Redguard Preservation

Reference documentation for The Elder Scrolls Adventures: Redguard (1998) file formats, engine behavior, and undocumented features. The documentation covers the GOG release’s Glide renderer and notes known original-CD differences.

Reference sections

• Engine behavior: scripting, actor animation, movement, rendering, audio, menus, and hidden cheats.
• File formats: binary layouts for models, maps, textures, sound, saved state, and bundled support files.
• Configuration: INI settings for worlds, combat, items, input, rendering, and menus.

Look and feel

Reproducing the look and feel explains how terrain and model lighting, fog, sky, water, texture animation, camera projection, and on-screen presentation combine, with links to each subsystem.

Starting points

Engine lineage

Redguard runs on Bethesda’s XnGine, a DOS-based 3D engine. Battlespire used its own build of the engine, and Redguard added 3dfx Glide support.

Terminator and Daggerfall files share structure with Redguard’s:

Terminator scenes use a cell grid with linked entity lists, not RGM sections.

Related community work:

• XnGine: game list and engine history.
• skynet-godot wld_terrain.gd: Terminator WLD layout and height table.
• skynet-godot mesh_3d.gd: Terminator .3D header offsets and texture ids.
• skynet-godot texture_nnn.gd: Terminator TEXTURE.NNN layout.
• skynet-godot map_file.gd: Terminator MAP layout.
• UESP: Daggerfall Mod:WOODS.WLD format and Daggerfall Unity WoodsFile.cs: Daggerfall terrain file layout.
• Daggerfall Unity Arch3dFile.cs: Daggerfall .3D header and texture ids.
• Daggerfall Unity and terminator-unity: a Daggerfall reimplementation, and an effort to extend it to the Terminator games.

Installation contents

Main Files

Asset Directories

Asset and support-file roles

Models, textures, fonts, UI images, maps, dialogue, sound effects, movie data, and CD music supply the content of a faithful reimplementation. Hardware configuration, audio-utility launch settings, SideWinder presets, and tool reports describe the original environment. Their layouts remain part of the format references in Bundled support resources.

The cursor file system/pointers.bmp contains a GXA archive despite its extension. fxart/fxart.txt and fxart/fxart3dc.txt are historical directory listings, and fxart/LOGFILE.TXT records collision-sphere generation. The support-file reference describes these files and the Miles setup catalog sound/MSSDRVR.LST.

Save-game containers describe SAVEGAME.SAV and the per-world .TSG snapshots. A slot’s LOGBOOK.TXT is journal content.

GOG vs original CD differences

The English CD installer contains software and Glide resources. GOG selects the Glide distribution and omits the software-specific asset directory and executable. The game data, renderer choice, configuration defaults, and host packaging are separate parts of edition compatibility.

Executables and installation layout

RGFX.EXE is byte-identical between the English CD payload and GOG. The Windows REDGUARD.EXE launchers differ; they are not the DOS rendering executables. The CD places the DOS executables outside DATA1.CAB, so extracting that cabinet alone does not produce a runnable installation.

Renderer-specific assets

GOG’s fxart/ contents are byte-identical to the English CD installer payload. GOG does not include 3dart/.

The directories overlap in model names, but are not interchangeable copies. Glide includes additional standalone models; software includes additional ROB archives. Even matching names can have different geometry and animation data: TIRBA001.3DC has different face and frame counts, and NCROCK.3D has different face counts. Resolve resources within the chosen renderer’s asset set rather than substituting a same-named file from the other set.

Both model generations use renderer-specific headers and texture references. See 3D model versions. Software texture banks are named TEXTURE.###, not TEXBSI.###; changing the filename prefix does not establish format compatibility. See software texture banks and software palette lookup tables.

3dart/ contains 18 COL palettes, including art_pal.col, world palettes, and sky palettes. It does not use art_pal.col exclusively. Matching palette names can differ between renderers: NECRO2.COL and REDGUARD.COL have different contents. The Glide set contains 27 populated COL palettes and an empty CLDTEST.COL placeholder. See COL palettes.

Shared content

The English CD installer payload and GOG share byte-identical:

• RGM scenes and their embedded scripts, WLD terrain, and PVO visibility data;
• SOUP386.DEF, WORLD.INI, COMBAT.INI, ITEM.INI, MENU.INI, KEYS.INI, REGISTRY.INI, and surface.ini;
• ENGLISH.RTX dialogue and speech, MAIN.SFX, and the other sound resources except the configured dig.ini and mdi.ini device selections;
• fonts and system artwork, including title, menu, HUD, and sky images.

Renderer-specific model and texture differences therefore coexist with shared authored scenes, scripts, and presentation resources.

Configuration defaults

GOG changes these values relative to the English CD installer’s SYSTEM.INI:

These are stored settings, not differences in the shared game scripts. animation_drive differs only in drive-letter capitalization, d:\ versus D:\. The software [screen] resolution remains 1 in both configurations. See SYSTEM.INI for field meanings and renderer overrides.

The CD cabinet’s sound/dig.ini and sound/mdi.ini contain setup comments without device selections. GOG supplies Sound Blaster device and driver settings. Hardware configuration belongs to the installation environment; it does not replace the game’s Red Book music tracks.

Cinematics, disc audio, and support files

The CD Smacker movies are byte-identical to those in GOG’s data track, including their embedded audio. GOG’s virtual disc omits the CD’s installer cabinet, DOS engines, setup files, and bundled hardware-driver installers. Its ISO9660 filenames FINDRE~1.EXE and REDGUA~1.ICO refer to the same contents as the CD’s FindRedguard.exe and RedguardCD.ICO.

An extracted CD data directory contains movies and installation files, but not the Red Book audio tracks. Mounting that directory as a CD-ROM cannot reconstruct the missing music tracks. A music-capable disc source must retain the audio tracks and their numbering; separately distributed soundtrack files are not a substitute for the disc’s track layout. See background music.

GOG adds host Glide libraries and DOSBox launch configuration. The selected Glide implementation determines the splash variant independently of the shared Glide executable. See startup presentation.