MIXIDtheSilly/kart-recomp v0.1.1

on GitHub

You no longer need to install anything to build, and the game runs about 50% faster. Versions 1.0.0 and 1.8.0 of the game are supported.

Getting started

1. Download kart-recomp-0.1.1-windows.zip and unzip it somewhere without spaces in the path.
2. Run launcher\out\launcher.exe.
3. Follow its four steps: pick your dump (folder or .nup), click Set up, build (about half an hour the first time), play.

You need Windows 10/11 and a Vulkan 1.3 GPU. Set up installs everything else into the folder: Python, the .NET 10 SDK, the C++ compiler (LLVM MinGW) and the Python packages. It needs no admin rights and no Visual Studio. Anything the PC already has (Python 3.13+, the .NET 10 SDK) is used instead.

Coming from 0.1: unzip into a new folder and point it at the same dump. The first build there compiles everything again with the new compiler.

What's new in 0.1.1

• No Visual Studio, Python or .NET to install. The default compiler is now LLVM MinGW (clang). Set up downloads it and checks its SHA-256. Visual Studio is still an option on the Dependencies step.
• About 50% faster. The clang build is much faster than the Visual Studio one: in a 1.8.0 race, uncapped, ~150 fps against ~97 on an RTX 3080.
• The build brings its own tools: the SPIR-V tools and the shader translator's packages come with the repository (#6, #8), and Set up installs the Python packages (#3).
• Clearer builds: a progress bar with time estimates for every stage, now also while the shaders are found in the game files, and the compiler's full output when a file fails (#2). That shader search also starts minutes sooner. An interrupted compile no longer leaves a broken object behind (#12). The huge main-module files that kept Visual Studio busy for a long time now compile in seconds to a minute (#10). The tools now run in UTF-8, whatever the system code page (#7).
• Builds use every CPU core. Set BUILD_MP in local.cfg to use fewer.
• Lean memory imports on PCs where the GPU can map little host memory, such as 16 GB RAM systems (#4).
• Runs on Intel integrated GPUs (handheld PCs).
• Fewer texture hitches: sparse textures are cheaper, and textures are read ahead.
• Movie fixes for the end of a movie and for a movie that is stopped.
• The pipeline cache is never saved from a lost device, and it is checked when it loads.

Known issues

• A GPU device loss can still happen, though rarely.
• One shader the GPU faults on in free roam is skipped, so something may be missing from that scene.
• The first races can stutter while pipelines and textures are prepared (Bake textures in the launcher helps).
• A crash on an AMD RX 6700 XT (#11) is still being looked into.