goldeneye-pc-port/.github/release-notes.md

GoldenEye 007 PC Port — v

Platforms: Windows x86-64 and Linux x86-64 (including Steam Deck). Region: NTSC-U (US) only. See Known issues.

Played on Windows and Steam Deck: campaign spot-checks, 2-4 player split-screen and controller-only sessions.

The headline is one real options system: both options screens merged into a single menu, laid out like the Perfect Dark PC port's, with the game's own N64 control styles as a per-seat preset, emulator save files that load directly, and a scalable HUD overlay. A round of fidelity fixes, checked frame-by-frame against the N64 game, rounds out the feature list.

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New features

One options menu, PD-style layout (D504, D519)

• The file-select PC Options entry now opens the same menu the F10 overlay shows — there is only one options UI, one place to learn (D519).
• Options are grouped into six sections in the Perfect Dark port's order (Video, Sound, Controls, Game, …), with checkboxes, sliders and dropdowns instead of the old numbered rows (D504).
• Display mode is a dropdown; Backspace goes back, matching the rest of the game's menus (D504 follow-up).

Control styles: the game's own N64 layouts (D513, D516, D518)

• Control style offers Ext (this port's scheme, unchanged) and Original, which shows the game's own N64 styles 1.1–2.4 (D513, D516).
• The style is chosen per seat and saved with the Bond file, so each player keeps their own (D518, D516).
• The Xbox-release presets (1.1 Jinx, 1.2 Christmas, 1.3 Frost, 1.4 Elektra) and Custom rebinding from v0.4.x are unchanged. Preset names refer to the Xbox release's control styles; this project is not affiliated with Microsoft or Rare.
• Here the right stick aims and the D-pad strafes, as on the N64; the Xbox release's "left stick aims the crosshair" and "D-pad copies the left stick" behaviours are not reproduced.

Emulator save files load directly (D514)

• An emulator-format ge007.eep sitting next to the executable is read on first launch, so a save from Project64, mupen or 1964 continues in the port without conversion. (Live playtest owed; the converter eep_convert.py still does explicit two-way conversion.)

HUD and overlay scaling (D510, D512)

• The F10 overlay and the FPS counter are now the same on-screen size on the front end and inside a level (D510).
• Game.HudScale scales the F10 overlay and FPS counter along with the in-game HUD (D512).

New settings (D511)

• Fullscreen mode, Center window, crosshair opacity and crosshair colour by health — the four settings the Perfect Dark port has that this port was missing.

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Fidelity and stability fixes

• Dam ending camera: the first shot of the ending cutscene swivels up onto Bond again, as on the N64; an old port workaround snapped it straight onto him (D552).
• Fog rework (Surface 2, from Deck playtest): ground fog no longer "chunks" away tile by tile, and the sky fades into fog toward the horizon as on the N64 (D540). Large near-camera triangles are now clipped against the near plane the way the N64's RSP does, with per-vertex fog recomputed on the clipped edge, so the haze around Bond stays steady as he moves instead of brightening and darkening (D543, D553; compared against hardware-level emulation). A new Fog distance setting (100% = N64) is independent of Draw distance, and Draw and Fog distance now apply live instead of on the next level load.
• Banded walls near explosions: in Aztec's dark corridor, walls near rocket fire turned into black/white/yellow/blue bands (also seen on the Deck); fixed by clamping colour-combiner inputs to the range the N64 can produce (D548). Build-verified; a live Aztec re-check is owed.
• Rocket and thrown-item crashes/clipping: a player-fired rocket could pass through the ground when fired near Bond's feet (a stack-layout difference from the N64, D545), and the same class of bug is fixed in thrown grenades, knives and objects (D549).
• Menu double-trigger (Steam Deck): one A press could advance two menu screens, and one B could back out two overlay pages. A short release hold-off on menu A/B/Start and a single back action per press are now in place. This is a mitigation: the exact cause is unconfirmed (the Deck re-check passed) (D541).
• Fog: objects far in fog are hidden as on the N64 (fog snap); in widescreen the wider view can still show a faint distant building edge (e.g. Surface's dish from the start area) — 4:3 matches the N64 (D503).
• Aspect ratio: forced ratios now letterbox/pillarbox without re-cropping the play area (D508); the rare gun/hand model glitch after changing ratio mid-level is largely fixed, a rare remainder is logged (D509).
• Watch menu: closing the in-level Watch menu now saves the watch's own screen size and ratio, and they no longer fight the front-end Aspect ratio setting; the earlier note in the findings log was corrected (D349).
• Overlay controls: slider wedges, slider markers and dropdown arrows no longer step in whole canvas pixels (which grew visibly at large window sizes); they are drawn smooth at every size (D520).
• FPS counter: holding left/right on a Bond settings row no longer drops the FPS counter (D517).
• Build: a fresh build directory no longer produces an untagged executable name (D515).
• Tooling: the asset converter's argument quoting and sidecar size check are tightened; the CI cache actions no longer carry stale ROM paths. The reference-frame tooling is now non-destructive and drift-free: a verification sweep used to overwrite your own data/ge007.ini and leave the previous level's save file behind, and now pins both idempotently (your ini and save are restored whatever the run does); the capture helper reads its frame windows out of the gate instead of a hardcoded copy that had gone stale (D524). The gate's recipe was re-based too: per-level windows that sit in settled gameplay rather than inside the intro flyby, and the save file pinned present (D522, D523).
• Harness: the debug capture/launch env vars are documented — GE_PCDUMP must be first-last:step (a colon where the dash belongs silently dumps every frame, D527), and a GE_STARTMENU boot skips the EEPROM import, so the imported-save test must run from a normal boot (D528). A per-triangle draw-state census probe (GE_D526/GE_D526BOX/GE_D526MAX) is available for transparency/texture triage (D526; the P13 Dam-ending grate show-through it targeted was confirmed faithful N64 behaviour on 1964/GEPD, so no change shipped).

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The small stuff

27 menu-wording edits across both menus (option names say what they do, not what the internal variable is called, D505); sliders carrying real units — percent, frames, seconds, pixels — standardised across the two menus (D506); a one-line description of the selected option in the same menu (D507); and menu spelling standardised to one convention across both menus.

• Settings standardised (D546): Draw and LOD distance default to 2.0x (N64 = 1.0x), stick deadzone to 25%, and the mouse sensitivity maximum is 4x. FOV is now vertical degrees, 30-90, with 60 = the N64 view. The old "Guard AI uses full wide view" row is now Gameplay view area (Original / Extended). Untouched old values migrate once; existing ge007.ini files still load.
• Optional update check (D551): a new Check for updates option in Game, off by default. When on, it makes one HTTPS request to GitHub per launch and shows an "Update available" row linking to the releases page.
• Settings menu wording pass (D554): clearer tips that wrap to two lines instead of being cut off, one Key: Action style for the control hints, consistent casing and names (Original / Extended, "Original layout"). Skip intro and All unlocked are no longer marked experimental. The game's own Look up/down option is gone from the menu; use Invert look on the Mouse and Controller pages (D564).
• Crosshair mouse pointer and scrollbar in the settings menu (D555, D556): the game's own crosshair is the pointer while F10 / PC Options is open (Mouse → Crosshair pointer to turn it off), long pages get a draggable scrollbar, and tips are kept only where a setting needs explaining. Long tips are no longer cut off inside a level (D558).
• New defaults (D556, D557): Crouch mode defaults to Toggle (new installs and Reset to defaults), and new profiles start with Look ahead off, which fights mouse look on PC; an existing save's untouched empty folders (no progress, factory options) get the same when first played (D559). Played or customised profiles and existing settings are not changed.
• All unlocked now applies live from the options menu, with no restart (D547).
• F10 overlay mouse: the OS cursor is always shown (no more flicker on the main menu), right-click goes back, and the tip line follows the hovered row (D544).
• Window: the title bar is now static (no per-second "NN fps" refresh; the FPS readout is still in the F10 overlay), and the window and taskbar icon is a new project mark instead of a game still (D550). Live icon/title check owed.

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Known issues

Issue	Impact	Workaround
PAL and JP ROMs aren't supported in release packages	NTSC-U only	Use an NTSC-U ROM. Both regions convert, build and boot from source; packaging is still open
Changing aspect ratio inside a level can briefly glitch the gun/hand model, rarely	Cosmetic, one-off	Change the ratio from the front-end PC Options, or accept it
No macOS or ARM builds	Platform	—
Saves from builds before v0.4.1 can hold fake unlocks from All unlocked	Save data	Not repaired automatically. Since v0.4.1 the option never writes the save; keep a backup of data/ge007.eep from before you used it
The first frame of a level takes a little longer while its textures upload	Brief FPS-counter dip	None needed
Far objects almost fully in fog are now hidden as on the N64, except in widescreen where a faint distant building edge can still show (e.g. Surface's dish from the start area); 4:3 matches the N64	Cosmetic	Higher Draw/LOD distance shows more

The full list, with workarounds, is the known-issues table.

Reference-frame gate for this release: Windows, Linux and Steam Deck each carry the full 21-level reference-frame set (63 frames each) at the same stems, re-captured for this release's fog and near-plane changes and confirmed by two independent capture passes per platform. The full pixel gate is green on all three against their own goldens on the final build: Windows 21/21, Linux (Intel HD 3000) 21/21 and Steam Deck 21/21. The recipe pins the run for you: the save file's CONTENT is pinned (the gate installs its own canonical save per level, the same way it pins the display ini — D529) and the PRNG seed is hard-pinned (a stray GE_RSEED in your environment warns and is ignored rather than re-seeding the gate — D532), so a gate run and a capture run see the same starting state. The cross-platform spread on the shipped sets (0.188-4.553% of pixels over tol 2 on the 20 non-Cuba levels) is informational only — it is not a cross-platform pixel-parity claim.

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Thanks

Outside contributions merged for this release: dolent (PRs #120–#122), MST246 (#125 draw-distance investigation), italoarruda (#109 gamepad-preset ideas), TenebrusoM (DexDrive / the D514 save-format sample), plus reporter credits on the issue numbers named above.

Downloads

File	Platform
goldeneye-pc-port-<version>-win64.zip	Windows x86-64
goldeneye-pc-port-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz	Linux x86-64 (incl. Steam Deck)

Each contains the engine executable, a README, license texts, and the one-time asset tool. No ROM, no game assets. The Windows bundle carries its runtime DLLs and the Linux bundle carries SDL2, so nothing needs to be installed first.

Running it

You need your own GoldenEye 007 N64 ROM (US version, .z64).

1. Unpack the archive.
2. Make a data/ folder next to the executable and put the ROM in it, named ge007.ntsc-final.z64.
3. Run the executable from that folder. The first start takes a few extra seconds while it generates its asset files from your ROM.

Updating from an earlier version: unpack into a new folder and copy your ROM, ge007.eep (your progress) and ge007.ini (your settings) into its data/ folder. Don't copy the old pcmodels-* / pccg-* folders: the new version makes its own.

Steam Deck: do the steps above on the Deck, then add the executable as a non-Steam game. The options overlay opens with Select and is fully controller-driven.

Full steps, controls and troubleshooting are in the bundled README.md.

Verify the download

sha256sum -c goldeneye-pc-port-<version>-win64.zip.sha256
sha256sum -c goldeneye-pc-port-<version>-linux-x86_64.tar.gz.sha256

Source & docs

https://github.com/jkdansereau/goldeneye-pc-port, built on the GoldenEye 007 decompilation, with its architecture modelled on the Perfect Dark PC port. Non-commercial fan preservation/research project; not affiliated with any rights holder. AI disclosure: built through agentic AI coding (Claude Code + a local open-weight model), directed by one person in their spare time. See the README's How it was made section for the full account.