Swap Force Recompiled 0.4.0-beta.2

Swap Force Recompiled, 0.4.0-beta.2 (test version).

• Music layers: music tracks with several layers in one track (the interactive music) play each layer again, not the first one on all of them, so the game's switches between them can be heard.

• Extras page: Nightmare from the start moved there from the Game page.

• Extras page: the settings menu (F4) has a new page for unlocks and cheats. While a cheat is on, achievements don't unlock, so an unlocked one still means you earned it.

• The setup on a PC without the Visual C++ runtime: on a fresh Windows the setup couldn't set up a disc: extracting an ISO stopped with "VCRUNTIME140.dll was not found", and the disc check with "VCRUNTIME140_1.dll was not found". Both fixed. An unattended install (/VERYSILENT /SUPPRESSMSGBOXES) also no longer waits on an error box.

• Starting without the disc: the message now says the disc belongs in the rom folder in the game's folder and how to set it up.

• Menus over a loading game: the portal menu that comes up while a save loads no longer stutters.

• AMD: a shader case that can make AMD drivers lose the device is avoided (fix from xenia-canary).

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 SwapForceRecompSetup-0.4.0-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 Vicarious Visions. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Swap Force Recompiled 0.4.0-beta.1

Swap Force Recompiled, 0.4.0-beta.1 (test version).

• Other pressings of the disc: the check now also compares the game's code, not only the whole default.xex. Another pressing with the same code, like a European disc with other languages, works too (a Trap Team player's French / Dutch disc already does). Discs from other regions mostly have other code and still don't.
• A clearer message when the disc isn't supported: the setup now says what it found (title, version, region, hash) and you can copy the message with Ctrl+C for an issue.

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 SwapForceRecompSetup-0.4.0-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 Vicarious Visions. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Swap Force Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.9

Swap Force Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.9 (test version).

• Smooth water ripples at a higher internal resolution (#76): the ripples that spread where you walk through water, like the stream in Woodburrow, looked grainy at 2x and above. The game steps them from their neighbours one console pixel away, and at a higher resolution that split them into four grids that didn't talk to each other. They now run on the console's grid and look as smooth as at 1x.

• Faster where the processor is the limit: the games are now built with profile-guided optimization: the compiler arranges the code by what a test run of each game actually used. In Spyro's Adventure's heaviest levels that's up to 12 % more frames per second; where the graphics card is the limit, nothing changes. No spot got slower in the tests.

• Safer file writes on USB sticks: when a game overwrites one of its files, the file is now cut short in place instead of deleted and made anew. On exFAT or FAT drives (most USB sticks, so portable data) a file another program still had open could get deleted without the new one being written. Normal saves already went another way; this covers the rest.

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 SwapForceRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.9.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 Vicarious Visions. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Swap Force Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.8

Swap Force Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.8 (test version).

• Nothing of its own this time: this release brings the parts all six games share up to date.

• Discord status (new, off unless you switch it on): under F4 > Game > Discord status, your Discord profile shows which Skylanders game you play, with which Skylander (and its vehicle or the villain in its trap), in which level and for how long, while the Discord app runs on the same PC. With two players it says co-op. Only the game's own names for figures and levels go out, never a figure's nickname.

• Smooth shadow edges at a higher internal resolution: at 2x and above, shadow edges could have small stair steps. Where a game draws its shadows at half resolution and blends them up to the full picture, that blend picked the wrong pixels at a higher resolution. Shadows are as soft as on the console now.

• A little less work per draw: the graphics thread keeps the last shader it used at hand instead of looking it up again.

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 SwapForceRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.8.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 Vicarious Visions. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Swap Force Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.7

Swap Force Recompiled, 0.3.0-beta.7 (test version).

• Nothing of its own this time: this release brings the parts all six games share up to date.

• Smoother where the game is busy: less work for every thing the game draws, on the thread that hands the game's graphics to your GPU. Where that thread was the limit, the game gets more frames: in Spyro's Adventure's busiest level about 6 % more without a frame limit (50 to 53 FPS). Where your graphics card is the limit, nothing changes.

• Your name stays out of the log: the log you attach to a problem report no longer has your Windows user name, your user folder or your PC's name in it (they show as %USERPROFILE%, <user> and <computer>).

• The log says which version it is: its first line names the game, its version and build, Windows, the processor and the memory, so a report tells us right away what it ran on.

• What got tested, and how it went: every story level of all six games and many of the others, every figure, 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 SwapForceRecompSetup-0.3.0-beta.7.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 Vicarious Visions. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Swap Force Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.6

Swap Force 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: tutorial_a at -8.67 -59587.95 564.24: 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.

• 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 SwapForceRecompSetup-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 Vicarious Visions. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Swap Force Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.5

Swap Force 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 SwapForceRecompSetup-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 Vicarious Visions. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Swap Force Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.4

Swap Force 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 SwapForceRecompSetup-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 Vicarious Visions. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Swap Force Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.3

Swap Force 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 SwapForceRecompSetup-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 Vicarious Visions. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.

Swap Force Recompiled 0.3.0-beta.2

Swap Force 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 SwapForceRecompSetup-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 Vicarious Visions. Skylanders is a trademark of its owners.