GUNMAN CHRONICLES: RECOMPILATION PROJECT

February 27, 2026 · View on GitHub

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"The year is 2037. You are Major Archer, commander of the Gunman militia..."

...and the year is 2026. This game has been dead for 25 years. We're digging it up.

WTF IS THIS?

This is a static recompilation project for Gunman Chronicles (2000) -- Valve's forgotten stepchild, the sci-fi western FPS that time forgot, rights disputes buried, and Windows 11 doesn't want to run.

The goal: Make this masterpiece of weird run on modern hardware without emulation hacks, compatibility shims, or blood sacrifices to the GoldSrc gods.

THE SAD HISTORY OF GUNMAN CHRONICLES

The Rise (1996-2000)

Year	Event
1996	Herb Flower (yes, real name) founds Rewolf Software in Utah. "Rewolf" is "Flower" backwards. Already peak game dev energy.
~1997	Team starts building "Gunmanship 101" -- a Quake deathmatch mod about space cowboys.
1998	Port to Quake II engine. Then they see Half-Life and think "yeah, that one." Port begins to GoldSrc.
1999	Gunman steals the show at the Half-Life Mod Expo. Sierra says "shut up and take our money."
1999-2000	Valve gives Rewolf office space, funding, and mapper Jeff Lane. Gabe was involved. It was... complicated.
Nov 21, 2000	Gunman Chronicles ships. First non-Half-Life standalone game on GoldSrc. Reviews are mixed. Sales are decent. Herb "didn't get rich."

The Features That Were Ahead of Their Time

Customizable weapons -- you could tune your guns like guitar amps
Drivable vehicles -- a full tank section through canyons (in 2000!)
Sci-fi western aesthetic -- dinosaurs + robots + cowboys. What's not to love?
Planned GameCube port -- never happened, obviously

The Fall (2001-forever)

Year	Event
2001	Rewolf Software dissolves. Team scatters to the winds. Core devs move to Netherlands, found Streamline Studios.
2002	Game shown in Steam preview at GDC. Never actually released on Steam.
2008	Sierra merges into Activision Blizzard. Rights become a legal dumpster fire between Valve and Vivendi/Activision.
2020s	Game literally cannot be purchased anywhere legally. Not on Steam. Not on GOG. Nowhere.
2025	Herb Flower now runs "Goatogrammetry" -- a photogrammetry business where actual goats carry his equipment through the Utah desert. You can't make this up.

"My relationship with Gabe didn't really go that great" -- Herb Flower, PC Gamer interview

EXISTING REVIVAL EFFORTS (We're Not the First Crazies)

Project	Approach	Status
FreeGunman	Clean-room reimplementation in QuakeC	~68 commits, low activity, unclear completeness
HLSourceHub Archive	Game files preservation	2 commits, basically a file dump
Xash3D Engine	Custom GoldSrc replacement engine	Works-ish. Requires `-game rewolf` flag. Menu issues in fullscreen.
Steam Conversion Patch	Run retail as Half-Life mod on Steam	Workaround, not a real fix
reGoldSrc	Reverse-engineered GoldSrc engine	WIP, Windows only, no Gunman testing
reGS_WON	RE of GoldSrc build 738	Very WIP
Collection Chamber	Pre-packaged installer for modern Windows	Convenience package, not a recomp

None of these are a proper static recompilation. That's where we come in.

OUR APPROACH: STATIC RECOMPILATION

What is Static Recompilation?

Instead of running the original binary through compatibility layers or reimplementing from scratch, we:

Disassemble the original game DLLs (client.dll + gunman.dll from the rewolf/ mod directory)
Analyze the x86 machine code and reconstruct equivalent C/C++ source
Recompile with a modern compiler targeting x86_64/modern Windows
Link against modern system libraries instead of ancient Win32/GoldSrc APIs where needed

This gives us a binary that is functionally identical to the original but runs natively on modern systems.

The Targets (Now Identified!)

Binary	Size	Code	Purpose
`rewolf/dlls/gunman.dll`	1.32 MB	950 KB	Server game logic -- entities, AI, weapons, vehicles, everything
`rewolf/cl_dlls/client.dll`	552 KB	360 KB	Client game logic -- HUD, weapon prediction, effects, VGUI menus

Both compiled with MSVC 6.0 on November 10-12, 2000. Neither is packed or obfuscated. The server DLL only imports KERNEL32 (engine provides everything else via function pointers). The engine itself (hw.dll, sw.dll, gunman.exe) gets replaced by Xash3D -- we only touch the mod DLLs.

Total code to reverse: ~1.3 MB of x86. But most of it is Half-Life SDK 2.3 boilerplate. The Rewolf-custom code is the real prize -- and we've found it.

Code Classification Results

Multi-signal analysis (name matching + string references + call graph + address clustering) reveals:

DLL	Total Functions	SDK (HL 2.3)	Rewolf Custom	Unknown
`gunman.dll`	2,638	2,059 (81%, 492 KB)	366 (14%, 80 KB)	116 (4%)
`client.dll`	1,352	1,072 (83%, 210 KB)	133 (10%, 39 KB)	82 (6%)
Combined	3,990	3,131 (82%)	499 (13%)	198 (5%)

Translation: ~80% of these DLLs is straight Half-Life SDK code we can pull from public source. The actual Rewolf custom code -- weapons, dinos, vehicles, the fun stuff -- is only ~119 KB across both DLLs. That's our focused recompilation target.

Project Structure

gunman/
+-- README.md              # You are here
+-- docs/                   # Research notes, reverse engineering docs
+-- disasm/                 # Disassembly output and analysis
+-- src/                    # Recompiled C/C++ source code
|   +-- client/             # Client-side game DLL
|   +-- server/             # Server-side game DLL
|   +-- common/             # Shared code
+-- tools/                  # Helper scripts and utilities
+-- assets/                 # Asset extraction/conversion tools (no copyrighted content!)

Tech Stack

Disassembler: Ghidra 12.0.3 (NSA's finest, headless mode)
Decompiler: Ghidra built-in decompiler
Compiler: MSVC 2022 / Clang
Reference: Half-Life SDK 2.3 (the game DLLs are based on this)
Engine: Xash3D FWGS (open-source GoldSrc-compatible engine for testing)

PROGRESS TRACKER

Phase 0: Research & Setup

Phase 1: Disassembly & Analysis

Phase 2: Recompilation

Set up build system (CMake + MSVC 2022, Win32 target)
Server DLL SDK base compiles and links -- gunman.dll builds!
Client DLL SDK base compiles, linking in progress (VGUI + weapon stubs needed)
Reconstruct Rewolf weapon code (~45 KB, 11 weapon systems)
Reconstruct Rewolf monster code (~103 KB, 57 entity types)
Reconstruct Rewolf vehicle/tank code
Build against modern Windows SDK
Testing with Xash3D FWGS

Phase 3: Polish & Release

HOW TO HELP

This is a massive undertaking. If you know your way around:

x86 reverse engineering (IDA/Ghidra)
GoldSrc engine internals
Half-Life SDK programming
C/C++ and Win32 API

...then pull up a chair. Open an issue. Send a PR. Let's bring this beautiful disaster back from the dead.

LEGAL STUFF

This project contains no copyrighted game assets. You need your own copy of Gunman Chronicles to use any recompiled binaries. The recompilation targets functional equivalence for preservation and compatibility purposes.

The game cannot be legally purchased anywhere as of 2026. It exists in a rights limbo between Valve, the Activision Blizzard estate, and the ghost of Sierra Entertainment. If you're reading this, Valve/Microsoft -- just put it on Steam already.

LINKS & RESOURCES

"In space, no one can hear you yeehaw." -- Tagline we just made up but should have been real