Supplied media and the expansion

The earlier extraction, original-code comparisons and C++ implementation used the October 1994 Earthsiege 1.0 CD. The other supplied archives had not been included. This audit closes that inventory gap and establishes separate expansion installs. It does not extend the 1.0 gameplay comparisons to the expansion executable.

Open Editions & expansion for the new mission briefings and resource tables. Complete hashes, comparisons and structural decoding results are in report.json and volumes.json. Reproduce them with:

.venv/bin/python tools/audit_install_media.py

What was supplied

Original archives remain intact. The complete bundle's images are now in install media/cd_1996_10/earthsiege.iso and install media/expansion_cd_1995_03/earthsiege_expansion.iso. The loose executable and its instructions are in install media/expansion_patch_1995_04/.

The base reissue's ISO label is ESCD_SO and creation field is 1996-10-11. The expansion label is ESMD, publisher DYNAMIX, INC, application EARTHSIEGE MISSION DISK and creation field 1995-03-21. Some contained files have March 22 timestamps. Month-level folder names avoid claiming exact release dates.

The floppy ZIP stamps every member 1996-12-24. Those flattened dates do not date the game build; its 1995_03 install name groups it with the matching CD data. The patch's April 10, 1995 timestamp is present in both the bundle and the original ESXPANPT ZIP. The expansion README's opening 3/21/94 date conflicts with the disc and asset dates and should not be used to date it.

Duplicates and extra material

All 178 files from the original CD occur byte for byte on ESCD_SO.iso. Nothing is changed or missing. Its 402 additions include a PDF manual, Earthsiege 2, MissionForce: CyberStorm and Hunter Hunted demos, and Windows setup/DirectX components. This is a 1996 compilation of the 1.0 game.

The filesystem is expanded in extracted/cd_1996_10. Its ESSR10-1.PDF is identical to the supplied top-level Earthsiege Manual.pdf; the literature entry links to that copy. PDF metadata identifies PageMaker 6.0 and Acrobat Distiller 2.1 for Power Macintosh. That describes manual production, not game compilation.

The expansion MDF has 65,872 Mode-1 sectors of 2,352 bytes. Retaining each sector's 2,048-byte user field at offset 16 produces exactly ESMD.iso, including trailing sectors: zero differing user-data sectors. Shared SHA-256:

fb29c26708548b5b926b041ec0f93841c2d41bbb9d0607d798f157587a9af913

The ISO is the DOSBox copy. MDF/MDS remain in their original ZIP, without retaining another loose raw-image duplicate.

Expansion content

The full CD filesystem is in extracted/expansion_cd_1995_03. All 20 Earthsiege VOL archives, containing 4,274 member records, are expanded beneath resources/. This total includes inherited resources and localized speech.

• SIMVOL0, ZONES, SPEECH, SIMVOICE and DETECT volumes are unchanged. The CD's SHELL0.VOL has 14 changed members.
• SIMPATCH.VOL adds and replaces simulator assets. New HERC profiles name Apocalypse, Diablo and Headhunter. It includes METEOR.DTS, RUINS and WASTE scenery, replacement building/weapon meshes, cockpit data, palettes and world settings.
• PSHELL0/1/2, PZONES, PZONES1 and SIMLANG supply shell changes, campaigns and localized text. Archive header priorities control overrides; the simulator selects mask 1 and searches higher priorities first. See SIMULATOR_VERSIONS.md.
• PZONES1.VOL contains 37 version-5 missions, each with English, French and German briefing/debrief programs. BTLSET_1.DAT lists three groups of eight campaign missions, B1_C0_0A through B1_C2_7A. Thirteen S2_* files supply single missions. Both filename alternatives at each campaign step match; that alone does not establish runtime progression rules.
• 13 additional HMPs are present, none byte-identical to a base song: six BATTLE4A/B through BATTLE6A/B tracks and seven shell tracks (BSHELLA/B/C, ECHO, TAU, TEXT, VICTORY2).
• PSPEECH, PFSPEECH and PGSPEECH each hold 62 expansion speech records. New movies MI_INT1.DFL and MECHVIC3.DFL and their raw audio accompany inherited and localized base movies.

The expansion is fully catalogued in the main browsers alongside the original edition. Model coverage includes 35 separate entries, 348 thumbnails, 19 HERC assemblies and 112 loadout presets. All 37 missions have original constructed starting scenes, including their expansion actors, buildings and terrain. Expansion catalogue and integration gives the complete viewer inventory, executable checks, unresolved fields and C++ support.

The supplied expansion manual, PDF pages 7-9 and 16-19, describes selectable Battleset 2, three campaigns, one-way career transfer with optional HERC/salvage transfer, the new chassis and Cybrid landing craft. It introduces PBW2, EMP2, ELF2 and the plasma launcher, including EMP2's paired shots and limited plasma-projectile homing. An OCR reference is retained; consult the scan for ambiguous text.

The expansion README says earlier Earthsiege patch files are included. It describes corrected displayed weapon ranges without changed actual ranges, additional input-device support and corrected movie speed without a sound card.

Floppy package and executable builds

extracted/expansion_floppy/payload contains 22 files extracted by passing all three compressed chunks, in order, to the original DOS UNCHUNK.EXE inside isolated DOSBox. Its seven VOLs match the CD counterparts byte for byte, including directory records and timestamps.

GO.EXE matches between CD and floppy expansion. Both floppy launcher files, ES.EXE and ESCD.EXE, equal the CD's ESCD.EXE. The floppy installer removes ESCD.EXE and uses ES.EXE. Its marker is M1D instead of M1.

Expansion speech and movie files are absent from the floppy payload. Installing it over a CD base preserves base-game resources without mixing in the missing CD expansion speech or movies.

The original install media/expansion_patch_1995_04/ESXPANPT.ZIP contains the April patch README and an executable exactly matching the bundled patch. Its instructions describe mission lockups, usually around Campaign 4, Mission 8. The initial audit missed this archive; its README and batch file are now retained with the patch.

The executable comparison traces the floppy scanner correction, April effect-cleanup and radio fixes, expansion weapon behavior, archive precedence and the optional 320x400 graphics layouts. Byte-complete checks account for the initialized application differences between expansion revisions. The floppy package's exact distribution provenance remains unknown.

Comparison installs

./run_earthsiege_dosbox.sh displays a choice by default. --list lists IDs; a name or number selects one directly. --print-command prints its mounts.

Each C: drive owns its SIERRA/MTECH directory. Expansion copies started with fresh CAR contents from the base disc and inherited configured sound settings. Expansion BAR data comes from its installer. CD variants mount the expansion ISO; the floppy variant mounts the base CD for its inherited movie path.

The flattened floppy installer retains disk-change assumptions. After unpacking disk 1, it could not find disk 2 from its source directory. The installation was completed from the verified original UNCHUNK output, followed by INSTALL.SCR's cleanup, without modifying compressed data or the executable. Temporary path aliases tried during that investigation were removed.

The 1996 reissue needs no duplicate install because its original payload is identical. Its extra files remain available separately. Use the expansion UI's Options > Load Battleset > Battleset 2 to select the new content.

Installation checks

All three expansion builds entered a Battleset 2 mission in isolated DOSBox: CD campaign B1_C0_0A, floppy single mission S2_RCN02, and patched CD single mission S2_RCN02. Screenshots and retained launch files record the simulator hashes and scenarios. Test careers created in the new installs were cleared after capture; the expansion selection remains saved. The original install was not modified. These are launch smoke checks, not whole-campaign gameplay comparisons or listening tests.

The browser's mission selection, briefing/objective display and resource counts pass headless Chromium checks. All four launcher IDs and numeric choices produce the intended mounts; a noninteractive invocation lists choices without launching. The shared source-mission decoder still reads the same 75 base missions and retains the same two legacy-layout exceptions.

Remaining expansion work

1. Trace battleset selection, career transfer and archive precedence.
2. Compare the three simulator builds and identify their fixes.
3. Establish new weapon, enemy, environment and campaign behavior against original execution, adapting harness addresses to the expansion.
4. Add correctly assembled expansion resources to the main browsers, then implement and validate native expansion support.

The existing 1.0 comparisons retain their scope. They do not test these systems.