The dual topics of decompliation and recompilation have been getting plenty of attention lately, thanks to the fact that, via these two processes, we're seeing a flood of classic games being natively ported to modern-day systems, along with a raft of improvements and enhancements.
Read Only Memo has a lengthy and insightful interview with Tom, the driving force behind ReXGlue, an Xbox 360 recompilation tool.
"Around that time, someone reached out to me about a community working on the Fable 2 Recomp," Tom says when asked about the origins of the project.
"That's where I came into contact with a great group of people who shared similar goals and aspirations. Loreaxe (Ryan Fisher) was the owner of that Discord server and became my biggest supporter during the early days of getting the project off the ground. I was experimenting with how we could build something that provides the foundational pieces for an emulated backend while also giving developers the ability to implement native rendering, audio, and other subsystems. That is really where static recompilation shines."
ReXGlue has enabled the recompilation of a range of 360 classics, including Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts, Ninja Gaiden 2, Halo 3's beta, Crackdown 2 and Viva Pinata, but, as Tom is at pains to point out, it's not at the point where everything is perfect – and he's hestiant to put a lineline on when that will be:
"I honestly don't have a timeline. For Blue Dragon specifically, it needs to be at a place where I can say it is genuinely worthy of being put in front of people. That's a high bar, and I know it's a subjective one. I hold my own work to a strict standard. Getting a title to boot is a real accomplishment, and the effort involved should not be understated, especially for people who have limited exposure to systems-level programming. But booting is a starting point, not a finished project. There is a long distance between 'it runs' and 'this is something people should play.' I want the projects that come out of ReXGlue to represent what the SDK is actually capable of, not just that it technically works. When something is ready to be released, it should demonstrate real quality: clean implementations, thoughtful use of the SDK, and genuine progress beyond initial boot. That is the standard I hold Blue Dragon to, and it is the standard I encourage everyone in the community to hold their own projects to as well."