Case study

SDLPAL: reimplementing Legend of Sword and Fairy with SDL

SDLPAL is an SDL reimplementation of the Chinese RPG Legend of Sword and Fairy, also called PAL. It builds for Windows desktop and UWP, GNU/Linux, macOS, Android, iOS, and several consoles. Windows desktop opens win32/sdlpal.sln in Visual Studio 2017 or later. GNU/Linux runs cd unix && make and needs SDL 2.0. The original resource files are copied into the same directory as the executable. On case-sensitive filesystems those filenames are lower-case. Versions are selected in the first-launch window or in sdlpal.cfg.

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

Stars: 2.0k
Last commit: 2026-11-09
Language: C
License (GitHub): GPL-3.0

GitHub data as of 2026-11-10

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Evidence

Demo available · no screenshot

Observed: Code, documentation, download and demo observed; a full-reconstruction candidate for manual Class 0 review.
Scope: Partial
Checked: 2026-11-09

How evidence classes are assigned

Requirements & limits

The original game data files, placed beside the executable. git submodule update --init --recursive before the platform build.
License: GNU GPL version 3.

Cite

BibTeX

@misc{sdlpal,
  title = {{SDLPAL: reimplementing Legend of Sword and Fairy with SDL}},
  howpublished = {\url{https://github.com/sdlpal/sdlpal}},
  url = {https://github.com/sdlpal/sdlpal},
  urldate = {2026-11-07},
  note = {Awesome REA entry: \url{https://awesomerea.org/resources/sdlpal/}}
}

Plain text

SDLPAL: reimplementing Legend of Sword and Fairy with SDL. https://github.com/sdlpal/sdlpal (accessed 2026-11-07). Awesome REA entry: https://awesomerea.org/resources/sdlpal/

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Primary sources

README.md GitHub · sdlpal/sdlpal · Revision d4bf69b