SSX Tricky

This is a work-in-progress decompilation of SSX Tricky for the PlayStation 2.

This project builds the NTSC-U version of the game (SLUS_203.26). Other regions and versions may be considered once NTSC-U has been completed and matched.

Setup

You will need:

• a Linux system that can run 32 bit applications. WSL2 should work as well. The compiler in tools/cc is a 32 bit i386 binary.
• Python 3.13, with pipenv
• A NTSC-U disc image (obtained legally)

Arch Linux

# pacman -S lib32-gcc-libs

Debian/Ubuntu

# apt install -y pipenv ninja-build

Fedora

# dnf install -y python3.13 ninja-build glibc.i686

Fedora does not package pipenv; install it with pip install --user pipenv or uv tool install pipenv.

Make a disc directory in the root of this repository, and copy the files from the NTSC-U game disc. Only disc/SLUS_203.26 is needed to build; the rest of the disc is for asset work later.

If what you have is a disc image rather than loose files, pull just the executable out of it:

$ mkdir -p disc
$ isoinfo -i /path/to/ssx.iso -x '/SLUS_203.26;1' > disc/SLUS_203.26
$ sha1sum disc/SLUS_203.26
45e9fd5fa4c0b30ffbd4155a9e256d5eabc65d23  disc/SLUS_203.26

Keep the image itself outside the working tree; disc/ and the usual disc-image extensions are ignored.

Download the toolchain -- the decompals binutils and ee-gcc 2.9, both pinned and checked against a sha256:

$ ./download.sh

Neither lives in the repository. Re-running is a no-op once the versions on disk match the pins; delete tools/binutils or tools/cc/ee-991111-01 to force a re-download. See tools/cc/README.md for where the compiler comes from and under what terms.

Setup a venv for splat:

$ pipenv install

pipenv run ./configure.py ultimately does the setup.

Building

ninja should do the trick.

The build is correct when the rebuilt image is byte-identical to the disc's executable, which ninja checks for you against config/checksum.sha1. Pass --skip-checksum to configure.py while you are deliberately mid-change.

Tools

pipenv run python -m mapfile_parser first_diff out/SLUS_203.26.map disc/SLUS_203.26	report the first byte that diverges from the disc's executable, and which symbol it is in
tools/compdb	write compile_commands.json for clangd
./configure.py --objects	build objects twice, into obj/target and obj/current, and write objdiff.json

Documentation

• doc/styleguide.md -- naming and formatting, following the original codebase.