Age of Wonders (beta demo)

Triumph Studios / Epic / GoD, 1999. Tutorial plus one scenario ("The First Conflict"). Registered as age_of_wonders_demo; version string 0.86.0140.

Fixture and install

• Source: test/binaries/win98-games-a-d/Age Of Wonder I demo-SW.EXE, an InstallShield PackageForTheWeb wrapper (44 MB) around a Disk1 set (setup.exe, _setup.dll, data1.cab, ...).
• Installed headless in three stages, each child captured with --capture-launch because CreateProcess does not run a child in the CLI:
  1. run.js --exe=<wrapper> --capture-launch=cap -> setup.exe /SMS
  2. run.js --exe=cap/.../setup.exe --args=/SMS --vfs-include='*' --capture-launch=cap2 -> c:\windows\temp\_istmp1.dir\_ins5576._mp
  3. run.js --exe=cap2/.../_ins5576._mp --exe-guest-path=<same> --vfs-tree=cap2 --control --frozen --save-vfs=inst --save-vfs-prefix='c:\program files', then Yes (licence), Next (destination), step until Setup Complete, quit. The tree (782 files, 93 MB) lives at Age Of Wonders demo-SW/installed/ and mounts at c:\program files\triumph studios\age of wonders beta demo\; node tools/gen-win98-games-a-d-manifests.js writes its manifest.

What it needed (2026-10-06)

1. OFT-less imports (44b311d2). A Delphi 3 app with runtime packages: aow.exe imports 19 .dpl packages and they import each other, all through Borland import descriptors with OriginalFirstThunk 0. $patch_caller_iat stopped at OFT == 0, so the EXE (mapped before any package, every slot a stub) was never bound: first call trapped as UNIMPLEMENTED System.LoadResourceModule@83E68268. Test: test/test-dll-import-no-ilt.js.
2. OBM_CHECKBOXES (44b311d2). VCL loads it at startup to size check boxes (id 32759 trapped in $gdi_bitmap_create_system).
3. Low VirtualAlloc arena (virtualAllocTop: 0x10000000). Loading the scenario span forever in ilpack.dpl 0x552111ea (a colour-keyed 16-bit span copy) with ECX ~0x8FB02614. Cause: the record skipper at ilpack+0x55211188 does lea esi,[esi+edx+3]; and esi,0x0FFFFFFC, which drops the top nibble of a pointer; Win9x never hands out heap above 256MB, our top-down arena starts at 0x7F000000. Not the uop tier (--no-uop stalls the same). Test: test/test-virtual-alloc-top.js.

The packages must be seeded explicitly (dlls in lib/apps.js, VCL30 first): resolveDllGraph only follows dependencies whose names are in lib/dll-registry.js.

Route (CLI, default batch size)

Batch numbers from scratch/runs/20261006-aow-demo-move/route.txt: 300K first orb (crossed swords) -> Game Type; 340K "Single Computer" -> Select a Map; 375K "first conflict.hsm", 389K Select -> scenario setup (Elves = Human vs Halflings, Orcs, Goblins CPU); 423K Start! -> loading; ~700K "Gildesh, Let the game begin". Then: click the banner (briefing book), click the bookmark (research book), pick a spell (Haste) -> map. Click the party on the town (222,205) to select it (leader + 3 archers, 26 moves), click a hex (298,262) to plot the path, click it again to move.

Evidence: scratch/runs/20261006-aow-demo-move.

Open

Audio (Galaxy Sound System, galaxy.dll; it imports ole32 which falls to WAT stubs), FPS, the browser route.