Lost EnginesEarthsiegeExhumed

Attribution and scope

Earthsiege Exhumed is part of the Lost Engines Project. It presents selected results of our reverse engineering of Metaltech: Earthsiege, developed by Dynamix and published by Sierra On-Line in 1994.

The models, textures, text, artwork and music belong to their original creators and rights holders. Earthsiege Exhumed is an independent research and preservation project. The game is freely available, but its assets remain under copyright.

This site contains display data and short audio excerpts. The site repository covers our presentation and tools; rights to the game material remain with its owners.

What the exhibits show

The model gallery uses the game’s geometry, equipment tables, palettes and animation rules, drawn with WebGL. Pixel coverage can differ from the DOS renderer. The mission atlas shows starting positions, including groups waiting to activate during play.

The graphics-engine article combines output from original drawing routines, DOSBox screenshots, synthetic test shapes and explanatory diagrams. Captions identify their origins; the graphics asset manifest records the published hashes.

The damage and physics article uses controlled original-code captures of component loss, shield absorption, movement and salvage. Its diagrams are explanatory; captions distinguish supplied test states from ordinary gameplay. The combat manifest records the published assets.

The sky exhibit shows output captured from the original drawing routines. The panorama lays all four sections of horizon artwork side by side.

Audio excerpts follow the original HMI scheduler and OPL2/OPL3 driver paths. FM synthesis uses Nuked OPL3, an LGPL project. Playback on a physical card may differ in mixing, resampling and analogue output.

The investigation links findings to the supporting research notes. A claim-by-claim source guide and snapshot hashes are also kept in the site repository. The native reconstruction, Earthsiege C++, is a separate project and is not yet published.

The visual design follows our companion projects: Darker Discovered, TFX Traced and Corncob Contemplated.