Super Smash Bros Melee

This repo contains a matching decompilation of Super Smash Bros Melee (US).

[!TIP] The DOL this repository builds can be shifted! Meaning you are able to now add and remove code as you see fit, for modding or research purposes.

It builds main.dol:

Version	Game ID	SHA-1
1.02	GALE01	08e0bf20134dfcb260699671004527b2d6bb1a45

Dependencies

Windows:

On Windows, it's highly recommended to use native tooling. WSL or msys2 are not required. When running under WSL, objdiff is unable to get filesystem notifications for automatic rebuilds.

• Install Python and add it to %PATH%.
  • Also available from the Windows Store.
• Download ninja and add it to %PATH%.
  • Quick install via pip: pip install ninja

macOS:

• Install ninja:

  brew install ninja
  

• Install Game Porting Toolkit (the wine-crossover cask was removed from this tap in favor of this one):

  brew install --cask gcenx/wine/game-porting-toolkit
  

After OS upgrades, if macOS complains about Game Porting Toolkit.app being unverified, you can unquarantine it using:

sudo xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine '/Applications/Game Porting Toolkit.app'

Linux:

• Install ninja.
• For non-x86(_64) platforms: Install wine from your package manager.
  • For x86(_64), WiBo, a minimal 32-bit Windows binary wrapper, will be automatically downloaded and used.

Building

• Clone the repository:

  git clone https://github.com/doldecomp/melee.git --depth=1
  

• Using Dolphin Emulator, find your ISO and click Properties. Go to the Filesystem tab, right-click Disc - GALE01 and select Extract System Data. Choose orig/GALE01 of this repository.
  • To save space, only main.dol (and .gitkeep) are necessary. Other files can be deleted.
• Configure:

  python configure.py
  

• Build:

  ninja
  

Tooling

We use Python for our command line tooling. It is recommended that you use a virtual environment.

1. Create a virtual environment.

   python -m venv --upgrade-deps '.venv'
   

2. You'll need to activate it whenever you open a new shell.
   • Windows:

     .venv/Scripts/Activate.ps1
     

   • Linux/macOS:

     . .venv/bin/activate
     

3. After that, you can install or update our packages with:

   pip install -r reqs/decomp.txt
   

4. Now you can run decomp.py to decomp a function using m2c. Pass it -h to see all the options.

   python tools/decomp.py my_function_name
   

Modding

1. Dump the full game disc to a folder as described under Building, not just the system files.
2. After cloning the repository, you can freely add new source files/folders under /src.
3. Enable the non-matching build by running:

   python configure.py --non-matching
   

4. Add each of your source files to configure.py. The order determines when your files are linked, but in most cases does not matter. You can create a new MeleeLib definition, but you don't have to. Make sure any newly created files are marked Equivalent.

       MeleeLib(
           "My Custom Library",
           [
               Object(Equivalent, "my-cool-mod/helloworld.c"),
           ],
       ),
   

5. Run ninja to build the game.
6. Move the build DOL from build/GALE01/main.dol to the sys folder of the game directory you created.
7. Make sure your game directory is configured under Paths in Dolphin, then launch your main.dol from the Games list.

Containers

We use nix for most of our tontinuous integration, which can be containerized under nixos/nix or nix-toolbox. We plan on fully migrating our CI to nix; see issue #1368.

Diffing

Once the initial build succeeds, an objdiff.json should exist in the project root.

Download the latest release from encounter/objdiff. Under project settings, set Project directory. The configuration should be loaded automatically.

Select an object from the left sidebar to begin diffing. Changes to the project will rebuild automatically: changes to source files, headers, configure.py, splits.txt or symbols.txt.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you're new to decomp, check out our Getting Started guide. Before opening a pull request, please read our contributing guidelines. If you're new to Git and don't know how to create a pull request, we encourage you to create an issue with your decomp.me link and a maintainer will add your code to the repository.

Most of our efforts now are directed to naming and cleanup. See our todo list and cleanup index.

We're also happy to answer any questions in the #smash-bros-melee channel on Discord.

FAQ

How is the codebase structured?

The code in src is divided into several modules, the main one being melee, which is the game code.

melee

The main game code is divided into several two-letter folders, which were left behind by HAL in assert messages and game data on the original disc.

Short	Full	Notes
cm	Camera
db	Debug
ef	Effect	Visual effects.
ft	Fighter	The player characters.
gm	Game	The main game loop.
gr	Ground	Stages and other levels.
if	Interface	User interface.
it	Items
lb	Library	Utility functions that are often thin wrappers around dolphin or baselib code.
mn	Menu
mp	Map	Related to stages and contains things like mpcoll (map collisions).
pl	Player	As in users.
sc	Scene	Menu, versus mode, single-player, etc. The game mode.
ty	Toy	Trophies.
vi	Visual	Cutscenes, etc.

melee/ft/kinds

HAL also used two-letter abbreviations for each fighter.

Short	Full	Canonical English
Bo	Zako<sup>1</sup> Boy	Male wire frame
Ca	Captain	Captain Falcon
Ch	Crazy Hand
Cl	Child Link	Young Link
Co	Common	Shared code
Dk	Donkey Kong
Dr	Dr. Mario
Fc	Falco
Fe	Fire Emblem	Roy
Fx	Fox
Gk	Giga Koopa	Giga Bowser
Gl	Zako Girl	Female wire frame
Gn	Ganondorf
Gw	Mr. Game & Watch
Kb	Kirby
Kp	Koopa	Bowser
Lg	Luigi
Lk	Link
Mh	Master Hand
Mr	Mario
Ms	Mars	Marth
Mt	Mewtwo
Nn	Nana
Ns	Ness
Pc	Pichu
Pe	Peach
Pk	Pikachu
Pp	Popo
Pr	Purin	Jigglypuff
Sb	Sandbag
Sk	Seak	Sheik
Ss	Samus
Ys	Yoshi
Zd	Zelda

¹ Zako (雑魚) is Japanese for "trash mob" in video games, literally "small fish."

sysdolphin/baselib

HAL's core internal library.

Class	Full
AObj	Animation
CObj	Camera
DObj	Draw/Display
FObj	Frame
GObj	Global/Game
JObj	Joint
LObj	Light
MObj	Material
PObj	Polygon
TObj	Texture
RObj	Reference
SObj	Scene
WObj	World

dolphin

The Dolphin SDK.

MetroTRK

The Metrowerks Target Resident Kernel.

MSL

The Metrowerks Standard Library.

Runtime

The Gekko hardware runtime.

What can be done now that the game is fully decompiled?

See our FAQ.