# Sourcehold: reimplementing the Stronghold game engine

> Sourcehold is an early open-source engine for Stronghold, the 2001 castle game by Firefly Studios. It uses SDL2, OpenAL, FFmpeg, zlib blast, and the EnTT, filesystem, and cxxopts submodules. git submodule update fetches those. Windows builds use vcpkg for sdl2, ffmpeg, and openal-soft, then cmake --build build. macOS runs apple/build.sh macos. The iOS path builds only the simulator. --path points at the game data, or the files go in a data directory with binks, fx, gfx, maps, and stronghold.mlb.

- Type: Case study
- Targets: Game
- Category: Independent reconstruction cases
- Relationship: Independent reconstruction project
- Sources reviewed: 2026-11-07
- Added to the catalog: 2026-11-09
- Original resource: <https://github.com/sourcehold/Sourcehold>
- Primary source: <https://github.com/sourcehold/Sourcehold/blob/779cc325103148eb85f1ae16790c196d50d5059e/README.md>
- Catalog page: <https://awesomerea.org/resources/sourcehold/>
- Record JSON: <https://awesomerea.org/resources/sourcehold/record.json>
- Chinese version: [简体中文](https://awesomerea.org/zh/resources/sourcehold/index.md)

## Requirements & limits

- Original Stronghold data in the layout above. CMake, and SDL2, OpenAL, and FFmpeg.
- The README does not name a license.

## Primary sources

1. <https://github.com/sourcehold/Sourcehold/blob/779cc325103148eb85f1ae16790c196d50d5059e/README.md>

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## About this entry

The description was reviewed against primary sources.
Original editorial content: MIT. Linked projects, papers and assets retain their own rights and licenses.