Show HN: After a decade of reversing, I got co-op working in DOS Wing Commander
1 comments
- Points255
- Comments40
–Rank now
#12Peak rank
5Days on list
152Score · 7d
Nov 4, 2026First seen
Rank · 7 days
On Hacker News
- Points
- 255
- Comments
- 40
- Submitted by
- daniel_rh
- Posted
- Nov 4, 2026
- Site
- fireflyk64.github.io
Story details from Hacker News ↗ · linked article on fireflyk64.github.io.
Trending history
Show HN: After a decade of reversing, I got co-op working in DOS Wing Commander was first seen on Hacker News · Front page on Nov 4, 2026. Since then it has appeared in 185 checks on 5 different days, across 3 lists (Hacker News · Front page, Hacker News · Show HN, Hacker News · Show HN · this week). Its best position was #12 of 30, reached on Nov 5, 14:22 UTC. It dropped off the list after Nov 8, 14:50 UTC.
Rank history
Position on Hacker News · Front page at every check (lower is better).
Last 14 days
Best rank per day (UTC).
17
12
Oct 26today
Metric history
Platform metric as reported by Hacker News.
Where it trended
| List | Best | Days | Checks | Last seen |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hacker News · Front page | #12 | 2 | 72 | |
| Hacker News · Show HN | #1 | 1 | 34 | |
| Hacker News · Show HN · this week | #9 | 4 | 79 |
From the discussion
A few top-level comments from Hacker News, shortened. Read the full thread on Hacker News.
Author here: in 2015, I was playing the classic Wing Commander in DOSBox and suddenly realized the game state fit in the 64k data segment. Over ten years my brother and I went through a set of experiments (stop and go, turn, communicate) while probing the memory. We uncovered where the variables were, how to inject…
This reminds me of how I used to cheat at certain games back in the 8-bit olden days. You could change one thing at a time, save, then look through and see what changed on the disk. Eventually you could identify all the locations that held the values for inventory, stats, location, quest stages, NPC state, and so on.…
I did a similar approach but completely without DOSBOX to get native ARM64 binaries on a Mac (using SDL3) or WASM (using canvas + HTML Audio): https://github.com/haraldF/wc-decomp - multiplayer is still very basic, though.
Featured in
Archived daily, weekly and monthly lists that include this entry.
Hacker News 2 days, best #12
Show HN 1 day, best #1
Questions
Is Show HN: After a decade of reversing, I got co-op working in DOS Wing Commander trending on Hacker News right now?
Not at the moment. It was last on the list on Nov 8, 14:50 UTC, after 5 days of trending.
What is the highest rank Show HN: After a decade of reversing, I got co-op working in DOS Wing Commander reached?
#12 on Hacker News · Front page, on Nov 5, 14:22 UTC. Trendoday checks this list every 15 minutes.
How long has Show HN: After a decade of reversing, I got co-op working in DOS Wing Commander been trending?
It was first seen on Nov 4, 2026 and has been on the list on 5 days (185 checks) since.
How much discussion did it get on Hacker News?
255 points and 40 comments; submitted by daniel_rh on Nov 4, 2026.