How Exile works

Rebuilding a 1988 masterpiece in TypeScript — every layer, from the landscape hash to the physics kernel to the renderer, held bit-identical to the original 6502 machine code. The series is being prepared for this site; the layers below are the running order.

1. 00 Why I rebuilt Exile, and how The motivation and the method: investigate, understand, recreate, and prove it right bit by bit.
2. 01 The source code There is no source code, however there is a remarkable reverse-engineered disassembly.
3. 02 How Exile builds a world 65,536 tiles from 500 bytes of code — a landscape that is never stored, where one wrong carry builds a different planet.
4. 03 How Exile draws the world Every graphic in the game in 3.3KB — and the self-modifying sprite plotter that gets it on screen at speed.
5. 04 Player physics Gravity, thrust and collision in 8-bit arithmetic. Coming soon
6. 05 The player Walking, jumping, aiming, and the jetpack that sometimes doesn't. Coming soon
7. 06 Creatures The bestiary's shared brain: one kernel, forty behaviours. Coming soon
8. 07 Sound The SN76489 effect engine, replayed write-for-write. Coming soon
9. 08 Weapons The fire path, projectiles, and the armoury. Coming soon
10. 09 Particles Thirty-two slots of self-modifying sparkle. Coming soon
11. 10 Doors & switches Tertiary objects: the world that lives in the map. Coming soon
12. 11 Robots & turrets The mechanical opposition and its update routines. Coming soon
13. 12 Carry & throw Held objects, grenades, and the blast that moves the world. Coming soon
14. 13 Water & fire Flasks, fireballs, spawner tiles, and dousing. Coming soon
15. 14 Teleports & pockets The recall ring, transporters, and the destinator itself. Coming soon
16. 15 Items & the Chatter Collectables, whistles, and the game's best companion. Coming soon
17. 16 The events system Triax, hives, emergence and summons — the world's director. Coming soon
18. 17 The object lifecycle The secondary list and the far-away check: a world that remembers. Coming soon
19. 18 The renderer The sprite and tile plotter, held byte-identical in screen memory. Coming soon
20. 19 The perfect oracle Proving the reconstruction bit-identical with a 216-line emulator. Coming soon
21. 20 The game Assembling every validated layer into the thing you just played. Coming soon

Exile © 1988 Peter Irvin and Jeremy Smith · published by Superior Software
Reconstructed by James Randall from the enhanced version disassembly created by level7
Presented as a tribute to its authors.