Silent Hill - Native PC Port
A native PC port built on the Silent Hill PSX decompilation. What started as an experiment has become a fully playable port with a large feature set, built-in mod support, an active community, and fan translation/multilingual support. It uses PsyCross (a PsyQ SDK compatibility layer originally written for REDRIVER2) as its hardware abstraction layer, which we now maintain our own fork of. Care has been taken to leave the original game code intact wherever possible and to work around it where needed, so game logic and feel still match the PSX original. Most if not all enhancements are optional, and always will be.
The game runs as a real Windows/Linux executable compiled from decompiled C source. It is not an emulator and not a static recompilation: no part of the original binary is translated by a tool. NOTE: Linux and Mac support are a WIP. On Linux, it is recommended to use wine for the time being.
Development is heavily AI-assisted (Claude Opus 4.6, 4.7 and the newer Fable model), and we're open about that. It is not automated translation of the game. Every change is a reviewed, hand-directed edit to real source, tested against the original behaviour.
Project Website: https://sh1pc.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/JWuNzVsQbr
Play on the web: https://sh1pc.com/play/
Latest Features
- See the whole town. Turn the fog/visibility slider in the launcher below 1.0 and the outdoor maps render all the way out instead of fading into fog. It needs PGXP, and the launcher offers to turn that on for you.
- High-poly character swaps. Replace Harry or Cybil with a skinned glTF model: full skeletal animation, lip sync driven by the voice lines, blinking, shape keys, optional ragdoll deaths, and per-model tuning in an ini. Extra
HERO_* models show up as playable characters in Play As.
- Realtime updates. Every change is built automatically for Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS and Android as soon as it lands. Grab the newest build from the Realtime builds page, or, from the next release on, tick Realtime updates in the launcher's Build Settings to follow them and roll back to any of the last 30.
- Native menus. A new Controls screen and an in-game Achievements screen, with button prompts that match the controller you are using.
- Natural diagonal movement. In the alternate cameras, Harry's legs now turn to follow the direction he is walking or running.
- Quick weapon switching. Optional, including the mouse wheel.
- Play in your browser. Try it without installing anything at https://sh1pc.com/play/.
Features
The game is fully playable start to finish. Every map, boss, cutscene, ending, and system works. You can complete the full game today, and the remaining known bugs are minor. Enhancements are optional and always will be: at default-faithful settings the port plays like the original PSX game (same logic, same feel, same look), and everything beyond that is opt-in.
- Faithful core. Original decompiled game logic, PSX fixed-camera system 1:1, original movement/combat/AI behaviour; play it exactly like 1999, just natively.
- Graphics. Any resolution, widescreen 16:9/21:9+, high refresh / uncapped FPS, optional rewritten PGXP perspective correction, MSAA, texture filtering, tone mapping and post-process looks (CRT, scanlines, film grain, and more).
- Flashlight & lighting. Four flashlight modes (Classic / Modern, each with optional per-pixel shadow mapping up to 8192x8192).
- Cameras. Classic fixed cameras plus a full alternate suite: third-person, over-the-shoulder with free-aim, and first-person, each with FOV/aim options and its own control scheme, plus a mouse-look free camera for exploring.
- Audio. Optional surround 5.1/7.1 with true 3D positional SFX and reverb; XA cutscene voices streamed straight from the disc image; FMV playback with HD AVI & MP4 override support.
- Quality of life. Mouse-clickable menus, quick save/load, reload key, quick-heal, an in-game PC Options menu and an F10 quick-options overlay (graphics / HUD / audio / cheats / debug, live while playing), minimap options, low-health screen glow (off by default), uncensored toggle.
- Cheats & tools. In-game console (warps, spawns, god/noclip, live tuning of nearly everything), cheat menu, play as any of 14 characters, spawn any monster in any map (global monster pool), raised enemy cap, collision visualizer, keyframe inspector.
- Modding. Built-in Mod Manager (extract the disc, texture packs, loose-file replacement, DuckStation-style packs), character retextures, full character model replacement (ILM <-> OBJ / Blender), modern glTF inventory item models, VAB audio extraction/repacking, AVI FMV replacement. See Game Files / Modding.
- Integrations. RetroAchievements and Discord Rich Presence.
- Experimental. A Lua-scripted Randomizer mode, and a TrenchBroom-based level-editing pipeline in development.
- Languages & regions. USA, PAL/EUR (English, French, German, Italian, Spanish) and NTSC-J (Japanese) discs all supported and auto-detected; fan-translation discs work via the launcher's disc picker; Russian and Polish translation packs; Chinese playable on NTSC-J; the launcher UI itself is localized into 10 languages.
- Multiplatform. The same codebase runs on far more than PC. Windows is the primary target; Linux and macOS builds exist (WIP); and ports are in development for , , , , , and even an (Expansion Pak required).
Nightly builds: https://github.com/SlickAmogus/silent-hill-pc-nightly
Known Issues / Bugs
- Linux and macOS builds still have issues. Windows (or wine) is recommended where possible.
- Visual glitches or artifacts can appear on certain systems/hardware (try the
renderer= config option: d3d11 / vulkan / warp).
- Some minor visual bugs and cosmetic issues remain.
Everything else that's known is tracked on the issues page.
Short Instructions
- Extract the release anywhere on your PC.
- Put your game disc image in the
gamedata folder. Any filename works, since the launcher auto-detects it by region, but Silent Hill (USA).bin is a safe default.
- Run
SilentHillPC_Launcher to configure, or run SilentHillPC to play. The build is unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen may block it the first time; run the game once, then the launcher.
Controls
Default keyboard bindings (fixed-camera "Classic" scheme):
| PSX Button | Key | In-game |
|---|
| Cross | C | Action / shoot |
| Circle | V | Flashlight |
| Triangle | Z | Map |
| Square | X | Run |
| L1 / R1 | A / D | Sidestep left / right |
| L2 / R2 | Right Shift / Left Shift | View / aim |
| D-Pad | Arrow keys | Move |
| Start | Enter | Pause |
| Select | Space | Inventory |
PC-only keys:
| Action | Key |
|---|
| Reload | R |
| Quick save / load | F6 / F8 |
| Change camera style | F9 |
| Quick options overlay | F10 |
Quick options (F10) is a live in-game overlay with four pages (Graphics, HUD & Audio, Cheats, and Debug), navigable with keyboard or mouse (left-click raises a value, right-click lowers it). The Cheats page includes Free camera: once enabled, fly with the mouse + W/A/S/D, Space/C for up/down, Shift fast, Ctrl slow. A controller works too (left stick to move, right stick to look, R1/L1 fast/slow, R2/L2 up/down).
Rebinding: open the launcher and click Controls to remap keys and controller buttons. Click a bind box, then press the key (Esc or Backspace clears it). The alternate cameras (third-person / OTS / first-person) use a separate control scheme; toggle "Alt. Cam Controls" in that window to edit it. Everything is also stored as plain key_* lines in config.cfg. (Reload is fixed to R.)
Building
Prerequisites
- MSYS2 / MinGW64 (Windows). Install MSYS2 from https://www.msys2.org/, then from an MSYS2 MinGW x64 shell install the toolchain:
pacman -S --needed mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-ninja mingw-w64-x86_64-SDL2 mingw-w64-x86_64-openal mingw-w64-x86_64-libjpeg-turbo
- PsyCross, pulled in as a git submodule (the SH-specific fork). From the repo root:
git submodule update --init --recursive
This populates pc_port/PsyCross. Do not clone PsyCross separately; the build uses the submodule.
- Game disc image, a BIN dump of Silent Hill (USA) (SLUS-00707). Place it at:
pc_port/build/gamedata/Silent Hill (USA).bin
Build
Easiest (Windows): one command.
pc_port\build.bat
Double-click build.bat for a menu (incremental / clean rebuild / build+run / nuke), or pass a mode: build.bat (incremental), build.bat rebuild, build.bat configure, build.bat run, build.bat nuke. It auto-configures (Ninja + map DLLs) on the first run and rebuilds incrementally afterward. If MSYS2 isn't at C:\msys64, set MSYS2_ROOT first (e.g. set MSYS2_ROOT=D:\msys64 && pc_port\build.bat).
Manual, from an MSYS2 MinGW64 shell (first time):
cd silent-hill-decomp/pc_port
cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja -DSH_BUILD_MAP_DLLS=ON
cmake --build build
Subsequent incremental builds: cmake --build build. -DSH_BUILD_MAP_DLLS=ON builds the maps as DLLs loaded at runtime; without it only the starting area is available.
Note: close the game before rebuilding. The linker cannot overwrite a running SilentHillPC.exe (cannot open output file SilentHillPC.exe: Permission denied). build.bat detects this and tells you.
Game Files / Modding
The game's assets are packed into two archives (SILENT. and HILL.) on the disc; there is no real filesystem. They're indexed by a 2074-entry table with 6-bit-encoded names; the full enum with paths is in include/main/fileenum.h.USA.inc.
| Ext | Type ID | Description |
|---|
| .TIM | 0 | Texture image |
| .VAB | 1 | Sound bank |
| .BIN | 2 | Overlay code / data |
| .DMS | 3 | Cutscene data |
| .ANM | 4 | Animation data |
| .PLM | 5 | Map geometry |
| .IPD | 6 | Map data |
| .ILM | 7 | Character model |
| .TMD | 8 | Mesh data |
| .DAT | 9 | Demo data |
| .KDT | 10 | Audio metadata (sequence / score) |
| .CMP | 11 | Compressed data |
Extracting and replacing files, via launcher → Mod Manager:
- Extract BIN… unpacks a disc
.bin into a loose asset tree (<FOLDER>/<NAME>.<TYPE>), the same result as the dev extract with no extra tools. Tick "Convert textures to PNG" to also dump every .TIM as a .png.
- TIM → PNG… / Bulk → PNG… convert one texture or a whole folder to editable PNGs.
- Loose-file overrides. Enable loose files (the checkbox on the window) and drop replacements in
gamedata/load/<FOLDER>/<NAME> (e.g. gamedata/load/SND/MAP000.VAB); the game swaps them in at load. Replacements must be no larger than the original's size (oversized textures excepted).
- Character textures are one index sheet drawn through several palettes, so a single PNG only recolors part of the model. Use Reference… to build one correct composite from a character's model + texture, edit it in any image editor, then Rebuild… to slice it back into the per-row PNGs the game loads.
- Texture packs. Loose PNG overrides,
.dds (BC7) support, per-palette/per-CLUT-row overrides, and DuckStation-style replacement packs, all managed from the Mod Manager.
Beyond textures:
- Character models (ILM). Export any character to OBJ, edit or fully re-rig in Blender, and import back; the toolchain supports complete model replacement (a high-poly pipeline with automatic seam welding). See
Model_Modding_Guide.md.
- Inventory item models (glTF/GLB). Drop modern glTF models in to replace the rotating inventory/examine items, keyed by item ID. See
Modern_Item_GLTF_Modding_Guide.md.
- Audio (VAB). Extract every SFX/instrument sample out of the game's VAB sound banks (vgmstream workflow documented in the guide), modify, and repack; loose-file VAB overrides load without touching the disc.
- FMVs. Drop
.avi files in as movie overrides; no disc rebuild needed.
- Disc rebuild. For changes that outgrow the loose-file size limits, the documented two-stage extract/rebuild produces a modified disc image with no size ceiling.
Full workflows: Modding_And_Extraction_Guide.md.
Console Commands
An in-game console for cheats, warps, and live tuning. Enable it with allow_debug_controls = 1 in config.cfg, then hold ` (backtick / tilde) in-game to open it (the game pauses while it's open). Type a command and press Enter; commands are case-insensitive. Type help or debug to list everything live.
| Command | What it does |
|---|
give <item> | Give a weapon / ammo / health: give allweapons, give ammo, give health (help give lists items) |
kill / killall | Kill Harry / kill nearby enemies |
spawn <name> [state] | Spawn a monster in front of Harry (spawn list) |
unlimited [0|1] | Raise the concurrent-enemy cap |
map <name> | Set the New-Game start map: loads on the next New Game, does not warp mid-session |
noclip / obst / god | Walk through walls / round-obstacle collision / invincibility |
getflags · setflag <n> <0|1> · setending <bad|bad+|good|good+> | Inspect / force story flags and the ending (set before the ending) |
pgxp [0|1] | Toggle PGXP perspective correction |
cull | Toggle world visibility culling (draw everything) |
shadowres <n> | Flashlight shadow-map resolution (up to 8192) |
flmode <0-3> · shadows [0|1] · fl/wl [color] | Flashlight mode / shadows / flashlight & world-light tint |
fov · tpsfov · tpsaimzoom · camcollide | First-person / third-person FOV and camera feel |
audioout <stereo|quad|51|71|hrtf> · xavol <0-100> · adsr [0|1] | Speaker layout / FMV volume / SPU envelopes |
fmv [name] | Play an intro / ending movie (bare fmv lists them) |
quit | Exit the game |
Many values are also live-tuning knobs; run one with no argument to read the current value: vfov, hfov, vshift, cutshift, vcropanchor, par, drawdist, fogstr, pgxpedge, pgxpnearz, shadowbias, postint, tmint, and the inventory inv* offsets. debug 2 documents them.
Debug Controls
Also requires allow_debug_controls = 1. Debug events echo to the per-run SilentHill_<timestamp>.log.
Cheats & tools (top-row keys):
| Key | Action |
|---|
Esc | Warm reset to the title screen |
0 | Noclip toggle |
4 / 5 | New-Game start-map prev / next |
6 | Kill nearby enemies |
7 | Invincibility toggle |
8 | +15 handgun bullets |
9 | No-target toggle (enemies ignore Harry) |
- / = | Give Hunting Rifle / Shotgun (+ shells) |
' | Collision visualizer panel |
K · , . | Keyframe inspector / scrub |
Graphics hotkeys (no dev controls needed):
| Key | Action |
|---|
F1 | Toggle PGXP |
F2 | Cycle post-process effect |
F3 | Cycle tone mapping |
F4 | Cycle flashlight mode |
[ / ] | Lower / raise the selected effect's intensity |
\ | Choose which effect [ / ] adjusts |
Free camera (also toggleable from the F10 quick-options Cheats page, no dev controls needed there):
| Key | Action |
|---|
Num * | Free camera on / off (Harry stays put; his input is ignored) |
| Mouse | Look (follows your mouse sensitivity / invert settings) |
W/A/S/D | Fly forward / left / back / right along the view |
Space / C | Move up / down |
Shift / Ctrl | Fast / slow |
Num 3 | Reset cam nudge / in-game rescue teleport |
Num . | Log Harry's position |
A controller drives the free camera too: left stick moves, right stick looks, R1/L1 go fast/slow, R2/L2 move up/down.
With the free camera off, the numpad keys nudge the normal game camera, a live camera-tuning aid. (Camera styles, meaning third-person, OTS, and first-person, are cycled with the Change Camera key, F9 by default. The F10 quick-options overlay exposes most of the graphics/debug toggles below without memorizing keys.)
Licensing at a glance
The PC port is GPL-3.0. That covers pc_port/ (engine, launcher, tooling, docs) and every SH_PC_PORT addition to the decompiled sources. Files carrying an SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-3.0-or-later header are the ones being licensed here.
The decompilation is not licensed by this project. src/, include/, configs/, asm/, lib/ and rom/ are a decompilation of Konami's Silent Hill, and remain the work of the silent-hill-decomp contributors. This project asserts no copyright over that material and grants no rights to it. The GitHub license badge above refers to the port only.
No game data is included. Silent Hill is © Konami. A legally obtained copy of the PlayStation disc is required to play; nothing from it ships here or in any release.
Full breakdown, including bundled third-party components: COPYRIGHT.md.
Support
I'm on Discord as @KushAstronaut, and the project has a Discord server: https://discord.gg/JWuNzVsQbr
This is a 100% free project funded from my own pocket. If you'd like to support me, it is greatly appreciated, and you can do so on Ko-fi:
Silent Hill is © Konami and this does not contain any game assets. You must provide a legally obtained dump of Silent Hill for PSX to use.
