NX2navi/docs/building.md

Building from source

Windows 10 or later, an x86-64 CPU with SSE4.2, and a GPU with Vulkan 1.3 and VK_EXT_external_memory_host. The default build targets x86-64-v3 (AVX2/FMA); a CPU without them builds with --cpu v2 instead and runs slower (see "Build"). Allow about 60 GB for the work folder. Extraction wants about 55 GB free while it runs and keeps about 35 GB afterwards.

Players who only want to play use the launcher instead: it installs its own build tools, builds the game on their machine and keeps it up to date.

Toolchain

Versions are the ones the build was verified with; newer patch releases are fine.

Tool	Version	Install	Used for
MSYS2 UCRT64	clang/lld 23.1.3	msys2.org installer to C:\msys64, packages below	compiling the generated C and the runtime
Visual Studio Build Tools	2026, C++ workload, Windows SDK 10.0.26100	winget Microsoft.VisualStudio.BuildTools with --add Microsoft.VisualStudio.Workload.VCTools --includeRecommended	the linker .NET NativeAOT calls
.NET SDK	10.0	winget Microsoft.DotNet.SDK.10	the shader translator (nx2navi_xlate.exe)
Vulkan SDK	1.4.363	winget KhronosGroup.VulkanSDK	validation layers, vulkaninfo
uv	0.13	standalone installer from astral.sh	the two Python environments
hactool	1.4.0 @ 1d64a83	.venv\Scripts\python tools\build_hactool.py, see below	NCA and update extraction

MSYS2 packages, after pacman -Syuu (run it twice; the first pass updates the core and exits):

pacman -S --needed --noconfirm mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-{clang,lld,ninja,gcc,make,pkgconf,sdl3,opus,libvpx,zstd,vulkan-devel,\
vulkan-memory-allocator,vulkan-validation-layers,shaderc,spirv-tools} base-devel git unzip

ffmpeg from MSYS2 is a GPLv3 build and is never linked; the movies go through libvpx.

PATH:

• Add C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio\Installer to the user PATH: NativeAOT needs vswhere.exe, or the publish fails at the link step (MSB3073).
• Another cmake or ninja earlier on PATH (a 32-bit winlibs MinGW, for example) is picked up by accident. The build scripts call Ninja from C:\msys64\ucrt64\bin themselves; from a shell, put C:\msys64\ucrt64\bin first.

hactool

tools/build_hactool.py fetches hactool at 1d64a83 into toolchain\src\hactool, applies the three patches in tools/hactool/ and builds a static toolchain\hactool\hactool.exe with MSYS2 UCRT64 gcc (a few seconds):

• portable.patch: the changes a portable Windows build needs, the MNG_TITLE_KEYS variable and the two BKTR fixes in nca.c for the subsection table padding and the subsection layout of newer cumulative updates;
• unicode.patch: a manifest with <activeCodePage>UTF-8</activeCodePage>, so paths under a non-ASCII user profile reach it intact;
• mbedtls-asm-clobbers.patch: the memory and cc clobbers the bundled mbedtls 2.6.1's x86-64 multiply asm lacks. Without them a clang build (the Linux release) fails every RSA signature check and the update merge stops.

hactool reads -k <prod.keys>; MSYS2 shells set HOME, which hides its default key location, so pass -k there.

Build

From the repository root, in PowerShell. Every step that depends on the game version takes it as <ver>: v143 for 1.4.3, v121 for 1.2.1 or v110 for 1.1.0. The tools default to v121 when --version is left out. Saves load on any of them.

1. Python environments (once). .venv runs the lifter and the build; .venv-py314 runs the extraction scripts, which need the stdlib compression.zstd of Python 3.14:

   uv venv --python 3.12 .venv
   uv pip install --python .venv/Scripts/python.exe -r tools/requirements.txt
   uv venv --python 3.14 .venv-py314
   uv pip install --python .venv-py314/Scripts/python.exe -r tools/requirements-py314.txt
   

2. Copy config.example.toml to config.local.toml and set the paths to your base game, the update and your console's keys file. config.local.toml is ignored by git. The tools read the keys file themselves.

3. Extract and verify. This writes build\extracted\v0 (1.0.0) and build\extracted\<ver> for each update in updates, identified by its hash; a hash mismatch stops the run. With another [work] dir in config.local.toml, extracted goes there instead, and build_game.py reads the ExeFS and RomFS from there:

   .venv-py314\Scripts\python tools\extract.py
   

4. Shader translator (no game files; again after a change to its sources, and tools\make_release.py stops on an older one). This publishes build\xlate\nx2navi_xlate.exe:

   .venv\Scripts\python tools\build_xlate.py
   

5. Lift the modules to C, write the RomFS overlay (the frame-rate fix), then compile and link build\<ver>\nx2navi.exe:

   .venv\Scripts\python recomp\gen.py --exefs build\extracted\<ver>\exefs --out generated\<ver> --patches recomp\patches-<ver>.txt
   .venv-py314\Scripts\python tools\make_romfs_patches.py --version <ver>
   .venv\Scripts\python tools\build_game.py --version <ver>
   

   The runtime's own shaders (upscaling, HDR, texture decode and the like) are in the repository as source only: GLSL and SPIR-V assembly in runtime\shaders\, and two small ones assembled by tools\make_dlaa_mask.py and tools\make_mvobj_fs.py. build_game.py compiles them into runtime\<name>_spv.h (git ignores these) before it compiles the runtime, with glslc, spirv-as and spirv-val from the shaderc and spirv-tools packages above, and again whenever a source changed. python tools\build_shaders.py does that step alone; --check only reports the headers that are missing or stale.

   --cpu v2 targets x86-64-v2 (SSE4.2, no AVX2/FMA) for older CPUs; the default v3 needs AVX2. The v2 build links runtime/fma.c, a correctly rounded software fma the FP lowering needs, and runs slower. Inline assembly, target attributes and intrinsics are not bound by -march, so a v2 build runs tools/check_isa.py over the runtime objects before it links: any AVX, BMI or other instruction above x86-64-v2 outside a function listed there as dispatched by a runtime CPU check stops the build.

   gen.py sizes its emit pool from the CPU count and the free memory; --jobs N sets it, and so does the environment variable NX2NAVI_LIFT_JOBS=N, which the installer's lift step honours too (it has no --jobs). When a worker runs out of memory, the pool restarts with half the workers (emit: out of memory with N workers, retrying with M), down to one; only an out-of-memory error with one worker fails the step.

   Lifting takes about 15 s, a clean compile about 200 s on 24 threads; later builds recompile only what changed. A compiler cache in front of clang shortens it further: with SCCACHE set to an sccache executable, build_game.py writes it into the ninja file ahead of cc, and every lift rewrites the generated chunks with the same contents, so a second build of the same version hits all of their objects:

   $env:SCCACHE = "path\to\sccache.exe"
   .venv\Scripts\python tools\build_game.py --version <ver>
   

   --patches builds in the frame-rate, resolution and other patch sets, switchable at run time. The link copies SDL3.dll, libiconv-2.dll and libopus-0.dll next to the exe. For Xbox button prompts, run make_romfs_patches.py twice more, with --prompts xbox and --prompts xbox-label: they write build\<ver>\romfs-patches-xbox and romfs-patches-xbox-label (controls.md, "Xbox button prompts"), which build_game.py copies next to nx2navi.exe like romfs-patches. --prompts pc writes romfs-patches-pc, the keyboard and mouse prompts (controls.md, "PC button prompts").

6. Prepare the shaders (once per build folder and translator). It needs refs\MacNativeGames (tools\fetch_refs.sh) for the shared shader list:

   .venv-py314\Scripts\python tools\prepare_shaders.py build\<ver> --version <ver>
   

   Without this step the first launch compiles shaders and pipelines during play and stutters until the caches fill. The AMD driver keeps its pipeline cache per exe path and holds a limited amount: preparing another build folder can evict this one's. nx2navi.exe --warm-shaders rebuilds it from the shader cache. A driver update empties the driver's cache too, and a change to what a stage library is built with gives every library another entry in it. So an update that carries the prepared shaders over runs --warm-shaders (tools/make_game.py warm_driver_cache: seconds while the libraries are there, minutes when they are not), and the game itself checks at every start: it builds a sample of the prepared fragment libraries and, when their median time says the cache is cold, builds the whole prepared list into the driver's cache again on idle-priority threads while it runs (runtime/vk_pipeline.c lw_start, NX2NAVI_LIB_WARM; shader-warm.txt next to the caches says where that stands). With the cache cold every pipeline a draw first needs compiles in play: on an RX 7900 XT a library took 93 ms (vertex) and 242 ms (fragment) on average against 0.3 and 0.6 ms from the cache, and a first walk through a village skipped 11,180 draws and made 94 draws wait 5.5 s in all, against 1,605 skipped (1,473 of them in the scene's first frames) and 60 ms of waits with the cache warm. A frame that still lacks draws when it is presented is not shown: the previous picture stays on screen (runtime/vk_backend.c frame_hold, NX2NAVI_FRAME_HOLD_MS, an allowance of 120 ms that fills again at an eighth of the clock's rate). On a first walk through a village with nothing recorded, 21 of the 23 such frames were held back; in a player's session a hit by a boulder had shown one black frame, its lighting pass skipped after 50 ms. When the driver's shader compiler crashes on a variant (NVIDIA 615.78.08 on an RTX 5080 does, issue #30), prepare_shaders.py runs the driver step again with --warm-shaders, up to three times, without the variants the driver was building at the crash. shader-prepare-skip.txt next to the exe lists them with the GPU and driver version; they build at their first draw instead, another driver version builds them again, and so does deleting the file.

7. Run. The game keeps running when its window loses the focus (assume_focus = 1 in nx2navi.ini, the default; the Game tab switches it). With 0 it pauses, as it does on the Switch when Home is pressed.

   build\<ver>\nx2navi.exe
   

Settings live in nx2navi.ini next to nx2navi.exe (nx2navi.ini.example lists them). Saves go to build\profile for v121 and build\profile-<ver> for other versions (build_game.py --profile changes it).

Portable folder

.venv\Scripts\python tools\package_build.py --version <ver> writes build\<ver>-portable, which runs on another of your machines without MSYS2, Python or .NET. romfs.bin stays out unless you pass --with-romfs; otherwise put it in romfs\ next to the exe or point NX2NAVI_ROMFS at its folder. Run nx2navi.exe --prepare-shaders once in the copied folder. The folder holds code and data derived from your game: for your own machines only.

Profile-guided build

build_game.py --pgo <file>.profdata compiles the generated code at -O2 with an execution profile, and the runtime with it too: hot paths laid out straight, hot calls inlined, code that never ran compiled for size. On 1.4.3 the fight bench ran 12-15% faster per frame and a fight outside the training about 6%. The installer builds with data/pgo-<ver>.profdata of the release when the update has one, else at -O1.

A profile only fits the generated C it was trained on: functions are matched by name and control-flow hash, so a function whose C changes loses its counts without a warning. Retrain after a lifter or generator change, from a clean recomp/. The instrumented build needs llvm-mingw, as MSYS2's clang has no profile runtime:

$llvm = "toolchain\llvm-mingw-<date>\llvm-mingw-<date>-ucrt-x86_64"
.venv\Scripts\python tools\build_game.py --version v143 --out build\v143-pgogen --toolchain $llvm --pgo gen

Play build\v143-pgogen\nx2navi.exe through varied scenes (fights, towns, riding, building, underground, menus) for 20-30 minutes; it is slower than a normal build. It writes build\v143-pgogen\pgo\*.profraw every minute and at exit. Scripted runs from saves (tools/run_game.py) add to the same file. Then:

.venv\Scripts\python tools\pgo.py merge build\v143-pgogen --version v143

writes build\pgo\pgo-v143.profdata and its record (.json: the recomp/ tree it fits). make_release.py ships every profile of build\pgo in data\ and warns when a record names another recomp/ tree than the one released.

Linux (in progress)

The runtime builds and runs on x86-64 Linux with a window, input and menu on SDL3 (*_sdl.c) in place of the Win32 files (*_win.c); runtime/platform/linux.c implements platform.h. Status: the selftest and the probes pass; 1.2.1 plays at 60 fps on RADV (RX 7800 XT) and NVIDIA (RTX 3060); 1.4.3 builds, probes and plays on RADV (RX 6600, and the Vega 7 of a Ryzen 5 4600G at about 34 fps). Long play sessions and the Steam Deck itself are not verified yet.

Requirements:

• Linux 6.7 or later: the write watch uses userfaultfd write protection with PAGEMAP_SCAN. SteamOS 3.8 qualifies.

• A Vulkan 1.3 driver with VK_EXT_external_memory_host (RADV, NVIDIA).

• Packages on Arch:

  pacman -S --needed clang lld ninja make sdl3 opus libvpx zstd vulkan-headers vulkan-icd-loader \
      vulkan-validation-layers shaderc spirv-tools dotnet-sdk uv git
  

  Vulkan Memory Allocator is a single header (AUR vulkan-memory-allocator). Without it, build_game.py fetches the version the Windows release pins (3.4.0) into toolchain/vma/ on first use and checks its hash.

The steps are the Windows ones with POSIX paths: .venv/bin/python in place of .venv\Scripts\python, and nx2navi in place of nx2navi.exe. build_game.py takes clang, lld and Ninja from PATH (or the ones in <dir>/bin with --toolchain <dir>) and links against the system libraries, with libstdc++ static and an $ORIGIN rpath; build_hactool.py builds hactool with make. tools/prepare_shaders.py reads the shader list from refs/MacNativeGames at origin/HEAD, which must be the pinned commit with its history (the list format changed later).

The probes open a window, so from an SSH session they need the desktop session's display, or they stop at gpu 0 skipped: no graphics+compute+present queue family: on Wayland XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/$(id -u) WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-1 SDL_VIDEODRIVER=wayland (the socket name is in $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR), on X11 DISPLAY=:0.

NVIDIA's Linux driver compiles into a disk cache of its own. A process adds at most __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_SIZE to it (1 GiB by default; at a start the files after the first are deleted while the folder is over that size), and the default folder, ~/.cache/nvidia, is shared with every program. --prepare-shaders of game 1.1.1 builds 42,142 variants, about 1.5 GB: on the default limit about 30,700 of them were stored and the rest compiled again at their first draw in play. runtime/vk_device.c therefore points __GL_SHADER_DISK_CACHE_PATH at nvidia-cache beside ocarina and the size at 8 GiB, each unless the environment sets it, as it does MESA_SHADER_CACHE_DIR for RADV, and only while NVIDIA's kernel driver is loaded (/proc/driver/nvidia/version). The driver does not make that folder and caches nothing in a folder it cannot write, so the game makes it, and when it cannot make or write it sets neither variable. A game run sets them in main before any of its threads starts, since a thread can load the Vulkan driver before the instance is made. The folder can be deleted; ocarina --warm-shaders fills it again.

Memory: on Windows the GPU imports guest memory and GetWriteWatch tracks the CPU's writes to it. On Linux, re-protecting imported memory invalidates the driver's userptr buffer on every submit (about 1.3 ms per 16 MiB on amdgpu), and importing pins the pages, which drops their write protection. Each CPU-visible pool therefore gets a host-visible copy (shadow storage, runtime/vk_memory.c): the pages the CPU wrote go in before each submit, and the GPU's writes come back at its fence. Pages both sides write keep a base copy, so each direction moves only its own bytes; a VRAM mirror's write-back merge marks the pages it changed, and only those are compared at the fence; a lookup that reads guest memory itself (the uniform snapshot, vk_mem_lookup) does not queue its pool for the copy-in. In Kokiri Forest (1.1.1, RTX 4090) that costs about 1 ms a frame (copy-in 0.5 ms, write-back 0.6 ms), and the copies hold about 5 GB. NX2NAVI_SHADOW=1 turns it on under Windows too. The Steam Deck's RADV has VK_EXT_external_memory_host as well: the shadow copies are chosen for the measured cost above, not for a missing extension.

The device address table (runtime/vk_gpa.c) names a pool's shadow copy as it names an import, so shaders follow guest pointers into either. A shader that reads through the table resolves nothing, so the pool it reaches is not queued for the copy-in: a part whose pipelines declare the table is marked at its draws and dispatches, and its prologue brings the shadow of every pool in the table up to date with the pages the CPU wrote and queues the same pages for those pools' VRAM mirrors (vk_memory.c vk_mem_gpa_sync). That copies the written pages of every CPU-visible pool in each such part, which the cost above does not include. What a shader stores through the table into a shadow copy does not come back to guest memory. --probe-vkmem checks the read: a shader follows the table to a word of a pool that is never bound, and must read 0x13579BDF and, after a plain CPU write, 0x2468ACE0. On Linux, run it for each backing:

for shadow in 0 1; do for memory in import mirror; do
    NX2NAVI_GPA=1 NX2NAVI_SHADOW=$shadow NX2NAVI_MEMORY=$memory ./ocarina --probe-vkmem
done; done

The Deck's GPU (Van Gogh) has no native ASTC, so its textures go through the compute decoder (runtime/vk_astc.c, NX2NAVI_ASTC) as on desktop AMD GPUs without it; frame times measured there include it.

Checks

Before a commit:

• python tools/check_content.py --staged: nothing game-derived and no compiled shader is staged. CI runs the same check; git config core.hooksPath .githooks runs it before each local commit.
• build\<ver>\nx2navi.exe --selftest: layout, dispatch table and host-function registry, without game files.

A change to the in-game menu's look (runtime/ui/menu_skin.cpp, option_rows.cpp, perf_panel.cpp) can be looked at without game files: python tools/menu_preview.py builds the menu's own drawing code with the host's clang++ and writes the Screen tab, the full performance overlay and the boot screen to build/menu-preview/ (menu.png, overlay.png, boot.png; a stand-in font, and the window's plain border in place of the game's ornamented frame). With --romfs <extracted RomFS folder> it draws the game's interface textures as the game does, and tools/ui_textures.py <folder> lists the textures there and dumps those matching --match to build/ui-textures/; both decode the game's files, so they run with .venv-py314\Scripts\python (compression.zstd and numpy). What they write is decoded game data: keep it under build/.

A change to the shared save (runtime/save_zip.c, runtime/save_share.c, the save import in runtime/fs_host.c) passes python tests\save_zip_check.py and python tests\save_share_check.py. The first builds save_zip.c alone and checks its deflate, inflate, zip writer and reader against Python's zlib and zipfile both ways, and that the launcher imports a zip it wrote. The second builds fs_host.c and save_share.c with the rest of the runtime stubbed and runs each step as a start of the game on a profile it makes: the export, an import from a zip the launcher exported, its backup and swap at the next start, the zips it refuses and Cancel. No game files.

A change to the step Ocarina is given each frame (runtime/frame_rate.c ocarina_step) passes python tests\frame_step_check.py, which builds frame_rate.c with the rest of the runtime stubbed and feeds it display times: a held 60 fps limit gives exactly one frame every frame, a 240 fps limit never less than a quarter frame, uneven frame times one steady step, and game time follows the clock. No game files.

A change to the button prompts (tools/make_romfs_patches.py --prompts, tools/button_icons.py) passes .venv-py314\Scripts\python tests\romfs_prompts_test.py, which runs the tool on a RomFS it makes itself (no game files); a change to the settings passes nx2navi.exe --probe-cfg.

The lifter (recomp/) and the CPU headers (runtime/cpu.h, runtime/simd.h) are checked against Unicorn. Every lifter change passes these, all run with .venv:

Test	Checks	Game files
tests\diff\lift.py	instructions sampled from the extracted modules; --coverage lists every word the lifter rejects or traps	yes
tests\diff\simd.py	the whole FP/SIMD encoding space	no
tests\diff\atomic.py	exclusive load/store sequences and ARMv8.1 atomics	no
tests\diff\func.py	whole functions as the generator emits them, loops, jump tables and calls included (calls go to a stub that checks the registers at the call)	yes
tests\flags_check.py	the function-local flag helpers of runtime\cpu.h against its packed ones	no
tests\ds3_check.py	the DualShock 3 report decoding and output report of runtime\input_ds3.c	no
tests\gpa_check.py	the device address table of runtime\vk_gpa.c as a shader reads it: mapping, mirrors and twins, overlapping imports, and blocks given back and taken again while pool addresses climb (no GPU; any Python)	no
tests\excl_mt.py	the exclusive monitor helpers under contention and ABA, on several threads	no
tests\jumptables_check.py	recomp/jumptables.py against a Unicorn oracle; must report 0 disagreements, on 1.4.3 too	yes

A --cpu v2 build passes the same differential tests with --cflags=-march=x86-64-v2; they compile runtime/fma.c too, so they check the software fma the v2 build links rather than the C runtime's.

On NVIDIA Linux, NX2NAVI_DLAA=1 ./ocarina --probe-vkdevice logs NGX initialization and shutdown when available.

Runtime probes, each a mode of nx2navi.exe (the list is at the top of runtime/main.c): --probe-kernel, --probe-vkexec, --probe-nvn-tex and --probe-shader cover most runtime changes. --probe-shader and the draw part of --probe-vkexec translate shaders of the census below: they look for build/<ver>/shaders/jobs.json of the exe's own version first, then of the other one. --probe-vkmem also checks CPU-backed texture uploads and rewrites, GPU-written texture aliases, and memory write watches. --probe-prewarm runs the boot's pipeline stages without the game, from the caches next to the exe (it skips when there are none): the pipeline cache load, the shader prewarm, the recorded pipelines and the compute pipeline prebuild, with a mem: boot stage log line after each that gives the device memory and the process commit so far. It then asks for compute pipelines the boot did not keep, as their first dispatch would, and prints what one costs. The device memory after the compute stage should be what it was before the stage, apart from the kept pipelines. A change to what the boot builds or keeps (runtime/vk_pipeline.c: prewarm_run, lb_compute, the compute-used.bin record) passes it.

Shaders: .venv-py314\Scripts\python tools\shader_census.py --version <ver> --translate extracts every Maxwell shader to build\<ver>\shaders\ and runs it through the translator and spirv-val; failure groups go to failures.txt. tools\xlate_smoke.py checks the translator alone, without game files.

A change to the SM86 tensor lowering (tools/xlate/AmpereLowering.cs Hmma, Ldsm, Movm, Half) passes python tests\tensor_lowering_check.py: it lowers GPU-captured vectors with nx2navi_xlate --lower and runs them on tests\maxwell_warp_emu.py, a model of what the shader translator makes of Maxwell code (the docstring names the vector file and what is checked). tests\maxwell_warp_emu_selftest.py checks the emulator itself. No game files.

Reverse engineering (optional)

• Ghidra 12.1.2 with the Ghidra-Switch-Loader extension in toolchain\ghidra\ (JDK 21) opens the game modules (NSO).