Porting console games to PC?

[Nevander]

As a non-developer of the original game, is it at all possible to port a console game to another platform, specifically PC?

Reason I am asking is because of one game back on the original Xbox by the name of BLACK and it's one of my favorite games of all time and unfortunately it never got a PC release. Only PS2/Xbox (and then later able to be played on PS3/360).

I saw comments on a random YouTube video of a person who claimed he was trying to remake the game but gave up due to data corruption.

To anyone interested: I am going to try to remake this game on PC, I don't promise it will be exactly identical to the real game (obviously) but I will give it a try because I love the game, and I know many other people do too...

Sorry. I started project, got really far (level creation wise) and the game files got corrupt... trust me, I'm angry, and because I got so far, I'm not going to restart... Believe me, I'm wishing I'd pick it up again too but, well, all the scripts were done and the game messed up so I'm not going to redo it...

Do you find this information credible or is such a thing possible without having access to the original resources for the game's development? If so, what would be the first step (besides the obvious one of having the game files via the disc or something).

Shame if it's not... but I suppose that's why I still have my Xbox for exclusives like this.

[leileilol]

Only if you have the actual source code, know and understand assembly to make portable code out of it, and if you don't have the source....only if you're a industry veteran experienced with reverse engineering and writing game engines to take it all.


144% chance that commenter is just a kid trying to slap together rips in Unity and giving some bullshitting excuse for not showing promise.

[wildweasel]

The biggest headache you're going to find is a lack of source code. However, this isn't insurmountable; if there's enough documentation about how the engine works, where the data is stored, etc., that can be used to create an engine that will interpret the game data, but without a crap ton of reverse engineering, it will never achieve 100% accuracy. One thing worth noting as a yardstick: Doom64EX took quite a while to become a thing, and we already had most of the Doom engine pretty clearly documented at that point, and the source code from the PC version to work with as a base.

In BLACK's case, well, unless it's running some form of RenderWare, I'm not sure we know enough about the game's engine to do much of note.

[Nevander]

BLACK's engine is RenderWare, so says Wikipedia. Probably right because it was developed by Criterion and they also developed RenderWare.

[leileilol]

Renderware isn't an engine. It's a middleware for rendering (hence the name). People call it an engine like they call Ogre and Havok a game engine. It's not modular.

[Nevander]

So how are these games built? Some kind of back-end engine behind Renderware that we most likely know nothing about, unless Criterion were to have put it out there? Please excuse my ignorance on the subject.

[Reactor]

Sometimes an emulator is a better solution than porting. It does save a ton of work for programmers, even if not every game could be ran by the emulator.
You see, this is why I always valued PC more than a console - a console emulator for PC is always plausible theoretically, as a PC can mimic consoles, but no console could ever emulate a PC. So basically, a PC can be a NES, Megadrive, Atari, whilst a NES could never be a PC or something else for that matter.

[Nevander]

Yes I've heard of Xbox emulators like Xeon but apparently it only supports certain games, Halo CE for sure. Even then it's said the performance is terrible. Is it really that difficult to do or is the emulator developer not experienced enough or lacks the drive to do so? Because it seems like (and again, forgive my ignorance) once you get the emulator made it would run any Xbox game (since all Xbox's are the same). Or does every game really have to be emulated differently?

EDIT: Looks like there's a fairly good emulator for the PS2 version:

[YukiHerz]

I can confirm the PS2 version works on PCSX2, just make sure to grab a development build, didn't test past the first mission because i get better performance out of my actual ps2 rather than my crappy old laptop .

[Nevander]

I can confirm the PS2 version works on PCSX2, just make sure to grab a development build, didn't test past the first mission because i get better performance out of my actual ps2 rather than my crappy old laptop .

Awesome. Do you play it with a PS2 controller or can the M+KB emulate the controller? If I need a controller then I'm gonna have to buy one.

[YukiHerz]

You can use keyboard and mouse, but i recommend the joystick.

[Nevander]

Welp. Got PCSX2 set up, and tried running the game. It works, but the performance is awful. I can tell it's trying as hard as it can to perform well, but man... to be honest I think it's more the mouse being weird and hard to control versus the game actually running poorly. In fact, I think I was getting good FPS most of the time. The mouse is so horrid to control. Binding the controls was easy, I can play it like I play any PC shooter now but the mouse is still so slow. Any good tips on improving the responsiveness of it or some plugins?

[YukiHerz]

Can't help you there, as i use my joystick, but i think there's sliders for sensitivity in the plugin's configuration menu, assuming you're using Lilypad as the controller plugin, but i don't know if it works with mouse.

As for performance, make sure you select the video plugin with the highest SSE number that your computer has, you can check this by running gzdoom, in the console near the start it will list them with "Features: MMX SSE SSE2 SSE3 SSSE3 SSE4.1 SSE4.2...", for me, i can use the SSE4.1 plugin, also the highest DX version available, for me that's dx10 (hardware), finally you should also check the speed hacks.

[Jaxxoon R]

You see, this is why I always valued PC more than a console - a console emulator for PC is always plausible theoretically, as a PC can mimic consoles, but no console could ever emulate a PC.

[Reactor]

Hmm, looks like Nintendo Wii can emulate DOS...for certain games of course.