Rocky Recompiled

Rocky — Static Recompilation

A static recompilation of the original Xbox release of Rocky (Rage Games / Ubi Soft, 2002) into a native executable, built on xboxrecomp and ngbrecomp's xboxrecomp fork. The pipeline and Vulkan build are carried over from AnimaniacsRecompiled.

No game files are included. You need your own copy of the game.

Status: playable (Windows, early)

Boots through the intro movies to the title screen, menus, Movie Mode career setup and exhibition matches, at 60 fps with music, on the Vulkan build.

• Fights in widescreen and ultrawide through the game's own 16:9 mode (Hor+); menus and movies at 4:3 with side bars.
• Launcher before the game, in the same look: Play, PC Options, Mods (switch each on or off), Game Files (install from your disc image), Updates (from the GitLab releases; saves, settings and mods are kept), Open Saves Folder. Rocky.exe --play skips it, --update updates from the command line; skip_launcher = on in settings.ini goes straight to the game.
• First run asks for your disc: the ISO (plain or a full Redump dump), the .zip/.7z it came in, or the default.xbe of an extracted copy. It checks that it is the USA retail release and installs the files once to %LOCALAPPDATA%\RockyRecompiled\game (Rocky.exe --install <image> does the same without asking).
• PC OPTIONS screen over the paused game, in the look of the game's own menus: F1, or Back + Start on a controller. Display mode, window size, aspect ratio, render resolution, texture filtering, V-Sync, FPS counter, skip intro, and Quit to Desktop; most apply at once, all are saved.
• PC wording: the game's save messages talk about your PC and its disk instead of the Xbox hard disk and memory units, in all five languages. The reworded text is made at start-up from your own copy of the game.
• Mods: put a mod in mods/<name>/ beside the exe, with files at their disc paths (e.g. mods/MyRing/ARENAS/MADISON/MADISON.PAK); they replace the game's files. Mods apply in name order, a later one winning; a file named disabled in a mod's folder switches it off. Changed archives are re-copied into the game's hard-disk cache automatically.
• settings.ini beside the exe: window or fullscreen, resolution, aspect, render scale, skip_intro (skips the three boot movies).
• Keyboard controls as in AnimaniacsRecompiled (Enter = Start, Space/K = A, L = B, arrows = D-pad); controllers through SDL (tested).

Bring-up notes, the fixes and the debugging tools are in docs/NOTES.md.

The game binary

Title ID	0x55530014 (USA, retail)
Build	2002-08-14, XDK 4721
Debug path	C:\Boxing\Game\Game.exe
Entry point	0x0009AE9C
Code	.text 0.6 MB + statically linked D3D8, XGRPH, DSOUND, XPP and Bink sections
Kernel imports	121

Building (Windows, Vulkan)

Requirements: Python 3.10+ with capstone, CMake 3.20+, Ninja, a GPU with Vulkan 1.3 drivers. Optional: Ghidra 12.x and a 64-bit JDK 21 for function naming.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/poststructural/rocky-recompiled.git
cd rocky-recompiled
pip install capstone

# 1. Extract your disc into game/
python -m tools.xiso unpack "Rocky (USA).iso" -o game   # run from tools/xboxrecomp

# 2. One-time setup: fork patches, llvm-mingw, libraries
scripts/setup_vk.sh

# 3. Generate the C from your XBE
GHIDRA_HOME=/path/to/ghidra_12.1.4_PUBLIC JAVA_HOME=/path/to/jdk-21 \
    TK=tools/ngbrecomp/xboxrecomp XBE=game/default.xbe scripts/regen.sh

# 4. Build
cmake -S vk -B build-vk -G Ninja \
    -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=cmake/toolchains/windows-llvm-mingw.cmake
ninja -C build-vk

# 5. Run; the first start asks for your disc image (or put game/ beside the exe)
build-vk/Rocky.exe

Saves and log.txt go to %LOCALAPPDATA%\RockyRecompiled (RKY_SAVE_DIR overrides).

Layout

src/main_vk.c           host entry: window, GPU model, virtual CPU
src/recomp_manual.c     hand-written overrides for lifted functions
src/settings.c          settings.ini
src/recomp/gen/         generated C (not committed; produced by scripts/regen.sh)
tools/xboxrecomp/       the toolkit (git submodule)
tools/ngbrecomp/        ngbrecomp, for its xboxrecomp fork (git submodule)
vk/                     the Vulkan build
patches/                local patches applied to the toolkits
scripts/regen.sh        the full XBE -> C pipeline
docs/NOTES.md           bring-up notes

Thanks

None of this would exist without other people's work, and they have our deepest thanks:

• sp00nznet, for xboxrecomp, the toolkit that lifts the XBE to C and runs it.
• gamboozino, for ngbrecomp and its xboxrecomp fork with xemu's NV2A model and Vulkan renderer, which this build runs on.
• The xemu developers, whose GPU and audio models are inside Rocky.exe.
• TGP482 (SCDA-XBERecomp, BLACK-XBERecomp) and linkssy2 (Darkwatch Darker Edition, Urban Chaos Burner Edition), whose ports set the bar for what an Xbox recomp should feel like on PC.

Where to find it

Source: github.com/poststructural/rocky-recompiled. Releases and updates: gitlab.com/unowa001/rocky-recomp (the launcher's updater reads these).

Licenses

The project's own code is MIT licensed (LICENSE). Third-party parts and their licenses are listed in THIRD_PARTY.md. Rocky belongs to its rights holders; no game data is included here.