BLACK PC port

An unofficial native Windows port of BLACK (Criterion Games, 2006), made from the original Xbox version (NTSC-U).

black.exe loads your own copy of the game's default.xbe and runs the original x86 game code directly on the PC.

You need your own copy of the game. This repository and the release downloads contain no game code or data.

The game is fully playable. Please report problems in the issue tracker and include port\black.log.

• Any render resolution (720p to 4K and beyond, or a multiple of the window size), anti-aliasing
• Widescreen 16:9 (the game's own widescreen mode) or 4:3, adjustable field of view
• 60 fps (the default) or the original 30 fps
• Mouse look, with the weapon swaying as it does with the stick; keys bound to the game's actions; XInput controllers
• The port's settings in the game's own menus (Options > PC SETTINGS, and in the pause menu), including borderless fullscreen
• Room reverb, the game's own brightness and gamma ramp; auto-aim off by default; every movie can be skipped
• Fixes for things the Xbox hides by its low resolution: flickering seams between pieces of destructible objects, a grid pattern in the blur effects

• Windows 10 or 11. The program is 32-bit and runs on 64-bit Windows.
• A graphics card with Direct3D 9 (Shader Model 3). On old laptops with Intel graphics (HD 4400 class) play at 30 fps.
• The NTSC-U (North America) Xbox disc of BLACK. Other regions and builds have different code addresses and are not supported.

Nothing else needs installing: the C runtime is built in, and Direct3D 9, the shader compiler and XAudio2 ship with Windows.

1. Dump your NTSC-U version of the game to an ISO and extract it with extract-xiso (extract-xiso -x Black.iso). Rename the extracted folder to game.

2. Check that you have the supported build. In PowerShell:

   Get-FileHash game\default.xbe -Algorithm SHA256

   It must print DF2739C372D254A90AEECCF5971D12097F22D89FBB90DB021FDA96DD4DEB68F6.

3. Download the zip from Releases and extract it next to the game folder, so the port folder sits beside it:

   BLACK\
     game\
       default.xbe
       ...
     port\
       black.exe
       blackrt.dll
   

4. Start port\black.exe.

The port keeps everything it writes in the port folder: savedata\ holds the Xbox hard disk (saved games and the game's settings), black.ini the port's settings, black.log the log of the last run and cache\menus the game's menu files with the PC SETTINGS pages added.

Keys and mouse buttons are bound to the game's own actions, not to controller buttons, and can be changed in PC SETTINGS > CONTROLS > KEY BINDINGS (two keys per action, saved to black.ini). Controllers work as well. Click the window to capture the mouse; Esc lets go of it (in play it also pauses), and play starting or resuming takes it again.

In menus the arrow keys move (held, they repeat), Enter selects and Backspace goes back; Enter also passes PRESS START, skips movies and a mission's intro text, and closes the game's hints (PRESS A TO CONTINUE). QUIT at the bottom of the main menu closes the game. On the KEY BINDINGS page left / right choose the first or second key and Enter waits for the new one (Esc cancels, Delete clears it). Any key can be bound, F1-F12 included: the port has no keys of its own.

The port's settings are in the game's menus: Options > PC SETTINGS on the main menu, and PC SETTINGS in the pause menu (below OPTIONS).

Left / right change a setting; field of view, brightness, gamma and mouse sensitivity are sliders. Changes apply at once and are saved to black.ini. --no-pc-menus leaves the game's menus as they are.

black.exe --help lists the command-line options. They override black.ini for that run, for example --fullscreen, --resolution 1080, --fps 30, --fov 86, --normal-aspect, --autoaim, --mouse-sens 2.5.

Field of view (PC SETTINGS > VIDEO, --fov) is horizontal, in degrees; the game's is 70. The widescreen picture keeps that width and shows less height than 4:3; 86 shows the same height as the 4:3 picture. Aiming zooms by the same factor as before, cutscenes keep their own framing, and the gun and hands keep the game's own view (they were made for 70 and their animations would show their ends at a wider view).

The game lets you skip a movie only once you have earned it (the intro and a mission's movies after completing that mission, the logos never). The port lets A, START or Enter skip every movie; set PC SETTINGS > AUDIO AND GAME > SKIP ANY MOVIE to off (or start with --no-movie-skip) for the original rule.

• The game was made for 30 fps; at 60 (the default) something may still run at the wrong speed (PC SETTINGS > DISPLAY > FRAME RATE), but I didn't notice.
• The game's on-screen prompts show Xbox controller buttons, also when you play with the keyboard.
• Audio: the reverb is an approximation of the Xbox's, some effect sends are not mixed, there is no subwoofer channel, and 3D sound uses distance and panning only.
• Only the NTSC-U build is supported (--force tries another build, which will most likely fail).

Visual Studio 2022 or 2026 (Build Tools are enough) with the C++ x86 tools, and CMake 3.24 or newer (it ships with Visual Studio).

cd loader
cmake --preset win32            # Visual Studio 2026; use win32-vs2022 for Visual Studio 2022
cmake --build build/win32 --config RelWithDebInfo

This builds build\win32\RelWithDebInfo\black.exe and blackrt.dll. loader/README.md has the developer options and the source layout.

black.exe is a small stub linked at the XBE's base address, so the game's address range belongs to it before Windows can put anything there. blackrt.dll maps default.xbe into that range, provides the 115 Xbox kernel functions the game imports, and redirects the Xbox libraries that are linked into the game (Direct3D 8, DirectSound, XAPI) to PC code by patching their entry points. Graphics run on Direct3D 9: the NV2A vertex programs and register combiners are translated to HLSL. Audio is a software DirectSound mixer on XAudio2.

The game's code is never changed on disk; the few patches (60 fps timing, mouse look, auto-aim switch) are applied in memory at start. Design notes and findings (addresses, structures, the boot sequence) are in NOTES.md; the original plan is docs/ROADMAP.md. notes/ holds analysis results used to build the address tables: function addresses and symbol names, the XBE header report and checksums of the disc's files. It contains no game code.

This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Criterion Games or Electronic Arts. BLACK is a trademark of Electronic Arts Inc.; Xbox is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. No code or data from the game and no code from the Microsoft Xbox Development Kit is included. You need your own legally obtained copy of the game.

The port is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or (at your option) any later version. See LICENSE.

Cxbx-Reloaded and xemu served as references for how the Xbox kernel and the NV2A behave (no code was copied). XbSymbolDatabase identified the Xbox library functions in the game, Ghidra with ghidra-xbe was used for the analysis, and the nxdk headers document the kernel's types.

Developed by Spark198rus with Claude Code.