Links 2004 - XBE Recomp

Links 2004 - XBE Recomp

An unofficial native PC port of the original Xbox version of Links 2004, made with static recompilation and built as a 64-bit Windows executable. The game's x86 code is translated to C++ ahead of time. The Xbox kernel, Direct3D, DirectSound, XACT and XNet calls are implemented on Windows. Everything is drawn with Direct3D 12 and played through XAudio2.

This port was created with the Xbox XBE Recomp tool by TGP482.

Installation

The latest version can be downloaded from the Releases page.

1. Extract the zip anywhere you like.
2. Put your game files in the assets folder. This can be a disc image (.iso), or the extracted data files with default.xbe and the game's folders beside it.
3. Run Links2004.exe. The first start compiles the game's code for your PC behind a progress window. This only happens once.

The executable checks that your default.xbe is the version it was made from, and tells you if it is not.

Features

PC GRAPHICS Menu

The port's settings are in the game's own menus, under Options > Graphics > PC GRAPHICS, from the main menu or the pause menu during a round. Left and Right (or A) change the selected setting, and every change is saved at once. The list scrolls, with the game's own scroll arrows.

Setting	What it does
Monitor	The monitor the game shows on, numbered left to right as Windows places them.
Display	Fullscreen, Borderless (default) or Windowed.
Resolution	Any of the monitor's resolutions, defaulting to the desktop's instead of the original 640x480.
Frame Rate	30, 60 (default), the monitor's refresh rate, 120, 144, 165, 240 or Unlimited, for the menus and rounds alike. Original plays as the Xbox did: menus at 60 and rounds at 30.
FPS Counter	Shows the frame rate in the top left corner.
V-Sync	On by default.
Overscan	Trims a little from each edge of the picture, as a TV did. The game was drawn with that in mind, and some main menu course pictures leave a stray column at the left edge without it.
Render Scale	Renders the game at 0.5x to 2x the output resolution, for supersampling or for speed.
Anti-Aliasing	Off, FXAA or SMAA, over the finished frame. SMAA keeps text and fine detail sharper.
Texture Filter	Forces 2x to 16x anisotropic filtering on all textures.
LOD Distance	How far away objects keep their full detail and stay drawn, up to 4x the original, for less pop-in.
Grass Distance	How far ahead the 3D grass reaches, up to 3x the original.
Skip Intro	Starts the game at PRESS START, leaving out the legal screens, the logo movies and the intro.

Experimental

Features still being tried out are under Options > Graphics > EXPERIMENTAL.

• Upscaled UI: The menus, HUD and fonts upscaled 4x with Real-ESRGAN, for sharp text and icons at high resolutions. BUILD UPSCALED UI closes the game and upscales the textures from your own copy of the game, on your PC, then starts the game again. Nothing of the game's is shared or downloaded. The first time, it asks to download Real-ESRGAN's official Windows release (45 MB) into tools\realesrgan beside the exe, and checks it before using it. The images go into textures\generated\ui, and UPSCALED UI turns them on and off at any time. Building needs a GPU with Vulkan support.
• Smooth Animation: The game's animations are keyed 30 times a second. Most of them blend from one key to the next, but some play key by key, among them the golfers' celebrations and frustrations after a shot and the crowd's clapping, so at high frame rates they step. This blends those too, so they move smoothly at any frame rate.

Graphics

• Widescreen: The course is drawn in the proportions of a 16:9 screen. The Xbox only did that with its HDTV cable, and with any other cable it drew the course a little too wide.
• Ultrawide: On a display wider than 16:9 (21:9, 32:9), the course fills the screen and shows more at the sides, with the HUD at the screen's edges. The menus and movies stay 16:9 in the middle, with black either side, as the menus' art was not made to be seen past 16:9. Set ultrawide = false in the settings file for 16:9 with black bars instead.
• Shader Cache: Shaders are compiled once and kept in shader_cache beside the exe, so a scene only stutters the first time it is seen, not every time the game starts. The release also comes with shaders.list, a list of the shaders a full play session needs (how each is made, not the shaders themselves, so it holds nothing of the game's). On start, the ones your cache lacks are compiled in the background while the game boots, so even the first round's flyover plays smoothly. The list grows as you play and new shaders turn up.
• Higher Frame Rates: Rounds run past the Xbox's 30 FPS, with aiming, the camera and D-pad aiming kept at the original speed.
• Widescreen Menu Backgrounds: The PC GRAPHICS and EXPERIMENTAL screens have the Graphics menu's widescreen bars during a round.
• Texture Replacement: Replaces the game's textures with .dds or .png images in the textures\replacement folder beside the exe.
• Texture Dumping: Saves every texture the game uses into textures\dumps beside the exe, as PNG or DDS.

Audio

• Custom Soundtracks: The Xbox let you rip CDs to the hard drive and play them in games. Here, put folders of music in the soundtracks folder beside the exe. Each folder becomes a soundtrack, and loose files become one called "Music". MP3, WMA, M4A, AAC, FLAC and WAV are supported. New songs are converted when the game starts, with a progress window. They then show up in the game's Sound options under Soundtracks.

Multiplayer

• System Link: LAN play between PCs, as with linked consoles.
• Direct Connect: System Link over the internet. Multiplayer > DIRECT CONNECT takes the host's public IP address, and a port if they chose one, picked digit by digit with the D-pad or typed on the keyboard (Ctrl+V pastes one), then goes into System Link, whose search finds the host's game there. The host forwards UDP 1000-1001 and TCP 1002 on their router to their PC, or a port of their choice and the two after it to 1000-1002, then creates a System Link game.
• Xbox Live: The original service is gone. The sign-in menu stays where it is, and B goes back.

Input

• Controller: Xbox, PlayStation and Switch controllers, with hot plugging and rumble.
• Quit from the Main Menu: B on the main menu asks "Are you sure you want to quit?" and closes the game on YES.

Miscellaneous

• Boot Splash: Place a splash.png (or .bmp) beside the exe to display a splash screen at launch.

Settings

Settings are kept in settings.toml beside the exe. It is written on the first start, and you can edit it while the game is closed.

Setting	Values
monitor	the monitor's device name (\\.\DISPLAY2), "" for the primary
display_mode	"fullscreen", "borderless", "windowed"
width, height	output resolution, 0 for your desktop's
render_percent	render resolution, percent of the output (50 to 200)
fps_cap	frame rate cap, 0 for none, 1 for the monitor's refresh rate (default 60)
original_frame_rate	true plays as the Xbox did: menus at 60 FPS, rounds at 30
fps_counter	true or false
vsync	true or false
ultrawide	true fills a display wider than 16:9 (default), false keeps 16:9 between black bars
overscan	tenths of a percent trimmed from each edge, 0 to 50 (default 10)
anti_aliasing	"off", "fxaa" or "smaa"
anisotropic_filtering	0 (as the game asks), 2, 4, 8 or 16
lod_distance	percent of the game's detail distances: 100, 150, 200, 300 or 400
grass_distance	percent of the game's grass distance: 100, 150, 200 or 300
skip_intro	true starts at PRESS START
smooth_animation	true or false: EXPERIMENTAL > SMOOTH ANIMATION
custom_textures	true or false: images in textures\replacement
generated_textures	true or false: images in textures\generated, such as the upscaled UI
dump_textures	true or false
texture_dump_format	0 PNG, 1 DDS
join_ip	the Direct Connect host, "ip" or "ip:port" (a host name also works here), that the System Link search also asks

System Requirements

Minimum

• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• CPU with support for SSE4.2 and POPCNT (x86-64-v2)
• GPU with support for Direct3D 12

Building

1. Clone the Repository

Clone this repository using Git.

git clone https://github.com/<your-account>/Links2004-XBERecomp.git

2. Add the Required Game Files

Place your extracted game data files in the assets folder. default.xbe must be there, with the game's folders beside it.

3. Install Dependencies

Install Visual Studio 2022 and select the following:

• Desktop development with C++
• C++ Clang tools for Windows
• C++ CMake tools for Windows

4. Build the Project

• Run build.bat. The first build recompiles the entire game and takes a while.
• When it finishes, run out\build\release\Links2004.exe.

Making a Release

Run release.bat, which needs 7-Zip. It writes Links2004-XBERecomp.zip, containing the executable, the bundled compiler, an empty assets folder and, if you have played with this build, the shaders.list from beside the exe. It contains no game files and no game code. To give a release the most complete shaders.list, play through the menus and a few holes on a few courses before running it.

Repository Layout

• src/game: the hooks that replace or patch the game's functions, among them the PC GRAPHICS and EXPERIMENTAL menus (pc_graphics.cpp).
• src/common: the game's description for the runtime, the custom soundtrack support, the UI upscaler (ui_upscale.cpp, with zip_read.cpp for the game's packs) and the Direct Connect window (direct_connect.cpp).
• config/game.toml: the recompiler's config, with function and data addresses in the game's executable.
• sdk: the Xbox XBE Recomp recompiler and runtime, with the changes this port needed, among them the shader cache and precompile list (sdk/runtime/gpu/shader_warm.cpp).

Credits

• TGP482 for Xbox XBE Recomp, the recompiler and runtime this port is built on.
• XenonRecomp for the overridable function layout and instruction hooks.
• SMAA by Jorge Jimenez et al. for the SMAA anti-aliasing.
• Real-ESRGAN by Xintao Wang et al. for the upscaled UI. It is downloaded on your PC when you build the upscaled UI, and is not part of this project.
• Zydis for decoding x86 instructions, toml++ for the configs, Dear ImGui for the overlay and SDL for the window, input and controllers.

License

This project is under the MIT license (see LICENSE). The sdk folder is TGP482's Xbox XBE Recomp, also under the MIT license (see sdk/LICENSE). Links 2004 is a trademark of its respective owners. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.