Inside Earthsiege
The engine, piece by piece.
Six illustrated articles on how Dynamix's walking machines draw, fight and find their way through a campaign, and how we checked the reconstruction against the original.
Graphics engine
How Earthsiege draws a frame
Follow a HERC through fixed-point transforms, palette shading, polygon sorting and four planes of VGA memory.
Damage & physics
Taking a HERC apart
Armour, internal components, missing limbs and the machinery that turns a wreck into salvage.
AI & squad behaviour
How the HERCs choose a fight
What a machine knows about its enemies, how it chooses a target and weapon, and when it decides to withdraw.
Missions & campaigns
Building a battlefield
Follow authored mission data through random choices, campaign history, activation triggers and the return to the hangar.
Reverse engineering
Checking a reconstruction against the original
Controlled experiments, recorded missions and the few wrong pixels that led into the original memory allocator.
Music & sound drivers
Inside Earthsiege’s soundtrack
Hear the FM arrangements and sampled drums, follow a combat music change, and investigate the missing MT-32 melody.