PerfectDarkZeroRecomp

A static recompilation of Perfect Dark Zero (Xbox 360, 2005, Title ID 4D5307D3, [PAL]) to native PC, built on the ReXGlue SDK. The game's PowerPC code is translated into C++ and compiled. There is no emulator.

Target retail release:

Field	Value
Title ID	4D5307D3
XEX CRC	375EC9BB
Module Hash	AA1EA03FEC9A549C
Media ID	750FF1D9

This project is not affiliated with Microsoft or Rare. It contains no game files: you need your own legally owned copy of the game.

Status

• Fully playable on Windows and Linux: video, audio, gameplay, achievements and saves.
• Keyboard and mouse support.
• Local split-screen for 4 players out of the box (max_local_users = 4), up to 4 players with gamepads. Keyboard and mouse can be one of the players, see Split-screen.
• Optional patches: 60 FPS (on by default) and 16:9.
• Third-person camera and language selection, see Mods.

Requirements

• CMake 3.25+, Ninja, and Clang/LLVM. MSVC alone won't build this.
• The game's files, extracted from your disc or ISO with ABGX360 or extract-xiso.

Build

1. Clone the repo with its submodule. The ReXGlue SDK is built from source (thirdparty/rexglue-sdk).

   git clone --recursive https://github.com/nikolaygorb/PerfectDarkZeroRecomp.git
   

   If you already cloned without it, run git submodule update --init --recursive.

2. Copy the extracted game files into assets/, so the path is assets/default.xex. assets/ is gitignored.

3. Build:

   cmake --preset win-amd64-release
   cmake --build --preset win-amd64-release
   

   There are also Linux and macOS presets (linux-amd64-*, mac-*), but only Windows is tested. Codegen (default.xex → generated/) runs automatically as part of the build.

Run

out\build\win-amd64-release\perfectdarkzerorecomp.exe

Game files are found in <repo>/assets automatically; use --game_data_root to point somewhere else. Logs go to out\build\<preset>\logs\.

Mods

Third-person camera

Press V in game to switch between first and third person. Set pdz_tp_enable = true in hardware.toml to start in third person. Camera offset and the rest of the options are in src/mod/README.md.

Language

Set user_language in hardware.toml and restart the game:

# 1 = English, 3 = German, 4 = French
user_language = 1   

Only languages your copy of the game includes will work (check assets/pdz/ASSETS/loc/). Anything else falls back to English.

Split-screen

Set max_local_users in hardware.toml (1 to 4; the file ships with 2). Player 1 uses keyboard and mouse plus gamepad 1, player 2 signs in when a second gamepad is connected, and players 3 and 4 follow with gamepads 3 and 4.

# Two players, one gamepad: keyboard and mouse against the pad
max_local_users = 2
keyboard_own_player = true

Each player keeps their own in-game options; saves are shared. Explicit device assignment, player names and troubleshooting are in settings/split-screen.md.

Local player profiles

Press F9 to open the profile list. You can create profiles, rename them and pick the one to play next time. Each profile has its own saves and achievements. A new profile or name takes effect after you restart the game.

The first profile, "User", keeps the saves you already have. Other profiles save to profiles/<id>/ in the user data folder (Documents/perfectdarkzerorecomp by default), so renaming a profile doesn't move its saves. The list is kept in local_profiles.toml in that folder. Settings and the shader cache are shared.

Names are 1–15 characters: letters, digits, spaces, - and _. To use another key, change bind_local_profiles in settings/mapping.toml.

Configuration

All settings live in settings/ and are loaded at startup. Most can also be changed in game from the F4 overlay.

File	What it covers
hardware.toml	renderer, window, patches (pdz_fps60_unlock, pdz_aspect_ratio_16_9), pdz_gpu_wait_mode, third-person camera (pdz_tp_*), language (user_language), split-screen (max_local_users, keyboard_own_player)
mapping.toml	input backend, keyboard and mouse (mnk_*), key bindings including bind_third_person

Development notes

• Set dev_debug_runtime = true to stub every unknown function and log missing ones to logs/stub_sweep.txt and logs/missed_functions.txt.
• Game-specific hooks are in src/: patches, the GPU wait hook in render/, high-FPS physics and cutscene timing in timing/, and the camera mod in mod/.

Credits

• ReXGlue SDK, whose runtime is derived from Xenia
• xenia-canary/game-patches, the source of the 60 FPS and 16:9 patches
• 2023PerfectDark/Perfect-Dark-Zero-Reinstated, the source of the high-FPS physics and cutscene timing fixes
• SDL_GameControllerDB, for settings/gamecontrollerdb.txt (zlib license)
• ABGX360 and extract-xiso, for dumping the game

License

MIT. See LICENSE. This applies to this project's own code only, not to the game or its assets.