From-scratch reimplementation of the Sword of the Stars (2006) engine. Clean-room; engine code only — bring your own game copy. Planning/RE evidence live in sots-re.
Find a file
alex ae170ecdfe B5: the post-battle retreat rules as a pure planner (game/combat)
The strategic half of a battle: where beaten fleets go, which fleets split,
which are left empty, and who learns the system they were beaten at. Draw-free
end to end -- the whole sub-tree contains no random draw -- so this is a pure
function of its inputs and needs no generator.

What is modelled:
  * the destination search: three independent nearest-system passes (owned /
    no hostile presence / anything), each with its own best-so-far, over
    squared float32 distances with a strict comparison. The independence is
    load-bearing: a nearer system rejected by one predicate must not spoil
    that pass's best, and a single-loop version gets it wrong.
  * the hostility mask, including the rule that a system captured on the
    current turn loses its owner's ceasefire cover.
  * per-ship eligibility: already-departed, encounter-faction exclusions (one
    hard-coded id plus a data-driven bitmask), and the dead-drive gate, which
    tests against a single-precision epsilon rather than zero and which the
    gate species skips because it does not fly out.
  * grouping on all four key words (owner, destination, mode, variant).
  * whole-versus-partial: a fleet runs whole only when every one of its ships
    is in the group; otherwise the group gets one new fleet and the leftover
    ships move into it, while ships of a wholly-retreating fleet stay put.
  * the emptied-fleet list, which matters because destroying a fleet aborts
    every intercept aimed at it.

Deliberately NOT modelled: applying the plan. Creating a fleet mints an object
id from a monotonic counter and appends to the master fleet list, and both of
those are saved state; that belongs above this layer, where the object store
lives. Keeping the decision separate is what makes it host-testable.

53 hand-computed checks. ctest 42/42, clean-room check OK.
2026-09-08 11:52:57 -04:00
cmake m0: binkw32 proxy shim, minhook, trace hook on Application::Initialize; build/deploy tooling 2026-09-07 17:22:15 -04:00
docs Y: correct the divisor-defect numbers -- 6 of 25 corpus records, and the rate rises with magnitude 2026-09-08 11:39:36 -04:00
include/generated merge lane Z: per-turn RNG ledger (header regenerated, CMakeLists union-resolved) 2026-09-08 10:58:10 -04:00
src B5: the post-battle retreat rules as a pure planner (game/combat) 2026-09-08 11:52:57 -04:00
tests B5: the post-battle retreat rules as a pure planner (game/combat) 2026-09-08 11:52:57 -04:00
third_party mars/vfs: gob ZIP reader + native override, miniz 3.1.2; oracle-verified 8352+2035 entries 2026-09-07 17:40:51 -04:00
tools b4: colony + movement hooks; 22 formula corrections (growth curve has no capacity term, range margin +0.05f, ties-to-even rounding); 3 verified signatures 2026-09-08 00:57:55 -04:00
.gitignore init commit 2026-09-07 17:07:54 -04:00
CMakeLists.txt B5: the post-battle retreat rules as a pure planner (game/combat) 2026-09-08 11:52:57 -04:00
CMakePresets.json m0: binkw32 proxy shim, minhook, trace hook on Application::Initialize; build/deploy tooling 2026-09-07 17:22:15 -04:00
CONTRIBUTING.md CONTRIBUTING: note uv tool install cmake as the local workaround 2026-09-08 09:07:47 -04:00
LICENSE init commit 2026-09-07 17:07:54 -04:00
README.md src/app: the standalone -- load a save, run a turn, write a save 2026-09-08 10:35:45 -04:00

sots-engine

A from-scratch, functional reimplementation of the engine behind Sword of the Stars (2006). Not a byte-for-byte decompilation: behavior-equivalent code, built up one verified piece at a time (OpenRCT2-style) until the tree can build the whole application on its own.

Bring your own game. This repository contains engine code only. Game data, assets, saves, and the original binaries are never included; tests and tools read an owner-supplied copy via $SOTS_DATA_DIR. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the clean-room rules.

Status

Phase 2. M0 done — the shim frontend (src/shim/, a proxy binkw32.dll the original game loads) builds, deploys, hooks, and logs from a real game launch. Engine code accrues under src/mars/ and src/game/; each module is oracle-verified against the owner's game data before merge:

  • mars/parse — brace-block + .effect readers (1,531/1,531 files agree with the reference)
  • mars/text — flat key/value tables, id manifests, CSV (64/64 files agree)
  • game/sim — strategic formulas (economy, research, colonies, movement) as pure functions; 356 hand-computed checks
  • mars/vfs — .gob (ZIP) archive reader + loose-file override; entry counts and bytes verified against unzip
  • mars/stream — the game's self-describing save/serialization format (reader, writer, typed shapes) + gzip; three real saves round-trip byte-identical
  • mars/rng — MT19937 with save-state load/store; layout confirmed against real saves, draw mappings read off the binary (docs/mars-rng.md)
  • game/data — typed catalogs (weapons, ship sections, turrets, id registries, tech tree, strings) with cross-reference checks; 229k values agree with the reference
  • game/design — ship-design assembly/fit/tech-gating rules and derived stats; validates all 127 stock designs from real saves
  • app — the standalone: sots_turn loads a save, runs one strategic turn over the published phase order of all three turn drivers, and writes a save. 14 of the 44 turn-driver phases are modelled; every phase that is not appears in the run log as a named no-op. How far it is from the byte-match, and what stands in the way, is in docs/S-standalone.md

Build: cmake --preset host && cmake --build --preset host && ctest --preset host (Linux); tools/sync-build.sh cross-builds the shim on the lab box and stages it for deployment.

Layout (grows with the work)

  • src/shim/ — binkw32 proxy + hooks + old-vs-new compare harness (frontend #1)
  • src/mars/, src/game/ — the engine and game reimplementation (accruing)
  • src/app/ — the standalone turn driver (frontend #2): load a save, run a turn, write a save
  • include/generated/sots_addresses.h — binary facts (RVAs/prototypes), generated from the RE repo
  • tests/ — host tests; real-data tests skip unless $SOTS_DATA_DIR is set
  • tools/ — build (MinGW i686 cross) and deploy scripts

Planning, findings, and verification evidence are tracked in the private RE repo (sots-re).