SYNDICATE WARS EXECUTABLES

THE FILE THAT STARTS THE GAME AND CONTAINS ITS CODE

There is nothing interesting in SETSOUND file ;), so the only thing to rework here is a MAIN.EXE file.

I think it is easier to write the game from the beginning, than to use reverse engineering. The only part of EXE files that may be easy to understand and reuse are internal text strings.

DOS4GW may be considered as "reworked" since this is just a DOS Extender...

The second interesting EXE file is a GAME.EXE in early beta version, with debug data. It is available to download in Patches and mods section.

Texts from both MAIN.EXE files are already extracted and you can download them in "Text files" section.

Another aspect of MAIN.EXE are its command line parameters. Only a few of them are known. It looks like most keys have some meaning for the exe, but it is quite hard to understand what they do...

Here is workbook of command line parameters for SW Beta Engine (avaible in "patches and mods":

/e<num> - unknown
/i<num> - unknown
/n<num> - unknown
/r<num> - unknown
/s<num> - unknown
/u<num> - unknown
/w - unknown
/a - starts mission (/m<num>) with no weapons
/b - I don't know what it should do, but /m<num> don't work with it
/c - I don't know what it should do, but /m<num> don't work with it
/d - disables keyboard controls
/f - rewrites tables.dat file (destroys original file)
/g - starts game menu? /m<num> don't work with it
/m<num> - start the typed map, skips menu, gives default equipment for the mission
/p - do not init mission objective and agents control; gives you "hurry" mode under H key
/q - disables switching into video mode?
Partially-reworked EXE files:
MAIN.EXE