Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria

Captured from vp2s.exe (USA disc), native renderer.

Title screen (animated sky, matched against PCSX2)	The port town of Logun
Camp menu	Settings
Load game (data menu)

The end state has zero PS2 hardware emulation. Only the game's own code runs: the recompiled EE code and its recompiled IOP modules. Everything that code produces goes to native PC paths: a renderer with its own targets and textures built from the game's data, an audio mixer on the PC's clock, and frames paced by the host with the real frame time. No GS (VRAM, swizzling, CLUTs), no VU1 microcode, no VIF/GIF packets, no SPU2.

Emulated code is never the default: where a native path is still wrong, the native path gets fixed. The old GS path stays only behind a comparison switch (VP2S_GS=1). The reference for how things should look and sound is the real game on PCSX2, compared screen by screen (zone averages, and PCSX2 GS dumps to read the exact draw order when a screen differs).

Playable through the start of chapter 1 (the opening, the town of Logun, the battle tutorial and the first battles, menus, saving). The menus and the town are being compared against PCSX2 one screen at a time.

✅ works · 🔧 in progress · ⏳ not reached yet

docs/RECOMPILER.md records every fix and how it was found; docs/vp2_models.md and docs/vp2_dof.md document the model format and the post effects as the port reads them; docs/AUDIT.md is the initial feasibility audit (disc layout, modules, compression and encryption).

your disc ──► tools/extract.py ──► main ELF + overlay modules (decrypted, decompressed) + the game's asset files
                    │                          │
                    │   Ghidra (EE) + find_entry_points.py ──► function maps ──► ps2_recomp ──► C++
                    │                                                                         │
                    └─► offline conversions (textures, meshes, archives) ──┐                  │
                                                                           ▼                  ▼
                         PS2Recomp runtime (EE kernel HLE, DMAC, IOP) + native renderer / mixer ──► vp2s.exe

• Most of the game's code is loaded at run time as overlay modules, stored encrypted (SLE) and compressed (SLZ). tools/extract.py unpacks them; tools/vp2_archives.py opens the encrypted p@Ck archives, where the battle modules live. Modules met at run time that no archive holds are saved the first time the game loads them (<build>/captured_modules/, never committed) and recompiled by the next build.
• Ghidra (with the Emotion Engine extension) maps the functions; PS2Recomp turns each one into C++. Overlay calls are dispatched by slot, so a module's code runs only while it is resident.
• port/ links the generated code with the runtime into vp2s.exe and hooks the game where it builds its draws: the model, interface and post-effect objects are read from the game's own memory and drawn natively.
• The game's textures and meshes are converted once, offline, from your disc (tools/vp2_textures.py, tools/vp2_meshes.py); the running game is matched to them by the keys it passes its own loaders.

The PS2Recomp fork lives in external/PS2Recomp (git submodule, TheBozos/PS2Recomp, branch native/gs-backend): the native renderer, the native mixer and most runtime fixes land there and are shared with the team's other ports.

• Windows 10 or 11, Python 3.10 or later
• Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools ("Desktop development with C++": MSVC, CMake, Ninja), found with vswhere or VP2S_VS_DIR
• Ghidra (GHIDRA_INSTALL_DIR) and the Emotion Engine extension zip for that Ghidra version (VP2S_GHIDRA_EE_ZIP)
• Your own disc image of SLUS-21452 (check the hash above)
• The 16-byte SLE key, in VP2S_SLE_KEY or <build>/sle_key.txt (32 hex digits). It is not distributed: the game computes it at boot; see load_sle_key in tools/slz.py.

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/TheBozos/VP2S_Recomp.git
cd VP2S_Recomp
$env:VP2S_BUILD = "build_usa"; $env:VP2S_ISO = "Valkyrie Profile 2 - Silmeria (USA).iso"
python tools/pipeline.py

VP2S_BUILD picks the build tree (build by default, the European one), VP2S_ISO the disc image (else the first .iso in the project root). The pipeline runs extract, wrap, ghidra, tool, sdk, entries, recomp, vu, report, port, test; each stage skips work whose outputs are up to date (--only <stage>, --from <stage>, --force, --inputs main,mod003). The first full build takes a while: the recompiled code is several hundred MB of C++.

Then the offline conversions, once (they read the asset files extract.py --assets wrote):

python tools/vp2_archives.py "<disc image>" --out build_usa/extract/assets
python tools/vp2_texture_keys.py --assets build_usa/extract/assets --index build_usa/vp2_texture_index.json
python tools/vp2_textures.py --assets build_usa/extract/assets --index build_usa/vp2_texture_index.json --out build_usa/vp2_textures
python tools/vp2_meshes.py --assets build_usa/extract/assets --out build_usa/vp2_meshes

tools/README.md documents every stage and tool.

build_usa\port\vp2s.exe build_usa\extract\iso\SLUS_214.52

or set [game] elf in vp2s.ini and start vp2s.exe alone. The disc image is found through VP2S_ISO, or by searching upward from the ELF's folder (an image named (USA) first).

Written next to vp2s.exe, with comments, the first time it starts. An environment variable with the same meaning wins over the file, so test scripts and diagnostics keep working.

A controller is used when one is connected; otherwise the keyboard (US key positions):

In the field, Start pauses and Select opens the camp menu.

• Pause screen in the field: the town disappears behind the pause title (the game re-sends the town's prebuilt packets while paused, which the native path does not see yet); its blur and the PAUSE title are missing too.
• Town look: compared with PCSX2, the far distance is not blurred and the picture is a little brighter.
• Battle HUD: one battle module (mod027) is in no archive on the USA disc and has to be captured at the first battle.
• European build: kept for reference; its converted meshes need converting again after the USA-era format change.

Everything derived from the game (build*/, extracted/, out/, work/, ghidra/, disc images) is git-ignored. Never commit or redistribute it.

Logo. VP2S's variant of The Bozos' logo: the team clown (console shapes: cross and triangle eyes, a red circle nose, square teeth, on the PS2 BIOS blue with boot towers) in a winged Valkyrie helmet, drawn by docs/branding/make_logo.py vp2s (the generator comes from TMB_Recomp). No game art.

• The Bozos (boubou666, Arzaroth): this port, and the team's other PS2 recompilations it shares its fork with.
• PS2Recomp by ran-j and contributors (GPL), the recompiler and runtime this port is built on.
• The Drakengard recompilation and the team's other ports (TMB, JC2, TTA), developed alongside this port on the same PS2Recomp fork; many runtime fixes are shared.
• PCSX2, the reference every screen is compared against.
• Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria © tri-Ace / Square Enix. This is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by them.