The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age — Recomp

An early-stage static recompilation of the North American original-Xbox release of The Lord of the Rings: The Third Age (EA-095, title ID 4541005F, version 8) into a native Windows executable.

This repository contains project-specific source code and research only. It does not contain the game executable, disc image, movies, audio, or other copyrighted game assets. You must supply files from a legally owned copy.

Current status

Startup reaches the main menu with working audio. Gameplay is not yet verified. Status reviewed October 9, 2026.

These milestones describe the menu/audio source checkpoint and its matching runtime submodule revision. Game-code generation is still a local step, so a fresh clone is not yet a turnkey build. The local-checks badge is a recorded result, not a GitHub Actions/CI status.

• Loads the original XBE sections and resolves the title's 117 kernel imports.
• Renders the loading ring, legal splash/logo, EA, THX and New Line movies, followed by a textured main menu in the diagnostic framebuffer window.
• Completes the startup command queue in roughly 38 seconds on the development machine; this is an observation, not a performance guarantee.
• Produces audible movie and menu audio. A listener reports clean THX, New Line and main-menu music after the audio pacing correction.
• Passes 5,455 local APU regression checks in both Debug and Release, covering sample delivery, mixer advancement, IRQ status, voice-table backing and audio-thread lifecycle.

The next milestone is New Game → opening scene → first controllable gameplay, checking input, transitions, 3D rendering, dialogue and effects. Broader rendering, voice resampling, DSP effects and audio/video synchronization remain unverified. Slight roughness in the EA logo audio needs a source/emulator comparison before being classified as a bug. See project status.

Documentation

• Status, limitations and next milestone
• First working-audio checkpoint
• Front-end investigation and latest verification
• Native/emulator startup comparison
• Disc intake and historical bring-up

Repository layout

Path	Purpose
src/	Game-specific host entry point and manual recompilation overrides
config/	Validated analysis seeds
docs/	Intake notes and technical findings
vendor/xboxrecomp/	Pinned public runtime/tooling fork
dump/	Local game executable, extracted assets, and analysis output (ignored)
src/recomp/	Locally generated recompilation sources (ignored)

Requirements

• 64-bit Windows
• Visual Studio 2022 with the Desktop development with C++ workload
• CMake 3.20 or newer
• Python 3 with the runtime/tooling dependencies for local analysis and generation
• Git with submodule support
• A legally owned North American Xbox copy of the game

Setup

Clone the project and its runtime:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/Revan67/ThirdAge-Recomp.git
cd ThirdAge-Recomp

Extract your own disc so the executable is located at:

dump/game_files/default.xbe

The rest of the extracted disc filesystem belongs beneath dump/game_files/ as well. Game data is intentionally excluded by .gitignore and must never be committed or redistributed.

Generated files under src/recomp/ are also kept local. The analysis and generation workflow is still being stabilized, so a fresh clone is not yet a one-command reproducible build. Use the matching pinned runtime revision. Do not substitute an arbitrary newer upstream runtime for the pinned revision. Once those sources have been generated and the matching runtime is available, build with:

cmake -S . -B build -A x64
cmake --build build --config Release
.\build\Release\third_age_recomp.exe

Run from the repository root so the relative game-data paths resolve correctly. This is a development build, not an installable release. Diagnostic runs should be bounded and stopped afterward; closing a window must not trigger a relaunch loop.

Local regression checks

The current working runtime includes a deterministic audio suite with a silent fake output sink; it does not require game data or play audio through speakers:

cmake -S vendor/xboxrecomp/tests/apu_monitor -B build/tests/apu_monitor -A x64
cmake --build build/tests/apu_monitor --config Release --target apu_monitor_test
.\build\tests\apu_monitor\Release\apu_monitor_test.exe

Use Debug in both paths/configuration to check that build too. These test sources are included in the matching runtime submodule revision. Additional renderer/compiler checks are described in the verification notes.

Verified reference input

The current research uses a disc matching these Redump values:

Item	Value
Disc size	7,825,162,240 bytes
Disc MD5	57e3789289a89c860067d3c770e61807
Disc SHA-1	bc97495b5702b11c4ae2c0e53d47ab1844dd3e4b
default.xbe SHA-256	a45ca85284a12b86877ebe37e9e86741f166207bfc5a4355df990fa341a2485d

These hashes identify the supported input; they are not links to game data.

Privacy and repository policy

Disc dumps, extracted assets, generated binaries, logs, saves, local tools, editor settings, credentials, signing keys, and machine-specific files stay outside version control. Before opening a pull request, check git status and confirm that no proprietary or personal data is staged.

The runtime is a separate Git checkout: its changes must be reviewed and published before updating the parent repository's submodule pointer. A dirty submodule alone does not carry runtime fixes into a clone.

Licensing

No project-root license has been selected yet. The runtime has its own license and third-party notices; those do not automatically assign a license to this project's original files. No game-data distribution permission is implied.

Disclaimer

This is an independent preservation and compatibility research project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Electronic Arts, Warner Bros., Tolkien Enterprises, Microsoft, or the original developers. No game assets are provided.