The Sims 2 - Static Recompilation

The Sims 2 - Static Recompilation

An unofficial native PC port of the original Xbox release of The Sims 2 (USA), produced by statically recompiling the game's x86 XBE with the XboxXBERecomp SDK (vendored in sdk/, branch urbz-port-fixes).

This repository contains no game code and no game assets. It holds tooling, configuration and host-side glue only. You must supply your own legally acquired copy of the disc.

Status: boots to live gameplay. The port plays its startup movies, reaches the title screen and main menu, and enters live gameplay on a lot (docs/status.md, update of 2026-10-18; screenshot out/gameplay1.png). A verbose 100 s bounded run through movies, title and menu navigation logged 0 exceptions and 0 allocation failures, and a 75 s release run stayed healthy with no exception in its log. Frame-rate and resolution measurements are not yet published — see below.

Run it on Windows

There is no release download yet; build it from source (below). When it runs, you supply the game: the USA Xbox release, as a disc image or as the files from one.

1. Build Sims2.exe (see Build it from source); it lands in out/build/release.
2. Put your disc image in the assets folder beside Sims2.exe, so you have Sims2.exe and assets\<anything>.iso. A whole-disc dump or a plain xiso both work, and so do extracted files (default.xbe with its DATA and movies folders beside it).
3. Run Sims2.exe. It mounts the image as the console's D: and boots the game.

You need Windows 10/11 x64 and a Direct3D 12 GPU.

Display features that come from the SDK and need no port work: display mode, output resolution, render scale, aspect ratio, ultrawide, vsync, frame cap, HDR and anisotropic filtering. The port adds an F1 settings panel (display mode, resolution, render scale, aspect ratio, ultrawide, vsync, frame cap, HDR, anisotropic filtering) and an F2 frame-time graph (src/common/overlay.cpp). These settings exist and are persisted by the host, but measured frame-rate and resolution results are not yet published — no numbers are quoted here until they have been measured. The host is meant to present only the drawn picture: the game draws 640x448 inside a 640x480 frame, so the host presents rows 16..463 (picture_top = 16, picture_height = 448; see docs/analysis-video-mode.md). A frame-step fix in src/game/hooks.cpp (guest function sub_001C2400) replaces the engine's 1/60-quantised frame step so the game keeps its real speed at any frame rate instead of following the quantised clock; see docs/analysis-frame-step.md.

If it says the game is missing, the assets folder has no image or extracted default.xbe in it. The exe only runs the XBE it was recompiled from — SHA-1 16f9e41c..., USA retail; any other build will not run properly.

Controls

The game itself only ever reads an Xbox pad, so keyboard and mouse are translated into one on port 0 (src/common/input_kbm.cpp). A controller and the keyboard can be used at the same time; neither takes input away from the other.

Keyboard / mouse	Pad	In game
W A S D	left stick	walk; menus that read the stick
arrow keys	D-pad	menu and dialog navigation
mouse, right button held	right stick	camera, deflected from where you pressed: rotate and zoom
Q / E	right stick left/right	rotate the camera
R / F	right stick up/down	zoom the camera in / out
mouse wheel	right stick up/down, in pulses	zoom the camera in / out
space	A	accept, interact
escape, backspace	B	cancel, back
X / Y	X / Y
Z / C	left / right trigger
1 / 2	black / white
enter	Start	"press Start", pause menu
tab	Back
shift / ctrl, middle mouse	left / right stick click

The camera is the right stick and nothing else: the game turns on its X axis and zooms on its Y.

Keys are read only while the game window has focus, and are dropped when it loses focus, so an alt-tabbed game does not walk on by itself. While the F1 settings panel is up it owns the keyboard and the mouse and the game sees neither.

Status

Stage	State
Disc image read and extracted (tools/xiso_extract.py)	done — 55 files, see docs/iso-extract.md
XBE identified and analysed (tools/xbe_info.py)	done — see docs/xbe-analysis.md
XDK build matched against the SDK's signature set	done — XDK 5849, supported by sdk/xdk/5849
Toolchain (LLVM clang + VS 2022 Build Tools + Ninja + CMake, Python 3.12)	done — see docs/toolchain.md
config/game.toml written by xbe_symbols	done — 132 of 240 XDK functions and 11 of 12 data symbols located, partitions = 64
Kernel import coverage (tools/kernel_coverage.py)	done — 124 of 124 implemented by the SDK runtime, 0 trapping, see docs/kernel-coverage.md
Recompilation and native build	done — 15,926 functions, 843,348 instructions, builds to out/build/release/Sims2.exe with clang/lld
Remaining XDK surface gaps	68 real gaps (16 D3D, 44 DirectSound, 7 CRT math, 1 XNetGetEthernetLinkStatus), see docs/analysis-xdk-gaps.md
Boot and rendering	done — startup movies decode and render, title screen and main menu render, see docs/status.md
Gameplay	reached — scripted pad (Story Mode → Start New → Yes → One Player → Start) loads into a live lot; screenshot out/gameplay1.png, see docs/status.md

Fixed during bring-up (evidence in docs/status.md): the D3DDevice_Reset crash (host replacement plus a [symbols] entry), the push-buffer callback deadlock (D3DDevice_InsertCallback = 0x275750 plus a host replacement that runs the callback immediately), and a physical-memory leak in Reset that let a read-back scribble over guest kernel memory (surface reuse in SetupPresentation plus a low-physical-memory read-back guard). Also added: D3DDevice_SetPalette and D3DDevice_SetVertexShaderConstant1Fast.

Of the 108 XDK names xbe_symbols did not locate, 40 are expected zeros for sections this XBE does not have (4 Bink, 34 Winsock/XNet, 2 XOnline) and 68 are real gaps, as itemised above; the detail is in docs/analysis-xdk-gaps.md.

Analysis documents

• docs/status.md — authoritative bring-up record and current state.
• docs/analysis-frame-step.md — the 1/60-quantised frame step and its replacement.
• docs/analysis-video-mode.md — the 640x448 picture inside the 640x480 frame.
• docs/analysis-startup.md — startup sequence.
• docs/analysis-xdk-gaps.md — unmatched XDK surface.
• docs/analysis-dsound.md — DirectSound analysis.
• docs/analysis-dsound-xtlid.md — DirectSound .XTLID exports.
• docs/analysis-4k-hazards.md — resolution hazards and the ordered scaling plan.
• docs/toolchain.md — toolchain and build presets.
• docs/iso-extract.md — disc-image extraction.
• docs/xbe-analysis.md — XBE identification and analysis.
• docs/kernel-coverage.md — kernel import coverage.

The game

Field	Value
Title	The Sims 2 (USA), original Xbox
Title ID	0x4541038B (EA, serial 907)
Region	North America (north_america)
Allowed media	dvd_x2, media_board
Build	retail, base 0x00010000, entry 0x0021BF66, image size 4,134,528 bytes
XBE	default.xbe, 3,399,680 bytes, SHA-1 16f9e41ce26c315a758f25d43ba1fa9d3809d1ad
Linked	2005-09-12T12:10:50Z (certificate 2005-09-22T17:21:41Z)
Debug name	c:\buildagent\cm3-build16-win32\cmbuild\output\disks\xbox\u2_xbox_release_dvd.exe
XDK	5849 — XAPILIB 1.0.5849 qfe1, XBOXKRNL 1.0.5849 qfe1, LIBCMT 1.0.5849 qfe1, D3D8 1.0.5849 qfe15, XGRAPHC 1.0.5849 qfe9, DSOUND 1.0.5849 qfe11, XMV 1.0.5849 qfe1
Kernel imports	124, thunk table at 0x002DED60
Sections	.text, D3D, XGRPH, DSOUND, XMV, XPP, .rdata, .data, DOLBY, $$XTINFO, $$XTIMAGE, $$XSIMAGE, .XTLID — no BINK, XNET or XONLINE sections

The build is pinned to this exact XBE. A different region or revision needs its own analysis pass.

Recompilation, for the record: 15,926 functions, 843,348 instructions, 2,694,811 of 2,940,256 code bytes, 524 jump tables, 10 callback entries.

Layout

assets/        your disc image and/or the files extracted from it (never committed)
config/        game.toml - the recompiler config written by xbe_symbols, then hand-corrected
docs/          analysis and bring-up notes
sdk/           XboxXBERecomp SDK submodule (recompiler, runtime, XDK HLE, D3D12 renderer)
src/common/    host-side code: game_info.cpp defines app::kGame, input_kbm.cpp the keyboard pad,
               overlay.cpp the F1 settings panel and F2 frame-time graph
src/game/      hooks and overrides for recompiled functions (src/game is excluded from the host glob)
tools/         xiso_extract.py (XDVDFS reader), xbe_info.py (XBE reader), kernel_coverage.py,
               env.bat (toolchain PATH)
generated/     recompiler output (never committed)
out/           build output, out/build/<preset> (never committed)

Build it from source

1. Put your disc image in the repository root, or default.xbe plus its DATA and movies folders in assets/. Do not commit the image; *.iso and assets/ are git-ignored.
2. Get the SDK submodule: git submodule update --init sdk
3. Extract the image:

   python tools/xiso_extract.py info    "<your>.iso"
   python tools/xiso_extract.py extract "<your>.iso" assets
   

4. Check that the XBE is the one this configuration targets:

   python tools/xbe_info.py assets/default.xbe --json build/xbe_info.json --markdown docs/xbe-analysis.md
   

   The SHA-1 must match the table above.
5. Install the toolchain and build:

   tools\env.bat
   build.bat
   

   build.bat configures the release preset, builds xbe_symbols, writes config/game.toml from the XBE and the SDK's XDK 5849 signatures, then recompiles the XBE and builds Sims2.exe into out/build/release. The first build is long: it compiles one C++ function per guest function. Presets, and a separate verbose RelWithDebInfo build directory for debugging, are described in docs/toolchain.md.

Working on the port

• Never edit anything in generated/; it is rewritten on every recompile.
• Behaviour changes go in src/game/ as X86_FUNC(sub_XXXXXXXX) overrides (call __imp__sub_XXXXXXXX for the original) or as [[hook]] entries in config/game.toml.
• Analysis mistakes are corrected in config/game.toml with [[function]], [[switch]] and [xbe] data_ranges.
• python sdk/tools/symbols/xbe2pe.py config/game.toml game.exe writes a flat PE with the recompiled functions as exports, for symbol work in Ghidra.

Legal

Bring your own disc. Do not commit or distribute the XBE, the disc image, extracted assets, or any key material. assets/, generated/, *.iso and out/ are ignored by git for that reason. The SDK is MIT licensed; see sdk/LICENSE and sdk/THIRD_PARTY.txt.