Xbox 360 Static Recompilation — Knowledge Base

A growing, reusable body of knowledge for turning Xbox 360 games into native PC builds by static recompilation (ahead-of-time machine-code → C++), not emulation. It is written to be useful across titles and to be published so other people — and other Claude Code / agent sessions — can build on it.

The running case study is South Park: Let's Go Tower Defense Play! (a small XBLA title chosen as an onboarding pilot), but the general/ material is deliberately title-agnostic.

Scope of this repo: method, measurements, and references only. No copyrighted game code or assets. Format/architecture facts are public knowledge (Xenia, Free60, and the upstream tools' own docs); empirical specifics are validated hands-on during bring-up and cited as such.

How to use this KB

• Starting a new 360 port? Read general/00 → general/40, then follow general/90-new-title-onboarding-playbook.md and copy templates/.
• Debugging a specific failure? Jump to general/95-pitfalls-and-patterns.md and the relevant subsystem doc (50 CPU, 60 GPU, 70/75 runtime).
• Choosing tools? general/30-toolchains.md.
• An agent consuming this: treat general/ as reference; treat titles/<id>/ as the live state of one port; record new findings as you go.

Layout

general/     transferable knowledge (the publishable core)
titles/      per-title case studies and live findings
templates/   copy-paste starting points for a new title

Index

Legend: ✅ written · ✍️ skeleton (expand on contact) · ⏳ filled during bring-up

general/ — reusable

Doc	Status	Topic
00-static-recompilation-overview.md	✅	What recomp is, why/when it beats emulation, the landscape & precedents, feasibility heuristics
10-xbox360-hardware.md	✅	Xenon CPU (PPC, VMX128, in-order, big-endian), Xenos GPU, memory map, EDRAM
20-xex-format.md	✅	XEX2 structure: headers, sections, base address, compression (LZX), encryption (AES), imports, .pdata
25-containers-and-extraction.md	✅	STFS (CON/LIVE/PIRS), GOD, ISO/GDFX; how to get default.xex + assets
30-toolchains.md	✅	XenonRecomp vs XenosRecomp vs rexglue-sdk vs rexdex; how to choose
40-recompilation-pipeline.md	✅	The end-to-end pipeline and where each tool fits
45-static-binary-analysis.md	✅	Static analysis of a decrypted title: 0x01F2 PPC-BE PE disassembly (capstone), .pdata as the function-boundary source, big-endian guest content
50-cpu-recompilation.md	✅	Jump tables, function boundaries, register save/restore, longjmp/setjmp, exceptions, endianness, FP/denormals, optimizations
55-performance-and-pacing.md	✅	Per-frame serial chain (latency-bound); vsync time-dilation; host EPP/governor throttling; levers that don't move a latency floor + the two that do
60-gpu-shader-translation.md	✅	Xenos microcode → HLSL/SPIR-V, vertex fetch & formats, samplers, specialization, control flow
70-runtime-kernel-and-xam.md	✅	Implementing xboxkrnl/xam: memory, threads, TLS, sync, time, the import-shim methodology
75-runtime-graphics-audio-input-io.md	✅	Command processor, audio (XMA), input (XInput), filesystem/VFS, saves
80-patching-hooks-overrides.md	✅	Mid-asm hooks, function overrides, patch patterns and when to use each
90-new-title-onboarding-playbook.md	✅	The reusable step-by-step checklist/decision tree for any new title
95-pitfalls-and-patterns.md	✅	A catalog of recurring problems and their fixes
98-glossary.md	✅	Terminology
99-references.md	✅	Upstream docs, emulator/RE sources, articles, prior recomp projects

titles/south-park-lgtdp/ — case study

Doc	Status	Topic
00-feasibility.md	✅	Graded feasibility verdict + risk register for this title
10-dump-analysis.md	✅	Container/STFS layout, XEX & import recon, extraction plan
15-environment.md	✅	Host toolchain: what's installed and how (Phase 0 record)
20-codegen.md	✅	Codegen & first build (Phase 2): function table, unresolved-call config, fixups
30-boot-log.md	✅	Boot bring-up journal (crash → cause → fix)
35-entry-forensics.md	✅	Why a cold call to the XEX entry stalls (mid-function entry, no prologue)
40-seh-implementation-plan.md	✅	The boot's last blocker: custom setjmp/longjmp vs table SEH; resume-after-exception
50-menu-input-and-lobby.md	✅	Reaching an interactive game: menu, input plumbing, lobby/session enroll
55-save-system.md	✅	Save-system architecture + why a blind run never triggers it (trial mode, async queue)
56-continue-re-map.md	✅	Cross-restart "continue": locating + snapshot/restoring the in-memory progress state
60-boot-present-deadlock.md	✅	First-XE_SWAP present/vsync deadlock → CP WAIT_REG_MEM spin-yield fix
65-font-glyph-corruption.md	✅	In-match glyph striping = texture page-validity race (rexglue #341); full-snapshot + forced-upload fix
66-always-win-invincibility.md	✅	--always_win cheat; engine (not Lua) owns win/lose — verify with the real trigger
67-polish-backlog.md	✅	Post-v1 polish: locale-subdir asset fallback, boot profiling, audio clips, intro WMV
68-autonomous-boot-to-gameplay.md	✅	Autonomous boot → live gameplay in one command (recipe + gotchas)
70-video-playback.md	✅	Intro/cutscene .wmv already play — the guest links its own WMV3/WMA2 decoder
75-in-match-lag-and-perf.md	✅	In-match lag root-cause (CPU-freq trap + translate capacity), the v1.0 line, v2 levers
90-progress-report.md	✅	Bring-up progress report / per-subsystem capstone (historical record)

templates/

Doc	Status	Topic
title-feasibility.md	✅	New-title feasibility report template
title-onboarding-checklist.md	✅	New-title onboarding checklist
annotated-config.toml.md	✅	Annotated recompiler config to copy & fill

Contributing & publishing

See CONTRIBUTING.md. The intent is to keep general/ clean and citable so the folder can be published as a standalone reference. Everything here is English-only.