AgainROM

AgainROM

AgainROM is a new engine for Rage of Mages (Allods, 1998) and Rage of Mages II: Necromancer. You play the original campaign with your own copy of the game, on Windows, macOS or Linux.

It ships no game files. It reads the maps, graphics, sounds, music and movies from the files of a copy that you already own. The English and the Russian releases of both games work.

The campaign, towns, shops, the tavern, battles, spells, movies and saving all run, but the game is a work in progress. Each known difference from the original is listed in docs/divergences/.

What you need

• 64-bit Windows, macOS on Intel or Apple Silicon, or Linux x86_64. See Install on Linux for its system libraries.
• The game files of Rage of Mages, English or Russian, from a Windows install or the CD, or of Rage of Mages II (see Rage of Mages II). Each game needs its own lawful copy. They are sold digitally, for example on GOG.

AgainROM only reads the game files. It never changes them.

Game files of Rage of Mages

AgainROM reads these files from one game folder:

file	what it gives
main.res, graphics.res, scenario.res, world.res, movies.res	the game itself; without any one of them AgainROM does not start
sfx.res	sounds
speech.res	voiced lines in towns
patch.res	the captions of three graphics options
Allods/MUSIC.RES	music
Allods/VIDEO4.RES, Allods/VIDEO8.RES	the intro and the mission movies

A missing optional file only turns its part off: no sound, no voices, no music or no movies. rom.exe and the other files of the folder are not needed. Saves the original game made in that folder (game*.sav) appear in LOAD.

An install from the CD

The CD installer leaves the music and the movies on the disc, and the original game reads them from there. AgainROM reads only the game folder. Copy MUSIC.RES, VIDEO4.RES and VIDEO8.RES from the Allods folder on the disc into a folder named Allods inside the game folder. A digital copy, for example from GOG, already holds that folder.

The GOG installer on macOS or Linux

This route was checked only for the first game's installer, not for Rage of Mages II's. The GOG installer is a Windows program. innoextract unpacks it without Windows and without running it:

innoextract --include app -d rom setup_rage_of_mages_2.1.0.3.exe

The folder rom/app is then the game folder: it holds every file listed above, Allods included. With innoextract 1.9 on that installer, the 11 files equal those of the same release installed on Windows.

Rage of Mages II

Rage of Mages II was released for Windows only. Point the starter at its whole install folder, copied from a Windows install if you use macOS or Linux.

The folder must hold main.res, graphics.res, scenario.res, world.res and movies.res, and also allods2.exe and scenario.dll. AgainROM never runs those two, but with the archives alone it takes the folder for the first game. sfx.res, speech.res, patch.res, music.res and video.res lie in the same folder, with no Allods folder, and a missing one only turns its part off.

In the starter the folder shows as rom2-en or rom2-ru, with the game and the language. One starter holds bases of both games; select one and press Play. New Game opens hero creation, then the first town. The campaign, the shops, the inn and saving run.

LOAD lists the saves in the saves folder (see Saves), not those in the install folder. To load a save the original made, copy its game*.sav file into the saves folder. Multiplayer is not available yet.

Install on Windows

1. Download the Windows AMD64 ZIP from GitHub Releases. Unpack it into its own folder, for example C:\Games\againrom. Do not unpack it into the original game's folder.
2. Run starter.exe.
3. Under Base game, paste the folder of your Rage of Mages or Rage of Mages II install into Add path and press Add. The starter checks the folder and shows which game and which language (English or Russian) it is.
4. Press Play.

The starter remembers your choices in starter.ini beside it. You can add installs of both games and both languages and switch between them. The package starts with default settings. It includes no saves, mods or personal configuration files.

Install on macOS

Neither game was released for macOS. For Rage of Mages, copy the files listed under Game files from a Windows install or the CD into one folder on the Mac, with Allods as a folder inside it, or unpack them from the GOG installer. For Rage of Mages II, copy its whole install folder from Windows (details).

1. Download the macOS AMD64 ZIP for an Intel Mac, or the macOS ARM64 ZIP for Apple Silicon. Unpack it into a separate folder, not into the game folder.

2. These builds have no Developer ID signature or notarization. For a download you trust, open Terminal in the unpacked againrom folder and remove its quarantine attributes:

   xattr -d com.apple.quarantine againrom starter
   

   An attribute-not-found message means that executable is already unquarantined.

3. Run ./starter from that Terminal. Under Base game, type the absolute path of the game folder, press Add, then Play. The Mac starter currently requires typed paths; clipboard paste and Command+V are pending.

The ZIP holds three command-line executables, without an .app bundle, and no game assets or player profiles. Alternatively, run ./againrom -assets "/path/to/game folder".

Install on Linux

For Rage of Mages, copy the files listed under Game files from a Windows install or the CD into one folder on Linux, with Allods as a folder inside it, or unpack them from the GOG installer. For Rage of Mages II, copy its whole install folder from Windows (details). File names are found in any letter case, so nothing needs renaming.

1. Download the Linux x86_64 AppImage or tar.gz from GitHub Releases.

2. For the AppImage, make it executable and run it:

   chmod +x againrom-*-linux-x86_64.AppImage
   ./againrom-*-linux-x86_64.AppImage
   

   For the tar.gz, unpack it into a separate folder and run ./starter in its againrom folder. The archive preserves executable permissions.

3. Under Base game, browse to the game folder, press Add, then Play. Install zenity or kdialog for the folder browser; zenity takes priority. Without either, type the absolute path in Add path. Clipboard paste remains pending on Linux.

The AppImage keeps starter.ini, mods/, game preferences and saves/ in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/Againrom, or ~/.config/Againrom when that variable is unset. Existing settings are kept; explicit paths chosen in the starter still apply. With the tar.gz, settings, mods and the player profile use the same layout beside the programs as on Windows and macOS. Install X11 or XWayland for the display. Ebitengine loads these libraries from the system; install their distribution packages:

• OpenGL: libGL, libOpenGL, libGLX or libEGL.
• X11: libX11, libXcursor, libXext, libXi, libXinerama, libXrandr and libXrender.
• Sound: PulseAudio or PipeWire's PulseAudio service. Without a reachable server, sound falls back to libasound.so.2 (ALSA).

Map editor

The map editor is part of the game program: againrom.exe --editor (./againrom --editor on macOS and Linux). Select a base in the starter and press Map editor (Редактор карт on a Russian install). See docs/MODS.md in the source repository for its keys. It opens the maps of a Rage of Mages II base too; the F5 test play is not available for that game.

Starter settings

setting	what it does
Sound, volume	sound on or off, and its loudness
Movies	play the intro and the mission movies
Saves folder	where saves go; empty means the default below
Mods	which mods to load, in order
Load unmarked saves	with mods on, also load saves made without them
Close after Play	close the starter when the game starts

Saves

AgainROM saves in the original game's save format. In Rage of Mages, LOAD also lists the saves the original game made in its own install folder, and they load in AgainROM. In Rage of Mages II, LOAD lists only the saves folder: copy an original game*.sav into it.

By default, saves go to the saves folder beside againrom.exe. If the game runs from inside an install folder, they go to Againrom\saves there instead, or to the user configuration directory's Againrom when that folder is read-only (%APPDATA%\Againrom on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/Againrom on macOS, ~/.config/Againrom on Linux unless XDG_CONFIG_HOME names another folder). The Mac and Linux executable is named againrom; its install-local profile is Againrom/saves beside it.

Mods

Mods live in the mods folder beside the starter. Each mod is one folder. Tick a mod in the starter, set its options under Mod settings, and press Play. Rescan picks up a mod folder you added while the starter was open. A mod runs on Rage of Mages II only when its applies-to names common, rom2-en or rom2-ru; rom1 does not.

A save made with mods remembers which mods were on. The game refuses to load it without the same mods, so the save stays consistent. A save made without mods loads with mods on only when Load unmarked saves is ticked.

Differences from the original

• Item bonuses can raise a skill above 100. Training still stops at 100, or at the Skill cap mod's limit. The save still records the trained level and the bonus separately, as the original does.
• The game window can be resized.

The full list of known differences is in docs/divergences/.

Problems

When you report a problem, say which game and release you use (English or Russian), what you did, and attach the save if the problem is in one.

Requests about pirated copies of the game are closed without reply.

Building from source

You need Go, at the version named in go.mod. macOS builds also require Xcode Command Line Tools and CGO_ENABLED=1. Linux builds use CGO_ENABLED=0 and need no C compiler; see Install on Linux.

go build ./...
go run ./cmd/againrom -assets "C:\path\to\Rage of Mages"
go test ./...

The tests need no game install. docs/ARCHITECTURE.md describes the code, and docs/PROVENANCE.md describes how the original game's behaviour was established without copying its code or data. The release packaging is described in docs/windows-release.md.

Legal

• This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Nival Interactive, Buka, Monolith, 1C or any other rights holder.
• "Rage of Mages", "Allods" and the Russian title of the game are trademarks of their owners. They are used here only to describe compatibility.
• No original game data, executable or asset is distributed with this project. A lawfully owned copy of the game is required to run it. Naming a store is not an endorsement of it.
• The game's behaviour was established by reverse engineering a lawfully owned copy for interoperability, in a separate research process. Its public findings are the knowledge/ snapshot.
• Copyright of the project's own code: the AgainROM authors.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later (LICENSE). Open-source libraries compiled into the game are listed in THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md, with their license texts under LICENSES/.