feedingfrenzy-nx installer

A native Nintendo Switch port of the Xbox 360 (Xbox Live Arcade) version of Feeding Frenzy (2006), by Sprout Games and PopCap Games: eat smaller fish, avoid the bigger ones and grow up the food chain.

It's not an emulator. The PowerPC code of the game's default.xex is statically recompiled to C++ with ReXGlue and compiled for the Switch, and the game is drawn by Renut's Direct3D-level renderer (reNut by masterspike52, as banjo-nx carries it) directly on the Switch's own graphics API, deko3d. It is made from the Bejeweled 3 port's code.

[!NOTE] You need your own copy of the game, from your own Xbox 360: the Xbox Live Arcade game's content package (Content/0000000000000000/584107F1/000D0000/F2727A719711C4E6BE4B402D70C1FA917A42E7C658).

How to install

1. Open the installer page: https://chanseyisthebest.github.io/feedingfrenzy-nx-installer/
2. Choose your game (its content package, or a folder that holds it) and press Create feedingfrenzy-nx.zip. Everything runs in your browser and the game files never leave your computer: the page checks your copy, downloads the build and makes the game pack from your files.
3. Extract the downloaded feedingfrenzy-nx.zip into sdmc:/switch/.

Your feedingfrenzy-nx folder should look like this:

/switch/feedingfrenzy-nx/
  feedingfrenzy.nro
  LICENSES.txt
  feedingfrenzy.toml           (your settings; written at the first start when it is missing)
  game_root.nxpack          (the game, in one file, made from your copy)
  game_root.nxidx

Launch it with a game override (hold R while starting an installed title) or a forwarder. Album applet mode does not give the game enough memory. If you use a forwarder, set it to a 39-bit address space.

To build everything yourself instead, see docs/building.md.

[!CAUTION] The first time you play, the game's shaders are compiled for the console, so it can stutter for a moment at the start. They are saved in deko3d_shaders.bin next to the NRO and later sessions start smoothly.

Controls

The left stick moves your fish; A selects in the menus and B goes back. By default the face buttons work by position, as on the Xbox 360 pad the game was made for: the bottom button is the Xbox's A, the right one the Xbox's B, and so on.

Switch	Xbox 360
B (bottom)	A
A (right)	B
Y (left)	X
X (top)	Y
ZR / ZL	RT / LT
R / L	RB / LB
+	Start
−	Back
Sticks / D-pad	Sticks / D-pad

To use the buttons by letter instead (the Switch's A acts as A), set input_xbox_layout = false in feedingfrenzy.toml. There are no touch controls.

The game has no multiplayer. Xbox LIVE (leaderboards, online play) is not available.

Settings

feedingfrenzy.toml, next to the NRO, holds only your options. Everything else is built into the NRO.

Setting	What it does
feedingfrenzy_language	Empty (default): the console's system language (English when the game does not have it). Or en, de, es, fr, it, ja or pt
input_xbox_layout	Face buttons by position (true, default) or by letter (false)
input_joycon_sideways	A single Joy-Con held sideways (true, default)
input_joycon_sideways_stick	With it, a single Joy-Con's stick turned for the sideways grip (true, default)

If you delete feedingfrenzy.toml, the game writes the default one again at the next start.

Resolution and performance

The game draws 1280x720 in handheld and docked mode and runs at 60 FPS. No log files are kept; only a crash writes logs/rex/rex_crash.log.

How it works

• The game's code is translated, not emulated. ReXGlue translates every function of the game's program to C++, which is then compiled for the Switch. ReXGlue also gives the game what it expects from an Xbox 360: its system, files, saves, audio and controllers.
• Renut's renderer on deko3d. The game's Direct3D calls (XDK 2571's Direct3D, mapped function by function onto Renut's) are drawn directly by Renut's Direct3D-level renderer through plume's deko3d back end.
• Shaders. The game compiles its 5 GPU programs (3 pixel and 2 vertex shaders) while it starts, with the Xbox's shader compiler, so none is stored in its files: they were translated with XenosRecomp, DXC and SPIRV-Cross into deko3d's GLSL and the NRO carries them. The console compiles each shader variant once with uam and keeps it in deko3d_shaders.bin.
• Optimization. The 64 busiest game functions (from an emulator profile of Stage 1) run as translated native copies that keep the game's registers in C++ locals and write back only the registers that changed; a few of the hottest (strstr, _stricmp, memmove and a game method) are written by hand (see docs/optimising-functions.md). The release NRO is built with link-time optimisation.

Documentation

Document	What it explains
docs/building.md	How to build the PC test build, the NRO and the game data
docs/feedingfrenzy-notes.md	Notes on the game's code and every change of the port, each with its evidence
docs/optimising-functions.md	How the game's hot functions are made faster, measured and checked
docs/hand-natives.md	The rules for hand-written native functions
docs/bejeweled3-notes.md	The Bejeweled 3 port's notes: the code this port is made from

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