Party Board (zeranemesis port)

Party Board

Mario Party 4, natively on PC, phone and Meta Quest, with online play for up to four players. Party Board is a native port built on the GameCube decompilation, not an emulator.

This repository does not contain any game assets or assembly. You need your own copy of the game as a disc image.

Current release: v0.19.0.

Getting started

Platform	How
Windows	Install it from CubeShelf, or extract PartyBoard-win-x64.zip and run Lancer PartyBoard.cmd
Linux	Run the .AppImage
macOS (Apple silicon and Intel)	Open the app from the .zip
Android phone	Install the phone APK
Meta Quest	Install the quest APK; it updates itself afterwards
Nintendo Switch (homebrew)	partyboard.nro and a GameCube-style launcher build from source; not run on a console yet (status)

Everything is on the releases page. On first launch, choose your disc image. F1, the gamepad's Back/Select button or the screen controller's menu button opens the Party Board menu at any time.

Discs

Disc	Region
GMPE01 rev 0 and rev 1	USA	supported; rev 1 online
GMPP01	Europe	supported online too, in English, French, German, Spanish or Italian
GMPJ01	Japan	recognised, not supported yet

ISO, RVZ, WIA and GCZ images are accepted. The image is checked by hash before launch.

The Party Board menu

Press F1 (or Back/Select) in the game:

• Settings — everything below.
• Achievements — your RetroAchievements set, with progress, and your friends'.
• Play Online — opens the online lobby.
• Reset Game and Quit Party Board.

Settings

Prelaunch

• Disc image used to start the game.
• Language of the game: English, French, German, Spanish or Italian, with a European disc. The Party Board menus follow in English or French.
• Graphics backend: Auto, Direct3D 12, Direct3D 11, Vulkan, Metal, OpenGL, OpenGL ES or WebGPU, depending on the platform.
• Save file type: a memory-card image, or a folder of .gci saves.

Video

• Fullscreen, and back to the default window size.
• Frame rate from 60 to 240 FPS. The game still runs at 60: higher rates smooth the 3D and 2D motion, cameras and fades without speeding up the game or delaying input.
• Adaptive widescreen HUD: uses the whole width of the window without stretching the scene, and moves the HUD towards the edges. Or lock 4:3 for the original picture.
• Internal resolution and shadow resolution.
• VSync, FPS counter, pause when the window loses focus.

Input

• Controller configuration: buttons, sticks and triggers for each port, from a gamepad, a keyboard or the mouse; dead zones; triggers emulated from buttons, with their thresholds; rumble strength, with a test.
• Background input: keep playing when the window is not focused.
• Screen controller: a GameCube controller drawn on the screen for phones and tablets (automatic, always or never), with adjustable opacity.
• Turbo key: hold Tab to unlock the frame rate and speed the game up.

Gameplay and cheats

• Speedrun mode.
• Unlock all minigames and unlock Bowser's Gnarly Party, without touching your save.

RetroAchievements

• Log in to retroachievements.org and unlock the Mario Party 4 set (softcore). The password is never saved.
• Online sessions do not count towards achievements.

Interface

• Check for updates at startup, or now.
• Open data folder: settings, saves, logs.
• Notifications to show: achievements, controllers.
• Skip the Party Board main menu and skip the game's boot sequence, to reach the game faster.

Online play

• Two to four players, each with their own copy of the same disc: the USA disc revision 1, or the European disc. Every player runs exactly the same game data, so a session never mixes the two.
• With the European disc, every player plays in the host's language, whatever their own setting.
• Create a lobby and share the invitation (it starts with PB4), or join by pasting the one a friend sent. Only the host starts the game.
• The lobby shows who is in, their disc and their ping; every disc is checked in full before joining.
• Mods: the host chooses the lobby's mods; a guest whose list differs aligns on the host's in one click.
• Connection: the router is opened automatically (UPnP, PCP or NAT-PMP). Without that, the lobby still works for players on the same network.
• Fair play: both games run the same simulation in lockstep and compare their state every tick. If they ever diverge, the session stops rather than letting the two games drift apart.

Online play runs from Windows (Play Online, or Jouer en ligne.cmd) and from Android phones, and a phone can play with a PC. All players need the same release. Online sessions run at 60 Hz in 4:3, with a fresh profile: your own memory-card saves are not loaded.

CubeShelf

When the game is started from CubeShelf:

• Mods are applied on top of the disc image, never rewriting it (how).
• One RetroAchievements login for every game CubeShelf launches.
• Friends: see which board, turn or minigame they are on, or whether they are away; see their achievement progress, and get a notification when they unlock one.
• Invitations to an online lobby are shared through CubeShelf.

Meta Quest

• The game in stereo 3D, in mixed reality: the board stands on your real table as a model, found by the room scan, and stays where you placed it.
• Quality presets on the Y button (economy, balanced, sharp), and a 3D resolution that adapts to keep the headset's frame rate.

Android phones

• Touch controls: an on-screen GameCube controller.
• Menus sized for phones, and the same online lobby as on PC.

Building

See building.md. Every push is built for Windows, Linux, macOS and Android; every v* tag publishes a release for all of them and refreshes CubeShelf.

Testing

partyboard.exe --netplay-self-test
tools\run_all_tests.ps1 -DiscPath <disc image> -BinaryDirectory <build folder>

The game carries its own self-tests (--*-self-test), and tools/run_all_tests.ps1 runs every test script, including real two-instance online sessions, over a simulated degraded network if wanted. Results always say how they were obtained: SCRIPTED (generated input), HUMAN (a game played by a person) or REAL-NETWORK (two machines). Known defects are recorded in the netplay defect register.

Common problems

An online session stops with "DESYNC"

The two games diverged and the session stopped on purpose. Make sure every player runs the same release with the same disc, then open an issue with the reports.

RenderDoc not working

RenderDoc conflicts with ASan. To turn ASan off, delete the two lines in CMakeLists.txt that enable it for the DOL and the RELs: set_source_files_properties(..., -fsanitize=address).

Credits

Special thanks to the GC/Wii decompilation community, the Aurora developers, the Dusk developers, all contributors, ImWhoreHay for the font, and justcamtro for designing the assets.