<img src="https://github.com/Sezzary/SilentEngine/blob/master/Resources/Icon.png" alt="Icon" width="64" height="64"/> Silent Engine

Silent Engine is an in-progress cross-platform engine port designed to run the original Silent Hill on modern systems. It aims to be a monolithic, flexible, and future-proof foundation with modern standards that will enable long-term goals such as translation support and modding. Written from the ground-up with a high-quality, no-compromise codebase.

Q: CAN I PLAY THIS? Not yet! While some core logic has been migrated from our decompilation repository, the priority is building a stable engine foundation before integrating original gameplay logic and graphics. I prioritize maintainability over quick, observable progress I can show off; simply getting the game to "work" is secondary to avoiding long-term technical debt. Additionally, much of the decompiled source still requires documentation and deobfuscation. Despite what completion metrics might suggest, the decompiled game code is hardly in a usable state, and rushing a port while the base source is being refined would be a mistake. However, the boot process, FMV playback, and some menus are already roughly functional, with progress on various rebuilt subsystems steadily underway alongside research of the original PSX code.

Decompilation progress can be tracked here: https://github.com/Vatuu/silent-hill-decomp

[!IMPORTANT]

<details> <summary>NOTICE AGAINST AI</summary>

Like the decompilation, this port project is human-driven and not vibe-coded. Deep understanding of game systems and code quality are of high importance, and the "document everything" attitude inherited from the original effort ensures anyone with the adequate will and curiosity has the opportunity to read, understand, learn from, and potentially help improve the port themselves. Purely AI-driven workflows for projects like these have done nothing but empower opportunists with little to no interest in software design. Such individuals seek attention, instant results, and unceremoniously ignore the wishes of the people whose real work they depend on. They might additionally understate the extent of their cognitive dependence, claiming the endeavor to be merely "assisted" by LLMs, if not omit disclosure altogether.

This is completely antithetical to the etiquette surrounding small open-source projects. It foregoes all creative aspects and erodes everything that makes community-driven pursuits like this one, which ought to be a chance for people of different skillsets to come together, worthwhile. Furthermore, given their hideous and practically illegible code output, contributions to AI repos will forever be out of reach to anyone who cannot afford costly tokens. At that point, I think, one might as well work with raw binary. Where there's source code, it should be workable by a human on principle.

From my observation, widespread usage of LLMs predominantly benefits two kinds of people:

1. Those who are already well-off (and can thereby afford throwing agent swarms at whatever they please).
2. Those with sociopathic tendencies (who lack common decency and remorselessly ignore all ethical concerns).

In trying various workflows and observing how others work, my opinion on the matter is informed by experience: LLMs on their own are an interesting technology, but the prevailing (and perhaps intrinsically coupled) abuse perpetuated by droves of bad actors is likely to endure and cannot be ignored. To the end user, i.e. the gamer, this might appear as a fair trade-off for quicker turnarounds and more games, but the significant cost to genuine, ambitious creators must be emphasized. I encourage you, the user, to carefully consider who you really support. I want this to be an awesome port people can enjoy, but it's about time regular users themselves also started being more high-minded and forward-thinking. Don't hand the world to the lazy and weak of character.

For these reasons, any future forks of this port by opportunistic parties who wish to go against this notice are strongly discouraged and, if created, should never be endorsed by anyone. The best thing about open-source is it allows anyone to do what they want, but the worst thing about it is people doing literally whatever they want.

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Contributing

Contributions to the decompilation repository are welcome. We need more people to help document, deobduscate, and conduct general research on the original PSX code. As for this project: it's still rather early to ramp up the effort, but you are free to take a look around in the meantime! Discussion and updates can be found on the PS1/PS2 Re-Arc (Reverse Engineering, Archaeology, and Reconstruction of Code) Discord server (#Multi-Platform Port (Silent Engine) thread under the #silent-hill channel).

Prospects

• Easy to use.
• Clean, well-documented codebase.
• Windows/macOS/Linux support out of the box, with the potential for other platforms later.
• Modern renderer supporting Vulkan, DX12, and Metal, with the potential for other backends later.
• Keyboard/mouse and gamepad support.
• Widescreen and CRT filter support.
• Retro and HD font options (.TTF fonts matching the originals have been found or meticulously recreated, allowing for modern font rendering to take place without relying on the original sprites).
• Various graphics toggles for a retro or modern look.
• Lua scripting.
• Extensive translation support.
• Modding support?
• Custom levels (ambition for the far future).

Current foundations

• Simple launcher with automated asset extraction from a user-provided compatible ROM
• User config options handling
• User savegame handling
• Input handling
• Math wrappers and functions (similar to DXTK but with some usability improvements)
• Window handling
• Asset streaming
• Timestep handling
• Parallel task handling
• Filesystem handling
• Extensive warning and error logging
• Renderer with swappable backends
• Translator for internationalized scripts
• Font manager
• Reworked subtitle handling that works with the new font system FMV video player
• Debug menu
• Parsers for all game formats
• Various handy utilities pulled from other projects I worked on

Building (Windows/macOS/Linux)

NOTE: Project setup is yet to be streamlined and this section is incomplete. Ideally the project will be able to cross-compile between all main development platforms. On the user end, the most you can currently do is play around with the main and options menus. The game itself doesn't run yet.

Prerequisites

Install the required system tools.

<details> <summary>Windows</summary>

winget install Kitware.CMake Git.Git Ninja-build.Ninja Python.Python.3

</details> <details> <summary>macOS</summary>

brew install cmake git ninja ffmpeg python

</details> <details> <summary>Linux</summary>

sudo apt install build-essential cmake ffmpeg git ninja-build python3 python3-pip python3-tk

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Clone the repository

Initialize Git LFS to ensure assets are pulled correctly.

git lfs install

Clone https://github.com/Sezzary/SilentEngine to your desired directory. Cloning recursively will include submodules in the process.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/Sezzary/SilentEngine && \
git submodule update --init --recursive

Build the LuaJIT dependency locally.

cd Libraries/LuaJIT && make && \
cd ../..

Set up a Python virtual environment and activate it.

python3 -m venv .venv && \
source .venv/bin/activate

Install required Python packages.

pip install -r Requirements.txt

<details> <summary>Windows</summary> TODO: Steps incomplete. </details> <details> <summary>macOS</summary> TODO: Steps incomplete. </details> <details> <summary>Linux</summary>

Install SDL dependencies.

sudo apt-get install build-essential git make \
pkg-config cmake ninja-build gnome-desktop-testing libasound2-dev libpulse-dev \
libaudio-dev libfribidi-dev libjack-dev libsndio-dev libx11-dev libxext-dev \
libxrandr-dev libxcursor-dev libxfixes-dev libxi-dev libxss-dev libxtst-dev \
libxkbcommon-dev libdrm-dev libgbm-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libgles2-mesa-dev \
libegl1-mesa-dev libdbus-1-dev libibus-1.0-dev libudev-dev libthai-dev

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Build the code (Debug/Release)

• Configure Debug:cmake -S . -B Build/Debug -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug

• Build Debug: cmake --build Build/Debug

• Configure Release:cmake -S . -B Build/Release -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

• Build Release: cmake --build Build/Release

Transfer assets

Copy the Assets folder (containing custom supplementary files) from the root of the repository to the Build folder. Then, run the Launcher utility to extract all required original assets from a 1.1 US release of the game. Note this utility is rather barebones at the moment and works silently in the background when extraction begins.

Original game assets are not provided and your own ROM must be sourced.