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Lost Engine Directory

This archive does two things. It hosts archival restorations of the engines it rebuilds itself, and it acts as a directory for finding other lost or dormant rendering and game engine resources. When a project is actively maintained, the archive does not fork or re-host it; it points to the maintainer.

Restorations hosted here

Engines rebuilt in this repository, with a reproducible harness and a verified build.

Engine State Where
Argonaut BRender v1.3.2 portable pure-C render path complete (loads and renders real .dat models) BRender packet

Actively maintained: go to the maintainer

These were assessed and found to be living projects. The archive indexes them as lineage and interop references and does not attempt a revival. Use the upstream repository.

Project Maintainer repository License
Mesa 3D https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/mesa/mesa MIT (core; per-file SPDX exceptions)
OGRE https://github.com/OGRECave/ogre MIT (LGPL before v1.7)
Quesa (QuickDraw 3D API) https://github.com/jwwalker/Quesa BSD-3-Clause
Open Inventor https://github.com/aumuell/open-inventor maintained fork
PHIGS (CERN OpenPHIGS) CERN OpenPHIGS permissive (X Consortium / Sun)
PSn00bSDK (PS1 clean-room SDK) https://github.com/Lameguy64/PSn00bSDK MPL-2.0 (sub-tools GPL)
OpenGOAL (Jak/GOAL) https://github.com/open-goal/jak-project ISC
LithTech Jupiter (ltjs) https://github.com/bibendovsky/ltjs rights unresolved; see note

Note on ltjs: the original Jupiter EX source carries an in-tree "all rights reserved" LithTech copyright, and the widely-repeated GPLv2 release claim has no primary-source corroboration. The archive treats its rights posture as unresolved and links the maintained fork for reference only.

Lost or reference-only: leads worth pursuing

Genuinely lost, dormant, or source-restricted engines. Some are buildable revival candidates, others can only be dossiers. Confidence varies; entries are leads, not claims.

Buildable revival candidates (genuinely lost)

  • Crystal Space 3D (github.com/crystalspace/CS, LGPL, dead since ~2011).
  • RenderWare, via the aap/librw clean-room substrate (original Criterion/EA source is lost/restricted).
  • Aqsis and Pixie (RenderMan-compliant renderers, dormant mirrors).

Missing from the roster, worth adding

Tracked as lead-dossier targets with planned accessions (2026-08-22):

Lead Target record Posture
Cosmo3D (SGI) targets/cosmo3d.json history verified (beta-era halt, Optimizer substrate, Fahrenheit lineage); no standalone source exists
N64 GBI / Fast3D microcode family targets/n64-gbi-fast3d.json official microcode proprietary; libdragon clean-room path verified complete
Sega Saturn SGL / SBL targets/sega-saturn-sgl-sbl.json documentation-only lead, research pending
trueSpace / Caligari (Octree Software renderer) targets/truespace-caligari.json freeware binary era verified; leaked ts4 source is do-not-redistribute
BMRT and its Entropy / Gelato lineage targets/bmrt-lineage.json shareware binaries-only lineage verified; ended by the 2002 Pixar settlement
RealSpace Engine (Origin Systems) targets/realspace-engine.json source likely lost; libRealSpace reverse-engineered reconstruction verified as revival path

The PS1 LIBGPU / LIBGTE / LIBGS entry is already tracked under targets/ps1-programmer-tool.json rather than duplicated here.

  • Blade Runner Engine (Westwood Studios).
  • Mercenary / Damocles (Novagen, Paul Woakes).
  • MathEngine Karma.
  • TDI Explore (Thomson Digital Image).

Reference-only (dossier deliverables)

IRIS GL, OpenGL Performer core (SGI never released libpf/libpr), QuickDraw 3D (Apple source never released), Reality Lab (RenderMorphics), the RenderMan interface specification, Softimage/Alias pipeline history, the tri-Ace PS2 renderer (GDC 2005 slides only), Sony ProDG/EB for PS2, and studio-heritage lineages such as Psygnosis Liverpool and Team Ico.

Restricted material is indexed as rights-posture metadata only. This directory never links to redistribution of proprietary source, leaked SDKs, or assets.