Case study

OpenReliant: reimplementing the StarLancer engine

OpenReliant reimplements the engine of StarLancer, the 2000 space-combat game by Warthog and Digital Anvil. It is written in Zig on SDL3 and draws with Vulkan, or Metal on macOS. The README says the beta can play the whole campaign, and that saves from the original game carry over.

Targets: Game
Category: Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
Sources reviewed: 2026-11-07
Evidence class: C2 code & docs, no demo or download

Stars: 46
Last commit: 2026-11-03
Language: Zig
License (GitHub): MPL-2.0

GitHub data as of 2026-11-10

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Evidence

Observed: Code, documentation and a download method observed; no demo found.
Checked: 2026-11-09

How evidence classes are assigned

Requirements & limits

The player supplies a retail copy of StarLancer. Building needs Zig 0.17.
Source code is MPL-2.0. Documentation under docs/ is CC BY-SA 4.0.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{openreliant,
  title = {{OpenReliant: reimplementing the StarLancer engine}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/OpenReliant/openreliant}},
  url = {https://github.com/OpenReliant/openreliant},
  urldate = {2026-11-07},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/openreliant/}}
}

Plain text

OpenReliant: reimplementing the StarLancer engine. https://github.com/OpenReliant/openreliant (accessed 2026-11-07). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/openreliant/

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About this entry

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Primary sources

README.md GitHub · OpenReliant/openreliant · Revision b22fc9a