Captain Bible reverse-engineering

Project repository: https://github.com/peterkelly/captain-bible-re

This book records the evidence, methods, and results of reverse-engineering Captain Bible in the Dome of Darkness. The supplied copy is a DOS program whose main executable is CB.EXE. The work begins with a reproducible FreeDOS virtual machine before moving to static and dynamic analysis.

Statements in this book should distinguish direct observations from inferences. Commands and their important results are preserved in the progress log.

Current scope

The playable QEMU environment is complete. Static analysis has identified the packer and run time, reconstructed the executable, mapped startup and major support routines, and recovered the command-line, export, input, and save paths. Dynamic analysis now uses a QEMU TCG plugin to trace game-originated DOS and sound-driver calls without modifying CB.EXE, correlating file activity and runtime addresses with the reconstructed program. The resource container, graphics, scene bytecode, audio, text, saves, maps, combat, conversation, and final progression all have reproducible inspectors or archive-backed regressions.

Focused input/save traces, representative gameplay screens, and a live combat memory capture now supplement the earlier startup evidence. Remaining questions concern semantic names and branch-level behavior that the current evidence does not distinguish. Those boundaries are recorded in PLAN and in the relevant system chapters.