pc-thelaststory

Toward a native PC port of The Last Story (Wii, Mistwalker / AQ Interactive, 2011; Europe 2012, North America 2012). The game was never re-released: no remaster, no digital release. The goal is the game running natively on PC, at a frame rate the Wii never held steady.

The route is static recompilation: the game's own PowerPC code, translated to C++ and built for the PC, running on a replacement for the Wii's hardware and system software. Nothing is emulated at the instruction level, and nothing of the game is rewritten.

This repository documents the port and holds its own tools and layer. It is the seventh port built on wiikit, the game-agnostic Wii toolkit, taken here as a submodule at wiikit/. Where this game needs something every Wii game would need, it goes into wiikit, not here. The game's formats were reverse engineered earlier, in wii-thelaststory-re.

Where it stands

After two sessions the game boots and plays into its first chapter: the strap screen, the title, the menu, New Game, Chapter 1 (Reptids' Cave), Zael in the cave and the first tutorial, at 16:9 and a steady 30 frames a second, with the Classic Controller (a gamepad), played by hand through the first cave. Session 2 cleared the sound's gaps and the stalls when characters come in. Fog is not drawn yet; 60 frames a second is next. See docs/00-sessions.md and the plan in docs/07-next-session.md.

BYOA — Bring Your Own Assets

This repository contains documentation and tools only. No game data, no executables, no assets. You need your own original disc. The work is done on the European release, SLSP01; the addresses in tools/ and docs/ are that executable's.

Layout

docs/     the executable, the plan, the session log
tools/    The Last Story-specific tools, the port's layer (tls.cpp)
wiikit/   game-agnostic Wii toolkit (submodule: github.com/vs-sr-dev/wiikit)
build/    (not in git) the disc, everything derived from it, the build

Building

As for the other wiikit ports: Python 3.8+, CMake, Ninja, clang (MSYS2) and SDL3; OpenGL 4.5 to run. From the root:

python -m wiikit.disc GAME.iso --extract build/extract
python tools/sigmatch.py build/extract/sys/main.dol --dsy <Dolphin>/Sys/totaldb.dsy \
    --out build/sig_guess.tsv
python tools/names.py build/extract/sys/main.dol          # -> build/names.tsv
python -m wiikit.recomp build/extract/sys/main.dol --out build/recomp \
    --symbols build/names.tsv --hooks tools/tls-hooks.txt
cmake -S build/recomp -B build/recomp-build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++ \
    -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DCMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELEASE=-O1 -DWIIKIT_EXTRA=$PWD/tools/tls.cmake
ninja -C build/recomp-build
cd build/run1 && ../recomp-build/wiiboot ../extract --symbols ../recomp/symbols.tsv

build/fonts holds the boot ROM's fonts and dsp_coef.bin (Dolphin's Sys/GC has free ones). The names need only Dolphin's totaldb.dsy (in every Dolphin install's Sys folder) and tools/names-manual.tsv, every function the runtime hooks that the database misses, each with its evidence. tools/look.py is wiikit.ppc on the stripped DOL.

Documentation

00-sessions.md            progress log
03-executable.md          the stripped DOL, its names, the engine's frame pacing
07-next-session.md        the plan for the next session
10-wiikit.md              how this port uses and grows wiikit

Playing: wiikit's Classic Controller mapping (the pad's buttons by position; build/keys.txt for the keyboard). F11 fullscreen, F12 a GX trace.

Licence

MIT. This covers the documentation and tools in this repository only. It says nothing about The Last Story, which remains the property of its rights holders.