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graal-delphi

Faithful rebuilds of the classic Graal Online clients, one per build, in the language they were written in: Delphi (Object Pascal). Each rebuild aims to behave like the original on the wire and on screen, and then gets hardened so it can run in large test runs.

The findings these rebuilds are based on live in graal_analysis. The servers they are tested against are the Seihai stack, mainly seihai-gserver.

Not affiliated. graal-delphi is an independent fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to GraalOnline or graalonline.com, Cyberjoueurs, or Stéphane Portha ("unixmad"). "Graal", "Graal Online" and related names are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only to identify the software being reimplemented.

This repo holds no original Graal code, graphics, sounds or level data. The code is written from notes on the wire protocol, file formats and observed behaviour (in graal_analysis), not copied or translated from the original programs. Game assets such as pics1.png, arrays.dat, ganis, heads and bodies are loaded at run time from an install you supply. Tests that need original data, such as the tutorial levels inside the 2.05 exe, read it from a local path and are skipped when it is missing.

Layout

common/                     code that is the same across builds
  GTypes.pas                GCHAR / GSHORT / GINT3..5 / GSTRING, message reader
  GZlib.pas                 zlib in and out of string buffers
  GBzip2.pas                bzip2 in and out of string buffers (gen 5, 2.22 on)
  GSocket.pas               non-blocking TCP, polled from the game tick
  GLevel.pas                64x64 level: GR-V1.0x, Z3-V1.0x, GLEVNW01, board packet, GR-V writer
  GSurface.pas              32-bit software surface, tile sheet blit, BMP/PNG/GIF/JPEG loading, palette recolour
  GArrays.pas               arrays.dat tile types (what blocks)
  GAni.pas                  GANI0001 animations
  GWindow.pas               a window, keyboard, mouse and typed text (X11 / Win32 GDI)
  GFont.pas                 an original 5x7 font for the window
  GStartScreen.pas          the start screen and server list every build opens with
  GGs1.pas                  the GS1 script language (shared interpreter)
  GBuiltin.pas              built-in original assets, compiled in (generated)
  GAssetDirs.pas            where a build finds the player's own Graal files (graal-assets/)
  builtin/                  those assets as files (scripts/builtin/make_builtin.py)
graal-2.05-GNW03081/        Graal 2.05
  src/                      the client (Graal205.dpr and its units)
  tests/                    Test205.dpr
graal-2.05r2-GNW03081/      Graal 2.05 rev 2
  src/                      the client (Graal205.dpr and its units)
  tests/                    Test205.dpr
graal-2.17.1-GNW22122/      Graal 2.17.1
  src/                      the client (Graal217.dpr and its units)
  tests/                    Test217.dpr
graal-2.22-GNW03014/        Graal 2.22
  src/                      the client (Graal222.dpr and its units)
  tests/                    Test222.dpr
scripts/
  build.sh                  build every rebuild and its tests
  test.sh                   run every test program
  builtin/                  draws the built-in assets and writes GBuiltin.pas / GFont.pas
  assets/merge_assets.py    merges per-version sets of original files into one graal-assets/
  assets/needed_assets.py   cuts it to the files the clients open and zips it (docs/assets.md)
  loopback.sh               log a rebuild into seihai-gserver (acceptance check)

Folder naming rule

Each build gets one folder named

graal-<version>-<token>
  • <version> is the build as players knew it, lower case, no spaces: 2.05r2 for "2.05 rev 2", 2.17.1, 2.22, 2.31.
  • <token> is the 8-character version token that build sends in its login line, exactly as on the wire (GNW03081 for 2.05 rev 2). It is the id the server sees, so it is the id the folder carries. The token comes from the binary or a capture, never from memory; graal_analysis client-internals/version-tokens.md lists the known ones.

Several builds can share a token (2.05, 2.05 rev 1 and 2.05 rev 2 all send GNW03081). The version part keeps their folders apart.

What goes in common/

A unit moves to common/ only when it is byte-for-byte the same behaviour in every build that uses it (the G types, zlib, the GR-V board code). Anything a build changed, even slightly (packet ids, prop encodings, the cipher, the login line), stays in that build's folder. When a later build differs from a common unit, it gets its own copy in its folder rather than a flag in common/.

The GS1 language (GGs1.pas) is shared under that rule: it holds only the language (parsing, statements, expressions, the command table), and what each command does lives in the build's own NPC host (Npc205, Npc217, ...). A build uses it until it is found to read GS1 differently; then it takes its own copy, as for any other unit. The NPC, baddy, sound, map and editor units stay per build.

Toolchain

  • Free Pascal 3.2 in Delphi mode (-Mdelphi) is the build used here and in CI, on Linux, Windows and macOS.
  • Delphi: the units avoid anything newer than Delphi 5 (no generics, no inline variables, string used as a byte buffer as in 2001-era code), and take the Delphi path under {$IFNDEF FPC} (WinSock, the Borland ZLib unit). 2.05 itself was built with Delphi 4 or 5 and DelphiX. A Delphi 5 or 7 build has not been tried yet; it is the next toolchain check.
  • DelphiX (DirectDraw) does not build outside Windows or under Free Pascal, so the rebuilds draw into a software surface (GSurface) and a front end shows it: a window (--window), or a .bmp (--dump). The window is X11 on Linux and GDI on Windows; macOS has none yet, so there the client runs headless or with --dump.

Build, test, run

# Linux
sudo apt-get install fp-compiler fp-units-base fp-units-fcl libx11-dev
scripts/build.sh
scripts/test.sh

# Windows: install Free Pascal (e.g. `choco install freepascal`), put its
# bin\i386-win32 folder on PATH, then run the same scripts from Git Bash.
# build.sh hands the compiler native paths through cygpath.

# macOS
brew install fpc
scripts/build.sh
scripts/test.sh

# offline: walk around a level in a window, with assets from your own install
build/graal-2.05r2-GNW03081/Graal205 --level some.graal --data path/to/graal --window

# online: log into a server (password from an environment variable)
GRAAL_PW=... build/graal-2.05r2-GNW03081/Graal205 --server 127.0.0.1:14802 --account test1 --dump frame.bmp

# acceptance: log into seihai-gserver on loopback
scripts/loopback.sh path/to/seihai-gserver/target/release/seihai-gserver

Roadmap for each build

Every build goes through the same phases. Phases 4 and 5 are the finishing steps and are required before a build counts as done.

  1. Wire. Framing, cipher, login line, the receive dispatcher. Checked against real captures of the original client.
  2. World. Level loading (files and server packets), the frame loop, drawing the board, the player, other players, NPCs.
  3. Play. Movement and collision, items, weapons, the build's GS1 script engine, editors where the build had them. Checked side by side with the original under Wine.
  4. Harden and stress. A headless mode that runs the same code with no drawing, so one host can run many instances; profiling and optimisation of the tick; no leaks over long runs; survives disconnects, slow links and malformed or hostile packets without crashing; fuzzed receive path. The build then joins the Seihai 1000-player stress runs as one of the client mixes.
  5. Release. Once phase 4 is merged, the build gets its own GitHub release, versioned so it can be recompiled and released again as more is learned about it. The tag is the folder name and the version (graal-2.05r2-GNW03081-v0.0.1). The release text is the folder's RELEASE_NOTES.md, and it carries the built Linux, Windows and macOS binaries. .github/workflows/release.yml (run from the Actions tab with the folder name and version, or by pushing the tag) builds that one folder and makes a draft release; Squirrel reviews it and presses Publish.

Status

Build Token Wire World Play Harden Release
2.05 GNW03081 as 2.05 rev 2 as 2.05 rev 2 as 2.05 rev 2 as 2.05 rev 2 v0.0.1 after merge
2.05 rev 2 GNW03081 done board, player from ganis, window walking and collision; props out; other players; level links headless stress mode, fuzzed receive path, leak checks v0.0.1 draft
2.17.1 GNW22122 login with tamper check; all 79 server ids accepted board, players and NPCs from ganis (ATTACHSPRITE, #P1 to #P30), addtiledef sheets, window everything 2.05 plays (items, combat, NPCs and GS1, baddies, sound, maps, editor); GANI and direction props out; replaceani from 2.05: headless stress mode, fuzzed receive path, leak checks not yet
2.22 GNW03014 done (gen 5, bzip2); start screen and 2.22 listserver step board, level cache, gmaps walking and collision; props out; other players; level links; gmap edges; Training on the offline tutorial; from 2.05: sword, items, combat, signs, weapons, NPCs and GS1, baddies, sound, maps headless stress mode, fuzzed receive path, leak checks v0.0.1 after merge

Licence

Not chosen yet.

Every build is a GUI program

Each build opens a window with the start screen when started with no arguments, as the original clients did: Training for the offline levels, Start for the server list from the listserver, then account and password. Flags still run it from the command line (stress runs, CI). Each build carries stand-in assets in common/builtin/, all new art drawn by scripts/builtin/make_builtin.py (no original file or pixel), so it runs with nothing next to it; files from a real install next to the program, or under --data, replace them.

A build plugs into common/GStartScreen.pas with:

  • a TListFetch subclass for its listserver step (2.05: plain zlib, id 0 newmain);
  • a TStartInfo: the title lines, the background images to look for next to the program, and a callback that draws the character;
  • its own front end, which picks the Training level and runs the game (see RunGui in graal-2.05r2-GNW03081/src/Graal205.dpr).

One assets folder for every build

The original Graal files never go in this repository. Every rebuilt program sits at the top of one folder (the root), and the player's original files sit next to them in graal-assets/, extracted from one zip kept outside the repo:

<root>/
  Graal205  Graal217  Graal222  ...
  graal-assets/
    common/     files the same in every version that has them
    2.05r2/     one folder per version line, named by the build's version label
    2.22/

A build looks for a file in the root (or --data), then in graal-assets/<version>/ and its fallback versions, then in graal-assets/common/, and else uses its built-in assets (common/GAssetDirs.pas). Nothing above the root is read. Graal 2.17.1 came in the same folder as 2.22, so its label is 2.17.1;2.22 and it reads graal-assets/2.22/ with no second copy.

The zip holds only what the rebuilt clients open, one version's install per folder, never mixed across versions. docs/assets.md has the search order per build, the keep/cut rule, how to build the zip (scripts/assets/merge_assets.py, scripts/assets/needed_assets.py) and what each client line's install held, from the 1998 betas on.