James Dansereau
4b51ded7d1
Bing Webmaster re-flagged the site after the first SEO pass (32f193a0): - Every Jekyll-processed doc page (building.md, dev-process.md, internals.md, porting-notes.md, dev/agentic-development.md, plus index.md caught last time) opens with its own "# Heading" on top of the Cayman theme's masthead <h1 class="project-name">, so all of them emitted two h1 tags, not just the homepage. Demoted each page's opening heading to h2 -- anchor slugs are unaffected (kramdown ids don't depend on heading level). - index.md's meta description was 161 chars (1 over Bing's 160 limit) and still said v0.2.0; re-trimmed to 133 chars and bumped to v0.2.1. - README.md and docs/index.md's Status lines/comparison table bumped from v0.2.0 to v0.2.1 to match the actual current release. Verified against a live, cache-busted fetch of the deployed Pages site (the first Bing report was reading a stale CDN edge cache from before the32f193a0deploy, per its own Last-Modified header) that the underlying fix was already live; this pass addresses what was still genuinely wrong. Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KwZViAFaXua3PKgHHjNgvi
10 KiB
title, description
| title | description |
|---|---|
| GoldenEye 007 PC Port | A native PC port of the 1997 N64 classic, built from decompiled source with a software RSP. v0.2.1 for Windows, Linux and Steam Deck. |
A native PC port of the original 1997 Nintendo 64 GoldenEye 007, compiled from the game's decompiled source with the N64's graphics coprocessor (RSP) running in software, the same architecture as the Perfect Dark PC port, the same Rare "Indy" engine family, one hardware generation apart.
Status: v0.2.1. The full single-player campaign runs at a steady 60 fps and is completable end to end; all 21 missions load and run clean on Windows and Linux (one intermittent Steam Deck crash remains, listed below), and audio (music + SFX) plays throughout. The known rough edges (cutscenes that still glitch, a few music tracks that sound wrong, a handful of cosmetic rendering defects) are listed plainly under Honest status.
~32 s gameplay montage loop from live play sessions, running in the port.
Download
| Platform | Bundle | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Windows (x86_64) | win64.zip | Engine + runtime DLLs + the one-time asset tool. |
| Linux (x86_64) / Steam Deck | linux tarball | SDL2 is bundled, so it runs as-is on any distro, and sideloads onto a Deck with nothing installed. |
Bring your own ROM. Both bundles contain no ROM and no game assets: you
supply your own GoldenEye 007 N64 ROM (the
Requirements table
has the region filenames and SHA-1s). This release supports the NTSC-U (US)
ROM; PAL and JP are on the roadmap. Then: unpack, drop the ROM in data/,
and launch; the first run generates the derived assets automatically (no
Python or other tooling needed). The full steps are in the
Quick start;
pre-built releases are legal to distribute precisely because they're useless
without a ROM you already own.
See it running
Full playtest gallery: 19 in-engine captures from the v0.2.0 Windows playtest, across the campaign
More captures may land here as playtesting continues.
Play it, or take it apart
- Try it yourself: grab a bundle above, bring your own ROM, and play the campaign. It's an early cut for exactly this: if something breaks, an issue with what you were doing is genuinely useful.
- Read the code: the game logic in
src/is unmodified decompilation; every hardware surface (video, audio, input, save storage, and the software-RSP renderer) is shimmed in the MIT-licensedport/layer. Internals is the map; Porting notes is the catalogue of N64→PC bug classes hit along the way, a good read even if you never touch the code. - Mod it: the port layer, build system and
tools_pc/helpers are MIT licensed and yours to extend: new video options, input tweaks, your own asset sidecar. CONTRIBUTING has the ground rules that keep it faithful to the original game. - The research angle: this is also a case study in AI-agent collaboration on a large, low-level codebase: two coding agents (a local open-weight model on a single RTX 5090, and Claude / Claude Code), driven by one person part-time through ~230 translation units of unmodified big-endian MIPS game code. The full write-up: setup, timeline, the handoff workflow, and an honest assessment of what did and didn't work.
How it works
The R4300 game code is compiled completely unmodified; the decompilation's control flow is ground truth. The N64's Reality Signal Processor, the graphics coprocessor that builds and executes each frame's display list, is emulated in software: the port interprets the GBI stream the game emits and translates it to OpenGL, bypassing the RDP entirely. Everything else that would touch N64 hardware (video, audio, input, timers, save storage) is shimmed in a small dedicated layer, following the architecture of the Perfect Dark PC port from the same Rare engine family. Full detail: Internals; the bug catalogue: Porting notes.
Honest status
- Cutscenes still glitch, mostly with James Bond: in scripted sequences Bond is the one who gets misplaced, hovers, or spins; the other actors are fine for the most part now. Still the most visible gap in this release.
- A few in-level music tracks sound wrong (wrong instruments, occasional garbling).
- Particle colours drift through a rainbow palette instead of holding grey/orange.
- Water levels show a moving seam; pixel strips at screen edges at non-integer scales; some front-end 3D models mispositioned or absent.
- The F10 overlay's bottom row duplicates the selected item; one intermittent Steam Deck SIGSEGV in heavy firefights remains open (D255).
- No macOS/ARM support; no controller rebinding UI yet.
The full list, with root causes and fix status: the README's Status section and the finding log.
Documentation
- The two-agent development case study: goal, setup, timeline, the handoff workflow, and an honest assessment of what did and didn't work.
- Development process: how work was scoped, partitioned, and budgeted across agents; the finding-log discipline.
- Internals: architecture, the software RSP-emulation approach, GoldenEye-vs-Perfect-Dark engine differences, the phased plan.
- Porting notes: the recurring Nintendo 64 → PC bug classes hit during the port, with fixes.
- Building: full build and asset-extraction guide.
Non-commercial fan preservation/research project. No ROM or game assets are distributed; you supply a ROM you already own. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Nintendo, Rare, Microsoft, MGM, Danjaq, or EON Productions.