Tenkaichi3Decomp

A native PC port of Dragon Ball Z: Budokai Tenkaichi 3 (PlayStation 2, USA release, SLUS-21678), built on the matching decompilation in BT3-Decompiled. It is the game's own code compiled for PC, with a new renderer, sound and input layer underneath; it is not an emulator.

This repository contains no game data. You need your own disc image of that release: the setup reads the game's data from it, and it stays on your computer.

Official source. This project lives only at github.com/z3xox/Tenkaichi3Decomp, and it never ships the game: you need your own disc. We do not make, run or endorse any website that lets you play Budokai Tenkaichi 3 in a browser, with or without ads; such sites are not affiliated with this project. A site that runs the game without your own disc is handing out the game's copyrighted code and data. Our releases are free and have no ads, accounts or payments.

What works

• The whole game loop: boot, opening movie, menus, saving, fights, split screen.

• A GPU renderer (Vulkan) with the PS2's effects (outline, glow, depth tint, distance blur), each switchable. An OpenGL 3.3 renderer draws the same picture for machines without a working Vulkan (F1, Video, Renderer; it is also tried by itself when Vulkan cannot start). It is slower than Vulkan.

• Internal resolution from 1x to 8x; 4:3, 16:9, 21:9 and wider without stretching the fight.

• Smooth motion (experimental, off by default; F1, Video, or F9): the game computes a fight 30 times a second, as on the console; with this the renderer draws pictures in between, for 60, 120 or 240 a second. The fight itself, replays and online play are unchanged, and the two players of an online match need not agree on it. The newest picture reaches the screen 17 to 29 ms later than without. Known limits: pictures are left out at camera cuts and where the camera would pass through scenery; 240 is uneven; little tested with OpenGL. Works in both halves of a split screen.

• Music, voices and sound effects; keyboard and controllers, fully rebindable; two players.

• Clashes: Square counts as a direction (off by default; F1, Controls): in a clash of two beams or two rushes the game counts newly pressed directions, which is why the stick is turned; with this each press of Square counts as one, as a tap of the d-pad does. It changes only your own pad, so it can be used online. A press can be made to count for 1, 1.5, 1.75 or 2 (1.75 unless set: the d-pad has four buttons to tap in turn, Square is one).

• Texture packs made for PCSX2 (.dds or .png): copied into the textures folder next to the game, they are used as they are.

• Stages and music from outside the disc: a stage model (.unk) dropped into the stages folder next to the game, or a song (.mp3, converted in the background when the game starts, or .adx) into songs, is added to the stage select, its name written in the game's own lettering (cut from the disc's name pictures while the game runs). They are not written to the save and are not offered in an online match. See docs/port/adding_stages.md and adding_songs.md.

• In the game, F1 opens the settings, or START + SELECT on a controller (which also works the window: d-pad and Cross, Circle to leave, L1 / R1 for the tabs). Controls has a row to choose another key or button. When a newer release is available, the main menu says so and the window offers to download it in the background, check its signature and, when you choose "Restart now", install it and start the new version (your saves, settings, game data, mods and texture packs are never touched). Esc asks before it closes the game, and the window has an "Exit game" button. Its Cheats tab has "Unlock everything" (a debug function the game's developers left in: all characters, stages, music, items and Zenni).

• Online play, experimental (from release 0.1.8): the main menu's Tenkaichi Budokai Online, the game's own online screens. To play friends, one player opens a lobby (Lobby > Open Lobby) and gets a six-character code; the others type it on Join: no port forwarding. A lobby has up to eight places: two play, six watch, and its owner chooses who plays, the rules, rematches and tournaments; playing one friend is a lobby of two. Lobby > Host by Address and Join > By Address do the same without a code (the owner's address and port, typed on a keypad). Quick Match pairs you with a stranger. (Since 0.1.39 there are no rooms of two and no Watch button: a spectator is a lobby member in a spectator's place. The first online window, "Dragon Net Battle", is kept under F1 > Online > Advanced, and opens and joins lobbies the same way.) Both players get the same roster with everything unlocked, each sees their own fighter's view full screen, and leaving the match puts each player back where they were with their own save. Linux and Windows play against each other. With rollback (the lobby's owner chooses how many frames, and the input delay) your own moves come out at once and the game corrects itself when the other player's buttons arrive. The owner also chooses the battle (single, team, or DP battle with a limit of 10, 15 or 20), the time limit and the game speed, on the lobby's page. Each player sees their own gauges on the left with the players' names under them, and hears the voice language chosen in their own save. The two players can write to each other: Tab opens a line, Enter sends it, Esc or Tab puts it away (the keyboard does not play while a line is typed; a controller does; the key can be changed under Controls). Lines show in the lower left corner for a few seconds. F1 > Online turns the chat off; the line also has "Mute rival". It is not part of the game's state and a copy without it simply sees nothing.

Online play is new. It has been played over the internet between a Linux and a Windows machine. The input delay is chosen from the connection when a match starts (or set by the host), both players need the same release (the game says so when they differ; 0.1.10 does not play against 0.1.8 / 0.1.9, 0.1.15 does not play against 0.1.14 and earlier, and 0.1.39 does not play against 0.1.38.x). F1, Video has a meter for the frame rate and, in a match, the ping, rollbacks and waits. The 32-bit Linux build has no rollback. docs/netplay_notes.md is the working log of how it is built and what was checked.

Lobby codes and quick matches go through a small matchmaking service (a Cloudflare Worker; its whole source is in port/matchmaking, and BT3_MATCH_URL points the game at another copy of it). The game tells it the name of your Profile and the addresses it can be reached at; the service keeps them with the code for at most ten minutes and hands them to the player who enters the code. The games then send to each other directly. Where the routers do not allow that, the match goes through a relay (Cloudflare's TURN service), which passes the match's packets (the buttons pressed) on and keeps nothing. By address none of this is used.

See docs/port/README.md for the running log of what is done, what is verified and what is not.

Requirements

• A 64-bit x86 processor and a graphics card with Vulkan support. Most of the work is on the processor (the game's arithmetic is reproduced exactly as on the PS2); a recent mid-range CPU is recommended.
• Linux (glibc 2.35 or newer) or Windows 10 / 11.
• macOS on Apple Silicon: experimental, built from source only (see below).
• About 4 GB of disc space, and your disc image as an .iso file.

Installing a release

Unpack the release, start Tenkaichi3Decomp-setup (Tenkaichi3Decomp-setup.exe on Windows), choose your disc image, press Play. The setup checks that the image is the unmodified USA release and unpacks the game's data next to the program.

On a machine without a working Vulkan the setup window and the game use OpenGL by themselves. To ask for OpenGL from the start (a Vulkan driver that starts but is incomplete, as on Intel Ivy Bridge), set BT3_GPU_API=gl: BT3_GPU_API=gl ./Tenkaichi3Decomp-setup, and the same for ./Tenkaichi3Decomp. The setup also runs without a window: ./Tenkaichi3Decomp-setup --install <disc image>.

Updates. Once per start the game asks GitHub for the newest release (F1 > Misc > "Check for updates" turns that off). A newer one is announced over the main menu; F1 has Update now, Later and What's new. The download runs while you play, its signature is checked, and "Restart now" replaces the program's files (the old ones are kept as .old until the next start, and put back if anything fails) and starts the new version. Updating by hand, by copying the new files over the old ones, works as before. The in-game updater is based on PR #107 by JosephLlacchua.

Building from source

python3 install.py --iso <your disc image>

does everything on Linux: checks the tools, reads the disc, builds the 64-bit program and runs the game's demo fight as a test. python3 install.py --check lists what is missing. port/setup/build.sh && ./Tenkaichi3Decomp-setup is the same with a window.

macOS (experimental)

Apple Silicon Macs, native arm64, built from source on the Mac itself; there is no macOS release archive. The attract-demo fight gives the same state as the Linux program on every frame, the rewind test (rollback) passes, and the game draws through Metal with sound; online play against Linux / Windows has not been tried on two machines yet. With Homebrew:

xcode-select --install                       # (once: Apple's command line tools)
brew install llvm sdl3 shaderc spirv-cross
python3 install.py --iso <your disc image>   # then ./play.sh

python3 install.py --check lists what is missing. How the build works and what is left: docs/port/macos_plan.md.

The release archives for Linux and Windows are built from the repository alone, with no disc involved: port/release/build.sh (needs only docker) or the GitHub workflow in .github/workflows/release.yml. The repository carries the shape of the game's built-in data tables without their values (port/data); the finished program fetches the values from your disc when it starts.

Layout

Path	Contents
src/, include/	The game's code, from BT3-Decompiled; changes for PC are inside #ifdef PORT
port/src/	The PC side: memory, files, memory card, movies; gs/ renderer, sound, input, settings window
port/tools/	The build: pointer rewriting for 64-bit, packaging, extraction
port/data/	The game's built-in data tables as shape only (labels, sizes, pointer slots), no values
port/release/	The container and scripts that build the release archives
port/setup/	The setup window
port/third_party/	Dear ImGui (MIT), the maths library of newlib
docs/	Notes on the game (from the decompilation) and docs/port/ on the port

This project was made with the help of AI.

Contributors

• RexxColder: the OpenGL 3.3 renderer beside Vulkan (the split of the renderer into a shared recorder and two back ends), and stages and songs from outside the disc (the manifest, the install scripts, the menu changes and their documentation), in pull request #1. Both were brought onto the main line with changes; the documents under docs/port/ say which.

Licence

The port's own code (everything under port/ except port/third_party/, the setup, the build tools, and the PC changes inside #ifdef PORT) is under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3 (AGPL-3.0-only) in every commit after 06e4671 (2026-10-14). Up to and including that commit it was under the MIT licence, and that code, as it was then, stays available under MIT; contributions made under MIT keep their MIT notice inside the AGPL whole. Whoever passes the program on, changed or not, or runs a changed version for others over a network (a lobby or relay server, a web page), has to offer its source under the same licence. The libraries in port/third_party/ keep their own licences (Dear ImGui: MIT; newlib's maths library: its BSD-style terms, in that folder). The game's code in src/ and include/ comes from the decompilation and is not ours to license: it belongs to the game's rights holders.

Legal

This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by the game's developers, publishers or rights holders. It exists for preservation, study and interoperability, and distributes none of the game's assets. All rights to the game belong to their owners. You need your own legally obtained copy of the game to use it.