Case study

OpenDW: porting Dragon Wars to a C game engine

OpenDW ports Dragon Wars from its 16-bit DOS implementation toward a C game engine for modern environments. It builds an SDL2 frontend and uses the player's original DRAGON.COM, DATA1 and DATA2 files; the repository also includes resource extraction tools.

Targets: Game
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-07
Evidence class: C1 partial scope or analysis entry

Stars: 18
Last commit: 2026-04-11
Language: C
License (GitHub): ISC

GitHub data as of 2026-11-10

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Evidence

Demo screenshot from the project's public documentation

Observed: Download and demo observed; the case covers part of the target software.
Scope: Partial
Checked: 2026-11-09

How evidence classes are assigned

Requirements & limits

Prerequisites: Requires the original DRAGON.COM executable and DATA1 and DATA2 files.
Prerequisites: Requires SDL2 and CMake to build; unit tests additionally require Check.
Prerequisites: On Linux and Unix, the original game filenames must be lowercase and placed beside the build.
Limits: The C port is described as an attempt.
License: ISC license.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{opendw-dragon-wars-case,
  title = {{OpenDW: porting Dragon Wars to a C game engine}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/devinsmith/opendw}},
  url = {https://github.com/devinsmith/opendw},
  urldate = {2026-11-07},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/opendw-dragon-wars-case/}}
}

Plain text

OpenDW: porting Dragon Wars to a C game engine. https://github.com/devinsmith/opendw (accessed 2026-11-07). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/opendw-dragon-wars-case/

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About this entry

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Primary sources

README.md GitHub · devinsmith/opendw · Revision e9765e6