Firestaff

Firestaff is a clean-room engine for the Dungeon Master games. It reads the original files you own, identifies each edition by its content hash and keeps that data separate from the program.

Firestaff has bounded native routes for Dungeon Master, Chaos Strikes Back, Dungeon Master II: Skullkeep and Theron's Quest using verified original media. Nexus is available in the launcher and has Saturn data and asset support, but does not yet reach playable gameplay through Firestaff. Coverage is deliberately conservative: a route is available only when the selected edition has a verified native handoff. Full campaign, save and visual parity remain active work, especially for Chaos Strikes Back, Nexus and Theron's Quest.

Current status

The status pages were reviewed on 2026-11-01. The latest full five-card authentic-media selection check verified keyboard and mouse selection plus default-root handoff for DM1, CSB, DM2, Nexus and Theron. Separate real-media runtime checks reached Firestaff gameplay for DM1, CSB, DM2 and Theron's Quest. Candidate Nexus tests verified JP/EN extracted-owner selection and matching supplemental-disc binding, but Nexus still stops at its Saturn title compositor gate and is not a playable route. These SDL dummy and CLI checks do not verify native display, audio, or physical input, and do not establish complete game parity.

Firestaff detects real media and exposes paths only after their handoff gates pass. Edition ownership is checked per route. Extracted Nexus JP/EN/FR owners now use regional identity hashes, and supplemental discs must match the owner; authentic JP and EN menu checks passed. The authentic Japanese retail CUE/BIN layout is admitted through direct CLI and start-menu routes while retaining the selected CUE as its media owner. Nexus still stops at the title compositor gate and is not playable. The detailed status is kept in project status. The published documentation is available at yeager.github.io/firestaff. The preservation status is a dated 2026-08-12 snapshot; use the current status pages for today's support boundary.

Game	Current scope
Dungeon Master	PC DOS, Atari ST, Amiga and FM Towns startup and selected dungeon routes have real-media coverage. The PC 3.4 Hall of Champions candidate panel is rendered from authenticated C040/C026 assets. Further gameplay and visual parity work continues.
Chaos Strikes Back	Atari ST, Amiga and FM Towns have bounded real-media runtime routes. FM Towns uses its authenticated entrance palette and MINI.DAT bootstrap state. Amiga F0107 wall ornaments now use source MEDIA720 scales and authentic C696 anchors; matched-frame, palette/light, inscription readability, floor trapdoor, and native-window intro/audio presentation remain open. Campaign and save coverage are also incomplete.
Dungeon Master II: Skullkeep	DOS, Amiga, FM Towns and Macintosh have real-media startup and selected runtime coverage. Amiga reaches its initial GDAT-backed M11 frame through the normal start menu with source movement covered. Broader input, save, native display/audio and dungeon-composition parity remain open per edition.
DM Nexus	Saturn disc parsing and source-bound MAPD decoding support a bounded render of the five authentic title planes. Firestaff does not yet reproduce the complete native Saturn title or menu. Ymir reference evidence verifies a no-save Japanese retail cold boot and a separate English-version disc-image cold boot to the native title menu; a separate Japanese New Game replay reaches the native 3D corridor viewport. The English screenshot replay matches the Ymir screenshot pixel-for-pixel, and its source join has 126 informative matches among 137 textured draws. These are emulator results, not Firestaff menu or gameplay support. Full title composition, menu rendering/control, stable gameplay, HUD and dungeon presentation remain capture-gated.
Theron's Quest	Firestaff runs Theron in its native C/SDL runtime. Direct launch bypasses Firestaff's Run menu and System Card. Authentic JP Track 02 reaches a loaded dungeon through fresh start; authentic US Track 02 plus matching Ak-Tu-Ba-complete BRAM reaches dungeon 2 through Continue. Source-only loaders verify all seven dungeons in both regions. Native SDL regressions cover bounded keyboard and mouse-panel movement, champion selection, wait, and US pickup/reselect/drop. Hash-verified US/JP ISO projections admit the same eight creature-pointer and five regular-spawn zone records as their raw BINs; pointer records 0–4 resolve in order to the five zones, while records 5–7 have zero offsets. This is static source metadata only; runtime pointer selection, JP category semantics, and spawning/RNG remain unverified. A newer authenticated JP state-only replay consumed five scripted controller events but recorded zero spawn-consumer/register entries, zero RNG samples, and no dungeon transition; it does not establish movement or spawn semantics. The capture wrapper now skips cold System Card hook-presence checks only for explicit state-only autoload traces while preserving autoload-receipt and trace-schema validation. See Theron capture readiness and the runtime spawn capture report. An authentic US Drator trace joins writes and reads of generated-row offsets 6–8 and a later ten-byte work-buffer copy. A strict verifier matches constructed 512-byte $CBC6 and $45C3 windows against authentic US Track 02 bytes and finds four and three possible raw offsets, respectively; this tooling fixture does not establish a runtime fetch or unique LBA/source occurrence. The $C852 runtime window is separately source-mapped at raw offset $A3AD2. The bounded consumer trace hit its cap after the row reads; route reentry was recorded separately. The BIOS trace was explicitly truncated and the wrapper rejected the capture package. A later authentic JP state-only $3879 trace hit its 8,192-row cap before $C852; an independent first-hit sidecar reported zero $C852 rows, as expected, and JP $C85E was opcode $A6 at physical $0D285E with no $5039 execution. A later authentic US cold trace records ordered $C852 → $C85E JSR $5039 → $5039 dispatch; the live target bytes differ from the static candidate. The wrapper rejected that package because live $45C3 bytes did not match retail Track 02 and other traces hit their caps. An identity-checked scan found no contiguous 8 KiB page in raw US Track 02 or Track 19 matching the 102 unique MPR2 $68 instruction windows; a separate authentic $23AD output also matched 0/102 windows. The next source join uses the existing all-writer $0D0000–$0D1FFF hook. C852 schema v3 and the all-writer trace now carry a per-run capture ID; the wrapper receipt binds their hashes, full-page range and completeness counts. The runtime-page write verifier has nine bounded fixture cases, but no authentic same-session capture has exercised it. It compares each fetched byte with its latest preceding write and does not identify the writer's source data. See the ordered call-window report and runtime-page source scan. The later cold capture used the source-scoped BIOS and Drator-row filters, but still reached trace caps and failed the live $45C3 source check. Generated-row semantics remain open. The JP Akutuba descriptor and all four source maps are located in raw Track 02 sector 308, and an offline scan found that complete 1,260-byte source span in an authentic JP .mc0 state at inflated offset 0x6633b (state SHA-256 b4f2a06788e4723110b19892f93e8ac4aef1b5c18c6358a9fe36f1baf747b068). All four arrays are present, so this does not identify the active map. The source-locked Mednafen 1.32.1 state inspector maps the bytes to HuC CD-RAM page $74 (physical $0E891D); the saved MPRs do not select that page. The state embeds a preview and named VCE/VDC0/VRAM/SAT snapshot data, but no pose-bound consumer is joined. Disc LBA 3674 is a capture target, but current instrumentation filters only the whole Track 02 span; FIFO-origin RAM receipts have no exact-LBA filter or media-byte-authenticated consumer join, and post-capture filtering cannot prevent trace-cap truncation. The JP active-map capture requires a same-run join from byte-verified Track 02 reads through map selection and a pose-bound tile consumer to atomic VDC/VCE/VRAM state. USE command effects, positive JP save restoration, later campaign play, combat, audio and visual parity remain open. See Theron capture readiness, the source-state report, and the active-map capture chain.

Dungeon Master II: Skullkeep

DM2 has bounded native routes from four authenticated source families:

Edition	Accepted source data	Verified runtime scope
DOSBox / PC English	GRAPHICS.DAT + DUNGEON.DAT; matching DOS saves are optional resume data	New Game, active runtime, movement, pits, stairs, level transitions, creatures and spell handoff
Amiga English	Original installer archive, read and verified in memory	M12 → SWSH/TITL → GDAT New Game → initial runtime frame and movement; receipt confirms real assets, zero core fallbacks and a visible frame
FM Towns Japanese	Original HME-242 ZIP/disc image; non-Japanese text uses the built-in GDAT-keyed l10n bridge	Title sequence, New Game, inventory, movement, level transitions and creatures
Macintosh English	Authentic retail ZIP/HFS media	New Game, active big-endian runtime, per-image movement-icon palettes, movement, stairs, level transitions and combat/creature handoff

The shared DM2 data root may contain all four editions. Firestaff resolves a selected version to its own source owner: the DOS data tree or symlink, Amiga installer, FM Towns disc archive, or Mac archive. Original archives are kept intact and archive members are read into bounded memory; Firestaff does not use a sibling edition as a fallback.

The Macintosh M11 HUD loads each movement icon with its own palette from the retail archive. The original-media New Game route verifies the HUD, movement, stairs, level transitions and combat handoff.

Language selection

Firestaff offers 20 interface languages: English, Swedish, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Czech, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish and Indonesian. Auto uses the system language when it is supported and otherwise uses English. A language chosen in the start menu or with --lang <code> takes precedence over Auto.

For the Japanese FM Towns edition of DM2, Firestaff keeps the original Towns disc as the only game-data owner. A built-in, GDAT-keyed bridge maps the disc's authenticated text records to canonical English gettext entries, so no PC-English GRAPHICS.DAT is required at runtime. The selected catalog then applies the chosen supported language, including Swedish. Catalog completeness is checked in CI; an unavailable or invalid catalog falls back to canonical English rather than to text from another edition. See translation status for the generated per-language coverage.

Focused real-media checks and their current boundaries are documented in TODO-dm2.md, DONE-dm2.md, DM2 platform variants and the DM2 FM Towns wiki guide.

Theron's Quest uses a DM1-like dungeon keyboard layout in Firestaff: Up/W moves forward, Down/S moves backward, Left/Right/A/D step sideways, and Q/E turn. Home/End and keypad 4/6 are alternate turn keys; keypad 1/3 step, 8/5 move forward and 2 moves backward. Tab selects the next living member of the Soul Room party; G picks up a source-verified item in the facing cell; P drops the selected source item on the party square; and U sends a USE command for the facing object. Its effect on authentic doors and other objects remains unverified.

The native dungeon view also provides a visible 4x3 Firestaff mouse panel. Its first two rows click to turn, move and sidestep; the remaining rows select the next champion, pick up or select an item, drop an item or send the USE command, and wait. These host controls dispatch the same native Theron input commands as the keyboard. They are not claimed as original PCE mouse hitboxes: the retail game is controller based, so clicks outside the panel are ignored until screen-space target semantics are authenticated. Mouse motion only moves the pointer. Mouse button 2 remains Button II for cancel/back and does not advance a dungeon tick by itself. On touch screens, a short touch is Button I and a long touch is Button II. The native dungeon presentation still needs a state-driven renderer, so working input dispatch alone does not establish visual gameplay parity. The matched JP PCE Fast $C1FC TII trace is input-conditioned state transfer; the same instruction is associated with teleporter destination copying, so it does not prove player movement. Active-map identity, field meaning, collision and visible response remain open. See Theron capture readiness.

Theron's Quest runtime status

Firestaff runs Theron's Quest through its native C/SDL runtime and admits hash-verified US or Japanese Track 02 data with --theron-native us or --theron-native jp. A native macOS Debug run with authentic Japanese Rev. 1 data advanced through stage select and Soul Room into a loaded dungeon using Firestaff's SDL input path. The runtime reported about 2.8 game ticks/s and 5 rendered/presented frames/s in one interval. A follow-up native Linux Debug run on trv2 used Xvfb only as the SDL display and authentic JP Rev. 1 Track 02; it reached theron-runtime, loaded map 0 and advanced 73 game ticks in 18 seconds. No emulator was used for this Firestaff run. The latest Firestaff-presented capture is nonblack, but has not been paired with an original-emulator capture. The original graphics-bank binding, palette and dungeon tile mapping are not yet connected to a validated renderer. These runs confirm native startup, input and tick-loop progress, not a visually playable game or complete parity. Source-only verification of all seven dungeon records establishes data admission, not campaign parity. Native movement, transitions, combat, audio, presentation and save parity remain open. The bounded native --debug spawn-source receipt has also been verified in three headless JP loops against an independent extraction from the hash-verified Track 02 BIN; an authentic DM1 control emitted no Theron receipt. This confirms source-metadata reporting only, not original spawn selection, creature generation or visible rendering. See the receipt evidence. The latest cold Japanese System Card reference trace separately binds the $1800=$C8, $1801=$04 callback to $2259=$04 and BIOS branch $E166->$E176; no game-owned handoff was observed. A separate cold Japanese run confirms that holding Button I for four seconds on NEW GAME opens file selection, and holding it for four seconds on FILE 1 enters the Akutuba story; shorter repeated presses advance to the dungeon. This confirms the Japanese title-action timing in the original game, but does not join guest input to an authenticated CD-to-RAM transition or establish native timing/parity. See the source-locked title route and System Card trace.

The capture-readiness record is the current summary of native runtime and original-reference evidence, including the authentic US mouse-held save-state replay. That replay has no runtime CD provenance and does not establish a semantic mouse action, movement, or renderer behavior. A separate read-only comparison maps all four US Akutuba source arrays into the saved standard-PCE HuC.SysCardRAM page selected by MPR3. The arrays remain simultaneously resident, so this does not identify the active map or prove the older trace's map reads without a contemporaneous MPR record. See the US state map binding report.

The Japanese F5 blocked-wall probe (autoload-state SHA-256 2cc9938b96640a74db1a5b706113564b5d578d5011daf5f85c588ef1c98d70ee) found no candidate position writes for UP, neutral or DOWN. A separate matched three-run comparison used the authentic JP Akutuba F5 emulator state with SHA-256 b4f2a06788e4723110b19892f93e8ac4aef1b5c18c6358a9fe36f1baf747b068; it found repeatable $20B4->$2040 TII transfers after Button II+UP reads, while three Button II-only controls retained the candidate bytes. A follow-up three-run control-flow trace used the first state and records the same 128-instruction path into $C1FC, including a $C1D6 call/return and conditional fall-through. Source-locked analysis also associates the TII with teleporter destination copying; the dynamic path does not establish the routine's gameplay purpose or identify the active-map object. This is input-conditioned state-transfer evidence, not proof of mapped movement, collision semantics, a visible response, or parity. The active map and position meaning remain unknown, and the state-only runs lack a cold CD handoff. See the comparison evidence and the historical blocked-wall report.

The reference-only Mednafen instrumentation chain, including the input-gated PCE Fast VRAM trace hook, applied to an isolated source tree and the instrumented PCE Fast binary built and installed on TRV2. An authentic JP save state loaded, and its guest input trace records scripted UP at $44C1 with port raw=0010, while the controller device value is device_raw=0000. This exposed and fixed a callback mismatch: the gate now receives the guest port value. A corrected bounded state capture now validates 4,096 gated VRAM commits after that authentic guest read in shared event order. State-only mode skips cold System Card checks and reports transition=missing. This verifies the trace gate and bounded event ordering only; causality, VRAM semantics, a visible response, a cold handoff, and renderer parity remain open. See the source-locked trace report. A follow-up cold US capture validates all three scripted inputs at System Card controller polls and records one $E009 dispatch. It observes no game-owned poll or runtime CD source-read join, so the observation does not change native support status. See the returned-mask capture report.

A separate PCE Fast replay loaded an existing US state and reached input-read PCs $44CA/$44DB, but its 1,354 short-format input rows share an output path and label with the standard-PCE instrumenter, so guest receipt is ambiguous. Its changed RAM/VRAM/SAT snapshots are not attributed to an action or renderer state. See the saved-state capture boundary.

README screenshots are Firestaff-rendered only; original-emulator captures are not presented as Firestaff output. See the platform status and capture handoff record for the evidence boundaries.

Chaos Strikes Back editions

Firestaff recognises original CSB editions by hash rather than by their folder names. The scanner currently covers the following families when the required matching data is present:

Original family	What Firestaff does with it today
Amiga 3.1 and 3.5	Default CSB route when a verified native program handoff is available. Native startup, entrance, supported HUD and viewport material use the Amiga data path.
Atari ST 2.0 and 2.1	Native media uses its own animation, runtime, HUD and supported viewport-material routes.
FM Towns English and Japanese	Native CD installations use their version-specific Towns packages for the supported title, Game and Utility routes.
PC-9801 Japanese 3.1	Not supported. The media is retained only as preservation reference and cannot select a data, startup, gameplay or input route.
X68000 Japanese 3.1	Not supported. The media is retained only as preservation reference and does not select a data, startup or gameplay route.

Recognition is deliberately separate from a playability claim. A recognised edition has passed the data gate; it does not imply that every screen, save format or gameplay path has reached parity. Firestaff keeps each edition on its own data path and never borrows files from another release to make a route appear to work.

CSBWin legacy saves

A complete original-named legacy CSBWin slot can resume with matching Atari ST 2.0/2.1 GRAPHICS.DAT and DUNGEON.DAT, from both the launcher and CLI:

firestaff --game csb --data-dir /path/to/CSB --save /path/to/CSBGAME2.DAT

The loader validates the full save body and source provenance before starting. It does not treat an arbitrary 512-byte header, renamed copy, compact roster, or DMSAVE.* file as a CSB resume. Extended Features/DSA saves remain fail-closed pending authenticated real-save coverage; its behavior is source-locked against CSBWin reference code and does not create a CSBWin game route.

Your game data

No game data is included. Keep your legally owned files in any directory and tell Firestaff where to look. It searches recursively and can inspect supported loose files, ZIP archives and disc-image containers without relying on filenames. Archives that need an external command-line tool are skipped by default. To allow an installed 7zz, 7z, or bsdtar to inspect them, pass --enable-external-archive-tools to the scan or game-launch command. The scan output identifies archive candidates it skipped. See game-data setup for details.

For the DAT-based games, GRAPHICS.DAT and DUNGEON.DAT must come from the same original edition. The launcher rejects incomplete or mismatched pairs. Optional title, animation, music and save files stay useful when they belong to the same edition, but they do not replace the required game data.

Suggested layout:

~/.firestaff/data/
  dm1/
  csb/
  dm2/
  nexus/
  theron/

Use the launcher setting or --data-dir to select another root, then inspect what was recognised:

firestaff --scan-data
firestaff --data-dir /path/to/games --scan-data

See game-data setup for the accepted media and the role of optional files for each game. The game-data format reference explains the verified containers, record families and save boundaries.

Firestaff never requires, searches for, reads, or bundles a BIOS, firmware, System Card, or external emulator. The only runtime input is your legally obtained game data in the local data directory; repository CI enforces this boundary.

The reproducible source dependency inventory is available as sbom/firestaff.spdx.json (SPDX 2.3). It excludes game media and every user-local input.

Included tools

Firestaff also ships desktop tools for working with files you own. They are optional and never run while playing a game.

Tool	Purpose	Documentation
Firestaff Artpack Studio	Creates and validates Modern-mode artpacks without modifying original game media.	Artpack Studio guide
Firestaff Dungeon Studio	Views and edits supported dungeon data, with a built-in screenshot option for documentation and review.	Dungeon Studio source
Firestaff Savegame Editor	Inspects and edits supported save files; always keep a backup of an original save.	Savegame Editor source

The desktop bundles build translations from their .po source catalogs during packaging. Generated .mo files are not stored in the source tree.

Platform status at a glance

Game	Playable	Verified runtime routes	Data/preservation only	Unsupported
DM1	—	PC DOS, Atari ST, Amiga, FM Towns and Apple IIGS startup; selected dungeon routes	PC-9801 preservation	X68000
CSB	—	Atari ST, Amiga and FM Towns bounded runtime routes	—	PC-9801, X68000
DM2	—	DOS, Amiga, FM Towns and Macintosh startup plus selected runtime routes	Mac JP/FR preservation	X68000
Nexus	—	Saturn disc/resource parsing and bounded rendering of authentic MAPD title planes	Saturn demo/fan translations	—
Theron's Quest	—	PC Engine/TurboGrafx Japanese Rev. 1 title-to-Akutuba route; US authentic Continue to dungeon 2 level 0 with bounded movement-command dispatch; all seven US/JP dungeon sources load	Original transitions, T900 item use/placement, broader campaign/save, presentation, combat and audio parity remain evidence-gated; five same-index ground placements are documented as capture candidates only	—

This table is a summary. Use Platform status for the exact feature boundary and Project status for cross-game evidence rules.

Running Firestaff

Build from source when a suitable package is not available:

git clone https://github.com/yeager/firestaff.git
cd firestaff
cmake -S . -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DBUILD_TESTING=OFF
cmake --build build --target firestaff --parallel
./build/firestaff --scan-data

This builds the game without registering the large CTest suite or hashing test-only game archives during configuration. To configure the full test suite, use -DBUILD_TESTING=ON in a separate build directory, then build the specific test targets you need before running them with ctest.

Firestaff requires CMake, a C11 compiler and SDL3. On macOS, SDL3 is available through Homebrew:

brew install sdl3

Useful command-line options:

firestaff --game <dm1|csb|dm2|nexus|theron>
          --data-dir <path>
          --platform <auto|pc|dos|amiga|atari-st|atari|st|fm-towns|fmtowns|fm_towns|mac|pce|pc-engine|saturn|apple-iigs|iigs>
          --dm1-fmtowns-ja
          --csb-fmtowns-ja
          --csb-utility-disk
          --scan-data
          --enable-external-archive-tools
          --fullscreen
          --scale-mode <n>
          --no-music | --music
          --version

--game starts the selected game directly. When you choose Return to Menu afterward, Firestaff exits. Add --menu to open the launcher first and return to it after the game ends.

Use the shared data root to choose a game in the five-game launcher:

./build/firestaff --menu --data-dir "$HOME/.firestaff/data"

To request one game from the command line, use its game ID:

./build/firestaff --game dm1 --data-dir "$HOME/.firestaff/data"
./build/firestaff --game csb --data-dir "$HOME/.firestaff/data"
./build/firestaff --game dm2 --data-dir "$HOME/.firestaff/data"
./build/firestaff --game theron --theron-native us --data-dir "$HOME/.firestaff/data/theron"
./build/firestaff --game nexus --platform saturn --data-dir "$HOME/.firestaff/data/nexus"

Theron accepts us or jp with --theron-native; choose the region whose authentic Track 02 data is installed. Nexus currently admits and renders the five authentic MAPD title planes in a bounded sequence, but Firestaff does not yet reproduce the native Saturn title composition or menu and its playable route remains gated. A successful menu selection or data scan does not by itself mean that a game is fully playable. See the platform status for each edition's verified scope.

In the startup menu, Settings → Audio → Music Volume → Off disables music while preserving sound effects and UI audio. --no-music applies the same choice for a direct CLI launch; --music explicitly re-enables it.

Nexus decodes and renders the five retail MAPD title planes from the original CUE/BIN in a bounded sequence. That source-backed asset route does not yet reproduce the native Saturn title composition or menu. Ymir reference evidence confirms a no-save Japanese retail cold boot and a separate English-version disc-image cold boot to the native title menu, plus a separate Japanese diagnostic replay from New Game to a native 3D corridor viewport. Replaying the English screenshot from the captured frame reproduces it pixel-for-pixel; the English source join has 126 informative matches among 137 textured draws, with 11 zero-filled spans excluded. These are emulator results; they do not establish Firestaff's full Saturn title composition or menu rendering/control. Firestaff's menu, HUD, viewport and dungeon routes remain fail-closed until their real consumer ownership and presentation evidence is bound.

Firestaff never delegates Nexus startup or gameplay to Mednafen (or another emulator); emulator tooling is used only outside the product to obtain and validate capture evidence.

--csb-fmtowns-ja explicitly selects the hash-verified Japanese FM Towns package and fails if that original package is not present; it never guesses from the host language or substitutes the English package.

--dm1-fmtowns-ja explicitly selects the hash-verified Japanese FM Towns edition and fails closed if its original members are unavailable; the default FM Towns selection remains the English edition.

Theron's Quest (PC Engine CD)

Place the original US Track 02 BIN in .firestaff/data/theron/ (or pass a data root that contains theron/TQUS02.bin). When both regions are installed, select either one without moving files:

./build/firestaff --theron-native us --data-dir "$HOME/.firestaff/data"
./build/firestaff --theron-native jp --data-dir "$HOME/.firestaff/data"

Hash-verified Track 02 members in external archives can also be read directly in memory when the installed host archive tool is explicitly enabled:

./build/firestaff --theron-native jp \
  --enable-external-archive-tools \
  --data-dir "$HOME/.firestaff/data/theron"

When both a loose regional BIN and an archive member are present, the loose BIN is preferred. Archive-only US and Japanese 7z startup—including the authentic Track 01 CDDA handoff—is covered by the theron_v1_us_7z_direct_boot and theron_v1_jp_7z_direct_boot real-media tests when those corpora are installed.

When a complete CUE is present, native startup may bind matching original Track 01 CDDA. A loose Track 02 never borrows audio from an unrelated file.

Firestaff's native input path maps Enter to title, stage and Soul Room selection actions. These controls have not yet been shown on a rendered Theron frame. An authentic Japanese reference capture confirms that four-second Button I holds on NEW GAME and FILE 1 advance into the Akutuba story; native Firestaff hold-duration parity remains unverified. For the input mapping and capture evidence, see Theron input notes. The Japanese Rev 1 CUE then reaches the bounded native Akutuba runtime through hash-verified Track 02 records. For a headless, reproducible CLI receipt, use:

SDL_VIDEODRIVER=dummy SDL_AUDIODRIVER=dummy ./build/firestaff \
  --game theron --data-dir "$HOME/.firestaff/data/theron" --boot-probe \
  --script 'enter,enter,action' \
  --boot-probe-expect-phase theron-runtime --boot-probe-expect-runtime \
  --boot-probe-expect-level-loaded 1 --boot-probe-expect-party 1,0,0 \
  --boot-probe-expect-startup-active 0

This confirms the native source-backed runtime route, not a recovered PC Engine CD-runtime semantic handoff. Uncaptured creature AI, combat, generator, sound-effect and text-control semantics remain unavailable rather than being replaced with host behavior. --csb-utility-disk opens the separately preserved FM Towns C06 Utility Disk after the normal verified CSB F31 boot; it implies --game csb --platform fm-towns and fails closed if that package is unavailable. The start menu also has a dedicated CSB Utility Disk (FM Towns) entry. This is distinct from the Atari R1 Hint Oracle (--csb-hint-oracle) and never substitutes its data or UI. Conflicting explicit --game selections are rejected, and the Utility Disk and Hint Oracle modes cannot be combined. The Hint Oracle needs --data-dir <root> containing the verified Atari R1 HCSB.HTC, HCSB.DAT and native MINI.DAT; those files may be loose or inside a supported archive. --save <MINI.DAT> is optional and selects an explicit native save instead of the verified R1 MINI.DAT found in that root. The initial Japanese C06 Utility chooser additionally requires the user's authorised 256 KiB FMT_FNT.ROM; set FIRESTAFF_FMTOWNS_FONT_ROM to that file before launch. Firestaff uses the ROM only for its original Shift-JIS glyphs and keeps the route closed if the file is missing or malformed; it never substitutes a system font or installs the ROM into game data.

Run the local test suite with:

ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure

Some tests need original game data and skip when that corpus is not present.

How the project is built

The launcher selects a game and its verified data. The game layer then owns rendering, input and runtime state, while the data layer reads the original files and models the dungeon.

Launcher
  └─ Game runtime
       └─ Dungeon and data layer
            └─ Original game files supplied by the player

Gameplay work is checked against primary references. DM1 and CSB use ReDMCSB, with CSBWin and documented original formats as additional references. DM2 uses skproject; Nexus and Theron's Quest use their respective platform analysis and original media.

The documentation index links the user guides, data notes and technical references. The project status is the place to check the current boundary before relying on a development route.

Legal

Firestaff is a clean-room engine reimplementation. You need game files from copies you legally own; the repository contains no copyrighted game data.

Dungeon Master, Chaos Strikes Back and Dungeon Master II are trademarks of FTL Games. DM Nexus is a trademark of Victor Interactive Software. Theron's Quest is a trademark of Working Designs and Victor Interactive Software.

License

MIT. See LICENSE.