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Beta 2 — Cross-platform (Windows, macOS, Linux)

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@cruuz cruuz released this 25 Jul 15:30
beta-2
d5a012f

⚠️ Superseded by Beta 3

Beta 3 is the release to download. No editor code changed between the two —
Beta 3 corrects documentation that shipped inside the Beta 2 APF archive and
was wrong, and adds the LICENSE and NOTICE.md that neither Beta 2 archive
contained. The Beta 2 APF asset was also replaced twice under one filename;
Beta 3's is dated so that cannot recur.

If you are already running Beta 2, your editors work — you are only missing
corrected docs and the licence text.

Beta 2 — Cross-platform

Release: Beta 2 · Date: 2026-07-25

Tools included

  • 2K5 Mod Studio — ESPN NFL 2K5 (original Xbox) — v1.0-RC29
  • APF 2K8 Mod Studio — All-Pro Football 2K8 (Xbox 360) — v0.1.0-alpha.34

Beta 1 was Linux-only. Beta 2 runs on Windows, macOS and Linux, verified on
every push by CI across all three, on Python 3.11 and 3.12.

Updated twice on 2026-07-25, both times the APF archive only. The 2K5
archive is byte-identical to the original upload and its SHA-256 below has
never changed.

  1. The APF archive was re-issued to bundle a Windows build of
    extract-xiso    , so handing the editor a .iso now works on Windows out of
    the box — the first upload required an already-extracted game folder there.
  2. It was re-issued once more because the APF2K8-README.md inside that
    archive still said the opposite: that the ISO path would not work on
    Windows, and that the test suite did not yet pass on Windows or macOS.
    Neither was true any more. That file now matches what actually ships, and
    the build receipt for both bundled binaries
    (tools/vendor/extract-xiso/BUILDING-THE-BUNDLED-BINARIES.md) is bundled
    alongside them instead of only being referenced from here.

If you downloaded the APF archive before 2026-07-25 19:10 UTC, re-download
it (the current bytes were uploaded at 19:08 UTC). Its current hash is f047682430… — the full value is in the integrity
table below, and the .sha256 sidecar next to the asset is authoritative.
Nothing in the editor itself changed between the second and third uploads;
only documentation and that bundled receipt.

Install — read the section for your system

Both editors are pure Python. You need Python 3.11+, PyQt5 and Pillow.
Neither editor ships game data, and neither will ever write to your original disc
or disc image.

Windows

  1. Install Python 3.12 and tick
    "Add python.exe to PATH" in the installer.
  2. Install the two dependencies: 
    py -m pip install --upgrade PyQt5 Pillow
  3. Download the archive for the editor you want (below), and extract it. Windows
    Explorer does not open .tar.gz directly — use
    7-Zip or, on Windows 10 1803+, the built-in tar: 
    tar -xzf 2K5-Mod-Studio-v1.0-RC29-20260725.tar.gz
  4. Start it from that folder: 
    cd 2K5-Mod-Studio-v1.0-RC29
py -m mod_editor --studio
    or, for APF: 
    cd apf2k8-mod-studio-0.1.0-alpha.34
py -m mod_editor.apf_studio

Point either editor at your .iso/XISO or at an already-extracted game folder —
both work. The APF archive bundles extract-xiso.exe (PE32+ x86-64), built from
the same vendored 2.7.1 source as the Linux binary, so ISO input needs nothing
extra from you.

The .sh launchers and the .desktop files in these archives are Linux desktop
integration; on Windows ignore them and use the py -m ... commands above.

macOS

  1. Install Python 3.12 — python.org
    or brew install python@3.12.
  2. Install the dependencies: 
    python3 -m pip install --upgrade PyQt5 Pillow
    On Apple Silicon, if pip cannot find a PyQt5 wheel, brew install pyqt@5
    works and exposes it to the Homebrew Python.
  3. Extract and start it (Finder opens .tar.gz on double-click): 
    tar -xzf 2K5-Mod-Studio-v1.0-RC29-20260725.tar.gz
cd 2K5-Mod-Studio-v1.0-RC29
python3 -m mod_editor --studio
    or, for APF: 
    cd apf2k8-mod-studio-0.1.0-alpha.34
python3 -m mod_editor.apf_studio

macOS is the one platform with no bundled extractor. Bundling one would mean
vendoring a third architecture that cannot be built or tested from the build
host, so rather than ship something unverified: point APF at an
already-extracted game folder, or build extract-xiso yourself
(brew install extract-xiso, or cmake on the vendored source — see
tools/vendor/extract-xiso/BUILDING-THE-BUNDLED-BINARIES.md) and pass it as
SourceManager(extract_xiso=...). 2K5 Mod Studio is unaffected: it reads the
.xiso.iso directly and needs no extractor at all.

These archives are unsigned and not notarised, so Gatekeeper will complain if you
try to run anything from them by double-clicking. Launching through python3 from
Terminal, as above, is the supported path and avoids that entirely.

Linux

The original and most exercised target — the desktop app has been smoke-tested
end to end here.

  1. Debian / Ubuntu / Linux Mint: 
    sudo apt install python3 python3-pyqt5 python3-pil
  2. Extract and start it: 
    tar -xzf 2K5-Mod-Studio-v1.0-RC29-20260725.tar.gz
cd 2K5-Mod-Studio-v1.0-RC29
./tools/launch_2k5_mod_studio.sh
    or, for APF: 
    cd apf2k8-mod-studio-0.1.0-alpha.34
./tools/launch_apf2k8_mod_studio.sh
    The launchers check your Python/PyQt5/Pillow and show a desktop error dialog
    rather than a terminal trace if something is missing. python3 -m mod_editor --studio and python3 -m mod_editor.apf_studio work too.

For a menu entry, install packaging/*.desktop and packaging/*.svg as
described in packaging/README.md.

What is new since Beta 1

Cross-platform support

Windows and macOS are now first-class. Every OS difference is concentrated in one
shim (mod_editor/core/platform_compat.py) so the editors behave the same way on
each, and where a platform genuinely cannot provide a guarantee the tools say
so rather than pretending. Concretely, that meant real fixes rather than
if windows: skip:

  • Positional file I/O, directory transactions, atomic no-clobber publication,
    private-cache privacy, ownership, and durable flushes all have real Windows and
    macOS implementations.
  • Windows file locking, which refuses to rename a file that has an open handle,
    is handled by opening staged files with FILE_SHARE_DELETE — so the writer
    keeps the descriptor it verified through, instead of dropping the proof to
    satisfy the OS.
  • Binary-mode reads, CRLF translation and 8.3 short names no longer corrupt
    byte-exact artifacts.
  • The APF archive bundles extract-xiso for both Linux and Windows, built
    from the same vendored 2.7.1 source and each pinned by exact size and SHA-256
    in the release gate.

APF 2K8 — new editable capabilities

  • Team logos on helmets and the score bug.
  • Field art / endzones.
  • Both proven bit-exact by an independent verifier, taking the capability
    registry to 65.

Release integrity

Each editor ships as a deterministic, byte-for-byte reproducible archive with an
adjacent SHA-256 sidecar. Rebuilding from the same staged tree reproduces the same
bytes — verified for this release, not merely asserted.

The two scripts that produce these assets are now in the repository rather than
being described only in prose: packaging/stage_release.py copies exactly the
allowlisted paths, and packaging/build_archive.py writes the tarball with
mtimes, ownership, modes and the gzip header all pinned. Staging from the
allowlist and rebuilding at epoch 2026-07-25T00:00:00Z reproduces the hashes
below, so the reproducibility claim is something you can run rather than take on
trust. Build from commit 071e7a0, not from the beta-2 tag: the tag still
points at d5a012f, one commit earlier, and the APF archive's documents changed
between the two — so a rebuild from the tag will not match the published APF
hash. The 2K5 archive is identical from either commit. STATUS.md records the same identities, including the two superseded APF
uploads, so an early download can be identified instead of left ambiguous.

Editor Archive SHA-256
2K5 Mod Studio v1.0-RC29 2K5-Mod-Studio-v1.0-RC29-20260725.tar.gz 4c293e609ce15df55a2b7dd870ad13eefe419e9db2a88ae8bb4b82e01c2230e4
APF 2K8 Mod Studio v0.1.0-alpha.34 apf2k8-mod-studio-0.1.0-alpha.34.tar.gz f047682430f4cc5be868b586b875fbf602c62799130cbd5623b128a6219676f1

Verify before extracting:

sha256sum -c 2K5-Mod-Studio-v1.0-RC29-20260725.tar.gz.sha256      # Linux / macOS
certutil -hashfile 2K5-Mod-Studio-v1.0-RC29-20260725.tar.gz SHA256  # Windows

Both archives pass an automated retail-free gate (no game bytes, decoded
pixels or audio, private paths, symlinks or undeclared files) and a
runtime-closure check (every shipped module imports from the clean stage).
Both gates were run again against the extracted archives, not only the staging
tree, so what you download is what was checked.

The two bundled extract-xiso binaries are pinned by exact size and SHA-256, and
each must still be the image format its platform can run (ELF / PE). .exe
remains a forbidden file type everywhere else in the release — the extractor is
one named, reviewed exception, not a relaxed category. The Windows build is
reproducible (-Wl,--no-insert-timestamp), and the exact build commands,
toolchain and hashes are recorded in
tools/vendor/extract-xiso/BUILDING-THE-BUNDLED-BINARIES.md so you can rebuild
the bytes yourself rather than trust them.

Verification

  • CI: all six jobs — Windows, macOS and Linux × Python 3.11 and 3.12 — report
    an identical 107 of 126 files, 1304 tests. The 19 that do not pass need
    retail game data, which never touches CI, so they fail the same way on every OS.
  • Independent security review: the Windows/macOS port was audited by a
    different model (GPT-5.6) across ten passes. It rejected the port nine times.
    The first round found four genuine blockers, including a pinned directory handle
    opened without the access right needed to answer its own ownership query, and a
    DACL check blind to WRITE_DAC. Later rounds found documentation that claimed
    more than the code enforced. The final verdict is ACCEPT, with every remaining
    platform limitation disclosed in the code where a caller meets it.

Known limits

  • 19 test files need retail game data and cannot run in CI on any OS. They are
    exercised locally against real discs.
  • macOS has no bundled extract-xiso. See the macOS section above.
  • APF: XMA1 audio encoding still needs a user-supplied encoder, on every
    platform.
  • The audio panel needs a wider minimum window on Windows, because the default
    UI font there is considerably wider. Cosmetic; no effect on any guarantee.
  • Three privacy tests are skipped on Windows. They express "unsafe" by
    chmod-ing something world-readable, and Windows mode bits confer no privacy at
    all — a directory always reports 0o777. Privacy there is the DACL, which is
    covered by other checks. Each skip states this rather than quietly passing.
  • The GUI has not been manually driven on Windows or macOS. The suite passes
    identically on all three, but treat the window itself as less exercised there.
  • Both editors remain beta / alpha. Always keep a backup of your original disc
    image; the tools only ever write to a copy, but back it up anyway.

These tools ship no game data and require your own legally obtained disc.

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