Cyberbots: Fullmetal Madness — recomp

A native PC port of Cyberbots: Fullmetal Madness (Capcom, 1995, CPS-2), made with tmcleroy's cps2recomp by static recompilation: the game's 68000 program is translated to C++ ahead of time and runs on the toolkit's own machine. No emulator is part of the port.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom. No game data is in this repository: the port reads the ROM set of a board its player owns. Ready-made builds for Windows, Linux and the Steam Deck are on the Releases page.

Features

With every feature off the port runs exactly as the board does. From the toolkit (no game-specific work):

• The launcher: choose the ROM set (checked file by file by CRC-32), set the controls, Play.
• The in-game menu (Esc or F1; a stick's click, or Start+Select): save states (nine slots), Reset, Insert coin, Player 2 joins, Quit game.
• Stop, step, slow (P, O, -/=).
• Run-ahead and the Display options (scaling, picture shape, window size, full screen).
• Every key and button remappable, for each player.

From the game's own sources (games/cybots/src/; the addresses behind them, and how each was found, are in games/cybots/PROGRESS.md):

• Free play — Start works without a coin.
• No damage and No damage, player 2 — a player's health does not go down.
• Infinite time — the round's clock stands still.
• One-hit knockouts — the opponent goes down with the first hit.
• Input display (training aid) — what each player holds, and for how long.

--list-features prints the whole list. Training mode, widescreen, custom colours and the other "alternative modes" are still to come — see ROADMAP.md for what each needs and the order to build them.

Layout

Path	What
cps2recomp/	A copy of the toolkit (v0.3.0), made by its tools/sync-toolkit.sh. Never change it here.
games/cybots/game.cfg	The ROM set's files and CRC-32s, the launcher's words, and the game's features.
games/cybots/src/	The game's own C++: the optional features on top of the board (cybots.h, cheats.cpp, training.cpp, game.cpp).
games/cybots/PROGRESS.md	The game's memory as it has been found (credits, health, the round's clock), and how each address was found.
ROADMAP.md	The features still to build (training mode, widescreen, modes) and what each needs.
rom/	Your ROM set: a folder of its files or the set's zip. Not committed.
build/, work/	Build output and generated code. Not committed.

Prerequisites (MSYS2, MinGW64)

Run all commands from an MSYS2 MinGW64 shell (so gcc/g++, SDL3 and zlib are found). Install what is missing once:

pacman -S --needed base-devel make git diffutils \
  mingw-w64-x86_64-toolchain mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-ninja \
  mingw-w64-x86_64-SDL3 mingw-w64-x86_64-zlib

Python 3 comes with MSYS2. CMake must be on PATH (which cmake must succeed); the MinGW64 package above puts it in /mingw64/bin. make check also needs git (the repository must be a git working tree, since check-common asks git for the top level) and diffutils (for cmp).

The ROM set

ROM points at a folder holding the set's files or at the set's zip. The default is rom, so put the set's zip at rom/cybots.zip (or the loose files in rom/). Files inside a zip are found by CRC-32, whatever they are named, so they may sit in a subfolder. The set is only read, never changed.

The set this port is made from is MAME's cybots (Europe 950424); games/cybots/game.cfg lists its files and checksums. Only this revision works: the port is made from its program, and the training features will use addresses found in it. Other regions and revisions are refused.

Building

make            # translate the game's code to C++ and link build/cybots/cybots.exe
make launcher   # build the launcher: build/cybots/cybots-launcher.exe

make reads the board's program out of the ROM set (above) and translates it, so the set must be in place first. A fresh tree also needs make explore once, because it starts out knowing almost none of the game's code:

make explore    # find the game's code by made-up play, in rounds (once; about ten minutes)
make            # translate again, now that the code is known

make explore plays the game headless with made-up input across several runs, records every place the code was reached by a computed jump, and translates what it found before the next round. Its progress is in the final run's log line, instructions had no translation — as low as possible is what you want (this port reports 0).

Running it

The build makes two programs in build/cybots/: the game, cybots.exe, and the launcher, cybots-launcher.exe. Keep them beside each other.

• The launcher is the way in for a player: choose the ROM set (every file checked by CRC-32), set the controls, choose features, Play. Where the set is kept is remembered in the launcher's own folder and reused next time.
• Double-clicking cybots.exe starts the launcher beside it — straight into the game if a ROM set was chosen before, otherwise at the launcher's first page.
• From a shell: make run runs the port windowed, with rom/ and the settings file the Makefile names; pass options through with ARGS=, e.g. make run ARGS=--fullscreen.

Feature choices come from work/cybots/settings.ini; the eprom and the save states (state0.bin …) sit beside it. --help lists every option (--headless, --frames, --movie, --poke, --trace, --dump-ram, --list-features, --cpu, --sound, …).

On Windows the two programs need SDL3.dll. It comes from MSYS2's mingw-w64-x86_64-SDL3 and lives in /mingw64/bin, so launch from an MSYS2 MinGW64 shell (which has it on PATH), or copy SDL3.dll beside the two .exe files.

Troubleshooting

• "SDL3.dll was not found" — you are not in an MSYS2 MinGW64 shell. Use one, or put MSYS2's mingw64\bin on PATH, or copy SDL3.dll beside cybots.exe.
• cmake: command not found — install mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake (Prerequisites); it lands in /mingw64/bin, which the MinGW64 shell has on PATH.
• The launcher refuses the ROM set — it checks every file by CRC-32. This port wants MAME's cybots (Europe 950424); other regions and revisions are refused on purpose.
• Slow, or the log reports instructions left to the interpreter — run make explore once, then make again.
• No sound — the sound program runs like the rest of the game; check the launcher's Sound row and that the set has its sound_program files (cyb.01, cyb.02).

Checking

make check          # translated code against the interpreter, by state hash; two runs alike
make check-blocks   # every translated block beside the interpreter (registers, cycles, writes)
make check-toolkit  # cps2recomp/ is what its tools/sync-toolkit.sh recorded
make check-common   # recomp-common/ is what its tools/sync-common.sh recorded

See cps2recomp/build.mk for the full list of targets.