RCRness v0.1.7 — Scenery and sprite fixes

Scenery and sprite fixes

• Sixteen additional gameplay areas now display their original two-page scenery in widescreen, including Sherman Park and formerly narrow outdoor areas.
• Original movement, collisions, exits and room boundaries are preserved. Single-screen scenes and shops retain their native composition.
• Carried enemies use the correct graphics instead of a box graphic.
• Coins and other objects omitted from the game's draw list no longer remain as stale images in widescreen.
• Includes the v0.1.6 shop-entry freeze fix.

Upgrading: download the new setup and choose Rebuild once. Play Previous Build keeps your existing executable and will not apply these fixes.

Downloads:

• Windows x86-64: RCRness-Setup.exe
• Linux x86-64 (glibc 2.35+): RCRness-Setup-Linux-x86_64.tar.gz
• macOS Apple Silicon: RCRness-Setup-macOS-arm64.zip
• macOS Intel: RCRness-Setup-macOS-x86_64.zip
• Corresponding source kits and SHA256SUMS.txt.

Each ROM-free setup builds the game privately from your supported River City Ransom (USA) ROM. No ROM, generated game code, playable game executable, saves or captures are distributed. Platform prerequisites and unsigned-app instructions are in README.md.

Verification: Windows gameplay checks cover all 73 entrances, 44 resident-room/aspect cases, unchanged native-versus-wide player/camera movement, carried-enemy and ghost-coin regressions, pause menus, CRT resizing and short save-state replay. Linux/macOS CI checks compiler portability, packaged setup audits and setup UI; gameplay on those platforms remains unverified.

Known limits: the previously disclosed long save-state replay differences remain. Full progression, all shop/boss prerequisites, physical two-controller play and netplay have not been fully validated. The widescreen mod remains experimental; --widescreen off selects the native view.

RCRness v0.1.6 — shop-freeze hotfix

Shop-freeze hotfix

Adds the missing bank-2 $8C7E continuation to game.toml. This is the only gameplay/config change; no additional engine or controller changes were made.

Upgrading from v0.1.5: download the new setup and choose Rebuild once. Play Previous Build will continue running your old executable and will not apply the fix.

The old build reproduced the shop-entry freeze at $8C7E. After regenerating and rebuilding, five shop scenes (including book, cafe, sushi and mystery shops) continued through menu/input checks with zero dispatch misses or watchdog trips. The six incoming-damage comparisons also pass. Thanks to the player who identified this continuation and reported completing the game with this change.

Downloads:

• Windows x86-64: RCRness-Setup.exe
• Linux x86-64 (glibc 2.35+): RCRness-Setup-Linux-x86_64.tar.gz
• macOS Apple Silicon: RCRness-Setup-macOS-arm64.zip
• macOS Intel: RCRness-Setup-macOS-x86_64.zip
• Corresponding source kits and SHA256SUMS.txt.

Each ROM-free setup builds the game privately from your supported River City Ransom (USA) ROM. No ROM, generated game code, playable game executable, saves or captures are distributed. Linux and macOS prerequisites and unsigned macOS-app instructions are in README.md.

Known limits: the previously disclosed long save-state replay differences remain. The local shop test bypasses walking/progression prerequisites; purchases, boss progression, learning moves, passwords and full completion were not independently retested. Linux/macOS real-ROM gameplay and physical gamepads remain unverified; native builds and setup checks run on each target platform. See VERIFICATION.md.

RCRness v0.1.5 — Adaptive widescreen and platform setups

RCRness v0.1.5 incorporates the merged experimental adaptive-widescreen renderer and adds ROM-free native setup applications for Linux and macOS alongside Windows.

The incoming-damage regression check is now resolved. A fresh-boot capture with no RAM edits reproduced a natural attack at X=48: HP changes 63 -> 61 in native, 16:9, 21:9 and 32:9. The same scene translated to X=400 takes damage in 32:9 and is clipped in native mode. Temporarily removing the existing left-edge clamp caused the new test to fail, proving that it detects the original bug. No game behavior changes were required.

The save-state watchdog now measures instructions between completed frames rather than the lifetime of a resumed session. Private Windows tests resumed pre-game and gameplay saves for another 6,000 frames without watchdog trips or dispatch misses. All 75 interpreter checks pass, including a progressing 4.1-million-instruction driver and a stalled loop that still trips the watchdog.

Known limitation: long save-state replay is not guaranteed to match uninterrupted execution exactly. Both tested saves had RAM differences; the pre-game save also differed in a roughly 5x5-pixel area near the lower death-message text after 6,000 frames. The later gameplay save's final screenshot matched. This limitation is accepted for this release; it has not been claimed fixed. See VERIFICATION.md.

Downloads:

• Windows x86-64: RCRness-Setup.exe
• Linux x86-64 (glibc 2.35+): RCRness-Setup-Linux-x86_64.tar.gz
• macOS Apple Silicon: RCRness-Setup-macOS-arm64.zip
• macOS Intel: RCRness-Setup-macOS-x86_64.zip
• Corresponding source kits and SHA256SUMS.txt.

Each setup builds the game privately from the user's exact River City Ransom (USA) ROM. Subsequent launches offer Play Previous Build and Rebuild. No ROM, generated game code, playable title executable, saves or captures are distributed.

Linux setup uses distribution build tools and SDL2 development files. Ubuntu/Debian users may be prompted through PolicyKit to authorize installation. macOS requires Homebrew and Apple Command Line Tools; the app is unsigned and not notarized. See README.md for instructions.

Validation: native platform compiler/linker checks with original synthetic input; embedded-source audits and packaged GUI startup checks; private Windows boot checks with zero dispatch misses, 73 entrance loads, nine world geometry cases, seven CRT pause/resize cases, five submenus, short gameplay/pause state replay, outgoing combat/coin/replacement-wave tests, and all six incoming-damage comparisons. Actual Linux/macOS commercial-ROM gameplay, physical controllers and full-game progression remain unverified. Long replay limitations are described above.

Thanks to mstan for the adaptive-widescreen contribution.

RCRness v0.1.4

Windows x86-64 ROM-free setup release.

What’s changed

• Fixed the visible mismatch between background scrolling and sprites/ground objects.
• Sprite corruption repair now replaces only transient invalid OAM entries instead of delaying an entire sprite page.
• Retains the existing controller, audio, 4:3 display, optimized JVC-style CRT filter, focus-pause, and Play Previous Build/Rebuild features.

Installation

Download RCRness-Setup.exe and run it. The setup utility downloads the pinned open-source build tools, asks you to select your legally obtained compatible ROM, builds RCRness, and launches it. Later runs can play the previous build without rebuilding.

The source ZIP is included for auditing and manual builds.

Important

This release contains no ROM, generated game code, save files, captures, or other copyrighted game data. You must provide your own legally obtained compatible ROM.

SHA-256

• RCRness-Setup.exe: 209403A73C0ACF1C75E398612EFFFD8283B9D5E16135EECF37E07C833D8F5909
• RCRness-Windows-x86_64-source.zip: 551474C0E401E279B741D13DA15C381A3CD2B2FE8876018EDA32EE2090680395

RCRness v0.1.3 — Reusable builds and faster CRT filter

What's new

• Setup now detects an existing completed build and offers Play Previous Build or Rebuild.
• Play Previous Build launches immediately without downloading tools or recompiling.
• Setup remembers only the local path to your ROM; it does not copy or upload ROM data.
• The CRT + 4:3 path now caches aspect-corrected sampling once per frame, reducing measured CRT processing time by about 36.6% (10.39 ms/frame to 6.59 ms/frame) while preserving the exact filtered output.
• Continues to use the compact portable LLVM-MinGW, CMake, and Ninja toolchain instead of the full Visual Studio SDK.

Installation

1. Download RCRness-Setup.exe.
2. Run it and select your legally obtained supported ROM.
3. Setup downloads the required open-source build tools, builds the game locally, and launches it.
4. On later runs, choose Play Previous Build to skip rebuilding.

Windows SmartScreen may identify this unsigned community build as an unrecognized application. Verify the SHA-256 before running it.

Distribution

This release contains no ROM, generated game code, save files, captures, or other copyrighted game data.

SHA-256

• RCRness-Setup.exe: 78B42329D3C8E7DBD632FB42FC0956E03DF5D3C03F2ACD7CFD8D731126E6A985
• RCRness-Windows-x86_64-source.zip: 2C7CA2ADDE6A3A027881C3CD27E08DB8DECBB3DFAF8962D1937E5EB7F2AF9FED

RCRness v0.1.2 — Compact portable Windows toolchain

One-click owned-input Windows setup, now without Visual Studio

Download RCRness-Setup.exe, run it, and select your legally obtained River City Ransom (USA) ROM. Setup verifies the ROM locally, obtains the open build tools, compiles RCRness on your PC, and launches it.

What changed

• Removed the multi-gigabyte Visual Studio 2022 C++ Build Tools and Windows SDK requirement.
• Uses pinned, SHA-256-verified portable LLVM-MinGW 20260616, CMake 4.4.2, and Ninja 1.13.2.
• The portable downloads total about 231 MiB and are cached under %LOCALAPPDATA%\RCRness\toolchains for later builds.
• No administrator approval is needed for the compiler toolchain.
• If Git is missing, setup can install Git for Windows through WinGet.
• The exact public source kit was clean-extracted, cloned at its pinned NESRecomp commit, built, and validated with a 600-frame smoke run with zero dispatch misses.

This release contains no ROM, generated game code, playable title executable, saves, captures, or other copyrighted game data. The playable executable is generated privately from the user's ROM.

SHA-256

• RCRness-Setup.exe: CBF1A3D6B73E69C50AE14A81753382BBAEB99F3EECF3B556A87F4BB5C1969D5F
• RCRness-Windows-x86_64-source.zip: B37860998F9CA31904F48A3CEF03386A99ED102D4C452BE6FD4DF8A917B4CB24

RCRness v0.1.1 — One-click owned-input Windows setup

One-click owned-input Windows setup

Download RCRness-Setup.exe, run it, and select your legally obtained River City Ransom (USA) NES ROM. You can also drag the ROM onto the setup window or executable.

The setup host will:

1. verify the ROM locally by SHA-256;
2. prepare the embedded clean RCRness source kit;
3. ask permission to install any missing Git, CMake, and Visual Studio 2022 C++ Build Tools through WinGet;
4. generate and compile the playable game only on the user's computer; and
5. launch the locally built game automatically.

This release contains no game ROM, generated game code, playable title executable, saves, captures, or other copyrighted game data. RCRness-Setup.exe is an independently written build host, not the playable game.

The setup host and locally built game are currently unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen may identify them as unrecognized applications. Download only from this release and verify the SHA-256 below.

SHA-256

• RCRness-Setup.exe: 5C4DF1CE64775E72B15B647E6199BC261E8F47CE2D34C532CE4552394A0A587E
• RCRness-Windows-x86_64-source.zip: 53DE064C9F1FCC3BB389B6C8117447CB211FBA1D43FB8FD1F2B902350097BF85

Full changelog: v0.1.0...v0.1.1

RCRness v0.1.0 — ROM-free Windows x86-64 source/build kit

Initial public ROM-free source release.

This release contains the Windows x86-64 source/build kit only. It does not contain a game ROM, generated game code, a playable executable, saves, captures, or other copyrighted game data.

Users must provide their own legally obtained River City Ransom (USA) NES ROM and run build.ps1 locally. See the README and PUBLIC_DISTRIBUTION.md for requirements and instructions.

Archive SHA-256: DE89B884FDB18B62AB6B177BFF0D0AF1D1DF9260B34FD499A84B8339408DBE34