Show HN: I reverse-engineered the world maps of Test Drive III (1990 DOS game)

A developer reverse-engineered the world maps from the 1990 DOS game Test Drive III: The Passion after five years of work, using AI to reconstruct the game's 3D tile-based terrain as accurately as possible. The project extracts the game's 32×16 grid map data, mesh objects, and sprites into modern formats like Wavefront OBJ files and PNG images, making the game's hidden world explorable outside its original engine. The open-source toolset includes a Three.js viewer and CLI utilities for exporting maps, images, and scene sprites from the game's proprietary DAT files.

Reverse engineered and extracted maps of the DOS Game Test Drive III: The Passion by Accolade As a kid, I played Test Drive III a lot. Not because of the racing, but simply to explore the world. There was so much to see, so much to discover. This project is an attempt to reconstruct those maps as accurately as possible. Over the past five years, I have worked on it on and off. Now, with the help of AI, I am close to success. Apart from the occasional flying car and missing sprites. The 3D format itself is nothing too exotic, but it does contain a few special cases. Each tile or object is a small mesh stored as three parallel arrays of 16-bit signed X, Y, and Z vertex coordinates, followed by 8-byte polygon records containing the polygon type, vertex indices, and palette color. These are preceded by a short 4- or 8-byte header. A map is a 32×16 grid. Each cell is 2 bytes: a tile ID selecting one of those meshes, plus packed rotation and height bits. Wavefront Object files are available in the objs directory. - Node.js 20.19+ required by Vite 7 npm install npm run dev Opens the viewer at http://localhost:5173 http://localhost:5173 npm run build Output is in the dist/ directory. npm run export Exports all maps and objects to the objs/ directory. npm run imgextract Exports the currently documented DAT images as indexed-color PNGs to the images/ directory. npm run spriteextract Extracts transparent scene-sprite PNGs from the known scene render descriptor banks, including the SCENE02 same-family variant. View LST file contents npm run lstview -- public/base/SCENE01.LST Extract VGA image from DAT file npm run imgview -- public/base/DATAB.DAT 0x151 12083 320 src/ ├── browser/ Browser-only modules Three.js viewer ├── shared/ Shared modules extraction logic, LZW/RLE decoders └── tools/ Node.js CLI tools ├── export/ OBJ exporter ├── imgextract/ Batch DAT image → PNG exporter ├── spriteextract/ Scene sprite extractor ├── lstviewer/ LST file viewer └── imgviewer/ VGA image extractor public/ └── base/ Game data files required objs/ Exported Wavefront OBJ files images/ Extracted VGA images PNG format spec/ File format specifications For a visual overview and previews of all extracted UI assets, scene sprites, map palettes, and car designs, visit the Project Images Gallery Index . Each individual directory contains its own generated visual gallery: 📁 Corvette ZR-1 Asset Gallery /s-macke/Test-Drive-3-Maps/blob/master/images/CCERV/README.md 📁 Honda NSX Asset Gallery /s-macke/Test-Drive-3-Maps/blob/master/images/CCNSX/README.md 📁 Lamborghini Diablo Asset Gallery /s-macke/Test-Drive-3-Maps/blob/master/images/CDIAB/README.md 📁 Mythos Asset Gallery /s-macke/Test-Drive-3-Maps/blob/master/images/CMYTH/README.md 📁 Chevrolet Corvette Stelvio Asset Gallery /s-macke/Test-Drive-3-Maps/blob/master/images/CSTEL/README.md 📁 Scenery Sprites Galleries /s-macke/Test-Drive-3-Maps/blob/master/images/SCENE01 SPRITES/README.md The spec/ directory contains reverse-engineered documentation for Test Drive III file formats: | File | Description | |---|---| | dat-file-layouts.md /s-macke/Test-Drive-3-Maps/blob/master/spec/dat-file-layouts.md map-format.md /s-macke/Test-Drive-3-Maps/blob/master/spec/map-format.md scene-render-descriptor-bank-format.md /s-macke/Test-Drive-3-Maps/blob/master/spec/scene-render-descriptor-bank-format.md SCENE01.DAT , SCENE02.DAT , and SCENETT1.DAT