SWROTS-PC

An unofficial, native Windows port of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith for the original Xbox. Not an emulator: the game's own code runs directly on your PC, and the parts of the Xbox it relied on (its kernel, Direct3D, audio and controllers) are replaced by native Windows code.

You need your own copy of the game (the North American Xbox release). This project contains no game code, art, audio or other game data.

Status: early development. The game boots, plays its movies and menus, and is playable through level changes, restarts and saving. It has not been played through from start to finish yet. Expect bugs; reports are very welcome.

What's new in each release: changelog.

Features

• Runs natively as a 32-bit Windows program: no emulation layer.
• Any window size or fullscreen, 16:9 widescreen, higher internal resolution, anisotropic filtering, a sharp picture on high-DPI displays.
• Keyboard and mouse, Xbox controllers, and PlayStation controllers (DualShock 4, DualSense) with rumble.
• Level changes and mission restarts happen in the same window, like on the console.
• Mods as loose files: replace textures, models and other game files without rebuilding archives.
• Yoda as a versus fighter with his own select-screen slot (the game's planned but unfinished fighter), and characters a level never had loaded from the rest of the disc.
• A developer menu with the game's own debug console and its hidden debug displays.

Port exclusives

Things the Xbox release never had:

• Playable Yoda in Versus. His own cell on the select screen, with the name, title and bust the disc kept for him; always unlocked, and Random can pick him. No settings or debug options needed.
• Sith Yoda. In Yoda against Yoda, player 2 is a dark Yoda with a red saber, as the game's own fighters get a different look against themselves.
• Commander Cody in Versus and Heroes vs Villains. The playable Cody the game cut, made from its own files: the 212th's armour with his helmet's rangefinder, his voice, his select-screen bust. A blaster against the sabers: he shoots, rolls out of the way instead of blocking, and spends his meter on a squad of clones rappelling down beside him or a bombardment on his opponent. The computer's Cody does the same. See his controls.
• Droid Commander. Cody's Separatist counterpart: a B1 battle droid commander in its yellow markings, with a blaster, a duck under the saber, droids dropping in to help and a bombardment, and its own lines. See its controls.
• Heroes vs Villains. Teams of heroes against villains in the main menu (Multi Player > Heroes vs Villains), 1 against 1 up to 5 against 5, with lives, intros, a kill feed, points and a podium, on the developer map or a custom map. See how to play it.
• Battlefront. A conquest battle in the main menu (Multi Player > Battlefront): clone troopers against battle droids, command posts to take and hold, tickets, and heroes bought with points, on the developer map or a custom map. See Battlefront.
• Custom characters and maps. Drop-in mods add new fighters with their own select-screen slot, model, voice, sabers, Force powers and intro (mods\characters), and new maps for Versus, Heroes vs Villains and Battlefront (mods\maps). The game is unchanged without them. See custom characters and custom maps.
• Keyboard and mouse button prompts: the game's prompts show your keys after you use the keyboard or mouse.
• Play story levels as anyone, in any costume or body. Vader in Order 66, Anakin without his robe in the Jedi Temple, a 501st clone trooper, Obi-Wan in Anakin's duel outfit: pick a class, a costume, a texture set and a body in the debug menu's Characters tab (or player IAnakin duel), and your character changes on the spot, as if the level had started with it (or the mission restarts with it when that cannot be done). Some missions expect their own character.
• Spawn any character into the running mission (spawn IVader, or the Characters tab's Spawn button), on your side or against you, loaded from other levels if need be, remove them again (despawn), and give your saber its own colour (saber red, any colour), which power-ups no longer change.
• A developer map: an empty, lit, flat floor under the sky with nothing on it but you, to spawn characters and test anything without a mission in the way (devmap, or the debug menu's Game tab).
• Two-player co-op in the story missions. Turn it on from the pause menu (Cooperative Mod) and a second player with a controller joins by themselves: they play the mission's companion (Obi-Wan beside Anakin) or a character of their own beside you, with the game's own second HUD, and come back beside you when they fall or wander out of the picture. Also in the bonus missions made for two players, with one controller. One controller is enough: the keyboard and mouse are then player 1. In the boss fights player 2 plays the boss, as in Versus, or fights it beside you. A clone trooper player 2 shoots as the computer's clones do. See the co-op guide.
• Unlock everything with the developers' own cheat, unlockprofile (debug console).
• Free camera. Fly the view anywhere with freecam (debug console): keyboard and mouse or a controller, without the game's camera shake and zoom. With set timeScale 0 and set hud 0, a simple photo mode.
• The game's hidden debug console and displays, and loose-file mods without rebuilding archives.

How Yoda was added, for developers: the versus roster and adding versus fighters.

Quick start

1. Download the latest release and unpack swrots.exe and core.dll into a folder of your choice, e.g. C:\Games\SWROTS.
2. Run swrots.exe. The first time, it asks for your disc image: an Xbox .iso / .xiso, or a .7z / .zip / .rar containing one. It checks that it is the supported release, copies the game files into GameData\ (about 2.5 GB) and adds a Start menu shortcut.
3. Play. Settings are in settings.ini, key bindings in controls.ini, both next to swrots.exe.

More: installing.

Requirements

• 64-bit Windows 10 (1803) or newer. (The port itself is a 32-bit program, but it needs the address space a 64-bit Windows gives 32-bit programs.)
• A Direct3D 9 capable graphics card (anything from the last 15 years).
• Your own disc image of Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith for the Xbox, North American release (the game's executable must have MD5 6460ef37862de3af364a0563a0a18c4e).

Controls

	Keyboard and mouse	Controller
Move (hold Left Ctrl to walk)	W A S D	Left stick
Fast / strong / critical attack	Left / right / middle mouse, E	X / Y / B (Square / Triangle / Circle)
Jump	Space	A (Cross)
Block	Shift	Left trigger
Force push / grip, saber throw, stun / lightning	F, Q, R	Right trigger, White, Black (L1, R1)
Deflect bolts, Force targeting	Hold Shift, move the mouse in circles	Hold block, circle the right stick
Pause / back	Escape / Tab	Start / Back

Keys can be rebound, and the mouse sensitivity and walk speed changed, in controls.ini. Details and controller layouts: controls.

Documentation

Installing	Setup, the folder layout, reinstalling
Linux and Steam Deck	Playing through Proton (community guide)
Settings	Window, graphics, frame rate, developer options
Controls	Keyboard, mouse and controllers
Co-op	Two players in the story missions: how to play, settings, known issues
Heroes vs Villains	The team mode: setting up a match, what's on screen
Battlefront	The conquest mode: command posts, tickets, heroes
Debug menu	The game's console, variables and debug displays
Modding	Loose-file mods, dumping assets, textures, character swaps
How it works	The port's design, for the curious and for contributors
Changelog	What changed in each release
All documentation	Including research notes on the game's engine

Known issues

• Some messages still refer to the Xbox and its controller (the button prompts follow the keyboard and mouse).

• 60 fps (FpsLimit=60) is experimental: some of the game's logic is timed for 30 fps.

• Outside co-op the keyboard and the first controller are both player 1, so Versus and the bonus missions made for two need two controllers. In co-op one controller is enough: the keyboard is then player 1.

• Co-op has known issues of its own (player 2 has no Force powers or saber throw yet, health pickups are player 1's, scripted moments that wait for the computer's companion): see the co-op guide.

• Controllers other than Xbox (XInput) and PlayStation ones need Steam Input or a similar translator.

• PlayStation controllers are read directly: with DS4Windows (or Steam Input) running, one controller can show up as two players. Close it while playing, or let it hide the real controller (HidHide).

• Some modding limits: animations stored in a level's memory image (most .bnm) cannot be replaced by loose files yet, and loose text resources in folders the disc also has (e.g. gameinfo\) fail to load.

• Only the North American release is supported.

• On Intel integrated graphics (e.g. Iris Xe), lightsaber blades can show away from their hilts. On a laptop that also has an NVIDIA or AMD graphics card, set swrots.exe to High performance in Windows' graphics settings (troubleshooting).

• Playing as and spawning characters (debug menu) work in story levels only. A swapped or spawned character can show at another spot for a moment before it is placed, and some missions expect their own character in cutscenes and scripted moments. Vader has no breathing after a live change into him in a level without Vader: restart the mission (he then starts the level) to have it.

• Heroes vs Villains, Battlefront and custom content: characters made on Serra's class with a single saber can turn it the wrong way in a saber lock; a custom character's intro or outro now and then does not play; on custom maps the computer's fighters have no paths, so one that cannot get through is moved near its goal.

See the issue tracker for the current list.

Reporting problems

Open an issue and attach logs\swrots.log (next to swrots.exe). If the game crashed and you have started it again since, attach logs\swrots.previous.log instead: it keeps the run before. Say what you were doing, which level, and whether it happens every time.

Mods, guides and questions

Share mods, guides, screenshots and setups that work (Linux, handhelds), or ask for help, in Discussions. Issues are for bugs. Share only your own work, never the game's own files (modding).

Roadmap

• Co-op: a playthrough of every mission with two players, player 2's character and controllers in the Cooperative Mod screen, health pickups for player 2.
• PlayStation button icons for PlayStation controllers.
• Proper 60 fps and higher (the engine has fixed-step simulation to build on).
• An in-game settings menu, keyboard as its own player for versus modes, more controllers.
• More versus fighters from the disc (the framework for Yoda's slot takes more), Yoda's own duel intro, and a darker player-2 bust and HUD portrait for Sith Yoda.
• Character tools: spawned characters that follow you (as the first mission's Obi-Wan does), and spawning in Versus.
• A photo mode built on the free camera, with the game's own menus.
• Modding tools: a character swap tool, dumping and replacing animations.
• A full playthrough on many machines, and a stable 1.0.

Building from source

Requires Visual Studio 2022 or newer with the C++ desktop workload, and CMake 3.20 or newer. The port must be built as 32-bit (the game's code is 32-bit):

cmake -S . -B build -A Win32
cmake --build build --config Release

The result is build\bin\swrots.exe and core.dll. Run it from there; it will ask for your disc image as described above. See CONTRIBUTING.md for the development setup.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome: code, testing on different hardware, documentation, research into the game's engine, and mods and modding tools. Read CONTRIBUTING.md first; in short, never add the game's files or code to the repository, and base findings on the game's own executable.

Legal

SWROTS-PC is free software under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later. It includes code adapted from Cxbx-Reloaded (GPL-2.0-or-later) and uses Dear ImGui (MIT); see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.

This is an unofficial fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed or sponsored by Lucasfilm, Disney, LucasArts or The Collective. Star Wars and all related names are trademarks of Lucasfilm Ltd. The game itself is not included and is not distributed by this project; you must own a copy.

Credits

• LucasArts and The Collective, who made the game and its engine, Slayer.
• Cxbx-Reloaded and its contributors, whose research into the Xbox and its libraries this port builds on, and whose shader translation it adapts.
• Dear ImGui by Omar Cornut and contributors, for the debug menu.

Community

• @chatgipity: the Linux and handheld guide.
• @anakinfan8: testing on a Mac that found the crashes after restarts (#2, #3), weapon modding (the guide, the weapon mesh layout and the tools in tools/weapons/) and music modding (the guide and tools/audio/hwx.py).
• @firestar300: custom character fixes found while building a character pack (#60): any number of custom voice lines, a pack's own dialogue archive and saber hilts, and live swaps to a mod's character; and custom maps' own collision, sky and deadly falls, more Versus slots for custom characters and Vader's breathing off for his class (#61).
• @QTG128: the first bug report, which found the missing sound at startup (#1).