SSX Tricky Rebuild (Unreal Engine 5.8)

An unofficial, non-commercial fan rebuild of the PS2 snowboarding game SSX Tricky in Unreal Engine 5.8. The game's behaviour (riding, tricks, AI racers, cameras, menus, HUD, audio) is reimplemented in C++ to match the original as closely as possible, and checked by automated tests against recordings of the original game.

[!WARNING] This project was made entirely with AI. All of it was written by AI models: the reverse engineering of the original game (the analysis, the notes and the Python reference models), the Unreal C++ port, the data extraction and conversion tools, the editor scripts, the tests and this README. The behaviour is checked against recordings of the original game, but the code has not been reviewed the way hand-written software would be. Don't treat it as an example of good programming or copy its patterns into code you care about.

No game data is in this repository. You need your own, legally owned copy of SSX Tricky (NTSC-U, game id SLUS-20326) as a disc image. The tools read everything from that image and write it to git-ignored folders on your machine. Never commit or share those folders, or the packaged game made from them.

Legal

• This is an unofficial fan project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Electronic Arts Inc.
• SSX, SSX Tricky and the related names, logos, characters, artwork, music and other content are trademarks and/or copyrights of Electronic Arts Inc. and their respective owners.
• No game assets are included: no textures, models, audio, video, text or executable files from the game. The tools convert them on your own machine from your own, legally owned copy of the game.
• The MIT license in LICENSE covers only the code, tools and scripts in this repository, not the game or its data (see NOTICE).

What you need

• Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), about 40 GB of free disk space.
• Unreal Engine 5.8. The scripts find it themselves (tools\find_ue.bat), in this order:
  1. the UE_ROOT environment variable (for example set "UE_ROOT=D:\Epic\UE_5.8");
  2. local_settings.bat in the repo folder, if you made one: copy local_settings.example.bat to local_settings.bat and put your engine folder in it (the file is git-ignored);
  3. the Epic Games Launcher's registry entry for 5.8 (HKLM\SOFTWARE\EpicGames\Unreal Engine\5.8);
  4. the launcher's default folder C:\Program Files\Epic Games\UE_5.8. The folder must contain Engine\Binaries\Win64\UnrealEditor-Cmd.exe; otherwise the scripts stop and say where they looked. build_data.bat without import does not need the engine. The command lines below write the engine folder as %UE_ROOT%.
• Visual Studio 2022 (17.14 or newer) or Visual Studio 2026 with the "Game development with C++" workload and a Windows 10/11 SDK (10.0.22621 is the one UE 5.8 prefers).
• Python 3.10 or newer on your PATH, with these packages:

  pip install pycdlib pillow numpy capstone zstandard
  

• A short folder path for the repository (for example C:\SSXTrickyRebuild): Unreal's build writes intermediate files with long names and fails in deeply nested folders (Windows' 260-character path limit).
• The disc image of SSX Tricky (NTSC-U, SLUS-20326), for example ripped from your own disc.

Quick start: build.bat

One command does everything: it converts the game data from your disc, builds the editor, imports the tracks, riders and audio into Unreal, and packages a playable game.

build.bat "C:\path\to\your image.iso"

• Leave out the path if the image is in the repo folder and named SLUS-20326.iso, or if local_settings.bat sets SSX_ISO (see step 1).
• Add dev for a Development build with logging (Packaged-Dev\) instead of the normal Shipping build.
• Add refs to also write the test reference data (see step 5).
• Add noenhanced to skip the Enhanced-look data (see Enhanced look); that look then has flat detail.

It stops at the first error and says which step failed. At the end it prints the time taken and where the game is: Packaged\Windows\SSXTricky.exe (or Packaged-Dev\Windows\SSXTricky.exe with dev). The full run takes a long time (the import and the cook are the slow parts); plan for a couple of hours on the first run.

The sections below are the same work split into separate steps, for when you only need part of it.

Step by step

1. Put the disc image in place

Do one of these (image files, *.iso, are git-ignored):

• copy your disc image into the repo folder and rename it to SLUS-20326.iso;
• keep it anywhere and set its path once in local_settings.bat (copy local_settings.example.bat): set "SSX_ISO=D:\path\to\your image.iso";
• or pass its path to the scripts each time.

2. Convert the game data: build_data.bat

build_data.bat                                  uses SSX_ISO from local_settings.bat, else .\SLUS-20326.iso
build_data.bat "C:\path\to\your image.iso"      any other path
build_data.bat "C:\path\to\your image.iso" refs      also writes the test reference data (step 5)
build_data.bat "C:\path\to\your image.iso" import    also builds the editor and imports everything into Unreal

What it does, in order:

1. Extracts the disc (extracted\), unpacks the BIG archives (unpacked\) and converts textures, tracks, riders, audio, speech, movies and fonts (converted\).
2. Exports the data the game reads at run time (Unreal\SSXTrickyRebuild\SimData\ and parts of converted\).
3. With import: builds the editor and runs the Unreal import scripts (riders, audio, one map per track, the front-end map). This is needed before you can play in the editor or package the game.

Steps 1 and 2 take roughly half an hour; import adds about as much again. Run it again whenever the tools change.

3. Compile the C++ code

First create the Visual Studio project files, either way:

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗