About
The Legend of Sword and Fairy is a 1995 fantasy adventure RPG developed by Taiwanese studio Softstar Entertainment, drawing on wuxia, shenmo, and xianxia themes and Chinese mythology; it was originally released for MS-DOS, later ported to Windows 95, Sega Saturn, and Windows 98/XP. SDLPAL is a cross-platform, SDL-based reimplementation of the original Legend of Sword and Fairy game engine, requiring the player's own copy of the original game's data files to run. It supports Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, iOS, and several consoles (3DS, Wii, PSP), plus an in-browser demo.
How it differs from the original
SDLPAL contains none of the original game's code or proprietary data files, which remain owned by SoftStar Inc.; players must supply those files themselves, and the project recommends buying the original on Steam.
Getting started
Clone the repository and update its submodules, then follow the platform-specific build steps (Visual Studio or MinGW on Windows, make on Linux, Xcode on macOS/iOS, Android Studio on Android). Once built, copy the original game's data files into the same directory as the SDLPAL executable — on case-sensitive systems like Linux and macOS those filenames must all be lowercase — and run it; a configuration window appears on first launch, except on macOS, where settings are edited via a config file instead.
History
SDLPAL was originally created by Wei Mingzhi and is now maintained by the SDLPAL development team, building on documentation from the community PAL Research Project.
Known limitations
- platform: MIDI support is preliminary on GNU/Linux and requires the timidity package; not supported on other platforms.
- compatibility: On case-sensitive filesystems (Linux/macOS), all game data filenames must be in lowercase.
Media
Additional notes
- External link
- A Gitee mirror of the repository, updated hourly, is offered for users in mainland China who have trouble reaching GitHub.