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.

Dungeon Master for PC DOS 3.4 and Dungeon Master II: Skullkeep are the current playable routes when matching original media is supplied. DM1 also recognises its native Atari ST container. Chaos Strikes Back starts from verified native Amiga editions by default; Atari ST and FM Towns have their own native data paths. CSB campaign, save and presentation parity, plus Nexus and Theron's Quest runtime work, are still under active development.

Current state

Dungeon Master for PC DOS 3.4 is the most complete route: startup, menus, dungeon view, HUD, controls, combat and save handling use original data.

Firestaff detects real media and exposes only paths with a verified handoff; it never borrows data from another edition to fill a gap. The detailed status is kept in project status. The published documentation is available at yeager.github.io/firestaff. The preservation status, reviewed 2026-08-12, separates source/disassembly evidence, real-media receipts and open routes.

Game	Current scope
Dungeon Master	Playable PC DOS 3.4 route. Atari ST media has its own native graphics decoder and launch path; further parity work continues.
Chaos Strikes Back	Native Amiga is the default route when verified media is available. Atari ST and FM Towns have their own native data and startup paths. Campaign parity is still being completed.
Dungeon Master II: Skullkeep	Playable source-owned runtime from DOS, Amiga, FM Towns and Macintosh data. Advanced parity work, native non-DOS saves and some combat/UI owners continue.
DM Nexus	Saturn real-data bring-up in progress.
Theron's Quest	PC Engine real-media bring-up in progress.

Dungeon Master II: Skullkeep

DM2 is playable in Firestaff from four authenticated source families:

Edition	Accepted source data	Verified runtime scope
DOSBox / PC English	GRAPHICS.DAT + DUNGEON.DAT; DOSBox saves in Downloads/dm2 are optional resume data	New Game, active runtime, movement, pit/stairs/DB1 routes, creatures and spell handoff
Amiga English	Original installer archive, read and verified in memory	New Game, active big-endian runtime, clipped source CHARSHEET inventory, movement, pit/stairs/DB1 routes and creatures
FM Towns Japanese	Original HME-242 ZIP/disc image; English text additionally uses the verified PC-English GRAPHICS.DAT companion	M12 archive launch, AUTOEXEC animation order, source title streams, New Game, inventory, movement, pit/stairs/DB1 routes and creatures
Macintosh English	Authentic retail ZIP/HFS media	New Game, active big-endian runtime, movement, stairs/DB1 routes and source-owned combat/creature handoff

The shared DM2 data root may contain all four editions. M12 resolves each 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.

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 ordinary desktop controls in Firestaff: Up/W moves forward, Down/S moves backward, and Left/A and Right/D turn while held. Keypad 8/2/4/6 provides the same four directions. Left and right mouse buttons are Button I and Button II; mouse motion only moves the normal pointer and never changes the selected object or jumps between controls. On touch screens, a short touch is Button I and a long touch is Button II.

Theron's Quest runtime status

README screenshots are Firestaff-rendered screenshots only. Original-media emulator captures are kept out of the public README and are not presented as Firestaff output. Theron's Quest remains in source-bound runtime bring-up; see the capture handoff record for the non-visual media and trace evidence.

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 an M11 data, startup, gameplay or input route.
X68000 Japanese 3.1	Not supported. The media is retained only as preservation reference and does not select an M11 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.

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.

Platform status at a glance

Game	Playable	Verified runtime routes	Data/preservation only	Unsupported
DM1	PC DOS 3.4	Bounded Atari ST, Amiga and FM Towns start/runtime routes	PC-9801 preservation	X68000
CSB	—	Bounded Atari ST, Amiga and FM Towns title/start-menu/runtime routes	—	PC-9801, X68000
DM2	Bounded DOS, Amiga, FM Towns and Macintosh routes	New Game/startup, source-owned runtime slices and real-media resume where supplied	Mac JP/FR preservation	X68000
Nexus	—	Saturn Japanese bounded phase launch	Saturn demo/fan translations	—
Theron's Quest	—	Bounded native PC Engine/TurboGrafx US CloneCD ZIP and Japanese CUE/Track 02 startup routes	Source-only dungeon loading; gameplay, save, and presentation consumers remain capture-gated	—

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
cmake --build build --parallel
./build/firestaff --scan-data

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|amiga|atari-st|fm-towns|pce|saturn>
          --dm1-fmtowns-ja
          --csb-fmtowns-ja
          --csb-utility-disk
          --scan-data
          --fullscreen
          --scale-mode <n>
          --version

Nexus remains deliberately fail-closed in Firestaff's native runtime until a real Saturn title/display-consumer capture exists. 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 is an explicit CSB-only F31J request. It 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 falls back to F31E.

--dm1-fmtowns-ja is the corresponding explicit DM1 request. It selects the hash-verified JDM.EXP/JDATA edition and fails closed if those original members are unavailable; the default FM Towns selection remains EDM.EXP/DATA.

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) and start it normally:

./build/firestaff --game theron --data-dir "$HOME/.firestaff/data"

The title accepts Enter, followed by the stage and Soul Room selections. 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 source-backed title → stage → Soul Room → initial runtime handoff, not broad PC Engine gameplay parity. Uncaptured later-level/object publication, 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. 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.