RigelEngine

RigelEngine emulates Duke Nukem II. It reads 6 files, 1 of them required: without a required file it does not start games.

About this profile

Detail	Value
Type	standalone
Classification	Game engine
Source	https://github.com/lethal-guitar/RigelEngine
Version	0.9.1-28-g30afeff8
Revision	lethal-guitar/RigelEngine@30afeff8f0b1
Profiled	2026-10-22
Profile	YAML, JSON
Cores	rigelengine
Systems	Duke Nukem II
Checks the file by	existence

Install this emulator's files

With EmuELEC: the installer finds EmuELEC and its BIOS folder, then downloads only the files RigelEngine reads there and checks each one.

On the device

Open a terminal on the device. Or connect from a computer with SSH, a terminal over the network. Paste the line. Press Enter.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Abdess/retrobios/main/install.sh | sh -s -- --emulator rigelengine

Technical notes

Reimplementation of the Duke Nukem II engine (Apogee, 1993). It plays the data files of the DOS release, shareware or registered.

Game path. The path comes from the positional command line argument (src/main.cpp:222), else the working directory when it holds NUKEM2.CMP, else a folder browser (src/game_main.cpp:101-125). A folder is accepted only when NUKEM2.CMP exists in it (src/game_main.cpp:72-78, 136-142) and the choice is kept in the user profile (src/game_main.cpp:152-153, 235-240). File names are opened as written, in upper case.

NUKEM2.CMP is an archive with a dictionary of 12-character names, offsets and sizes. Every game asset is read from it (src/assets/resource_loader.cpp:148, 515-537). The only check is that each entry lies inside the file (src/assets/cmp_file_package.cpp:43-66). No size, CRC or hash is compared.

Shareware or registered. The registered set is assumed when the archive holds LCR.MNI and O1.MNI (src/frontend/game.cpp:235-245). With the shareware set, episodes 2 to 4 answer with the ordering message (src/frontend/menu_mode.cpp:243-247) and saves of those episodes are refused (src/frontend/menu_mode.cpp:303-305). The shareware episode plays in full.

Intro movies. NUKEM2.F1 to NUKEM2.F4 are loaded loose from the game path (src/assets/resource_loader.cpp:415-429) when the intro is built (src/ui/intro_movie.cpp:72, 80, 94, 108), and NUKEM2.F5 is the Apogee logo (src/ui/apogee_logo.cpp:63-67). A missing file throws and the intro or the logo is skipped (src/frontend/intro_demo_loop_mode.cpp:38-55, 64-77).

On first launch the original game's saves, high scores and settings (NUKEM2.-NM, NUKEM2.-S1 to -S8, NUKEM2.-V1 to -V4, NUKEM2.-GT) are imported when present (src/assets/user_profile_import.cpp:144-203). They are user data, not distributed files.

The shareware release that the project points to is archive.org msdos_DUKE2_shareware, DUKE2.zip (README.md:82, cmake/rigel_pack.cmake:14-17). It holds NUKEM2.CMP and all five movies. NUKEM2.EXE in that release is never opened.

EmuELEC 4.8 builds commit f05996f9b3ad3b3ea5bb818e49e7977636746343, where every file cited above is identical, and passes /storage/roms/ports/rigelengine as the game path.