CTR Native

A native PC port of Crash Team Racing (PS1, 1999), built on top of the CTR-ModSDK decompilation project.

Philosophy

• No byte budget. Game source lives in game/ as our own copies. Edit freely.
• No PSX toolchain. Targets Windows and Linux with SDL3. No MIPS compiler needed.
• Clean platform layer. main.c owns process startup; host details stay in platform/native_*.
• No build system nonsense. Just build.bat / build.sh.
• Fully static build. Single executable, zero dependencies. SDL3 is compiled from vendored source and linked statically.

Directory Layout

ctr_native/
  main.c              Entrypoint and native platform boundary
  platform/           Native-owned audio, input, memcard, CD, and PSX facade glue
  build-msvc.bat      Windows build (MSVC x86)
  build.bat           Windows build (MinGW i686)
  build.sh            Linux build
  CMakePresets.json   Shared CLion/command-line CMake configurations
  README.md           This file
  game/               Our copies of all decompiled game source (943 files)
    game_unity.h      Ordered unity include chain for all game source files
  include/            Project headers (structs, globals, declarations, platform facade)
  externals/
    SDL/              SDL3 source (static build)

Prerequisites

Windows

The recommended native Windows toolchain is MSVC x86:

1. Install Visual Studio 2022 or Visual Studio Build Tools 2022.
2. Select the Desktop development with C++ workload and a current Windows SDK.
3. Ensure CMake 3.20 or newer is on PATH (standalone or the Visual Studio C++ CMake tools component).
4. Run build-msvc.bat, or select the windows-msvc-x86 CMake preset in CLion.

The existing MinGW i686 build remains supported:

1. Install MSYS2.
2. In an MSYS2 terminal:

   pacman -Syu
   pacman -S --needed git mingw-w64-i686-gcc mingw-w64-i686-cmake mingw-w64-i686-make
   

   If the update asks you to close the terminal, reopen MSYS2 and run the install command.
3. Add C:\msys64\mingw32\bin to your system PATH
4. Open a new Command Prompt or PowerShell and run build.bat.

That's it. SDL3 is compiled from vendored source -- no separate install needed.

Linux (Debian/Ubuntu)

sudo apt install gcc-multilib
sudo apt install libx11-dev libxext-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libasound2-dev libudev-dev libdbus-1-dev

Building

build-msvc.bat       # Windows, MSVC x86 (recommended)
build.bat            # Windows, MinGW i686
chmod +x build.sh
./build.sh           # Linux

The shared CMake presets can also be used directly or selected as CLion CMake profiles:

cmake --preset windows-msvc-x86
cmake --build --preset windows-msvc-x86-debug
ctest --preset windows-msvc-x86-debug

First build compiles SDL3 from source. This is cached as a static library in the selected build directory.

Output:

• MSVC: build-msvc-x86/Release/ctr_native.exe
• MinGW: build/ctr_native.exe
• Linux: build/ctr_native

Clean build

rmdir /s /q build    # Windows: delete cached libraries
build.bat            # Windows: rebuild everything

rmdir /s /q build-msvc-x86
build-msvc.bat       # Windows MSVC: rebuild everything

rm -rf build/        # Linux: delete cached libraries
./build.sh           # Linux: rebuild everything

Running

Normal Setup

If you downloaded a release build, you only need two things for normal play:

1. The game executable:
   • ctr_native.exe on Windows
   • ctr_native on Linux
2. Your own NTSC-U retail CTR disc image, named (put in directory called assets):
   • assets/ctr-u.bin

Example:

CTR-Native/
  ctr_native.exe
  assets/
    ctr-u.bin

Then run ctr_native.exe.

The disc image must be the common single-track raw PSX BIN layout: MODE2/2352 sectors, with the data track starting at byte 0. A cooked 2048-byte .iso does not preserve the XA/STR sector data needed for audio and video playback.

For development builds run from build/, put the same assets/ctr-u.bin next to the source tree:

ctr-native/
  build/
    ctr_native.exe
  assets/
    ctr-u.bin

Extracted Asset Override

You do not need extracted assets for normal play.

Extracted files are still supported for development, modding, and debugging. If present, they override files from ctr-u.bin.

Extracted-asset override structure:

CTR-Native/
  ctr_native.exe
  assets/
    BIGFILE.BIG
    SOUNDS/KART.HWL
    TEST.STR
    XA/
      ENG.XNF
      ENG/EXTRA/S00.XA ... S05.XA
      ENG/GAME/S00.XA ... S20.XA
      MUSIC/S00.XA ... S01.XA

The full extracted asset list is:

• BIGFILE.BIG
• SOUNDS/KART.HWL
• TEST.STR
• XA/ENG.XNF
• XA/ENG/EXTRA/S00.XA through S05.XA
• XA/ENG/GAME/S00.XA through S20.XA
• XA/MUSIC/S00.XA through S01.XA

Bug Replays

Internal builds can record a small bug report folder. See docs/REPLAYS.md.

Architecture

main.c (entrypoint)
  |
  +-- platform/native_* (platform shell, audio, input, memcard, CD, renderer, PSX facade glue)
  |
  +-- game/game_unity.h
        |
        +-- game/ (all decompiled game source)
              |
              +-- include/ (headers: structs, globals, declarations)

• CTR_NATIVE is defined for native host/platform-specific code
• First-party native code targets portable C17 with compiler extensions disabled
• The default build uses 32-bit mode while remaining PSX address-shaped data and host-pointer contracts are audited. GPU primitive links are bridged through 24-bit native tokens; see docs/MEMORY_MODEL.md.

Roadmap

• Clean up game/ copies strip byte budget hacks and route platform-specific code through CTR_NATIVE
• Keep reducing 32-bit host-pointer assumptions in PSX-shaped data, and keep pruning inherited compatibility code now owned in include/ and platform/.

Credits

• CTR-ModSDK — the decompilation project this is built on
• PsyCross — original PS1 compatibility code from which parts of CTR Native's owned platform layer and PsyQ facade headers are derived
• SDL3 — cross-platform multimedia
• Crash Team Racing is a trademark of Sony Computer Entertainment / Naughty Dog