Alter Echo for PC 1.1.1

Alter Echo (Xbox, 2003), statically recompiled to run natively on PC. The installer builds the game on your computer from your own copy of the North American (NTSC) Xbox release, either a disc image (.iso) or its extracted files. No game files are included.

What's new in 1.1.1

• Updates take seconds to a minute instead of half an hour. Run the new installer over your install folder: it copies in only what changed, keeps the game's translated code when nothing it depends on changed, and compiles only what changed. An update that changes the translator itself still builds everything (25-45 minutes). On Windows, the first update of an install made by 1.1.0 or earlier still builds everything once.
• Fixed (Linux): updating an install to 1.1.0 kept the old version's engine, so the update had no widescreen and no crash fix, with no error shown. If you updated a Linux install to 1.1.0, run 1.1.1 over the same folder: it repairs it in about a minute. Fresh 1.1.0 installs and Windows were not affected.

New in 1.1 (from 1.1.0)

• Widescreen, on by default. A wide screen or window (16:9, 16:10, up to 21:9) is filled with a wider view instead of black bars. The HUD, menus and text keep their shape in the middle of the screen, movies keep theirs, and the letterboxed opening and ending zoom to fill it. Screen effects (stealth, hit and pickup flashes, ripples, the damage and time-dilation tints, the loading wipe) cover the whole screen. Prefer the original? Put widescreen = 0 in settings.ini for the console's 4:3 with black bars.
• Linux: fixed a crash at startup. About one start in five closed straight away with malloc(): unaligned tcache chunk detected in its log. It came from the controller code and SDL being used from two threads at once.

Updating: run the new installer and choose the same folder. Your saves and settings.ini stay.

Which file do I download?

Your system	Download	Then
Windows 10/11	AlterEchoInstaller.exe	Run it, choose an install folder and your disc image, and wait 30-60 minutes. Start Alter Echo from the Start Menu
Linux	AlterEchoInstaller.sh	In a terminal: bash AlterEchoInstaller.sh. Give it your disc image and a folder, and wait 25-45 minutes. Start Alter Echo from your applications menu

You don't need the "Source code" downloads below unless you're building it yourself; the README explains how.

Good to know

• Windows will warn you: "Windows protected your PC". The installer isn't signed. Click More info, then Run anyway. The installer downloads its build tools (GCC with CMake and Ninja, about 270 MB, and the capstone disassembler) and checks each against a pinned checksum.
• Linux: if build tools are missing, the installer lists them and asks before installing them with your package manager (pacman, apt, dnf or zypper). It builds the native Linux version. No Wine is needed.
• About 6 GB of free disk space is needed in the install folder. Your saves, settings and logs stay inside it.
• Controls: an Xbox 360-compatible controller, or keyboard and mouse. The README lists the keys, settings and troubleshooting.

How tested is it?

• Linux: played start to finish. Updating was tested on a copy of a real 1.1.0 install (20 seconds, repaired) and with a runtime-only change (3 seconds). Widescreen was play-tested in combat, stealth, time dilation and pickups. The installer and the setup were tested from a clean start on an Arch-based system. On Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora and openSUSE the package names it installs are untested, so if it stops at that step, please report it.
• Windows: experimental. The installer and the game it builds have only been run under Wine, never on a real Windows PC. If you try it, please open an issue with how it went, whether it worked or not, and attach install.log from the install folder if the installer stopped.

Checksums (SHA-256)

9a7569def276e06ca1bddc118ded78de15acee5d2a6e7f7055778fa32caff206  AlterEchoInstaller.exe
3279f95b3cf2eb18c34d8f9fe810ce83f6b1f31a55abb4e48562b3e38159b75f  AlterEchoInstaller.sh

Built on the xboxrecomp toolkit by sp00nz and its contributors, via this fork. Alter Echo is a trademark of its owner. This project is not affiliated with the game's developer or publisher.