Case study

Imperialism: reconstructing the 1997 game in C++ and Rust

Imperialism reconstructs the 1997 Windows game's executable as ABI and behavior faithful C++ using Ghidra evidence, the original MSVC 5.0 toolchain and reccmp comparisons. A separate Rust implementation imports retail files and uses process-isolated differential tests against named behavioral captures.

Targets: Binary · Game
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-06

Stars: 5
Last commit: 2026-10-07
Language: C++

GitHub data as of 2026-11-10

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Requirements & limits

Supply a legally obtained Imperialism.exe.
The C++ workflow requires Git LFS, just, uv, Docker, Wine/GDB, Java 25 and the pinned Ghidra fork.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{imperialism-decomp-case,
  title = {{Imperialism: reconstructing the 1997 game in C++ and Rust}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/agluszak/imperialism-decomp}},
  url = {https://github.com/agluszak/imperialism-decomp},
  urldate = {2026-11-06},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/imperialism-decomp-case/}}
}

Plain text

Imperialism: reconstructing the 1997 game in C++ and Rust. https://github.com/agluszak/imperialism-decomp (accessed 2026-11-06). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/imperialism-decomp-case/

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Primary sources

README.md GitHub · agluszak/imperialism-decomp · Revision a468302
decomp/README.md GitHub · agluszak/imperialism-decomp · Revision a468302