Rollcage demo (Psygnosis/Attention to Detail, 1999, Direct3D)

App id rollcage_demo, candidate rollcage-demo (registered 2026-10-11, w5).

Source and licence

• archive.org item RollcageDemo, RollcageDemo.zip: 25,918,163 bytes, SHA-1 3e95613233ac21d2543d999c5f86fb5d98ea8f45.
• It is a demo CD. DISK1/ROLLCAGE/ holds the game loose, already laid out as installed:
  • a launcher ROLLCAGE.EXE (40 KB);
  • DIRECT3D/ROLLCAGE.EXE (786 KB) and QMIXER.DLL;
  • GLIDE/ROLLCAGE.EXE and QMIXER.DLL;
  • IDXDATA/ROLLCAGE.IDX and ROLLCAGE.IMG (20 MB).
• DATA1.CAB (InstallShield 5) only lists those same files.
• No licence grant. README.TXT says "© 1999 Psygnosis Ltd/Attention To Detail ... All rights reserved". The setup script names a license.txt that exists neither on the disc nor in the cab. The candidate is localOnly.

Launch

• DIRECT3D\ROLLCAGE.EXE opens its data as ..\IDXData\rollcage.img, so it must start in C:\Rollcage\Direct3D.
  • Started from C:\Rollcage, the setup dialog came up with blank buttons and an empty Device/Resolution list, because the per-language PC_INFORMATION_MESSAGES strings and the mode list never loaded.
• Static imports include QMIXER.dll (QSound) from its own directory and DINPUT/DSOUND/DPLAYX.
• ATD "GFX chaining". The first process is only the setup dialog (dialog 129, DlgProc 0x43838a).
  • Play creates event ATDGFXCHAINING, runs CreateProcessA("Rollcage.exe", "\"Rollcage.exe\" /FRONTEND"), waits 100 ms and exits.
  • The menus, attract mode and races all run in that /FRONTEND child.
  • After an idle attract cycle the front end relaunches itself (another /FRONTEND) and exits.
  • So the app needs spawnProcesses: true.
  • Since the CLI fix, a spawned child inherits the parent's DLL seeds; before it, the child crashed on the unresolved QSWaveMixInitEx.
• Input is DirectInput only: GetDeviceState on the keyboard (256 bytes, buffer at 0x4e0200). Use di-keydown/di-keyup; WM_KEYDOWN does nothing.

Route (CLI, --batch-size=200000)

node test/run.js --app=rollcage_demo --no-build --quiet-api --quiet-blocks \
  --batch-size=200000 --max-batches=1400 --input=250:click:451:121 \
  --pipe-child-args="--batch-size=200000 --input=160:di-keydown:13,162:di-keyup:13,200:di-keydown:13,202:di-keyup:13,240:di-keydown:13,242:di-keyup:13,280:di-keydown:13,282:di-keyup:13,400:di-keydown:38,450:png:race.png,600:png:race2.png"

• Parent batch 250: click Play at (451,121).
• Child batch 150: main menu (League / Arcade / ... / Quit Game).
• The Enter presses go through Arcade, then the car screen, then the track list (Daytona highlighted, "Harpoon Islands"), then the start.
• By child batch 450 the race has started: LAP 00 OF 03, 5th place, 53 km/h.
• Holding Up (VK 38): by batch 600 the player is on lap 1 at 349 km/h, driving along a tunnel wall.

Spawned children are full 512 MB guests. An earlier attempt let the /FRONTEND relaunch chain nest several deep and wedged an 8 GB boat. Run under a watchdog that caps the number of spawned children.

Evidence: scratch/runs/20261011T0650Z-rollcage_demo-race-w5.