About
Ascendancy is a 1995 4X, turn-based science-fiction strategy game for MS-DOS, later updated and re-released for iOS in 2011 by The Logic Factory, centered on a galactic struggle among wildly different species for dominance. Starlane Empire is a Linux space turn-based strategy game engine that aims to emulate and extend the old DOS game Ascendancy. It is still in an early state -- the original Ascendancy CD is currently needed just to test the engine.
History
The reverse engineering behind the project was done entirely on Linux, using the Biew hex/disassembly tool and file-format notes from wotsit.org to work out Ascendancy's .shp file format.