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Prototype · roughly 10–15% complete5.1 MB format decoded
NetStorm Remaster
Rebuilding a 1997 strategy game from its own undocumented data files.
What it is
NetStorm: Islands at War shipped in 1997. There is no source code and no documentation for its file formats, so the remaster is reconstructed from the original game's own data — decoded byte by byte.
The simulation core is real and tested: deterministic command simulation, bridge mechanics that match the original's data, economy, combat using authentic unit stats pulled from the shipped files.
“Verdict: this is a mechanics prototype, not a game. Realistically ~10–15% of a finished, shippable remaster. For a multiplayer game, netcode is the core deliverable and it is at 0%.”my own status doc, written before anyone asked
The parts that were hard
- Reverse-engineering a 5,170,476-byte sprite archive with no public documentation — magic bytes, frame counts, unsorted absolute offset tables, per-frame dimension records
- Writing a parser for the original map format
- Extracting real unit statistics from the game's own type files and wiring them into working combat
- Deterministic command simulation, which is the prerequisite for lockstep multiplayer
Need something built at this level?
You talk to the person who writes the code — about the architecture, the trade-offs, and what it costs. Two questions to start, and a reply within one business day.