dauntless

Open reimplementation of the Bridge Commander engine.

Legal notice

This project is an independent engine reimplementation. It does not include any game assets, scripts, or content from Star Trek: Bridge Commander. A legitimate retail copy of Star Trek: Bridge Commander is required to use this software.

This project is not made by, affiliated with, or supported by Activision or Paramount.

Setup

Drop your BC installation into game/ and your BC SDK into sdk/.

uv sync
uv run pytest

See docs/project/gap_analysis.md for the engine gap analysis and implementation phases.

Running the renderer

Build the renderer host from the project root, then launch the binary directly:

cmake -B build -S . && cmake --build build -j
./build/dauntless

Keys: WASDQE flies the ship · 1-9/0/R throttle · arrow keys orbit the camera · scroll wheel zooms · C resets · F8 toggles the RmlUi debugger overlay · F9 toggles UI visibility.

NIF parser corpus test

native/tools/scan_nifs/ is a C++ binary that walks a directory tree, runs nif::load on every .nif file, and reports per-file outcomes — files that reached End Of File, files where the walker stopped on an unknown block type (grouped by type), and files that threw (grouped by message). It exits 0 only if every file reached EOF.

It's wired up as a ctest target (scan_nifs_corpus) that points at game/data when a BC install is present. The test is registered conditionally — if game/data is absent, no test is added (CI without assets just skips it). Re-run cmake configure after dropping in game/.

cmake -S native -B build
cmake --build build --target scan_nifs
ctest --test-dir build -R scan_nifs --output-on-failure

You can also run the binary directly against any directory tree:

./build/tools/scan_nifs/scan_nifs game/data

Game-loop harness

tools/gameloop_harness.py discovers every SDK mission script, calls Initialize(pMission), fires ET_MISSION_START, and advances the headless GameLoop for N ticks per mission. It reports per-mission pass/init-fail/loop-fail status and a grouped error summary — useful for catching regressions across the full mission corpus.

uv run python tools/gameloop_harness.py              # default: 36000 ticks (~10 min @ 60 Hz)
uv run python tools/gameloop_harness.py --ticks 600  # shorter run
uv run python tools/gameloop_harness.py --profile    # adds a ranked stub-call profile

TGL harness

tools/tgl_harness.py walks every .tgl file under game/data/TGL/ and sdk/Build/Data/TGL/, parses each via engine.missions.tgl_reader.read_tgl, and reports per-file pass/fail plus a grouped error summary. A file passes if it decodes to at least one string or sound; it fails on a parse exception or if it parses to an empty TGL. Missing roots are skipped silently so checkouts without a game/ install still work.

uv run python tools/tgl_harness.py

References & acknowledgements

The Phase 2 NIF parser draws on two open-source projects:

• OpenMW — its NIF parser (components/nif/) is mirrored into native/third_party/openmw_nif/ and used as a test-only diff oracle. Many thanks to the OpenMW team for building and maintaining a robust, GPL-licensed NIF implementation we can hold our own work to.
• NifSkope — its nif.xml schema is the authoritative documentation for NIF block layouts and explicitly includes Bridge Commander in its compatibility list. Thanks to the NifTools / NifSkope team for keeping the format documented.

See THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md for the formal attribution.