F-15 Strike Eagle II reverse-engineering hits playable milestone, wants DOS testers

A hobbyist reconstructing the C source of MicroProse’s 1989 game F-15 Strike Eagle II from its original binaries reports the project has jumped far ahead of schedule. All three executables now have their C code rebuilt, data has been migrated out of assembly, most assembly-only routines have working C replacements, and functions and data structures have been given meaningful names. The maintainer is preparing to fork the repository for a separate porting effort.

With the rebuild now actually runnable rather than just opcode-matched against the original, the project needs human testers. Release v0.9.1 works against version 451.03 with the Desert Storm expansion: players drop the new executables into the game folder (after backing up and removing the original f15.com so it doesn’t launch instead). The build skips the setup screen and assumes MCGA/VGA, no sound, and no joystick, but the briefing, flight, and debriefing phases should all function. The maintainer wants reports of crashes, graphical glitches, and broken keys, ideally with a screenshot and a description of what triggered the problem.

A key constraint is that this is a bug-for-bug reconstruction: original quirks like vanishing 3D objects and the plane falling upward when inverted and out of fuel must be preserved for now. Testers are therefore asked to confirm an issue doesn’t also occur in the original before filing it. The post credits community involvement for the project’s accelerating progress.