MarioSouls 0.9.0-dev.2 — Experimental Windows installer

Experimental preview for Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition on Windows. Mario replaces the Pyromancer class with libsm64 movement and attacks while Dark Souls retains progression, equipment and world interactions. Remastered is not supported.

Changes

• Separate reusable character/camera and F8 diagnostic presentation from PTDE observations and D3D9 rendering. Give guest resources and session/native-restoration state explicit owners, and document the first future Remastered milestone.
• Candidate Fire Flower handoff fix: wait for confirmed native footing before sending the cast input, with bounded rejection diagnostics and cancellation of stale requests. The reported left-hand L1 failure has not yet been verified fixed in game. Native spell charges and bouncing-fireball tuning remain unchanged.

Install / uninstall

1. Download MarioSouls-0.9.0-dev.2-Setup.exe and compare its SHA-256 against SHA256SUMS.txt. The installer is unsigned.
2. Close Dark Souls, run setup, and select the PTDE DATA folder and your own US Super Mario 64, 8 MiB big-endian .z64 ROM.
3. Choose Install / Update. First setup downloads pinned tools/packages, builds the mod locally and exports assets from your game. Allow internet access, several GB of free disk space and several minutes. No preinstalled Python/Git/compiler is required.
4. Launch normally through Steam. Run the same setup and choose Uninstall to remove the managed mod files.

Requirements: Windows 10/11 x64 and .NET Framework 4.8; the game host remains x86. Setup does not elevate itself; protected game folders may require administrator rights. DSfix 2.4 is optional and supplied separately; supported DSfix installations retain their graphics/FPS settings. Keep the selected ROM and %LOCALAPPDATA%/MarioSouls/setup/ cache while installed. Saves are not edited.

Included files

• Setup executable with tracked project source and official Python.
• Matching source ZIP, revision/hash manifest and SHA-256 checksums.
• No ROMs, Dark Souls files, private exports, compiled Mario geometry or prebuilt guest runtime. Owned data is prepared locally.

Verification and known limits

Verified for this revision: doctor, PTDE host/Mario/runtime x86 compilation, shared C/C++ SDK/core x86/x64 compilation and x64 guest builds; C# installer compilation; embedded-payload inspection, source provenance, licenses and release checksums. Build source: cb56bb83d4e8e04ee5fd45d4b64da1aa645b8ce6. No GitHub Actions minutes were used.

Still pending: fresh gameplay and Fire Flower confirmation, GUI installation/removal, protected folders and a second PC. Earlier installer preparation/file-operation checks and focused stock/DSfix gameplay checks are historical evidence, not a current full-game guarantee. One unsupported Ash Lake collider remains native-only; Mario traversal/support there is unverified. The optional historical Asylum arena-floor export is preserved on existing installs but is not bundled.

Controls

A interacts at eligible prompts or jumps elsewhere; LB/L1 casts a left-hand Fire Flower or guards with a shield; LT/L2 crouches/ground-pounds; X uses the selected item. F6 toggles Mario/native. F8 toggles the initially hidden collision overlay, F9 changes views and F10 toggles through-wall drawing.

Original project code: GPL-3.0-only. Uses libsm64/SM64 decompilation, MinHook, Soulstruct, Python, Git and Zig under their respective notices. Development assisted by OpenAI Codex. See the README, CHANGELOG, THIRD_PARTY.md and docs/RELEASING.md in the matching source.