Golden Sun Recompiled

Native PC ports of Golden Sun (The Broken Seal) and Golden Sun: The Lost Age for the Game Boy Advance, made by static recompilation, for Windows and Linux (including the Steam Deck). Each game's ARM/Thumb code is translated ahead of time into C++ by the shared engine in engine/ (an edited copy of gbarecomp), then compiled into native code without requiring a GBA BIOS. Code first discovered during play can temporarily run through an interpreter while it is compiled into native code.

No game data is in this repository or in the releases. You supply your own legally obtained USA/Europe ROMs; the game code is generated from them on your machine. The launcher checks each ROM's SHA-1 unless you enable Skip the ROM check; the supported ROMs remain the USA/Europe versions.

[!WARNING] Work in progress. Both games are in public testing (pre-release builds). Bugs and visual/audio inaccuracies are still present.

Playing

1. Download the Windows or Linux zip from Releases and unzip it.
2. Start GoldenSunLauncher (GoldenSunLauncher.exe on Windows), pick The Broken Seal or The Lost Age, and choose that game's ROM. It remembers each.
3. On first start, and after an update, the launcher builds the game code from your ROM with a progress bar. A compiler is included; Linux needs SDL2 and OpenGL from the system.
4. Select the cartridge to play. Settings are in the launcher's gold cog and in-game on F1.

If something goes wrong, press F12 in the game right after it: the game keeps the last two seconds, and the launcher packs a bug report you can send with Send report. ROMs live in ROMs/, saves and savestates in Saves/. Control bindings live in Controls/ and are shared; other F1 settings remain per game. On first launch, existing bindings from that game seed the shared settings.

Each game's README describes its features and game-specific build steps: The Broken Seal and The Lost Age. The release notes list what each version changed; updating can make the launcher prepare your game code again.

Features

• Wider views. Wide and Extra Wide show more of each room and the world map around the original screen, with effects, weather and scenery carried into the extra space.
• Shared settings. Keyboard, controller and hotkey bindings carry between both games. Under F1 → Controls, the Controller and Alternate columns bind the D-pad and stick together; Soft Reset (F1 → Hotkeys, unassigned by default) restarts the current game at its title screen.
• Seamless mode. Finish The Broken Seal and carry straight on into The Lost Age with your Clear Data (launcher cog). The Lost Age's F1 → Game also offers Update from The Broken Seal for an existing save, keeping a backup.
• Music mods. Recordings in the Music folder can replace the soundtrack (FLAC), looping where the game loops each song. The remastered Golden Sun soundtracks by Vincent Dortel aka Juste-D are available as a ready-made music mod, shared with his permission. See Music mods to use or make one.

Known issues

• Loading a savestate made at a different screen size (for example Extra Wide, loaded in Original) can still garble graphics, such as Felix turning into a mess of lines. Changing the screen size between Original, Wide or Extra Wide and back redraws the screen and fixes it.
• TLA, music mods: the opening scene before Venus Lighthouse keeps the original music.
• TLA: Raging Flood has the wrong shape, gets cut off at the edges and causes slowdown.
• TLA: Great Gabomba has an effect that can show bits of text, and slowdown during its ritual.
• TLA: Supernova doesn't fill the wider view yet, and some other summon graphics have smaller issues at the edges.
• TLA: world-map quakes can still glitch at the edges; Jupiter Lighthouse's beacon stops short of the top of the wider view.
• TLA: walking can occasionally stutter; we haven't reproduced it yet.
• TBS: Kolima's pond scenery doesn't follow the water as it drains.
• Performance is still being worked on for both games, including Turbo speed in TLA.

Layout

GoldenSunLauncher.exe   the one launcher for both games
engine/                 shared engine and translator (edited gbarecomp)
shared_game/            features shared by both Golden Sun games
launcher/               launcher source: game selection, builds, settings, reports
player_builder/         builder that player packages run on the player's ROM
scripts/                shared build, readiness and release scripts
build_dev.bat           developer build of both games and the launcher
build_launcher.bat      developer build of the launcher only
make_release.bat        player release window
MUSIC_MODS.md           how music mods work and how to make one
ATTRIBUTION.md          who owns what, licences and credits
The Broken Seal/        GS1: runner, ROM configuration, hooks, tools, build tree
The Lost Age/           TLA: runner, ROM configuration, hooks, tools, build tree
assets/                 launcher artwork
ROMs/  Saves/           your ROMs and progress (never committed)
Controls/               shared keyboard, controller and hotkey bindings
Music/                  optional music mods (never committed)

Generic ARMv4T/GBA code lives in engine/. Golden Sun features such as Retreat, Custom Battle and the trackers share code in shared_game/. Changes in either folder trigger a rebuild for both games. Each game's addresses, hooks and generated code stay in its own folder.

Building

See BUILDING.md. In short: the launcher builds a game from its cartridge or the gold cog, and build_dev.bat builds both developer games and the launcher.

Credits

• Vincent Dortel aka Juste-D, for his remastered Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age soundtracks, his permission to share them as a music mod, and his help with the loop points.
• Matthew Stan, for gbarecomp, the recompiler this project's engine is built on (see License).
• David Reid, for dr_flac, which plays the music mods' FLAC files.

License

engine/ is an edited copy of gbarecomp by Matthew Stan, licensed under the PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0 (engine/LICENSE), so this project is noncommercial. See LICENSE for the rest of the repository and ATTRIBUTION.md for who owns what.

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_{Portions of this project were developed with the assistance of AI-based development tools.}