BRENDER-ARCHIVAL.md

BRender Archival

BRender (Blazing Render) was Argonaut Software's real-time 3D engine, shipped through the 1990s and used in titles such as Carmageddon, FX Fighter, and Microsoft 3D Movie Maker. This packet is the public revival of BRender v1.3.2: not a source mirror, but a reproducible harness and evidence trail showing that the engine still builds and renders from public material.

Provenance and rights

• Source: the public foone/BRender-v1.3.2 snapshot, pinned at commit d88d0ed41122664b9781015b517db64353e16f19, MIT licensed. Provenance runs through Foone Turing, with the open-source release authorized by Argonaut's former CEO Jez San.
• This repository vendors none of that source and none of BRender's assets. The materializer generates a build harness that references a public checkout in place. Model and texture datafiles are read from that checkout at run time, never copied into this repository.

What the revival delivers

A materializer turns the period makefile topology into an out-of-tree CMake harness. The verified public boundary is Visual Studio Win32 Debug from the public v1.3.2 snapshot pinned above.

Two rendering paths exist today:

1. Portable lane: a ladder of self-verifying smokes through BRender's own pixelmap/rasterizer core. It covers vector math, framework startup, wireframe, scene graph, solid fill, depth, texture, datafile models, multi-model loading, Gouraud shading, plotter SVG, audits, host semantics, file texture sampling, and deterministic shell lifecycle.
2. Period-pipeline lane (brender_core_softrend_render): softrend and pentprim are compiled from the pinned upstream tree, pentprim's primitive library is explicitly bound, and the harness drives BrZbSceneRender over a loaded .dat model. The current release evidence renders dat/sph32.dat as an eight-frame nonblack orbit and reports final_frame_lit=19284 valid=true for the release media source run.

The 2026-08-27 native verification result is 21/21 CTest targets passing.

Release hardening

The release branch selectively ports only verified fixes that were still missing from current origin/main:

• material-resolve scanline setup initializes the third edge from w2 via ew[2][0];
• generated C receipts use shared JSON string escaping for caller-supplied paths and identifiers;
• pixelmap and host file round trips refuse preexisting caller-owned workfiles and clean up only files they created;
• generated texture rungs resolve INDEX_8 texels through the loaded palette;
• stale investigation diagnostics are removed from generated release surfaces.

These are covered by focused Python tests before the implementation changes.

Current limitations

These are documented boundaries, not release claims:

• Experimental textured TIA/PIZ2TIA execution reaches the kernel, but black output remains blocked by a measured vertex-layout/state mismatch. Completed textured period rendering is not claimed.
• x64 pointer-width portability is not claimed. The verified native build target is Win32.
• Assembly-only pentprim kernels outside the exercised RGB_888 ZB and experimental TIA path remain linkage stubs.
• The MSVC warning set is warning-only in the verified build, but has not been reduced to a zero-warning portability claim.
• This is an archival harness and release-evidence packet, not an endorsement, not a production renderer, and not a vendored source distribution.

Reproduce it

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

The brender_core_model_smoke executable takes any .dat model path and writes a PPM, so it doubles as a minimal model viewer for the period asset library.

Release media and provenance

Current public media lives under gallery/release-20260827/. It is generated from verified nonblack render output, or from factual diagrams/cards that cite the same boundary. It excludes black diagnostic frames and generative imitation.

• Provenance manifest records sanitized commands, source attribution, source SHA, input/output hashes, dimensions, nonblack metrics, and limitations.
• Period pipeline still is a lossless PNG from the final verified orbit frame.
• Period pipeline orbit contact sheet shows the provenance-pinned eight-frame period-pipeline orbit.
• Evidence card, pipeline diagram, and 1200x630 social card are bounded release assets.

Package it

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

The staging directory contains the materialized harness, README, CTest transcripts, release media, provenance manifest, SHA256SUMS.txt, and package-receipt.json. The package references the public checkout by path at materialization time and does not copy upstream source or assets.

What you can do with it today

• Build BRender's core from a public checkout on a modern MSVC Win32 toolchain.
• Run 21 native CTest targets over the portable and period-pipeline harness.
• Load and render BRender's own period models straight from their datafiles.
• Use the portable smokes as small, inspectable examples of BRender geometry, materials, texture sampling, and plotter output.
• Extend the period-pipeline lane one measured kernel or state boundary at a time without claiming unverified textured output.

Records

The claims above are backed by structured records in this repository: readiness/brender-production-readiness.json, harnesses/brender-v132-portable-core-plan.json, tasks/brender-critical-edition-packet.json, and reproductions/brender-critical-edition-source-build.json. The generated target dossier at docs/generated/targets/brender.md is the machine-updated view.