Source code and a build for The Operative: No One Lives Forever (Game of the Year Edition, PC, 2000/2001): every executable and DLL of the game -- the LithTech engine (lithtech.exe, server.dll, the Direct3D renderer d3d.ren), the NOLF.exe launcher, the NolfServ.exe dedicated server, ltmsg.dll, sres.dll and the three game DLLs -- compiled from the source in this repository with the original 2000-era compilers.

_{The modern build at 1920x1080: the Direct3D 9 renderer with antialiasing, model shadows, 32-bit textures and 16x anisotropic filtering.}

The engine source in src/engine/ is a reconstruction: Monolith never released it, so it was written to recompile to the retail machine code. The game code in src/game/ is Monolith's own NOLF Source Code v1.003 release, which predates the Game of the Year Edition: the GOTY changes to it, reconstructed from the retail GOTY game DLLs, are made in place and marked GOTY:, and the modern build's changes sit inside #ifdef NOLFSRC_MODERN blocks. See docs/LICENSE-NOTES.md for what is whose.

This project, and its modern build in particular, is not made or supported by Monolith Productions.

No game data is included. The build takes the game's data (and the Miles and Bink sound/video runtime, the only binaries not built from source) from the retail Game of the Year Edition, which the rez/ submodule installs from the redump images of its two discs, fetched from archive.org. The modern build replaces that runtime with open-source builds from ext/: OpenMiles for Miles, and our own Bink player on FFmpeg.

1. Byte-for-byte compatibility, for preservation. Every binary compiles to exactly the machine code that shipped, so this source is a faithful record of the game as released. The whole game already builds from this source and plays; how much of it already compiles to the retail bytes is under Progress. The rest is written and working, but not yet identical.
2. Integrate the NOLF Modernizer patch, so its improvements are part of the source rather than a patch applied on top.
3. Fix the bugs found during reverse engineering. Rebuilding the engine to the exact bytes means reproducing its original bugs as well; once the byte-exact version is preserved, the fixes can go on top of it. The bugs found so far are listed in docs/RETAIL_BUGS.md. Fixes go behind the NOLFSRC_MODERN define and are built by make modern, so the release build keeps matching the retail one.
4. Move the renderer from Direct3D 7 to Vulkan, for native play on every platform, without Wine.

How much of each binary compiles to exactly the bytes of the retail game (the Game of the Year Edition, version 1.003). A function counts when our compiled code is identical to the retail function, with only the addresses the linker fills in left out of the comparison; the bars measure the share of each binary's code, by size, those functions make up.

Every function in that table is recorded in progress/identical.txt, and make progress re-scores the current build against the retail binaries and fails if any of them stops matching. See progress/README.md for how the scoring works and how to run it. The GameSpy library linked into the game DLLs is third-party middleware and is not scored. Resources are scored resource by resource and kept out of the total, which counts code; the resource-only ltmsg.dll and sres.dll (an empty DllMain with no resources at all, which its row checks ours keeps so) are scored that way only.

You need Linux with Docker and the submodules:

1. Fetch them: git submodule update --init (or clone with --recurse-submodules). toolchains/ is the compilers (about 560 MB, see toolchains/README.md); rez/ fetches and installs the retail game (see rez/README.md); tools/ is the build's helpers and the reconstruction tools and guides; ext/openmiles and ext/ffmpeg are the modern build's open-source middleware (about 130 MB), and ext/nolf1-modernizer the NOLF Modernizer, two of whose models the modern build uses (about 60 MB).
2. Run

make            # -> out/nolf-legacy-release/ and its -private / -public .tar.gz
                #    (about 3 minutes; the first time, also the docker image
                #    and the retail game's download and install)
make test       # optional: plays two levels under Xvfb with scripted input
make debug      # optional: the same game with symbols and debug logging,
                #    in out/nolf-legacy-debug/
make modern     # optional: the game with the retail bugs fixed, in
                #    out/nolf-modern-release/ (both: docs/BUILDING.md, "Variant builds")
make progress   # optional: how much of it matches the retail binaries

make help lists the other targets. docs/BUILDING.md explains the build in detail.

To play a release download, see docs/INSTALL.md. What the modern build changes is listed in CHANGELOG.md; its console commands, cheats and settings are in docs/CONSOLE.md and docs/VARIABLES.md. The rest of this section is about playing your own build.

out/nolf-legacy-release/ is a complete game directory. On a Linux machine with Wine (32-bit support needed):

out/nolf-legacy-release/linux-run.sh                # the launcher, NOLF.exe: click Launch

The legacy build starts through its launcher. In modern builds, NOLF.exe (and linux-run.sh) starts the game immediately with the same saved settings and waits until it exits; NOLFLauncher.exe opens the launcher. To go straight into a level when testing a build, use build/playtest.sh (make test and make shell; its header has the options).

To play elsewhere, copy out/nolf-legacy-release-private.tar.gz (one file), unpack it and run nolf-legacy-release/linux-run.sh. Every variant is packaged the same way: out/nolf-legacy-debug-private.tar.gz, out/nolf-modern-release-private.tar.gz and out/nolf-modern-debug-private.tar.gz. nolf-legacy-release/linux-server.sh runs a dedicated server (NolfServ.exe; without a display it runs under xvfb-run). The scripts document their options in their headers. Sound needs Wine's audio to work on that machine.

The -private archives hold the retail game's data (1.1 GB of it), so they are for your own machines and for others developing on the build. To give the game to anyone else, give them the -public archive instead (out/nolf-modern-release-public.tar.gz, about 5 MB): the same directory without anything from the discs, and three scripts that copy it out of their own disc images of the Game of the Year Edition (Europe). An image can be a plain .iso (an own rip), redump's .bin (or its .cue), or redump's .zip as archive.org serves it; a .bin or .zip is converted to a temporary .iso first (about 0.6 GB a disc; on Linux this needs python3). They check each image's SHA-256 and every file they write, so the result is the -private archive's directory, byte for byte:

nolf-modern-release/linux-install.sh disc1.zip disc2.zip    # Linux, Steam Deck
nolf-modern-release/mac-install.command disc1.zip disc2.zip # a Mac, for CrossOver

On Windows, drop both images onto windows-install.bat (or put them in the game folder and double-click it), then start NOLF.exe. Each script finds the images in the game directory or the one above it by itself, and can be run again: a file already in place is checked and kept. The public archive is made only if rez/isos/ has the two .iso images (build/mkinstall.py).

Music needs more in the release build: it is DirectMusic, which Wine implements only in part. Its own DirectMusic cannot load the music's styles, so the game plays in silence apart from the sound effects. The modern build carries Microsoft's DirectMusic in its game directory and needs nothing installed, in Wine or in Proton (a Steam Deck included; src/modern/directmusic/README.md). For the release build, install Microsoft's DirectMusic into the Wine prefix the game runs in (linux-run.sh uses ~/.wine-nolf):

WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-nolf winetricks dmband dmcompos dmime dmloader dmscript \
    dmstyle dmsynth dmusic dmusic32 dswave gmdls

Not winetricks' directmusic verb: it also replaces Wine's DirectSound with Microsoft's, which the sound effects play through, and they then repeat. If it is already installed, give DirectSound back to Wine: WINEPREFIX=~/.wine-nolf wine reg delete 'HKCU\Software\Wine\DllOverrides' /v dsound /f.

On a Steam Deck (or any Steam with Proton), the modern build needs no winetricks or Protontricks: unpack nolf-modern-release-private.tar.gz (or the public one, then run linux-install.sh), add its NOLF.exe as a non-Steam game (Desktop Mode, Steam > Games > Add a Non-Steam Game), and in the shortcut's Properties > Compatibility force a Proton version. The music plays from the game directory's own DirectMusic. (Checked under Wine 9.0; the Proton steps are untested here.)

The modern build plays with a controller: an Xbox-style (XInput) pad, which is also what Steam Input makes of the Steam Deck's controls and of most other pads. The sticks move and look, the triggers fire and zoom, and the menus follow the d-pad, A and B; Options > Controls > Controller sets the look speed and dead zones, and Customize controls binds the buttons like keys (docs/MODERN.md, P7). So far it is tested with a simulated pad only.

The remaining work is functions that are written but not yet byte-identical, and functions not written yet. tools/guides/ explains the method, from reading the retail machine code to the compiler quirks that decide the last few bytes; make progress (after make) shows where things stand and catches a change that breaks a function that matched before.

This project builds on the work of others:

• Monolith Productions, for No One Lives Forever and for releasing its source code (v1.003, 2001), which src/game/ and src/LT2/ are, and the No One Lives Forever 2 source release, from which much of src/lithshared/ is adapted.
• StenApp for generously sharing his invaluable, in-depth knowledge of all things NOLF and LithTech.
• NOLF Modernizer by HeyThereCoffeee (haekb): https://github.com/haekb/nolf1-modernizer. Most of the modern build's fixes and features were found and designed there; docs/MODERN.md names the Modernizer change behind each one. The seasonal main menus' Cate models are its own, used as they are.
• ChthonVII's Modernizer fork: https://github.com/ChthonVII/nolf1-modernizer. It gathers the crouch toggle and Daniel Gibson's fixes, and sorts out what the different "Patch 4" releases contain.
• Daniel Gibson, for the fixes in haekb/nolf1-modernizer#55: Shift+Esc for the console, closing popups with Activate, each weapon keeping its ammo, and the sunglasses' zoom on wide screens.
• The author of the "crouch toggle" Modernizer on Mod DB, for the crouch toggle.
• OpenMiles (https://github.com/maci0/openmiles), the open reimplementation of the Miles Sound System that the modern build uses in place of Miles, with the miniaudio and TinySoundFont libraries it vendors.
• FFmpeg (https://ffmpeg.org), on which the modern build's Bink player is built; zlib; and Capstone, which the tools use to read the retail machine code.
• Wine, Proton and DXVK, which run the game on Linux and the Steam Deck, and OpenSpy (https://openspy.net), whose master server replaces GameSpy's.
• redump.org, for the verified disc images the installers check against.

The modern build reimplements the Modernizer's changes rather than copying its code (docs/MODERN.md, "Rules for this work"); of its assets, it uses the two seasonal menu models.