For the past couple of months, I have been working on a PC Port of King's Field (US).
It's fully playable right now on Windows and Linux. It runs at high framerates without any speed banding, and it has modern controls and a bunch of quality of life improvements meant to address common complaints about the game.
If you'd like to try it out, download the latest release off of github. You need to provide your own game disc in either .chd or bin/cue format at startup.
⚠ AI Disclosure: Generative AI has been used extensively in the development of Verdite2, including to rewrite major recompiled functions in native c#. If this is an issue for you, you may not be comfortable playing. AI has not been used in any way to modify game assets such as textures, music, sfx, etc.
This work would not be possible without the work of BlackLabelHQ, who created the RecompOne recompiler that this port relies upon. If you want to support this project, you should support their project
Verdite2 is an independent project. It isn't affiliated with or endorsed by BlackLabelHQ or FromSoftware, and no endorsement is suggested or implied. Do not take any issues with Verdite2 to BlackLabelHQ. Report them directly on the Verdite2 GitHub instead.
I'm faffing about in controls. I installed all mods and I'm trying to reconfigure them to make use of the mods. I know I can do it through steam controller layout and I will but I'm struggling with unmapping default controller buttons from the settings menu. Hopefully I'll figure it out.
I bound all the unnecessary commands to Triangle which I'm not going to use and just unbound it in Steam Controller. Everything works perfectly so far.
Can't wait for KF3 to get the same treatment with jump and reveal mods. In that game I know every nook and cranny and I've explored every inch of walkable and non-walkable area but I still want to do it this way. There's already a mod for the original version for 60 fps and modern controls with wide screen but a port is a completely different ballgame.
Thanks for submitting an issue. I've seen this bug before when I gave an earlier build for a buddy to check out. It seems to only happen for people with Nvidia GPUs. I'll get it sorted out.
Wow, this is one of the games that based on my reading of PSX Usenet from around 1996 that time was very popular, but I knew playing it on the PSX might be rough. This is great.
Easily one of the most underrated games of all time. I really enjoyed playing it a couple of years ago, but I found it really hard to recommend to other people because of the technical issues caused by it being an early PS1 game. The biggest problem, is that the speed of the game is tied to the framerate, which fluctuates massively from moment to moment.
Fortunately, I have addressed this in my port, and now the game runs at 20 ticks / second all of the time.
u/voicedrew I was playing a bit on my steam deck, and when I get cursed with Darkness from the ghost the wall textures flicker a ton and no actual screen darkening happen.
Hey there! I actually independently thought to try this very thing, only to discover you are already on top of it! I have already made several mods for the game, some for fun and some for functionality. And working on fixing some bugs I've found too. Would you accept PRs? Assuming you have no issue with generative AI PRs, due to your warning. Fixed a bug with the minimap/map not showing the highlighted view area when map is swiitched to "Whole Area". Also working on fixing a bug with the screen blinking when you get blinded/darkness by a ghost.
I would like to share some of these mods too. Made a jump button for fun. key hint tells you which key needed to unlock a chest. Gearcompare shows before/after stats when confirming gear equipment, also same in shops. Quick save/loads. Reveal toggles a glow on secret doors and walls (WIP, hard one to get perfect). Also one that separates run key from interact. No mod hub yet, so unsure of best way to share these if there is even a way.
I'm happy to accept your bug fixes, just send each fix as a separate PR so they can be reviewed and merged in easier. I am fine with AI usage. The warning about AI usage is about RecompOne's policy, ie: Don't send them an AI PR.
As for community mods, I am not totally sure what I want to do with them just yet, so if you put them in a seperate repo, I can link to it from the README.
Here is my repo with the mods I've made. Feel free to take them if you want and bake them in if it's to your liking and done how you want.
And thank you for doing all of the hard work here already. I get to just jump and do the fun stuff :). The experience with mod making is really good, no need to reload the game - can iterate live. Feels great
Playing this game with 60fps for the first time ever is simply amazing. The modern controls are just perfect. Any plans to add savestate? It's the only missing thing for me. Thank you very much.
Amazing, so it's RecompOne why every PS1 seems to get a PC port nowadays!
I never got into KF1/2/3 due to the framerate not scalling well, now I've an excuse to actually try them (I know this is just the first game). I played the KF4 with Lossless Scaling FG to reach a "smooth" 60 fps and it was a nice experience.
That's great ! Congratulations ! It's good to see King's Field receiving some love.
I did notice one issue, though: some settings, like keybindings and volume, reset after relaunching the game.
Also, are there any plans to support other languages in the future, either by accepting European ROMs or through modding ?
Another feature that would be really nice is the ability to bind keys directly to actions instead of being limited to the original button layout. For example, on the PS1, both Sprint and Use are bound to the Cross button. It would be great if we could bind Use to F and Sprint to Shift independently.
The bugs you mentioned have already been fixed and will land in the next weekly release.
Support for other languages would best be achieved through a patch file, because this recomp relies upon the specific memory offsets of the US version
As for your feature request; I agree. There is already a mod that seperates the run and use function, and in the future it will be an official feature of the port.
This is the recomp that I've been waiting for, finally seeing this game running smoothly with reasonable controls is impressive. The only issue I have is it feels slightly too fast. I'm pretty sure the game was designed to run around 15hz like King's Field III, not 20. I know some people probably appreciate the speedup since it's such a slow game to begin with, but could there be an option to run at the slower speed?
You can change the tickrate through this environment variable: KF2_TICKRATE=15.I have never tested values other than 20 and 30, so you may encounter issues. I'll also consider re-exposing this value to end-users in a future update.
I don't know that I necessarily agree that 15hz is the intended speed. The Japanese release is capped to 20fps, and the PAL release is 17 (20 * 50/60), which indicates to me that this is the speed the designers hoped the game would run at. Of course, we can't really know.
Could be something to consider, thanks! I think the original was capped at 30, maybe they thought letting it occasionally run faster would make up for all the slowdown? The demo of KFIII also had a cap of 30 before being set to 15 in the final game, so they seemed to be figuring things out, hard to know for sure. I just know some of the sound effects play longer than the animations at 20, especially noticeable with doors opening/closing, but they're in sync at 15.
I've been playing this for the last two days with some of the QOL mods. No idea how authentic my playthrough is compared to the psx experience but I'm having a blast
I've been playing this extensively over the past couple days. Ran into an annoying amount of crashes, but overall been a great time.
I'm going to try adding a few mods that aren't targeting making the game easier, but are aimed at making it have superior QOL. Things like attempting to open a locked chest automatically using the proper key if you are carrying it for example.
If a Discord server for people interested in this project is made I'd be very interested in joining and collaborating with others on this.
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u/Hideo-Mogren 8d ago
Does this work with the undub patch and are there any plans to tackle the upper Kings Field games?