ReCoF

ReCoF

Cry of Fear improved version.

ReCoF fixes the bugs of Cry of Fear (Steam release, version string 1.6a) and improves the game, starting from the source of DeCoF, the complete matching decompilation of every retail binary: the game DLLs, the engine, the Paranoia renderer, the menus and both launchers.

Principles

• DeCoF stays faithful. DeCoF reproduces retail exactly, bugs included. Fixes and improvements are made here. Corrections to the decompilation itself, such as a wrong name or a real mismatch, go to DeCoF and are merged in.
• Speedrun techniques stay. Movement tech, skips and exploits that runners use are not removed unless they crash the game or corrupt saves. When a fix changes something runners rely on, the original behavior stays available behind a cvar.
• New cvars and commands use the prefix rc_.
• Retail saves keep loading. A fix that has to change a save table versions it and still reads the old format.
• Every change is measured against the baseline. Before any fix, a ReCoF build is identical to DeCoF's except for build stamps and the name of the build folder, so each fix can be checked to change only the functions it means to change (docs/baseline.md). hl.dll and client.dll are built with a current compiler since Sprint 5, so their code no longer matches retail byte for byte; DeCoF's tools compare a unit with the retail compiler.

Building

The tools and steps are the same as DeCoF's: see "Building it yourself" in the DeCoF README and docs/tooling.md.

1. Copy your Cry of Fear game folder, the one that holds cof.exe, to versions/1.6a. The scripts only read it.
2. Install the compilers listed in the DeCoF README, and the Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools (C++ workload, MSVC 14.44, Windows 11 SDK 10.0.26100) for hl.dll and client.dll. The default locations are under I:\Tools and the Visual Studio default; the paths are set at the top of tools/msvc.py, tools/msvc1444.py, tools/msvc6.py and tools/coflaunchapp/build.py.
3. Put the third-party headers into refs/: halflife, a3d-sdk, bzip2-1.0.2-dl, dxheaders, irrklang-1.6.0 and id3lib-3.8.3, from the sources in the DeCoF README.
4. Fetch the submodules, discord-rpc and RapidJSON for the Discord status: git submodule update --init.
5. Build:

python tools/build.py link hl
python tools/build.py link client
python tools/build.py link hw
python tools/build.py link opengl32
python tools/build.py link gameui
python tools/build.py link launcher
python tools/coflaunchapp/build.py
python tools/make_dist.py --bin build/bin

The binaries land in build/bin, and dist/ becomes a copy of the game that runs them.

Making a release

Releases are installed and updated by the ReCoF Launcher, which only accepts the format described in its docs/releases.md: recof-<version>.zip, recof-manifest.json and its Ed25519 signature recof-manifest.json.sig. After building every binary as above:

python tools/make_release.py --version 0.2.0 --channel beta

It stages the binaries in game folder layout with Play ReCoF.bat and tools/dist_extra/recof-cvars.json (the options the launcher shows; add a new rc_ cvar there when it should appear in the launcher), and runs cargo xtask pack-recof from a ReCoF-Launcher checkout next to this one, which signs the manifest with the launcher key. Both sets carry the rebuilt CoFLaunchApp.exe; the script also writes ReCoF-v<version>.zip, the same files in one zip for installing by hand. Upload the four files from build/release/v<version>/upload to the GitHub release v<version>; its body is the changelog the launcher shows. A beta is a GitHub prerelease, which launchers on the stable channel do not see.

Merging DeCoF corrections

ReCoF keeps DeCoF's history, so later corrections to the decompilation merge in directly:

git remote add decof https://github.com/caixax/DeCoF.git
git fetch decof
git merge decof/master

Documentation

File	What it covers
docs/tooling.md	The tools a build needs and the commands
docs/original_bugs.md	Bugs of the retail game found during the decompilation, the starting point for ReCoF's fixes
docs/bugs.md	The bug inventory: every known problem, its evidence, severity, runner impact and fix plan
docs/speedrun.md	Speedrun techniques ReCoF keeps, and the runner tools that depend on the binaries
docs/baseline.md	The baseline build every fix is compared with, and how to compare (tools/compare_build.py)
docs/feasibility/	Feasibility studies for the larger projects: GPU and multicore, rc_hlmovement, a launcher repository, a server SDK

The decompilation's own notes (how each compiler was identified, the source workflow, struct layouts, reference repositories and their licenses) and its tools stay in DeCoF.

Credits

• Team Psykskallar made Cry of Fear. ReCoF fixes and extends their game and ships none of its assets.
• Valve made the GoldSrc engine and the Half-Life SDK that Cry of Fear is built on.
• BUzer wrote the Paranoia renderer that Cry of Fear's client and OpenGL wrapper come from.
• cd_n0 made RebuiltSimon. ReCoF's information panel, HUD numbers, ducktap and autojump aids and other speedrun options are rebuilt from what it shows and does; none of its code is used.
• YaLTeR made BunnymodXT, whose practice commands, crosshair, timer and ideas ReCoF follows, and the fork of discord-rpc that ReCoF's Discord status uses.
• IlyaTsyganov wrote the Cry of Fear LiveSplit script, whose timing rules ReCoF's run timer follows.
• Discord made discord-rpc, and Tencent and Milo Yip made RapidJSON; both are MIT and come in as submodules.

License

See LICENSE, inherited from DeCoF. The code reconstructed from the Cry of Fear binaries belongs to its original authors, and no rights over it are granted. Code derived from the Half-Life SDK stays under the Half-Life 1 SDK License, and code derived from Paranoia under Paranoia's terms.

This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Team Psykskallar or Valve. The repository contains no game assets or retail binaries; you need your own copy of Cry of Fear.