OpenDawnstar

A from-scratch, reverse-engineered browser reimplementation of The Elder Scrolls Travels: Dawnstar (Vir2L Studios / Bethesda Softworks, 2003, J2ME). No original code or bytecode is included or executed — every mechanic here was traced from the original's binary data files and rebuilt in plain JavaScript, cross-checked against an independent Python decompilation and UESP's wiki.

Play it in your browser

Status: playable, not finished

This is a real, working game — character creation, a full first-person dungeon crawler, real combat/spell/skill formulas, shops, a complete champion/traitor mystery questline, save/continue, the works. But it's not a final, polished release. Known rough edges:

• UI needs another pass. Some screens are functional-but-plain, the in-dungeon Options menu was only just added, and a few visual details (sprite positioning, mobile layout edge cases) haven't been checked against a real device by anyone but the person who built this.
• Several mechanics are documented, honest simplifications rather than byte-exact ports — see PORT_NOTES.md for the full list (duration- ticked ailments, exact dungeon-to-dungeon edge topology, champion clue text, and a few others).
• This project may or may not get further updates — treat what's here as a solid, playable snapshot rather than an actively maintained release.

If you run into bugs, PORT_NOTES.md documents what's real vs. simplified stage-by-stage, which is usually the fastest way to tell whether something's a bug or a known, intentional gap.

Running it

No build step, no dependencies. It's static files.

python3 -m http.server 8000

then open http://localhost:8000. (Must be served over http(s) — opening index.html/game.html directly via file:// won't work, the game fetches its data files.)

Or just push this repo to GitHub Pages — see below.

Deploying

Settings → Pages → Deploy from branch → main / root. That's it, it's a static site.

What's real vs. simplified

Two documents cover this in detail:

• PORT_NOTES.md — the full stage-by-stage development log: what was traced exactly from the original's data, what was cross-verified against an independent decompilation, and what's an honest, clearly-flagged substitution where the original couldn't be traced.
• COMPARISON.md — how this compares to playing on original hardware or through a J2ME emulator (and why the emulator route was abandoned).

Credits

• Original game: Vir2L Studios, published by Bethesda Softworks / ZeniMax Media, 2003.
• jet082/TES-Mobile-Decomp-Python-Port — an independent Python decompilation used throughout as a cross-reference to verify formulas and data layouts.
• UESP — wiki documentation used to fact-check game structure, quest content, and mechanics.

License & disclaimer

The code in this repository is original work, released under the MIT License (see LICENSE). Sprite assets extracted from the original game are included for visual fidelity and belong to their original rights holders.

OpenDawnstar is an unofficial, non-commercial fan project and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by ZeniMax Media Inc.