Battlefield 1943 Reborn

Battlefield 1943 Reborn

Battlefield 1943, the 2009 Xbox 360 game by DICE, running natively on Windows and Linux, with its online multiplayer brought back on servers that anyone can run.

This is a fan project by TekRantGaming. It is not made, endorsed or supported by Electronic Arts or DICE. It contains no game files: you need your own copy of the Xbox 360 game (Xbox Live Arcade, title ID 5841097E).

Latest build: 0.2.1 (Windows and Linux)  ·  Discord: discord.gg/8eakYSvBZS

• Download and play
• Requirements
• Features
• Controls
• Settings
• Online play and servers
• Known issues
• How it works
• Source code
• Privacy
• Credits and licences
• Legal

Download and play

Windows

1. Download BF1943-Reborn-<version>-windows-x64.zip from the Releases page and unzip it somewhere you can write to (for example C:\Games, not Program Files).
2. Start bf1943.exe.

Linux

1. Download BF1943-Reborn-linux-x86_64.AppImage from the Releases page into a folder of its own (for example ~/Games/BF1943-Reborn): its game and user folders go beside it.
2. Make it runnable (chmod +x on the file, or Allow executing in its properties) and start it.

Its name is the same in every release. Updates install themselves; to update by hand, put the new file over the old one (not in Downloads), so your settings, game files and Steam shortcut stay.

Then, on both

1. The first time, select your own Battlefield 1943 (Xbox 360) package: the single file in 5841097E\000D0000 from your console's storage, or a folder that holds it. It is installed into the folder game, once. The first start then prepares the game's shaders, so effects do not stutter the first time you see them.
2. Choose your name, then press Play.
3. Quick Match or the Server Browser first asks which movement you want, Classic or Modern (see Features), every time: then the busiest server that plays it, or one from its list.

Your settings, logs and crash reports stay in the folder user next to the game.

Updates install themselves. At every start the game looks at this page's latest release; a newer one is downloaded, checked against the release's SHA256SUMS.txt, installed and started. On Windows only the files that changed are replaced, and if any of them cannot be, every one is put back; on Linux the AppImage replaces itself. Your game and user folders are never touched. Builds before 0.2.0 cannot update themselves: download the latest build once and unzip it over your folder (Windows), or put the AppImage in place of the old one (Linux).

If Windows says "rexruntime.dll is either not designed to run on Windows or it contains an error" (Bad Image, 0xc0e90002), it is not a broken download: the builds are not code signed yet, and Windows 11's Smart App Control has not cleared this build's files.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, 64 bit; or Linux on x86_64 with glibc 2.38 or newer, an X11 or XWayland session, and curl for updates (SteamOS, Bazzite and current desktop distributions; tested on a ROG Ally with Bazzite).
• A graphics card with Vulkan (NVIDIA GTX 10 series, AMD RX 5000 series, Intel Arc or newer recommended; on Linux, Mesa's RADV or NVIDIA's driver).
• Your own copy of Battlefield 1943 for Xbox 360: its package file from your console.
• To host a server: Windows (10, 11 or Server) and Python 3.12.

Features

The game

• All four maps: Wake Island, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima and Coral Sea.
• Up to 24 players a server, on foot, in jeeps, tanks, boats and planes, with the air raid, as in the original.
• Two movement styles. Classic is the original game. Modern has quicker starts and stops, faster aiming with no turn lag and quicker shots after a sprint or a jump, with aim assist kept. Each server plays one or the other, so nobody has an edge: Quick Match and the server browser ask which one you want every time and show only its servers, and your game always plays what the server you join plays (there is no setting for it).
• The game's own tutorial (Help), and our Stats and Awards, Achievements and Leaderboards pages.

Online

• A server browser with the official servers and everyone else's (Community), each with its map and players, and Direct connect for a server that is not listed.
• Quick Match joins the busiest server with room that plays the movement you pick.
• A server package for anyone to host their own dedicated servers, listed for everyone.

On PC

• A native Windows and Linux program with a Vulkan renderer, at your screen's resolution and refresh rate.
• Any frame rate: a limit from 30 to 240 or none, and VSync. The game still runs its world 30 times a second as on the console, but the camera turns on every frame, and soldiers, vehicles and vehicle cameras move smoothly between the game's updates.
• Graphics: drawn at your display's resolution, or at a share of it scaled up and sharpened by AMD FSR 1 or NVIDIA Image Scaling (NIS), shadow quality up to four times the original, FXAA, sharpening (AMD CAS), texture filtering up to 16x, ambient occlusion (Intel's XeGTAO, with strength and quality settings) and global illumination (one bounce, with quality and distance settings).
• Grass and shrubs on Wake Island, Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, placed from each level's own data, drawn as far as the whole map.
• Field of view, motion blur on or off, camera shake and its strength, brightness and gamma.
• Keyboard and mouse beside controllers, with rebindable keys and the mouse aiming vehicle guns and turrets directly; the game's button prompts show the keys you play with, on foot and in vehicles.
• Volume for master, music, effects and voices, menu music and sounds.
• Performance metrics in the corner (off unless you turn them on; F2: off, FPS only or full), and crash and hang reports in user\crashes.
• Updates that install themselves (see Download and play).
• Add to Steam from the launcher's Home, with the game's artwork.

Controls

Keyboard and mouse are on by default, beside any controller. Every key can be changed in Settings > Controls > Keyboard bindings.

Planes: flying with keyboard and mouse is not right yet (see Known issues): take a boat to get to land, or fly with a controller. On a controller planes fly as on the Xbox 360: left trigger throttle, right stick pitch and roll, left stick rudder, right bumper bombs, left bumper free look.

Controllers: Xbox controllers play as on the console, with the game's own button layouts (Normal, Southpaw, Lefty) for soldiers, land vehicles and planes. Button prompts can show Xbox 360, Xbox Series, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 5 or Steam Deck buttons, or the keys.

Settings

Everything is in our Settings menu, from the main menu and the pause menu.

• Display: window mode (windowed or borderless), monitor, window size, resolution, refresh rate, aspect ratio (the game is 16:9: letterbox or stretch), brightness, gamma, VSync, frame rate limit, field of view, motion blur, camera shake.
• Graphics: antialiasing (FXAA), upscaler (Off, AMD FSR 1 or NVIDIA NIS) and its mode, shadow quality, sharpness, texture filtering, ambient occlusion, global illumination, grass distance, HD textures.
• Audio: master, music, effects and voices volume, menu music and sounds, the game's sound system and voiceover language.
• Controls: Keyboard and mouse on or off, button prompts, camera turning (every frame or 30 times a second as on the Xbox 360), mouse sensitivity (with its own for aiming down sights and for vehicles), aim hold or toggle, mouse vertical, controller camera sensitivity, response, dead zone, inversion, vibration and its strength, button remapping, keyboard bindings, and the game's own control layouts, vertical look and vertical fly.
• Gameplay: your name, performance metrics, and sharing (see Privacy).

Online play and servers

EA's servers for Battlefield 1943 are gone. Reborn brings online play back with its own main backend, which every player logs in to and which lists every server.

• Official servers are run by TekRantGaming: for Classic and for Modern, two with all maps in turn, one each for Wake Island, Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal around the clock, and Air Superiority on Coral Sea.
• Community servers: anyone can host dedicated servers with BF1943-Reborn-Server-<version>-windows.zip. Each server has its own name, description, maps, movement (Classic or Modern) and pause between rounds, and shows in everyone's server browser under Community. See docs/SERVER.md.

Known issues

This is an alpha. The main ones in 0.2.1:

• Avoid flying with mouse and keyboard for now. Take a boat to get to land, or use a controller to fly (controllers fly as on the Xbox 360). This will be fixed in a later update; mouse and keyboard work everywhere else.
• With keyboard and mouse a tank aims the opposite way up and down to the soldier on foot, and one invert setting covers both (issue 3).
• The first person weapon and hands still move 30 times a second at high frame rates (the view itself turns on every frame).
• Stats, awards and leaderboards are kept only while the official backend runs: they reset when it restarts.
• No HDR, and no ultrawide picture (the game is 16:9: letterbox or stretch).
• Linux: the Vulkan renderer needs X11 or XWayland (a Wayland only session falls back to a slower one); the game's tutorial (Help) can drop back to the menu at once; dedicated servers on Linux are not tested yet.
• The builds are not code signed yet (see Download and play).
• HD textures can be imported (Settings > Graphics), but no texture pack has been published.

Report anything else on Discord, with the files from user\crashes for a crash.

How it works

• Static recompilation. The Xbox 360 program is translated ahead of time into native 64 bit code for Windows and Linux with the ReXGlue SDK (derived from the Xenia emulator), and runs on its runtime (rexruntime.dll, on Linux librexruntime.so), which stands in for the console's system services. The game's own code runs natively; it is not emulated.
• NativeXRenderer. The game's Xbox 360 graphics work is drawn with Vulkan by NativeXRenderer (rexgpu-bfnative.dll), with this project's additions: ambient occlusion, global illumination, grass, sharper shadows and motion between the game's updates.
• Online. The game talked to EA's servers and Xbox LIVE. Reborn answers it with its own backend (server\plasma.py: login, server list, stats), and each dedicated server has a host (server\gmhost.py) that links players to it. A dedicated server is the game itself, run as a server with no window.
• Our menus. The first start setup, main menu, server browser, pause menu and settings are this project's own, drawn over the game, which keeps its own HUD.
• Updates. The game reads this repository's latest release through GitHub's API. The Windows download carries a list of every file with its hash (bf-files.txt) and of files earlier builds had that it does not (bf-retired.txt): an update installs exactly those, removes a retired file only while it is unchanged, and checks the folder again at the first start of the new version.

Source code

This repository holds the source code, next to the releases, the changelog and the guides. It contains no game files and none of the game's code: the code generator translates the game's program on your PC, from your own copy.

git config --global core.longpaths true
git clone --recursive https://github.com/TekRantGaming/Battlefield-1943-Reborn.git
cd Battlefield-1943-Reborn
sdk\src-bf\build_bf.bat
python -I tools\stfs_extract.py "<your package file>" input\pkg
mklink /J bf\assets input\pkg
cd bf
..\sdk\src-bf\out\install\win-amd64\bin\rexglue.exe codegen bf1943_manifest.toml
build.bat bf-relwithdebinfo

Privacy

• Share graphics data (on by default, Settings > Gameplay > Sharing) sends the graphics pipelines your game builds (render settings and shader numbers: no game files, no name, nothing about you) to our server, at most every 15 minutes and only when something new was built, so the next update has them ready and everyone gets less stutter.
• Playing online, the backend sees the name you chose and your IP address, as any game server does.
• The game's own Telemetry setting changes nothing: its reports went to EA's servers, which are gone.
• Settings, logs and crash reports stay on your PC, in the folder user.

Credits and licences

• Battlefield 1943 Reborn by TekRantGaming and contributors (MIT, LICENSE): the port's own code.
• ReXGlue SDK (BSD 3 Clause), derived from Xenia: the recompiler and runtime.
• NativeXRenderer by Gustavo Garcia (MIT): the Vulkan renderer.
• GHMetalRecomp (MIT): its NativeXRenderer profile, which Battlefield's started from.
• King Kong Recompiled by TekRantGaming and contributors (MIT): the ambient occlusion, global illumination and camera work, and much of what we learned.
• DiligentCore (Apache 2.0), SPIRV Cross (Apache 2.0), volk (MIT): the renderer's foundations.
• XeGTAO by Intel (MIT), AMD FidelityFX (MIT), NVIDIA Image Scaling (MIT), SMAA (MIT style) and NVIDIA DLSS (NVIDIA RTX SDKs licence): libraries the renderer is built with.
• FFmpeg (its decoders only) and libmspack, both LGPL 2.1, in the runtime.
• vgmstream (ISC): the layout of the game's menu music.
• Oswald (SIL Open Font Licence): the menus' font.
• Button prompts: Xelu's Free Controllers and Keyboard Prompts by Nicolae Berbece (CC0) and Input Prompts by Kenney (CC0).
• The Discord and Steam marks in the launcher from Simple Icons (CC0). Discord and Steam are trademarks of their owners.
• Add to Steam's artwork and More from TRG Studios' pictures from SteamGridDB (https://www.steamgriddb.com), downloaded when used.

Every download includes the full licence texts in its licences folder.

Legal

Battlefield and Battlefield 1943 are trademarks of Electronic Arts Inc. All rights to the game belong to their owners. This project is not affiliated with Electronic Arts or DICE, and it contains no game files or game assets: everyone installs their own copy. Please do not share game files.