TFX — reverse engineering

An investigation of Digital Image Design's TFX: Tactical Fighter Experiment, published by Ocean. Our reference is the September 1994 CD release, 2.05; floppy releases, earlier CDs and a PC Plus playable demo supply comparisons.

Start with TFX Traced for the illustrated account and public map/model explorers. The complete research archive contains the reports, original-code checks and inspection tools behind it.

Browse the investigation

• Maps and assembled scenery: terrain, mission routes, briefings, placement and the original night lights.
• Model browser: aircraft, scenery, weapons, animation states and effects.
• Fonts and lettering: glyphs, character tables, native formats and TTF / WOFF2 conversions.
• Viewer directory: cockpit artwork, presentations, sound, campaign logic, entities, weapons, code and resource comparisons.
• Research guide: where to find a particular subject and how to interpret the evidence.

The local viewers open directly from analysis/; extraction data and original media must be present for links to original resources. The published archive renders Markdown into navigable reports and stages an explicit list of viewer files and analysis records. Original media, installations, extracted archives, manuals, full recordings and working scripts are not uploaded to the website. References outside that scope point to their GitHub file pages, where repository permissions control access. Links never cause additional files to be copied.

Related projects

TFX C++ reconstructs the original game in C++26. TFX Redux holds deliberate enhancements. did-unpack is the standalone archive reader. QSound C++ is the separate Creative ASP/CSP investigation; exact DSP output remains unverified.

Publish the research archive

npm ci --prefix tools/publish
node tools/publish/build.mjs

This builds and checks web-stage/ without deploying. To build and publish to the TFX directory on lostengines.com, run ./publish.sh. Use ./publish.sh --dry-run to build and inspect the proposed upload first. See publishing notes.

Original game content belongs to its respective creators. Research exports, controlled native traces and viewer reconstructions retain separate scopes; a successful subsystem comparison is not proof of a complete natural playthrough.