Frontschweine Recompiled

A native PC version of Hogs of War (German release Frontschweine, Infogrames, 2000) for the PlayStation, built by static recompilation: the game's MIPS code is translated to C and compiled into a Windows program that runs against a hardware-accurate runtime, without an emulator.

The game plays from start to finish. On top of the original it comes with these enhancements:

Enhancement	Default	Effect
CPU Overclock	On, 200 %	Removes the slowdowns of the original hardware
Widescreen	On, 16:9	Wider view in battles, HUD kept at its 4:3 layout
CD Audio Smoothing	On, 100 ms	Fades instead of clicks when CD audio stalls
Instant Loading	On	Loads game files from an extracted copy of the disc, without waiting for the emulated drive
Fast Enemy AI	On	Runs the AI's terrain line checks natively, so the picture no longer freezes while the enemy thinks
60 Hz Mode (P/N Selector)	On	Plays like the classic PAL/NTSC selector patch: 60 Hz, battles at 30 instead of 25 fps, everything 20 % faster

Each one is a mod you can switch on, off or adjust in the launcher's Mods page; widescreen also offers 21:9.

Instant Loading takes over the game's own file loader: each data file is copied into memory at once from extracted/ next to the program, which is filled from your disc the first time a file is needed. Speech, music and cutscenes keep streaming from the emulated drive with their original timing. The framework's generic CD Speed and Fast Loading mods are therefore not shipped with this game.

Built on psxrecomp, via the fork Nero2611/psxrecomp (branch frontschweine), and recomp-ui.

You need

• Your own copy of the game: the German PAL release, serial SLES-02767, as a CUE file with its three BIN tracks. The build checks the data track against known checksums; other releases are not supported.
• Windows 10 or 11 (x64)
• Git and Python 3.11 or newer

The compiler toolchain (clang, CMake, Ninja) is downloaded automatically on the first build. No PlayStation BIOS is needed: the open-source OpenBIOS bundled with psxrecomp is used.

Build

git clone --recursive https://github.com/Nero2611/FrontschweineRecomp.git
cd FrontschweineRecomp
python psxrecomp/psxrecomp_cli.py generate --project-root . --disc "path/to/Frontschweine (Germany).cue"
python psxrecomp/psxrecomp_cli.py rebuild --project-root . --build-dir build

generate verifies your disc, prepares a working copy of it in disc/ and translates the game code; rebuild compiles the program. The rebuild includes two short profile-guided training runs of the game for extra speed. Then start build/Frontschweine_Recompiled.exe.

The battle modules the game unpacks at runtime are compiled ahead of time by generate, from your disc. Other code the game loads at runtime is translated in the background the first time it runs and cached in build/cache/.

If rebuild warns overlay toolchain staging failed; overlays will run interpreted, the Tiny C Compiler archive could not be downloaded from download.savannah.gnu.org or its mirrors. Fetch tcc-0.9.27-win64-bin.zip from any GNU mirror (for example mirror.netcologne.de), place it in .cache/overlay-toolchain/ and run rebuild again. Its checksum is verified against the pinned value, so any mirror is safe.

Setup package

Instead of cloning, you can download the setup zip from the Releases page. It contains the setup program and the project sources, but no game data and no translated game code. You need Python 3.11 or newer. Unpack the zip, start Frontschweine_Recompiled.exe, select your disc and follow the Generate & rebuild wizard; it downloads the compiler toolchain and builds the game on your machine.

Legal

This repository contains no game data: no disc image, no executable code and no assets of the original game, and no PlayStation BIOS. The translated code is produced locally from your own disc and never leaves your machine.

Hogs of War and Frontschweine are trademarks of their respective owners; PlayStation is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment. This is an unofficial, non-commercial fan project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by any of them.

License

PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0: you may use, change and share this project for any non-commercial purpose. The psxrecomp framework is licensed separately under the same terms by its author.

Credits

• psxrecomp by Matthew Stanley and the RetroPortingToolKit team, PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0
• recomp-ui, the launcher