brender-archival

Run Argonaut's 1990s BRender 3D engine on a modern 64-bit PC, and rebuild the original 1998 source with a build anyone can rerun.

BRender is the real-time 3D engine Argonaut Software sold in the 1990s, best known from games such as Carmageddon and Croc. Its source was published under the MIT licence. This repository gives you three things built on it:

• brview, a model viewer for 64-bit Windows and Linux that opens the engine's 1998 sample models, with mouse, keyboard and gamepad controls and an optional 256-colour period look.
• The Keeper's Hour, a short original game on the same engine: the last night of a lighthouse, told through conversation, with three endings.
• A rebuild of the original v1.3.2 source. A generator writes a CMake project around an unmodified checkout of the public source, and a ladder of 21 small test programs builds and runs it, from vector maths up to the period software rasteriser drawing a sphere.

It is for people who want to see or study a 1990s software renderer running today, for preservation and retro-graphics work, and for developers who want a starting point on the maintained BRender fork. No proprietary source, game assets or restricted material are stored here.

Run it

Download brview-<version>-windows-x64.zip or brview-<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz from releases, check it against the .sha256 file beside it, unpack it and run brview.exe (Windows) or ./brview (Linux). Nothing to install. Tab cycles the models, mouse drag orbits, and 8 turns the 256-colour look on and off.

brview.exe                    cycle through the bundled models
brview.exe my.dat my.pix      open your own model and texture
brview.exe --force-software   draw with BRender's software rasteriser

To save one frame and quit, set BRVIEW_SHOT=frame.ppm; BRVIEW_SCENE=n picks the model. The Keeper's Hour downloads (keepers-hour-<version>-windows-x64.zip, a Linux tarball and an AppImage) are on the same releases page; it takes about 25 minutes to play. Its source is in games/keepers-hour; code MIT, words and art CC BY 4.0.

Both are built on BRender 1.4 from BlazingRenderer/BRender, the maintained modern fork (MIT), which replaces the x86 assembly with portable C and adds SDL and OpenGL drivers. The same 21-program ladder passes against it as a 64-bit build. How it is built and pinned: modern/README.md. What comes next, in order: docs/ROADMAP.md.

Limits

• The viewer and game need OpenGL 3.3, or the software renderer with --force-software. On Linux they need glibc 2.38 or newer (Ubuntu 24.04, Debian 13, Fedora 39 or later).
• The rebuild of the original v1.3.2 source is verified as a 32-bit Visual Studio Debug build only. Several of the original assembly routines are replaced by C stand-ins, and textured rendering through the original period pipeline still draws black (see the next section).
• The repository also holds research records on 22 other engines and graphics libraries, as JSON metadata and links to public sources. No build exists here yet for any of them.

How it compares

• BlazingRenderer/BRender is the maintained engine itself. This repository does not fork it; it pins one commit, builds the viewer and game on it, and checks the result against the 1998 code.
• Foone Turing's BRender-v1.3.2 and the other published snapshots hold the original source as released. This repository adds the build around that source and the tests that run it.
• Emulators and DOSBox run the original games as shipped binaries. This repository runs the engine as source code on current systems, so you can read it, change it and build new work on it.

The 1998 source, rebuilt

From the public BRender v1.3.2 source snapshot (MIT, provenance via Foone Turing, release authorized by former Argonaut CEO Jez San), pinned at commit d88d0ed41122664b9781015b517db64353e16f19, the materializer generates an out-of-tree CMake harness that references the source checkout in place.

Verified on 2026-08-27 as a Visual Studio Win32 Debug build:

• 21/21 native CTest targets pass.
• The period-pipeline rung compiles softrend and pentprim from the upstream tree itself, binds pentprim's primitive library, and drives BrZbSceneRender.
• The period-pipeline rung renders dat/sph32.dat as an eight-frame nonblack orbit and reports final_frame_lit=19284 valid=true for the release media source run.
• Release hardening covers generated-C JSON escaping, caller-owned workfile protection, material-resolve third-edge initialization, INDEX_8 palette lookup, and removal of stale investigation diagnostics.

The experimental textured path through the original pipeline runs but draws black, because of a measured vertex-layout and state mismatch. For this 1.3.2 rebuild there is no claim of completed textured rendering, a 64-bit build or production use, and no endorsement by the original authors. The 64-bit build is the BRender 1.4 one described above.

Rung	What it proves
Vector math	scalar and vector core
Framework startup	BrBegin / BrEnd
Wireframe	BrMatrix4Perspective into a memory pixelmap
Scene graph	model actors projected through BRender's v1db transforms
Solid shaded	portable C scanline rasterizer, per-face lighting
Depth buffer	per-pixel occlusion in the portable rung
Textured	perspective-correct texture mapping in the portable rung
Datafile models	BrModelLoad renders real .dat models
UV-textured models	loaded model UV coordinates drive texture sampling
Multi-part assembly	BrModelLoadMany composites the 12-part coupe
Gouraud shading	per-vertex normals and smooth gradients
Plotter output	hidden-line-removed SVG polylines, pen-plotter ready
Asset audit	loaded model geometry, face indices, degenerate faces, and material attachment
Pixelmap audit	BrPixelmapLoad probes period .pix and .pal files
Material audit	BrMaterialLoad identifiers, flags, index_base, and colour-map attachment
Pixelmap round trip	BrPixelmapSave then reload, with safe caller-owned workfile handling
Material resolve	BrMaterialLoad material attached to loaded model faces and rendered
File-texture sampling	loaded period .pix sampled with palette-aware INDEX_8 lookup
Game shell	deterministic INIT/LOAD/RUN/TEARDOWN frame loop over loaded assets
Host semantic	host file round trips without deleting preexisting caller-owned workfiles
Period pipeline	softrend plus pentprim built from upstream, nonblack ZB sphere output

Release media

The current public media is generated from verified nonblack render output or from factual diagrams/cards. Black diagnostic frames and generative imitation are excluded. Provenance, commands, dimensions, hashes, input attribution, metrics, and limitations are recorded in gallery/release-20260827/provenance-manifest.json.

The social preview card is gallery/release-20260827/social-card-1200x630.png. The full progress sequence is gallery/release-20260827/progress-sequence.png.

Gallery

These captures are produced by render smokes from BRender's public sample models. They are public release output, not vendored upstream assets.

The plotter rung also writes ready-to-plot SVG: gallery/10-teapot-plotter.svg.

See docs/BRENDER-ARCHIVAL.md for the full packet: provenance, reproduction, current capability and known limits.

Package a release

python scripts/package_brender_release.py `
  --source-root <BRender-v1.3.2 checkout> `
  --output-root <release stage directory>

The packager stages the materialized harness, README, CTest transcripts, current release media, provenance manifest, SHA256SUMS.txt, and package-receipt.json. No proprietary source or assets are copied.

Reproduce the BRender build

The engine-revival command comes from the Engine Revival package, pinned in pyproject.toml; installing this repository installs it.

python -m pip install -e ".[test]"
engine-revival materialize-brender-harness `
  --source-root <BRender-v1.3.2 checkout> `
  --output-root <harness directory>
cmake -S <harness> -B <build> -A Win32 "-DBRENDER_SOURCE_DIR=<BRender-v1.3.2 checkout>"
cmake --build <build> --config Debug
ctest --test-dir <build> -C Debug --output-on-failure

brender_core_model_smoke <model.dat> <out.ppm> doubles as a minimal viewer for the period asset library.

Archive workflow

python -m pip install -e ".[test,media]"
engine-revival seed
engine-revival validate
engine-revival audit-public
engine-revival index
engine-revival report
python -m pytest

Findings live as structured JSON records first (readiness/, harnesses/, attempts/, reproductions/, sources/, targets/, ...), and generated pages under docs/generated/ are views over that corpus.

License

MIT, the same terms Argonaut's BRender v1.3.2 was published under. Copyright 2026 Zain Dana Harper; see LICENSE. This covers the whole repository, gallery/ included.

• The C ports of BRender routines that the harness builds ship in the engine-revival package (engine_revival/brender_compat/), MIT, with their upstream notice. Material from BRender keeps that notice, copyright 1998 Argonaut Software Limited, also kept here in LICENSES/MIT-BRender.txt.
• gallery/ holds frames rendered with BRender. See gallery/LICENSE-NOTE.md.

Releases 0.1.1 and earlier were published under AGPL-3.0-or-later, and 0.2.0 under FSL-1.1-MIT; those copies keep the terms they shipped with. The BRender source itself is fetched from the public upstream and never vendored here. Records under sources/, snapshots/, artifacts/ and targets/ describe other projects; any text they quote stays with its owner.

Public docs

• Revival mission
• BRender archival packet
• Public boundary
• Recovery workflow
• Generated public index
• Generated corpus database
• Generated production readiness
• Generated harnesses
• Generated attempts
• Contributing

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Built by Zain Dana Harper in Seattle. An independent lab building evidence-first tools that leave a re-checkable artifact behind. Built by Zain Dana Harper in Seattle. The full workbench is at Project Telos.