brender-archival

Reviving Argonaut's BRender, and every other lost rendering and game engine, one at a time. This is the public revival archive: reproducible harnesses, verified build ladders, bounded release evidence, and public-safe metadata. It vendors no proprietary source, no game assets, and no restricted material.

BRender is the current flagship release lane. The rest of the roster remains in progress.

BRender: rebuilt and rendering

From the public BRender v1.3.2 source snapshot (MIT, provenance via Foone Turing, release authorized by former Argonaut CEO Jez San), pinned at commit d88d0ed41122664b9781015b517db64353e16f19, the materializer generates an out-of-tree CMake harness that references the source checkout in place.

The verified 2026-08-27 boundary is Visual Studio Win32 Debug:

• 21/21 native CTest targets pass.
• The period-pipeline rung compiles softrend and pentprim from the upstream tree itself, binds pentprim's primitive library, and drives BrZbSceneRender.
• The period-pipeline rung renders dat/sph32.dat as an eight-frame nonblack orbit and reports final_frame_lit=19284 valid=true for the release media source run.
• Release hardening covers generated-C JSON escaping, caller-owned workfile protection, material-resolve third-edge initialization, INDEX_8 palette lookup, and removal of stale investigation diagnostics.

The experimental textured TIA path executes, but black output remains blocked by a measured vertex-layout/state mismatch. This repository does not claim completed textured rendering, x64 readiness, production readiness, endorsement, or vendored upstream source/assets.

Rung	What it proves
Vector math	scalar and vector core
Framework startup	BrBegin / BrEnd
Wireframe	BrMatrix4Perspective into a memory pixelmap
Scene graph	model actors projected through BRender's v1db transforms
Solid shaded	portable C scanline rasterizer, per-face lighting
Depth buffer	per-pixel occlusion in the portable rung
Textured	perspective-correct texture mapping in the portable rung
Datafile models	BrModelLoad renders real .dat models
UV-textured models	loaded model UV coordinates drive texture sampling
Multi-part assembly	BrModelLoadMany composites the 12-part coupe
Gouraud shading	per-vertex normals and smooth gradients
Plotter lane	hidden-line-removed SVG polylines, pen-plotter ready
Asset audit	loaded model geometry, face indices, degenerate faces, and material attachment
Pixelmap audit	BrPixelmapLoad probes period .pix and .pal files
Material audit	BrMaterialLoad identifiers, flags, index_base, and colour-map attachment
Pixelmap round trip	BrPixelmapSave then reload, with safe caller-owned workfile handling
Material resolve	BrMaterialLoad material attached to loaded model faces and rendered
File-texture sampling	loaded period .pix sampled with palette-aware INDEX_8 lookup
Game shell	deterministic INIT/LOAD/RUN/TEARDOWN frame loop over loaded assets
Host semantic	host file round trips without deleting preexisting caller-owned workfiles
Period pipeline	softrend plus pentprim built from upstream, nonblack ZB sphere output

Release media

The current public media is generated from verified nonblack render output or from factual diagrams/cards. Black diagnostic frames and generative imitation are excluded. Provenance, commands, dimensions, hashes, input attribution, metrics, and limitations are recorded in gallery/release-20260827/provenance-manifest.json.

The social preview card is gallery/release-20260827/social-card-1200x630.png. The full progress sequence is gallery/release-20260827/progress-sequence.png.

Gallery

These captures are produced by render smokes from BRender's public sample models. They are public release output, not vendored upstream assets.

The plotter lane also emits ready-to-plot SVG: gallery/10-teapot-plotter.svg.

See docs/BRENDER-ARCHIVAL.md for the full packet: provenance, reproduction, current capability, and bounded limitations.

Package a release

python scripts/package_brender_release.py `
  --source-root C:\path\to\BRender-v1.3.2 `
  --output-root C:\path\to\release-stage

The packager stages the materialized harness, README, CTest transcripts, current release media, provenance manifest, SHA256SUMS.txt, and package-receipt.json. No proprietary source or assets are copied.

Reproduce the BRender build

python -m pip install -e ".[test]"
engine-revival materialize-brender-harness `
  --source-root C:\path\to\BRender-v1.3.2 `
  --output-root C:\path\to\brender-portable-core-harness
cmake -S <harness> -B <build> -A Win32 "-DBRENDER_SOURCE_DIR=C:\path\to\BRender-v1.3.2"
cmake --build <build> --config Debug
ctest --test-dir <build> -C Debug --output-on-failure

brender_core_model_smoke <model.dat> <out.ppm> doubles as a minimal viewer for the period asset library.

Archive workflow

python -m pip install -e ".[test]"
engine-revival seed
engine-revival validate
engine-revival audit-public
engine-revival index
engine-revival report
python -m pytest

Findings live as structured JSON records first (readiness/, harnesses/, attempts/, reproductions/, sources/, targets/, ...), and generated pages under docs/generated/ are views over that corpus.

License

Copyright (C) 2026 Zain Dana Harper. Licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 or later; see LICENSE. The BRender source this project revives is separately MIT licensed and is referenced from a public checkout, never vendored here.

Public docs

• Revival mission
• BRender archival packet
• Public boundary
• Recovery workflow
• Generated public index
• Generated corpus database
• Generated production readiness
• Generated harnesses
• Generated attempts
• Contributing

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Zentropy Labs · order out of entropy. An independent lab building evidence-first tools that leave a re-checkable artifact behind. Built by Zain Dana Harper in Seattle. The full workbench is at Project Telos.