re-twist-tt2

re-twist-tt2

A native desktop recreation of Text Twist 2 (GameHouse, 2008) in portable C++17.

The original shipped a 25 k-word English word list and a 117 k-word full list, both locked behind a Win32 installer. This project extracts the game logic, decodes the dictionary format, and ships with a public-domain 2008 → 2026 dictionary update (ENABLE2k, 173 528 words) — drop-in replaceable with no engine change.

The whole thing builds with CMake and runs on Linux, macOS and Windows. There is no web layer, no JavaScript, no Capacitor.

Quick start

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build -j
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure
./build/tt2_engine data/open-common.tree data/open-full.tree

What's in the box

• engine/ — header-only C++17 engine. The LCG, the .tree format, the bag, the board, the scoring, the per-mode round state. Same logic as the original binary (see docs/reverse-engineering/), no GameHouse-specific types.
• src/main.cpp — small driver that exercises the engine.
• tools/tree_cli.cpp — decode, encode, merge, diff, verify for the .tree dictionary format.
• data/ — runtime dictionaries. open-common.tree (22 460 words) and open-full.tree (173 528 words) are committed.
• data-src/ — raw word lists (ENABLE2k, frequency lists) for rebuilding the open dictionaries.
• docs/reverse-engineering/ — the binary fingerprint, gameplay notes, and the .tree format spec; the evidence behind the reconstruction.
• CMakeLists.txt — the build.

Goals

• Update the dictionary. 2008 → 2026, with the public-domain ENABLE2k list as the new common source. No engine change required to swap dictionaries.
• Run on Linux, macOS, Windows. Header-only engine, no Win32 / no GameHouse GF2 / no C++Builder. The CLI driver runs everywhere.
• Faithful to the original rules. Scoring, the bag, the 48-slot cap with per-length quota, the Java LCG, the WOTD day index — all bit-exact matches to the original binary's behaviour.

What this isn't (yet)

• It is not a UI. The original uses GameHouse's GF2 engine + Borland VCL + a custom bitmap-font renderer; the next milestone is a native UI layer (SDL2 + SDL2_ttf + SDL2_mixer) on top of the existing engine.
• It is not a complete port. The Crossword scene (CrisscrossScene), high-score persistence, the trophy system, the player manager, the settings dialogs are not in this drop. The dictionary file, the LCG, the bag and the per-mode scoring are the parts that change with the dictionary; the rest is a thin VCL window wrapper.

Layout

.
├── CMakeLists.txt
├── README.md
├── CLAUDE.md
├── engine/
│   ├── include/tt2/        # header-only engine
│   └── tests/              # C++ unit tests (no external deps)
├── src/
│   └── main.cpp            # driver / smoke test
├── tools/
│   └── tree_cli.cpp        # dictionary CLI
├── data/                   # runtime .tree dictionaries
├── data-src/               # raw word lists
├── docs/
│   ├── reverse-engineering/  # binary fingerprint, gameplay notes
│   ├── design/             # original-look brief (kept for the future UI)
│   └── dictionary-sources.md
└── Text Twist 2.exe -> /home/deck/.temp/Text Twist 2.exe   (gitignored)

Legal

Look and feel may imitate the original; assets may not. The shipped dictionaries are public-domain or CC BY-SA 4.0. The original GameHouse .tree files and the executable are not committed. The DRM components (texttwist2_RADRM.dll, trial code, .nfo files) are not analyzed.

Status

• Engine: complete for Classic (Timed/Untimed/WOTD) and Lightning scoring; rack pick, board, slot cap, guess check, scoring — all unit-tested.
• Dictionary: open .tree files committed and verified round-trip byte-identical against the build pipeline.
• UI: not started.
• Crossword: scoring formula in scoring.hpp; the grid + placement loop are not yet in the engine.