg Vorbis, DirectX, OpenGL, Vulkan, and others are trademarks of their respective owners.