Homeworld demo

Relic's 1999 3D space RTS, the downloadable demo ("Homeworld Downloadable Version", menu shows Version DLD_05.1). Registered as homeworld_demo.

Payload and licence

test/candidate-corpus/manifest.json, id homeworld-demo: archive.org HomeworldDemo/HWDemo.exe (65.7 MB, SHA-1 27fd4faf...), a Wise installer (WiseMain in its strings; 7z cannot open it). The tree comes from running that installer in the emulator, tools/install-homeworld-demo.js (fetcher step installHomeworldDemo): Welcome, licence, destination (C:\Sierra\Homeworld Downloadable), program group, start -- Next is at (366,382) on every page at --batch-size=10000 from about batch 2050, and the copy is done by about batch 3500. It installs 16 entries, 75 MB: homeworld.exe, homeworlddl.big, dl_music.wxd, dl_demo.vce, the renderers rgl.dll / rglsw.dll / rgld3d.dll / 3dfx\, binkw32.dll, movies\.

Licence: Sierra's demo EULA (eula.txt) -- one copy for personal use, no copying or reproduction, no reverse engineering or disassembly. Kept localOnly; investigate with API traces only.

Launch: the "insert CD" box is a working-directory problem

Invalid or missing Homeworld CD. Please insert valid CD. means the game did not find DL_Music.wxd. It looks in the working directory first (FindFirstFileA("DL_Music.wxd")), then on D:\. With --vfs-tree the tree is mounted at C:\, so the CLI needs --exe-guest-path=C:\homeworld.exe --cwd=C:\; a cwd of C:\Sierra\Homeworld Downloadable reproduces the box.

Route to gameplay (CLI, --batch-size=100000)

Evidence: scratch/runs/20261011T1810Z-homeworld-demo-w6 (game6-s4600, game7-*).

Renderer

The registry has no renderer choice yet, and the game starts on its software renderer rglsw.dll (loaded through rgl.dll), 640x480.