Changelog

0.1.1-experimental — 2026-05-02

First end-to-end release-tarball flow: download tmc-usa-{linux,windows}-0.1.1-experimental.tar.gz, drop a baserom.gba next to it, run ./asset_extractor once, then ./tmc_pc. Works on Linux and Windows (real and via wine). Tarball ships only tmc_pc[.exe], asset_extractor[.exe], and sounds.json (104 KB metadata).

Fixed

• Title-screen sword + hilltop BG render correctly on Windows. Mingw's static-CRT heap allocates inside the simulated GBA address window (0x02000000-0x0A000000), so port_resolve_addr mistranslated heap pointers to &gEwram[N] and the title-scene palette load read zeros from EWRAM. Fixed by reserving the GBA address window with VirtualAlloc(MEM_RESERVE) before any heap is opened on Windows. Linux glibc keeps malloc above 0x55... so it was never affected. (port_main.c)
• Title sword routing restored. The matheo/master merge regressed ad9b4d94's GBA-mode-1 → VirtuaPPU-mode-2 routing via a "case handling" cleanup. BG2 affine was reading text-BG indexing and the title sword came out as garbage tiles. (port_ppu.cpp)
• asset_extractor works from a release tarball. Old logic required walking up to find an xmake.lua and bailed otherwise; new logic always writes assets/ and assets_src/ next to the executable, which is the same path tmc_pc looks under, in both dev and release layouts. (tools/src/assets_extractor/assets_extractor_main.cpp)
• tmc_pc finds assets and ROM next to the binary on Linux/macOS too. Replaced the cwd-only lookup with readlink(/proc/self/exe) / _NSGetExecutablePath, mirroring the Windows GetModuleFileNameW path. Double-clicking tmc_pc from a file manager now works. (port/port_asset_loader.cpp, port/port_rom.c)
• sounds.json discovered next to the binary. Audio backend now probes <exe_dir>/sounds.json and <exe_dir>/assets/sounds.json before the cwd-relative dev paths. Release tarballs ship sounds.json at the top level. (port/port_m4a_backend.cpp)
• ViruaPPU patches re-apply automatically every build. xmake.lua's before_build callback was disabled in a stash; re-enabled with git apply -3 so partial-upstream drift no longer aborts the patch step. The mosaic patch (drifted, has known issues) is removed from the auto-apply list — TMC_NO_MOSAIC (ea33eb71) covers the gameplay paths.

Added

• Merged matheo/master: build.py end-to-end build helper and .github/workflows/{_build,ci,release}.yaml release workflow. Tagging v* on a fork with ASSETS_REPO/ASSETS_TOKEN configured will produce tmc-{usa,eur}-{linux,windows}-<tag>.tar.gz artifacts.

Known issues

• ~900 animations (Gyorg, Vaati cutscene, MazaalHand, etc.) are skipped during extraction with Animation loop byte missing / Animation data has trailing bytes. Bug in infer_asset_size / WriteEditableAnimation's end-of-stream detection — affects both platforms identically. Animations not used by the title or early gameplay; will surface during specific cutscenes.
• Mosaic effect on title fade and certain spell charges is disabled (kill-switched). Patch needs re-porting against current ViruaPPU mode1.c.

0.1.0-experimental — earlier

Initial PC port snapshot.