Beach Life recomp

A native C++ port of Beach Life (Deep Red Games / Eidos, 2002), known in North America as Virtual Resort: Spring Break, for Windows, Linux and macOS.

Faithful reconstruction advances through source patches over a pinned baseline in this repository. New launcher, data, runtime and native platform code lives in src/. The original executable never runs inside the port.

Disclaimer

This project is AI-assisted. English is not my native language, and most of the documentation has been rewritten by LLMs.

I am a software engineer and have been working on software projects for more than 30 years: from the demoscene, to freelancing in the games industry, to failed startup dreams, to big and heavy projects in the commercial market.

This project is a labor of love for a game I remember enjoying, and for many hours of happy memories playing it with my girlfriend, now my wife, more than 20 years ago.

The decompilation and recompilation are crafted by hand, and most of the code is handwritten. LLMs helped me analyze the crash reports of the many bugs that crashed the game. And hey, you will enjoy many more bugs with this project, because neither I nor any LLM is perfect.

I am also bad at UI and design, worse than any AI, so LLMs help me there too. I value the time I invest in hard problems more than time spent on something that just makes me depressed. Do you want to step in here with your talent? Yes, please reach out to me by opening an issue.

This project shares a lot of code with Recharged, a port of a Nintendo Wii game into which I have already sunk thousands of hours.

I know that AI creates anxiety. In the hands of professionals, AI is an amazing tool, and the results speak for themselves. Society is learning to use these tools, just as we had to learn to use a chainsaw: dangerous tools, but incredible efficiency multipliers when used the right way.

If you have a personal problem with AI, please ignore this project. I do it for me, not at all to please you. If you enjoy the result, or if you want to share your excitement with me or contribute great ideas, you will make my day even nicer. Otherwise, I am happy to ignore you completely :) I don't challenge your dislike of AI, but then please be consistent and delete your operating system, your browser and your phone: more or less everything you use now and will use in the future.

We are all on a learning journey: we have to live through this change and find our place in this digital world on steroids.

Current status

Every native package includes the playable decompiled game. Select your own supported English ISO in the launcher and press Play to prepare its files, then enter the intro, menus and game. Prepared files work with the ISO disconnected. The original executable is never launched.

On the Gameplay page, Skip intro starts at the main menu and Mouse wheel zoom controls the camera. Both are off by default. Display, interface and update settings remain available in the launcher. The independent data tool can inspect and prepare the same local content.

This is an early playable reconstruction with known limits. English retail data is supported; broader language support and complete gameplay parity remain work in progress. Linux and Windows have local headless scenario, sandbox and input stress checks. macOS validation is limited to CI's headless generated-data checks; Metal presentation and gameplay with retail data still need testing on a Mac. Steam Deck's package checks its runtime ABI; on-device gameplay is not qualified.

The intended graphics backends are DX12/Vulkan on Windows, Metal on macOS, and Vulkan on Linux. The launcher uses pinned SDL3 and Dear ImGui, following Recharged's design; the game window uses SDL3's GPU API on those backends.

Build

Requires CMake 3.25+, Ninja, Python 3.10+, Git and a C++20 compiler:

python3 tools/setup_dependencies.py
cmake --workflow --preset release
./build/release/beachlife

See BUILDING for release builds, macOS and Windows.

Binaries and releases

PRs to main and stable produce native packages for Windows x86_64, Linux x86_64, Steam Deck and macOS (one universal app for Apple silicon and Intel, also as a disk image), each with the launcher and the experimental decompiled game. main is the development branch; promotion to stable goes through a tested main → stable PR.

Promotion PRs receive temporary test prereleases. Merging builds the stable commit and publishes the version in CMakeLists.txt as the latest release, titled and described by the merged PR. Existing versions are preserved; raise the CMake version for another release.

Read RELEASES for the complete process and INSTALL for package contents and startup.

Original game files

No original executables, DLLs, disc images or gameplay data are committed or included in packages. Playing requires the user's own game data. Development inputs belong under ignored orig/ or outside the repository; see orig/README.md. CI uses generated fixtures and builds without game files. The launcher artwork, a remaster of Beach Life art, and the game's logo are documented in launcher resources. The original application icon has separate provenance.

Layout

CMakeLists.txt        native targets and the sole release version
CMakePresets.json     shared local/CI configure, build and test presets
cmake/               platform configuration and toolchains
src/bootstrap/       native entry point and command line
src/data/            read-only game sources and the headless data tool
decomp/              frozen reconstruction baseline and matching setup
src/launcher/        graphical launcher, source selection and preferences
src/platform/        native graphics (the game window), audio, input and file services
src/runtime/         the game loop and reconstructed-game integration
extern/              pinned dependency checkouts; builds use prepared exports
patches/             reconstructed methods, native adaptations and optional tweaks
assets/              launcher resources and their provenance
tools/               versioning, packaging and release helpers
tests/               generated-fixture and native startup checks
docs/                architecture, building, installation and releases

New retail reconstruction belongs in patches/beachlife-decomp/. Matching, the game and optional native subsystem tests consume the pinned baseline plus ordered patches in build trees. See subsystem tests, ARCHITECTURE and patch rules.

The progress report tool turns a local audited split inventory and matching results into an offline HTML overview of methods, source units, matching, native linking and unmapped coverage.