TFX patch lineage
The supplied patches were executed under DOSBox on disposable copies of all three retained CD installations and both floppy installations. Original installations were not changed. Original documentation was restored in the test copies: patch 1 requires README.TXT and otherwise misleadingly asks to be copied into the TFX directory.
Results
| Starting installation | Patch 1 | Patch 2 | Patch 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| December 1993 CD | Applied | Applied: 2.00 | Applied: 2.01 |
| March 1994 CD | Rejected CONFIG.EXE; unchanged | Rejected CONFIG.EXE; unchanged | Rejected CONFIG.EXE; unchanged |
| September 1994 CD | Rejected CONFIG.EXE; unchanged | Rejected CONFIG.EXE; unchanged | Rejected CONFIG.EXE; unchanged |
| November 1993 loose floppy | Applied | Applied: 2.00 | Applied: 2.01 |
| Archived floppy installation | Rejected CONFIG.EXE; unchanged | Rejected CONFIG.EXE; unchanged | Applied: 2.01 |
Patch 1 identifies its purpose as switching to the Rational Systems 1.95 DOS extender. Patch 2 supplies version 2.0; patch 3 explicitly identifies itself as the update from 2.00 to 2.01, for both CD and floppy families. Failed patch attempts returned process status zero, so the textual result and before/after hashes matter.
Established relationships
- The December CD patched through all three updates produces a TFX.DAT byte-identical to March 1994's installed engine (833,674 bytes). START.EXE, Q2.COM and GUS.COM also match March exactly.
- The patched CONFIG.EXE is 341,897 bytes; its first 282,334 bytes exactly match March's CONFIG.EXE, with a further 59,563 bytes appended. The significance of that trailing data is not yet established. Do not describe the entire files as identical.
- The patches do not alter DID.DAT. The patched December installation therefore retains December's resources, which differ from March's: matching engines do not imply identical complete installations.
- The archived floppy's TFX.DAT, START.EXE and CONFIG.EXE exactly match the clean floppy after patches 1 and 2. Applying patch 3 to either produces identical versions of all three files. This establishes its core executable lineage as version 2.0; saved state and other installation litter are separate.
- March and September CONFIG.EXE differ at only one byte, offset 0x44606: the revision string changes from
VERSION $Revision: 2.01 $toVERSION $Revision: 2.05 $. - December's configuration program identifies version 1.12. September has a distinct engine and resource archive, and the supplied patches do not produce it.
Reference choice
Use September 1994 (identified as 2.05 by its configuration program) as the reference build. It is the latest identified release in this collection, beyond the supplied patch chain's 2.01 endpoint. This does not claim there were no later releases elsewhere. Keep December, March and floppy builds as comparison evidence.
The precise gameplay changes between 2.01 and 2.05 remain to be mapped. The date labels are disc filesystem creation dates rather than independently established release dates. Audio provenance is a separate question.
Evidence
Patch logs, file sizes and SHA-256 before/after records cover all 15 patch attempts. Temporary copies and snapshots are currently under /tmp/tfx-patches-3eqe5ayk/; the JSON remains useful after those scratch files are removed.