Ghoulies Recomp

Ghoulies PC Recomp: Grabbed by the Ghoulies, recompiled for PC

This is a native Windows build of Grabbed by the Ghoulies (original Xbox, 2003). The game's code is statically recompiled to C and runs on a PC reimplementation of the Xbox kernel, the GPU (NV2A, on Direct3D 11) and audio.

It is built on xboxrecomp by sp00nznet (MIT, with xemu-derived parts under LGPL-2.1), using the toolkit changes from Orta PC Recomp. Many GPU behaviours are matched against xemu.

Status: test build for playtesters. The game is playable, including cutscenes, challenges and the Reaper. See docs/KNOWN_ISSUES.md.

You need your own copy of the game

This repository contains no game code or assets: no XBE, no disc files, no recompiled game code and no textures. You supply files from your own disc. Only the North American (US) release is supported. Setup checks the game's default.xbe before it does anything.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
• A DirectX 11 graphics card
• An Xbox controller or any XInput pad
• Your own copy of Grabbed by the Ghoulies (US)

Repository layout

Path	What it is
xboxrecomp-main/	The xboxrecomp toolkit with this project's changes. It contains the recompiler (tools/) and the runtime (src/): kernel, NV2A GPU on Direct3D 11, audio, input and Bink video.
ghoulies/	The game project. main.c handles settings.ini and start-up. recomp_manual.c holds hand-written replacements, such as real-time frame timing and the Bink copy wrapper. overlay.cpp is the F1 settings menu. Also here: the build scripts and the playtest package template.
ghoulies/seeds/	Function addresses found while playing, which the recompiler needs. They are addresses only, with no game code.
ghoulies/third_party/imgui/	Dear ImGui (MIT)
installer/	Setup.exe source and the script that builds the game on the player's PC
docs/	Known issues and changelog

Installing

Download GhouliesPC_Setup.exe from the Releases page and run it.

• Setup looks for your disc image (.iso) by itself, in Downloads, Desktop, Documents, Videos, your user folder and then each drive. If it doesn't find it, press Disc image..., or Folder... for an unpacked copy with default.xbe in it.
• It checks that the disc is Grabbed by the Ghoulies, North American release.
• It downloads Python, the capstone disassembler and the llvm-mingw compiler (about 300 MB) into %LOCALAPPDATA%\Ghoulies PC Setup. It then translates and compiles the game, which takes about 20-30 minutes, installs it where you chose, and deletes that work folder.
• At the end it prepares the graphics shaders the game needs, so the first start is quick.
• The install folder gets setup_log.txt. Send it with any problem report. If Setup stops part-way, run it again: it reuses what it already downloaded and compiled.

Settings and files

• Launcher: shown the first time the game starts, and whenever Shift is held while it starts: resolution, display mode, widescreen, VSync, anti-aliasing, supersampling, frame rate, volume, sound effects, speakers and rumble.
• F1 menu while playing: resolution, widescreen, anti-aliasing, supersampling, frame-rate cap, VSync, volume and rumble. Everything is saved to settings.ini next to the game.
• Anti-aliasing: Off, Smooth scaling, or Smooth scaling + FXAA in four strengths: fast, quality, high and ultra (AntiAliasing = 0 to 5 in [Display]).
• Supersampling: draws the game at 1.5x, 2x or the most (2880 lines) of your screen's height and shrinks it to fit, for the cleanest edges (Supersampling = 0 to 3). It is the heaviest on the graphics card.
• Surround: Speakers = 5.1 in [Audio] (or the launcher / F1 menu) gives 5.1 sound, with sounds behind you on the rear speakers. Takes effect when the game starts.
• Defaults: the lightest settings, so the game runs well on most PCs: 480 lines (the original resolution), 4:3, 30 fps, no anti-aliasing, stereo. Raise them in the launcher or the F1 menu.
• Frame rate: 30 fps (as on the Xbox) or 60 fps; the game keeps real-time speed either way (FrameRateCap = 30, 60, or 0 for no cap).
• Alt+Enter switches fullscreen. F11 saves a frame capture for bug reports.
• Data folder next to the game: saves (Data\UserData, Data\TitleData) and the game's cache (Data\Cache). If the game folder can't be written to, it goes in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Ghoulies PC instead. Deleting Data\Cache is safe.
• Shaders: compiled graphics shaders are kept in shadercache next to the game. Setup prepares them, so the first start is quick. Deleting the folder is safe; the next start rebuilds it.
• Problem reports: each run writes session_log.txt next to the game, and keeps the previous run's log as session_log_previous.txt. Send these with any report.

To make the installer yourself, installer/build_setup.sh builds the Setup.exe stub (clang and lld-link, no C runtime). Then python installer/make_release.py GhouliesPC_Setup.exe appends the sources to it.

Building by hand

You need Windows 10/11 with Visual Studio 2022 (Desktop C++), CMake 3.20+ and Python 3 with capstone.

1. Copy default.xbe and the rest of the disc's files from your own copy of the game into xboxrecomp-main/game_files/.
2. Copy the three files from ghoulies/seeds/ into the same folder.
3. From a Developer PowerShell for VS 2022, in ghoulies/, run powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File .\ghoulies_loop.ps1. It disassembles the game and translates it to C in ghoulies/src/recomp/gen/; this output is never committed. It then builds with CMake into build64/ and starts the game.

The toolkit's own guide, xboxrecomp-main/docs/GETTING_STARTED.md, explains the pipeline in depth.

Licence

Code from xboxrecomp keeps its MIT licence (xboxrecomp-main/LICENSE). The xemu-derived files keep their LGPL-2.1-or-later licence and notices (xboxrecomp-main/NOTICE, xboxrecomp-main/LICENSES/). Dear ImGui is MIT (ghoulies/third_party/imgui/LICENSE.txt).

Grabbed by the Ghoulies is © Microsoft / Rare. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.