Additional TFX acquisitions — 15 October 2026

The PC Plus package is a distinct playable demo, retained as cd_demo_pcplus_1994_07. The other four acquisitions add no distinct game or installer program and have been removed after comparison. The source inventory records every original filename, size, SHA-256, retained match and cleanup action.

PC Plus playable demo

The package's own README.TXT and TFXINSTL.TXT identify PC Plus SuperCD, July 1994, issue 94. This is the directory's date basis. The incoming label 1994-05-23 is retained as provenance; the received files have 2026 filesystem timestamps, so it is not treated as independently verified mastering evidence. No CD image or audio tracks accompanied this acquisition.

TFX.BAT runs start cd_mag. Its selected cd_mag.par has 19 functions and 378 nodes, compared with the full game's 33 functions and 1,067 nodes. The main menu's active clickboxes are limited to enrolment, training and Flashpoints; the original artwork still shows the other mode labels.

The training sequence selects retail missions 501, 504, 505, 506 and 510: retail hops 1, 4, 5, 6 and 10. The archive contains 28 mission scripts, matching those five training missions, the Yugoslavia sequence 961–975 and the South Atlantic sequence 981–988. Presence of a sequence is separate from its menu accessibility.

The Flashpoint does not match the readme

Both supplied instruction files claim that only “The Doomsday Ship” is available. However:

• lev/soap_sel.opt enables only the Yugoslavia choice (yug, setting soap_val=4) and Exit.
• In cd_mag.par, that value branches into soapyug2, starting with cdyugint and its Yugoslavian briefings. The other retained non-exit selector branches also point to soapyug2.
• The separate soapsea function contains the South Atlantic “Doomsday Ship” story, but there is no branch into it from the demo's menu graph.

Thus the supplied notes and actual menu/control data disagree. The accessible route in the decoded data is Yugoslavia; the South Atlantic sequence is retained but unselected. This conclusion comes from the menu script and saved branch destinations. The DOSBox check reached enrolment, save-slot selection and the native main menu; it was not a complete training or campaign playthrough.

Native pilot menu · Native main menu · Decoded main graph · Complete graph records.

Executables and embedded dates

All four embedded OSL/FM/SCC-1/LAPC-I stamp pairs in the demo launcher read Date: 03/20/94 / Time: 22:18:57. The comparable retail launcher reads 03/15/94 / 10:16:04. The demo archive also has the four-byte trailer 0b b7 ff ff; its launcher matches the later retail code and does not enforce the old floppy hardware check.

A deeper native-code comparison now verifies matching aircraft initialisation and sound descriptors, proves the 17-byte text-loader format, compares DID-based save paths and explains part of the larger Gravis helper through different instruction generation.

The Windows installer (INSTALL.EXE, NE format), its helper files and PC Plus branding bitmap are preserved intact. They are packaging evidence, separate from the DOS game engine.

Resource comparison and extraction

All 2,962 archive entries were decoded and compared with our existing CD/floppy extractions. 2,953 entries are byte-identical to retained content; nine are new, totalling 30,789 decoded bytes:

• The reduced cd_mag.par main graph.
• Six companion presentation graphs: cdintro, cddeath1, cdbusted, cdfwsint, cdyugmid and cdyugint.
• The restricted lev/mastopts.opt and lev/soap_sel.opt menus.

The six companion graphs have the same decoded visual sequence, text, layout and timing as March's versions. Their saved settings use a 17-byte text header, with the drawing flags/font/colour fields and length word shifted one byte compared with the retained retail 16-byte layout. Saved pointers and opaque settings remain in the raw extraction; the extra settings byte's purpose is not assigned speculatively. The decoder selects this layout explicitly, keeping its retail default unchanged.

No new aircraft models, maps, artwork, palettes, effects or musical compositions were found. All shared payloads point to existing extracted files; only the nine new payloads are written under extracted/cd_demo_pcplus_1994_07/resources/. Compared with March, the absent decoded entries comprise 173 mission scripts, 13 texts and nine different/replaced presentation graphs.

Comparison and hashes · Complete delta manifest. Reproduce with python3 tools/compare_pcplus_demo.py in the usual analysis environment. The comparison verifies every reused payload against its on-disk bytes and consumes every saved presentation graph completely.

Duplicate and incomplete copies

The two BBS archives are exact 1,005,179-byte prefixes of December's 12,681,671-byte DID.DAT: 11,676,492 bytes are missing, including the index at 0xc0dd08. Their complete executables and accompanying files match the December installation/documentation. These are incomplete copies of that version, rather than separately authored small demos.

Xenosoft's archive differs only in its hardware stamp (9b b0 ff ff); every preceding archive byte and all supplied executables match November's floppy baseline. Its small personal configuration and save are preserved losslessly as hexadecimal in the source audit, rather than retaining another complete game installation.

The 2004 collection's 21,979-byte installer is PKLITE-compressed, despite file suggesting a self-extracting archive. Emulating only its decompression stub reaches the original entry with all 30,260 loaded module bytes identical to our retained alternate installer, including relocations at segment 0x1010. No interrupts or installer operations were executed. Its INSTALL.OLD is also a direct byte match for that alternate installer, and all eight game packs match our consolidated floppy set. Its small DIRINFO and batch file are preserved in the audit.