Skate 2 PC Recompilation

An unofficial native Windows port of the Xbox 360 version of Skate 2, built by statically recompiling the game's default.xex with the ReXGlue SDK (via the Skate 3 Recomp fork).

The game boots through the menus and idle movie into freeskate, and mission triggers work, at over 100 FPS on a Ryzen 7 7800X3D. It is early: expect bugs. It uses the SDK's emulated Xbox 360 GPU on Direct3D 12.

No game files or recompiled game code are included. You need your own Xbox 360 Skate 2 disc image. The build recompiles the code from your copy.

Tested with Skate 2 (USA) (En,Fr), title ID 4541087F, default.xex SHA-1 a9b539c1acbc80aeaade3ffbe708e1fbd3a2dad7. Other regions or title updates have different code addresses and need their own config.

Requirements

• Windows 10/11, x86-64 CPU with AVX2
• LLVM (Clang 18 or newer): winget install LLVM.LLVM
• Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools with the C++ workload (MSVC libraries, CMake and Ninja)
• Python 3, Git

tools/devenv.bat runs a command with the VS 2022 Build Tools environment plus LLVM on the path. Edit the paths at the top if yours differ.

Build

git clone https://github.com/cookingwithsimon/Skate2Recompiled.git

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File tools/setup.ps1

setup.ps1 fetches the SDK submodules and applies patches/rexglue-sdk.patch.

Extract your disc image into game/:

python tools/extract_iso.py "Skate 2 (USA) (En,Fr).iso" extract-all game

Configure, build the recompiler, generate the C++ from your default.xex, then build the game:

tools\devenv.bat cmake --preset win-amd64-relwithdebinfo

tools\devenv.bat cmake --build out/build/win-amd64-relwithdebinfo --target rexglue

third_party\rexglue-sdk\out\win-amd64\rexglue.exe codegen skate2_manifest.toml

tools\devenv.bat cmake --preset win-amd64-relwithdebinfo

tools\devenv.bat cmake --build out/build/win-amd64-relwithdebinfo

Copy skate2.example.toml to out/build/win-amd64-relwithdebinfo/skate2.toml, set game_data_root to your game folder, and run skate2.exe from that folder.

Controls

An Xbox controller works out of the box. Keyboard controls (set in skate2.toml, mnk_mode = true):

Controller	Key
Left stick	W / A / S / D
Left stick click	Z
A / B / X / Y	Space / Ctrl / Shift / T
D-pad	Arrow keys
Start / Back	Enter / Tab
LB / RB	Q / R
LT / RT	Right / left mouse button

F2 toggles the FPS counter.

What was needed for Skate 2

• config/skate2_functions.toml: native setjmp/longjmp (without them Lua never initialises), about 205 function entry points the analysis misses (found with tools/scan_data_ptrs.py and tools/scan_code_ptrs.py), and one jump table override.
• patches/rexglue-sdk.patch, applied to the SDK:
  • ImGui overlays (on-screen keyboard, FPS counter) never drew with the current imgui: the drawer read the obsolete ImDrawData::CmdListsCount.
  • A lone Alt press opened the window's system menu and froze input.
  • vpkuhus/vpkuwus produced wrong results when the destination register aliased a source.
  • Unregistered-call crashes log a guest backtrace.
  • One imgui font setting that only exists in the fork's imgui is disabled.
  • The frame-end refresh of GPU-written page flags always copies the whole table. The partial copy went into a buffer two frames stale and caused alternating-frame flicker once frames got faster.
• The presets build with REXGLUE_ENABLE_PERF_COUNTERS=OFF, which saves about 6% CPU on the GPU thread. Tested at 1x and 2x resolution scale.
• To update an SDK checkout that has an older patch applied, run git -C third_party/rexglue-sdk checkout -- src and then setup.ps1 again.
• The SDK pins an imgui commit that no longer exists upstream; setup.ps1 uses the nearest commit from the same day.

Development helpers

• tools/iterate.ps1: regenerate, rebuild, run for a while and print the end of the log.
• tools/play_keys.ps1: launch the game, press keys on a schedule and take screenshots.
• tools/peek.py, tools/find_refs.py, tools/func_strings.py: inspect the decrypted image from rexglue dump-xex.

Disclaimer

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Electronic Arts or Microsoft. Skate 2 is a trademark of Electronic Arts. Use only with a copy of the game you own.