Woohoo Flight School

Woohoo! Flight School

Play your own copy of Pilotwings Resort (3DS, USA) as a native PC program. The tools here translate the game's code from your dump into C (static recompilation), build it with your compiler, and run it. Nothing from the game is included in this repository. How it works: docs/architecture.md.

Screenshots: 4x 3D resolution, 16x anisotropic filtering, sharp bilinear scaling, large screen layout.

Disclaimer. Woohoo! Flight School is an unofficial fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Nintendo or Monster Games. Pilotwings, Pilotwings Resort, Nintendo 3DS and Mii are trademarks of Nintendo. The repository contains no game code, graphics, sound or other game data and no decryption keys. You need your own, legally obtained copy of the game, dumped from your own console. Please don't ask for ROMs or built binaries: a built pwr contains code translated from the game and must not be shared.

Status

Works: the title intro, Mii sign-up, the trial flights with all three vehicles (plane, rocket belt, hang glider), Mission Flight and Free Flight as far as they have been played, saving, sound, keyboard, mouse and gamepad. Tested on Linux and Windows, at 60 fps, also at 4x resolution.

Added for the PC (all optional, see Display settings):

• 3D resolution up to 4x;
• anisotropic filtering;
• AMD FSR 1, FXAA and sharp bilinear scaling;
• screen layouts, including one that switches automatically between menus and flight;
• longer draw distance;
• free look on the right stick;
• a settings overlay (F1).

Known issues and limits:

• The whole game has not been played through yet. Later missions may still hit untested code; please report crashes with the terminal output.
• Building on Windows itself (the build kit or MSYS2) is newer than the Windows port: it has been tested under Wine and by GitHub Actions so far. Reports from Windows players are welcome.
• No macOS build.
• Touch-screen input needs the mouse, also when you play with a gamepad (the signature at sign-up, some menus).
• No stereoscopic 3D: the game is shown in 2D.
• Free look knows where the sea is, but not the island's ground: flying low over land, the camera can go through a hillside.
• The first run of a scene compiles shaders, which can cause a short hitch. They are kept for the next run.

What you need

• A decrypted dump of Pilotwings Resort (USA), title 0004000000031C00, as .cia, .3ds/.cci or .cxi. Encrypted dumps are refused.

• Linux on x86-64, or Windows 10/11 on x86-64 (see Windows).

• A GPU with Vulkan 1.3 and the build tools:

  • Python 3.8+ with Tk (python3-tk);
  • CMake 3.16+;
  • GCC or Clang;
  • glslc (shaderc or the Vulkan SDK);
  • SDL2 and Vulkan development files;
  • optionally Ninja.

  On Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt install python3-tk cmake gcc ninja-build glslc libsdl2-dev libvulkan-dev.

Quick start

Easiest on Linux: the build kit AppImage. Download WoohooFlightSchool-Linux-kit-x86_64.AppImage from the latest release, make it executable and start it (chmod +x WoohooFlightSchool-Linux-kit-x86_64.AppImage, then double-click it or run it). It holds the launcher, Python, a C compiler and the build tools (about 140 MB), so you only need a Vulkan driver and SDL2, which most desktop and gaming systems already have (glibc 2.29 or newer: Ubuntu 20.04+, Debian 11+, Fedora, Arch, SteamOS). The game it builds goes to the same install folder as below. Windows players: see Windows.

From the source (with the build tools listed above):

python3 launcher/pwr_launcher.py

1. Game ROM: Browse to your dump. It is verified straight away (title, encryption, game-code hash).
2. Build: recompiles and compiles into the install folder (default ~/.local/share/pwr-port). One to two minutes on a multi-core machine.
3. Play: pick or create a profile (each has its own saves and settings), adjust the display settings, Launch.

Without the GUI:

python3 tools/pipeline.py check                      # build tools present?
python3 tools/pipeline.py verify "My Dump.cia"
python3 tools/pipeline.py build "My Dump.cia"
python3 tools/pipeline.py run --profile default
python3 tools/pipeline.py profiles create alice

Saving

The game saves nothing during the first trial flights. To keep your pilot, end the trial-flight period: pause, choose Return to Office, answer No to trying another aircraft and Yes to ending the trial-flight period. The instructor then explains the save icon and your profile is saved. If you quit before that, you sign up again next time, as on the console.

Saves and settings belong to the launcher profile:

	Linux	Windows
Save data	~/.local/share/pwr-port/profiles/<name>/save/	%LOCALAPPDATA%\pwr-port\profiles\<name>\save\
Settings	~/.local/share/pwr-port/profiles/<name>/settings.json	%LOCALAPPDATA%\pwr-port\profiles\<name>\settings.json

Copy the save folder to back up your progress.

Windows

Easiest: the Windows build kit. Download WoohooFlightSchool-Windows-kit.zip from the latest release, unzip it and double-click Woohoo! Flight School.bat. The kit holds the launcher, Python, a C compiler and the libraries (about 200 MB to download), so there is nothing to install. Then continue with the Quick start steps: pick your dump, Build, Launch. The kit contains no game code or data. It is assembled and tested on Windows by GitHub Actions for every release (tools/make_windows_kit.py).

Or with MSYS2. Build and play from an MSYS2 MINGW64 shell, which supplies the compiler and libraries:

pacman -S --needed mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-ninja mingw-w64-x86_64-SDL2 \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-vulkan-headers mingw-w64-x86_64-vulkan-loader mingw-w64-x86_64-shaderc \
    mingw-w64-x86_64-python mingw-w64-x86_64-tk git
python launcher/pwr_launcher.py

• The install folder is %LOCALAPPDATA%\pwr-port. bin\ holds pwr.exe and the DLLs it needs, so after building you can start pwr.exe without MSYS2.
• The GPU driver provides Vulkan (vulkan-1.dll). Keep the driver up to date.
• Started from the launcher, the game opens no console window; its messages go to pwr.log in the profile folder (as on Linux).
• Visual Studio's compiler cannot build the generated code. Ninja is required so that CMake does not pick it.

Controls

3DS	Keyboard	Gamepad
Circle pad	Arrow keys	Left stick
D-pad	I / J / K / L	D-pad
A / B / X / Y	X / Z / S / A	East / South / North / West (position)
L / R	Q / W	Shoulders or triggers
Start	Return	Start
Select	Backspace	Back/Select, if set to "3DS Select" (see below)
Touch screen	Left mouse button on the bottom screen	(use the mouse)
Free look (optional)		Right stick

The gamepad's buttons follow their position, as on the 3DS: the right-hand button is A, the bottom one B.

By default the gamepad's Back/Select button switches the screen layout instead of pressing the 3DS Select button, because the game hardly uses Select. To give it back to the game, turn off "Pad Back/Select: next layout" in the launcher or set "Pad Back/Select" to "3DS Select" in the F1 overlay. Backspace on the keyboard is always 3DS Select.

Hotkey
F1	Settings overlay (arrows or D-pad to change, Escape/B/F1 to close; saved to the profile)
F11 or Alt+Enter	Fullscreen on/off
F9 (or the gamepad's Back/Select, see above)	Next screen layout

Display settings

All of these are in the launcher's profile settings and the F1 overlay:

Setting	Values
Screen layout	stacked, side, large (big top + small bottom), top, bottom, auto (stacked in menus, large top while flying)
Auto layout in flight	large (bottom screen small) or top (bottom screen hidden)
Aspect ratio	keep, integer, stretch
Fullscreen	off, borderless, exclusive
Scaling filter	nearest, linear, sharp (sharp bilinear), fsr (AMD FSR 1), fxaa
FSR sharpness	0 (sharpest) to 2
3D resolution	1x (native 400x240) to 4x
Anisotropic filter	off, 2x, 4x, 8x, 16x
Frame counter	on / off
Pad Back/Select	next screen layout (default) or 3DS Select
Draw distance	1x (original) to 4x: the island's cars and boats are shown from further away, and information points, rings and their labels fade in from further away (these from the next flight).
Free look	off / on: the gamepad's right stick orbits the camera around your vehicle; let go and it eases back. Not in the original game; flight chase camera only.

Sound can be muted in the launcher.

Troubleshooting

• "the NCCH is encrypted": decrypt your dump first. This tool does not decrypt.
• "the game code differs from the supported version": another revision or region, or a modified dump. Only the USA release with the listed code hash is supported.
• Build fails in the compile stage: run python3 tools/pipeline.py check; CMake reports missing SDL2/Vulkan development files.
• It asks me to sign up every time: see Saving.
• The gamepad's Select button does nothing in the game: it switches the screen layout by default; see Controls.
• The terminal prints pwr: audio ring fill ..., underruns N: a rising N means audio dropouts; please report it.
• Reporting a crash: every run writes the game's messages to pwr.log in the profile folder (the launcher's Open log folder button opens it; see Saving for where profiles live). The run before is kept as pwr.log.1, so the log of a crash survives starting the game again. Attach the log, or its last 30 lines, to your report.

Licence

This project is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later (GPL-3.0-or-later). The licence covers the project's own files: the translator, runtime, tools and launcher. It does not cover Pilotwings Resort, its data or the C code generated from it. Those stay the property of their owners, are not part of this repository and must not be distributed.

Third-party parts keep their own licences (details in docs/architecture.md):

• AMD FidelityFX FSR 1 (MIT, recomp/runtime/shaders/fsr/);
• a font rendered from DejaVu Sans Mono (Bitstream Vera licence).

The screenshots show the game running in this port; the game's graphics in them are © Nintendo.