Burnout Recompilation

Version 0.1.0: an early, incomplete release, for Windows only.

A launcher that turns your own copy of the original Xbox game Burnout (Criterion Games / Acclaim, 2002) into a native Windows build. It uses a fork of xboxrecomp to recompile the game's code into C ahead of time, instead of emulating it one instruction at a time.

No game data is included. The first time you start it, it asks for your Burnout (USA) disc image and builds the game from that image on your own computer.

⚠️ This is early and incomplete

You can play races, but the game isn't finished. Known issues in 0.1.0:

• After a computer-controlled racer crashes, a crash "scrape" sound sometimes keeps playing on a loop. It stops at the next crash, and at the end of the race.
• Lighting on some scenery and car parts may not match the original exactly.

It has been tested on a small number of PCs. If something goes wrong, the logs (see below) are the most useful thing to include in a report.

What you need

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
• A graphics card with Direct3D 11
• Your own Burnout (USA) Xbox disc image (.iso)
• About 6 GB of free disk space for the one-time build
• An Xbox-style controller (recommended)

Running it

1. Download Burnout-Recompilation-v0.1.0-windows-x64.zip from Releases and extract it. Keep the whole folder together, because Burnout.exe needs the tools folder beside it. The one-time build runs faster from a local disk than from a network share.
2. Run Burnout.exe. If Windows warns that it is from an unknown publisher, choose More info, then Run anyway.
3. The first time only, choose your disc image and press Continue. The launcher builds the game from it. This takes a few minutes, and it happens again once after you update to a new release.
4. Press Play.

Options

• Brightness: Original, in the middle, is the game's own picture. Move left for darker, right to lighten the dark parts.
• Resolution: 1x is the Xbox's own 640 × 480. 2x (the default) is 1280 × 960, and 3x is 1920 × 1440. Higher is sharper but needs a faster graphics card.
• Run the graphics chip on its own thread: on by default, and much faster. Turn it off only if the game hangs or draws wrongly.
• Full screen: fills the screen, with black bars on a widescreen monitor so the 4:3 picture keeps its shape. F11 or Alt+Enter switches between full screen and a window at any time, including in game.
• Saved games folder: where your saves are kept. Choosing a new folder doesn't move saves already made.

The menus work with mouse, keyboard or controller (D-pad or left stick to move, A to choose, B to go back). On a laptop with two graphics chips, the launcher asks Windows for the faster one.

Where things are kept

%LOCALAPPDATA%\BurnoutRecomp\
    settings.ini   the disc image you chose, and your Options
    work\          the extracted game and the build (delete it to rebuild)
    logs\          launcher, build and game logs; include the newest with any bug report
    saves\         saved games, unless you choose another folder

Building from source

The release is assembled on Linux and cross-compiled for Windows with Zig.

• launcher-win/ holds the Windows launcher (Dear ImGui on Direct3D 11).
  • fetch_toolchain.sh downloads the embeddable Python, Zig, CMake/Ninja and Capstone.
  • build.sh builds Burnout.exe.
  • make_release.sh assembles the release folder: OUT=... XBOXRECOMP=/path/to/xboxrecomp ./launcher-win/make_release.sh.
• tools/build_from_iso.py is the pipeline the launcher runs on the player's machine. It extracts the ISO, recompiles the XBE with xboxrecomp (tools/regenerate.py, which uses the seed lists in config/), applies tools/apply_spin_fixes.py, and compiles burnout_game.dll. On Linux, regenerate.sh is the wrapper.
• src/ holds the host entry point, plus manual overrides that replace the generated code for specific functions.
• config/source-manifest.json records the xboxrecomp commit this release is pinned to. The release zip also includes that toolkit's source, under tools/toolkit.

Nothing game-derived belongs in this repository (see .gitignore). The paths in the manifest and the build scripts are the author's machine; set your own.

Credits and licences

• xboxrecomp by sp00nznet, MIT
• xemu, GPL-2.0-or-later. xboxrecomp's APU and NV2A libraries are derived from it, and it was the reference for how the hardware behaves.
• Dear ImGui, MIT
• Capstone, Python, Zig, CMake and Ninja, bundled for the one-time build under their own licences

Burnout is © Criterion Games / Electronic Arts. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Criterion Games, Electronic Arts, Acclaim or Microsoft.