Giants Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.6

Giants Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.6 (test version).

• The log now says where you were. When a level has its Skylander, every few minutes of play, at a crash and with a problem note (F4 > Game > Report a problem), the log gets a line like Where: Level_214_Tutotial_2 at 31.30 0.80 98.38: the level and your Skylander's position. With a report we can go straight to that spot, so most reports no longer need your save. Nothing else about you is in it.

• When the game wants a Skylander back: take one off in a shop or a talk and Giants asks for that very one back ("put the Skylander back on the portal"), as on the console. The portal menu used to offer every figure there, and any other one did nothing. Now it says which Skylander the game wants, and A or B puts it back.

• Play from a USB stick: with Core of Light's new "Portable data" setting (Core of Light 0.3.0-beta.3), a game in Core of Light's Games folder keeps its saves, figures and settings in the Skylanders folder next to Core of Light, on any PC and with any drive letter.

• What got tested, and how it went: every level of all six games, the figures and the end credits, on the test status page.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run GiantsRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.6.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Giants Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.5

Giants Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.5 (test version).

• Smoother sound on audio devices with big buffers: the game kept about 43 ms of sound queued. An audio device that asks for more at a time (Wine and PulseAudio on Linux can) played the rest of every request as silence, so the sound came out choppy and slow. The queue now grows to cover what the device asks for. The log names the device's chunk size, and once a minute it says if the sound ran dry, so a report shows where the problem is. In all six games.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run GiantsRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.5.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Giants Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.4

Giants Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.4 (test version).

• A sound bug that could freeze the game: when a sound stream's read position ran past the end of its piece of audio, the decoder gave up and tried the same thing again thousands of times a second. The sound got choppy, the log filled with one error (100 MB in a few seconds) and the game could freeze. It now moves on to the next piece, as the console does, and says so once. Found with the logs from ImaginatorsRecomp #16; the fix is in all six games.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run GiantsRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.4.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Giants Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.3

Giants Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.3 (test version).

• Fewer surprise crashes: the port didn't handle a jump the games use to recover from their own small errors (C's setjmp/longjmp). Where a game recovered fine on the console, here it went on into shutting down and crashed. All six games now recover the way the console does.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run GiantsRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.3.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Giants Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.2

Giants Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.2 (test version).

• Smoother on slower CPUs: the thread that turns the game's drawing commands into PC graphics looked up every register the game writes in a long table, only for a debug message nobody sees. Without that, Spyro's Adventure's Chapter 1 went from 51-55 to a steady 60 FPS here (1080p, frame rate limit off). All six games run the same code; handhelds and older CPUs should gain the most.
• Better crash reports: when the port stops on one of its own fatal errors (like "Call to invalid or unregistered function"), the log now also says where in the game it happened, so a "Report a problem" file shows the spot.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run GiantsRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.2.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Giants Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.1

Giants Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.1 (test version).

• The portal overview runs smoothly (Back + Y, F5): while it is open the game holds still, and the overview itself was drawn only ten times a second then, so its portal animation stuttered. Now it runs at your frame rate limit.
• Fewer leftovers in long sessions: some system objects the game creates (events, network sockets, I/O completion ports) were never freed; now they are. A fix from ReXGlue, the recompiler these ports are built on.
• Stricter checks on saved games: when the game creates or opens a save, only a real success counts as one now (another ReXGlue fix). Your saves stay where they are, and the previous version is still kept as a backup.
• One version for all six games: from now on the six games come out together with the same number. Under the hood they share much more of their code, so a fix reaches all of them at once. Nothing should look or play differently.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run GiantsRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.1.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Giants Recompiled 0.2.0-beta.6

Giants Recompiled, 0.2.0-beta.6 (test version).

• Softer shadows and blur at higher resolution scales: at resolution scale 2 and up the game's shadow and blur filters got squeezed by the higher resolution, so shadow edges could look harder than on the console. They keep the console's width now, so it looks as at scale 1, just sharper.
• A rare crash at start-up fixed: the sound system was started from the wrong thread and could, once in a while, crash the game right as it started.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run GiantsRecompSetup-0.2.0-beta.6.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Giants Recompiled 0.2.0-beta.5

Giants Recompiled, 0.2.0-beta.5 (test version).

• Sounds play to their very end: when a game stopped a voice right as it finished, its last moment (about 1/8 s on the portal speaker) could get lost.
• Element symbols for the launcher: the game leaves its own element symbols for the figure library in Core of Light (they show up there with its next update).

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run GiantsRecompSetup-0.2.0-beta.5.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Giants Recompiled 0.2.0-beta.4

Giants Recompiled, 0.2.0-beta.4 (test version).

• Nightmare from the start (F4 > Game, off by default): Nightmare is open in the difficulty choice without beating the game first. Your save isn't changed, turned off it's locked again until you unlock it the normal way.
• No more crash right at start when the window moves to another monitor while the game opens.
• The portal menu leaves your Skylander alone while the game is still loading it from the portal (Imaginators asked for a Skylander over and over).

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run GiantsRecompSetup-0.2.0-beta.4.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Giants Recompiled 0.2.0-beta.3

Giants Recompiled, 0.2.0-beta.3 (test version).

• When your Skylander runs out of health the portal menu opens to swap it, and the figure gets a red cross until it has rested (a new level). It stays pickable.
• The native 3D picture is back (F4 > Graphics, #30): the title and the outdoor scenes don't go black anymore. Checked on the title; tell me if a level still looks wrong.
• Portal overview (Back + Y / F5) holds the game still while it's open, closes when the portal menu opens, and its cards sit right above the portal.
• F4 opens on the Game page, which now has the volume and a frame rate display. F4 > Keyboard names each key the way your keyboard prints it and has a row to put every key back. The descriptions are short lines now.
• Hints in your pad's own buttons: PlayStation symbols and L1 / R1, or Nintendo's letters, when you play with such a pad.
• Hats only show in games that know them.

The easy way: install Core of Light, the launcher. It sets this game up from your disc and keeps it up to date by itself.

On its own: run GiantsRecompSetup-0.2.0-beta.3.exe and point it at your own Xbox 360 disc (an ISO file or an extracted folder). It's not signed, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC": "More info" > "Run anyway". The README says which disc version it needs.

The game's data (graphics, sound, levels, movies) doesn't come with it: the setup takes it from your own disc.

Problems: F4 > Game > "Report a problem" in the game, then a new issue.

Not affiliated with Activision or Toys for Bob. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.