'Splosion Man — Linux & Windows Recompilation

Native Linux and Windows ports of the Xbox 360 XBLA game 'Splosion Man (Twisted Pixel, 2009), built with the ReXGlue SDK static recompiler — the same toolchain family as Dante's Inferno and Condemned 2.

Status:

• Linux: fully playable — graphics, PipeWire audio, controller + vibration, full-game unlock, FSR upscaling, verified on Kubuntu (AMD RX 6600 / RADV).
• Windows: test build available (see the windows-test-1 pre-release) — built by CI, verified end-to-end via Proton (levels, sound, gamepad + vibration, FSR). Native Windows reports welcome.

No game data is included in this repository or its releases. You must supply your own legally obtained copy of the game — the launchers can import your XBLA package directly, or use a folder containing default.xex (e.g. extracted from your Xbox 360 disc/download). 'Splosion Man is © Twisted Pixel Games / Microsoft. This is a fan-made interoperability project; do not redistribute game assets.

Download

Linux — release v2.0

Grab the AppImage (x86_64) from the latest release. chmod +x, run — the launcher imports your XBLA package on the Game tab, or lets you pick an extracted game folder. Requirements: a distro with glibc 2.43+ (this build was produced on Ubuntu 26.04; a more portable build is planned), Vulkan drivers for your GPU, and PipeWire or PulseAudio.

Windows — pre-release windows-test-1

Grab SplosionMan-Windows-Test-v0.1.zip from the pre-release. Extract the folder anywhere, run TPSplosionmanLauncher.exe, import your XBLA package on the Game tab, and press Play. Requirements: Windows 10/11 64-bit and a GPU with Vulkan support. The four game program files (splosionman.exe, rexruntime.dll, rexgpu-xenos.dll, amd_fidelityfx_dx12.dll) must stay together in the folder — the launcher checks for them at startup.

The launcher

Both platforms ship the TP 'Splosion Man Launcher (Qt6, theme included), from the shared launcher codebase in tp-launcher/:

• Import XBLA package on the Game tab — built-in STFS extraction, no external tools needed
• 23 settings, each with a plain-language explanation: internal resolution (720p→4K), AMD FSR upscaling (on by default), FXAA, MSAA, anisotropic filtering, VSync, frame limit, audio options, storage locations, and advanced Vulkan/profile options
• Settings save automatically as you change them; Reset to Defaults included
• On Linux, the launcher also vacuums leaked guest-memory mappings from crashed runs before launching

Building from source

Linux

You need: the ReXGlue SDK (with FidelityFX enabled), clang 20, Qt6 dev, Vulkan headers, and PipeWire + SPA development headers — without them SDL silently builds without a PipeWire audio backend and the game has no sound on PipeWire systems. (Ask us how we know.)

1. Build the ReXGlue SDK (REXGLUE_ENABLE_FIDELITYFX=ON).
2. Codegen from your own default.xex (or use the included generated/): rexglue codegen, then scripts/fix-labels.py and scripts/smart-patch.py (host setjmp/longjmp registry, branch fixes).
3. Build the game (CMake preset linux-amd64), the SDK runtime libs, and tp-launcher/ (CMake, -DTP_GAME=splosionman).
4. Package with packaging/appimage/build-appimage-x86_64.sh.

Note: never mix the executable and runtime libraries from different build sets — it corrupts the heap.

Windows

Windows builds are produced by GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/windows.yml): the workflow clones the pinned ReXGlue SDK, applies patches/house-sdk.patch, builds the game with the win-amd64-release preset, and builds tp-launcher/ against Qt 6.8 (MSVC). Trigger it from the Actions tab. The same steps work in a local Windows checkout with Visual Studio 2022 and Qt 6.8 installed.

Known landmine (Linux): /dev/shm leaks

The runtime backs guest memory with a ~4.5 GB xenia_memory_* file in /dev/shm per run. Crashed or killed runs leak these files; when /dev/shm fills, new runs die with a bus error immediately after "Guest memory arena mapped" (launcher shows exit code 7). The launcher now cleans these up automatically before launching; if the game ever still refuses to start, check df -h /dev/shm and remove stale files: rm /dev/shm/xenia_memory_*. (Windows uses named page-file mappings that die with the process, so it doesn't have this problem.)

Also, on either platform: a crash while the shader cache writes can poison it — if the game starts freezing at the intro→3D transition, delete the cache subfolder in the game's data folder (your saves live elsewhere and are safe).

Credits & disclosure

• ReXGlue SDK team — the recompiler and runtime that make this possible.
• The original launcher was adapted from the Linux Qt launcher written by MaSieS4Fun for hells-gate-recomp, Zerkiller's (florinp93's) Dante's Inferno recompilation — its settings system, game-folder setup, and AppImage packaging approach all started there, and the launcher lineage goes back to Zerkiller's original launcher for that project. The current TP launcher grew out of that lineage into a bespoke cross-platform launcher for this project family. Credit where it's due: thank you both.
• Twisted Pixel Games — for a game absolutely worth this much trouble.
• This port was built by Jason Hixon with heavy AI assistance (Muse, by Meta) on the coding side, and tested the old-fashioned way: by playing it. The bugs were real, the explosions earned.