Kingpin: Life of Crime Demo (Xatrix / Interplay, 1999)

App kingpin_demo (candidate kingpin-demo, localOnly), alpha demo v0.22n. Quake II engine: kingpin.exe imports only system DLLs; ref_gl.dll (or 3dfxgl.dll as the GL driver) and main/gamex86.dll load at runtime; the data is main/Pak0.pak plus loose main/ files. Registered 8373af6cd.

The readme licence forbids decompiling or disassembly: debug it from traces and runtime behaviour only.

Source and licence

The archive.org item win-98-games-k-o.-7z is one 5.9 GB 7z, but the download service serves single members of it: .../Win98_Games-K-O.7z/Kingpin-DEMO-OpenGL.EXE (110023168 bytes, SHA-1 551cd726…), a collector's WinZip self-extractor of the demo tree that 7z x opens. readme.txt: personal noncommercial home use only; no copying, distribution, decompiling or disassembly. Hence localOnly.

Running

• Args +set vid_ref gl +set gl_driver opengl32: ref_gl through opengl32. On the CLI GL needs --headless-gl (or --gl-renderer=software).
• Slow first-level load and the loopback timeouts. After GAME → EASY the LOADING plaque stays up from about b500 to b3000 at the 200 ms/batch headless clock, with almost no API calls (CPU in ref_gl/gamex86). That is more than Quake II's 120 s cl_timeout/timeout: the console shows "Loading plaque timed out", "Can't find pic: net" (the lag icon) and then "Server connection timed out", and Escape lands in the main menu. Either --tick-ms-per-batch=20 or +set cl_timeout 100000 +set timeout 100000 gets into the level; the registry uses the cvars, since they also apply in the browser. The real fix is a faster load: worth a profile.
• The intro cut-scene runs to about b6000, then first person in the alley.

Route (headless, --batch-size=50000)

Enter at 300/400/500 (GAME → EASY), space at 5000, Up from 6200 walks into the wall ahead, Right at 6550 turns toward a corrugated-metal shed. Evidence: scratch/runs/20261011T0800Z-kingpin_demo-gameplay-claude1863.

Not looked at: the browser, combat, sound, why the level load is so slow.