adriadam10/mkw-recomp v0.1.10

on GitHub

Mods in the start screen, from @SavageCore's work, with GameBanana's mods a click away; Unlock everything on 1.8.0 by
@IgorLomba; @flavio-silva's fix for the slowdown of 8 GB cards and the video memory diagnostics that found it; Switch 2
controllers over Bluetooth, AMD cards on Linux past the title, Intel GPUs past the warm-up, and less memory on Windows.

Changes

• Mods (#218 by @SavageCore): the start screen's Mods page, by @SavageCore, installs a mod from a .zip or folder
  and enables it for the next start, merges enabled mods that change the same game archive, and builds code mods into
  the game with patches that skip a region of code, not only replace an instruction. On top of it: .rar and .7z, a
  GameBanana tab that searches and browses the game's mods there, with their pictures, and installs one with a click
  (or with GameBanana's 1-Click button), and GameBanana's code mods (.ips, such as 200cc or Classic Grand Prix)
  taken as they are published.
  Before the first install the page says what a mod can do (crashes, broken saves, graphics mods that cost frame rate),
  the save is copied to profile/save-before-mods before a start with new mods, and the log names the mods in use.
  Mods are their authors' work; this project is not affiliated with GameBanana or with any mod (README, Mods).
• Unlock everything on game version 1.8.0 (#211 by @IgorLomba): Settings > Hacks > Unlock everything did nothing on
  1.8.0, whose save has another layout than 1.0.0's; @IgorLomba's fix finds the lists by their key in the save itself.
  It also sets the Special Cup as seen, so the cup select skips its opening animation, where NVIDIA cards faulted after
  unlocking (#142, not yet confirmed on one).
• 8 GB cards no longer slow down after a few menus (#200 by @flavio-silva): textures the game released were capped
  in count only and could hold 1.6 GB; Windows then moved memory out of the GPU and the game fell to 0.07x speed on the
  trophy screen of an 8 GB RTX 4070 laptop. Their memory is now bounded too (a twelfth of the video memory budget,
  tex_released_mib), and @flavio-silva's two cups in a row on that laptop stayed at full speed.
• Video memory diagnostics (#199 by @flavio-silva): vram_log = <frames> logs the video memory census without the
  other traces, and the commands vram and trim [MiB] show it, or free memory as a failed allocation would, in a
  running game. This is how the slowdown above was found.
• Switch 2 controllers over Bluetooth (discussion #113): Settings > Controls > Switch 2 controllers (Bluetooth),
  off by default, pairs a Pro Controller or Joy-Con 2 without other software, on Linux (BlueZ) and Windows. On
  Windows 11 it asks for the shortest Bluetooth connection interval, against the input lag a first tester saw, and the
  log says how many reports a second the controller sends. Its Bluetooth LE protocol is from mkw-neo.
• Less memory on Windows (#198): the game's 8 GB heap is committed as the game touches it instead of at start, so
  Windows no longer charges it all against RAM and the page file (a race at 10.6 GB private instead of 15.7), which
  is what a 16 GB PC ran out of at the intro loading screen.
• Below 3 GB of video memory the texture tiles take a quarter of it instead of 768 MB (#215), and integrated GPUs may
  use 40 % of the RAM instead of a quarter (#174).
• On game version 1.8.0: the internal resolution setting takes effect (#195), and so do the ultrawide menus, the shadow
  map size and the fixed seed, and the game's own texts of 1.8.0 are in Catalan, Galician and Basque as well.
• In a container that refuses userfaultfd (Docker's and Podman's default), textures are no longer uploaded again
  every frame: ~20 fps there instead of ~6 (#241); the log says how to allow it for full speed (README).
• Polish and Thai in the game (discussion #193): the languages the game's own updates added (Polish in 1.5.0, Thai
  in 1.7.0) are listed in Settings > Game > Language when the dump has them (1.8.0), and a system set to one of them
  picks it; a 1.0.0 dump stays as before. Thai is also a menu and launcher language (the 20th; our first translation,
  corrections welcome).
• Settings > Sound > Mute in background: no sound while the game window is not in front (off by default).
• Settings > Controls > Stick dead zone (8 % by default): round instead of per axis, and the tilt past it starts from
  zero, so small moves just outside it are no longer lost; raise it if the kart drifts with the stick at rest.
• The setup no longer fails at "generate" with "Module use of python312.dll conflicts with this version of Python"
  (#177) when another Python's PYTHONPATH or PYTHONHOME is set on the machine.
• An update whose changes only touch how the game code is compiled no longer stops the setup at "compile" with
  generated/layout.json missing: the code is generated again first.
• The setup no longer fails at the shaders on Windows PCs with more than 61 CPU threads ("max_workers must be <= 61",
  #222): it uses up to 61 there.
• Moving or renaming the folder of your game files no longer stops the update's setup with "no exefs/main and romfs/"
  (#188): the start screen says the files are no longer there and asks for the folder again, and choosing it does not
  redo the game code and the shaders, since the setup now recognises the same game by its version, not its folder.
• 21:9 at 2160p (5040x2160) no longer gives a black screen with sound (#213): the game's output pool did not fit its
  memory at that size, and the port now gives it its own.
• Intel GPUs no longer hang at the title or in the setup's warm-up (#174, #184, #223): in the game's compute programs
  with barriers, a thread that leaves early now goes on through the barriers without writing anything, as on the
  console, instead of leaving the rest of its group waiting for it forever.
• Images whose usages the driver refuses together are created without the optional ones (#174: an R8G8_UNORM image
  on Intel's Linux driver was made with a combination it does not support).
• The setup also takes a folder with a loose exefs/ and romfs as a .nup package (or a link to one).
• NVIDIA's shader tools are downloaded again when they arrive cut or damaged (#207), and if they keep arriving damaged
  the setup says so (an antivirus, proxy, VPN or unstable connection) instead of only showing two checksums.
• AMD GPUs on Linux (RADV) no longer lose the device at the title as soon as the game draws its first task and mesh
  programs (#4, #43, #50, #225): they are drawn as compute passes there by default, as mesh_compute = 1 in mkw.ini
  did (mesh_compute = 0 goes back to the mesh shaders). A later hang some of these cards still have is in #50.
• For NVIDIA's "instruction pointer invalid" (#22): skip_programs = <key>[,<key>...] in mkw.ini leaves out the
  draws of the programs whose key starts with those hex digits (the vs/fs keys of the breadcrumb lines), so a
  reporter can tell whether the program named at the fault is the one that faults. A diagnosis: those draws are missing.

Tested before publishing

From these packages, before publishing:

• The whole setup on Linux (Radeon 660M, RADV) in 16 minutes, its warm-up 993 frames with the task and mesh programs
  drawn as compute passes (the new default on RADV), and on Windows 11 (GTX 1050 Ti) in 31 minutes, its warm-up to
  the end without a fault.
• Before the tag, on main: a mod of each kind on Windows, a skin from GameBanana's tab and Classic Grand Prix
  (.ips), built into the game and raced; the GameBanana tab and its 1-Click link on Windows.
• The AArch64 AppImage on an AYN Odin 2 (Adreno 740, Turnip) by @titooo7, with 0.1.9 (#176).

Install

• Linux x86-64, glibc 2.31 or newer (Debian 11, Ubuntu 20.04, SteamOS and later): chmod +x the AppImage and run it.
  The game it builds lives in ~/.local/share/mkw-recomp. On 64-bit ARM (ARMv8.2: Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 and newer), the
  -aarch64.AppImage.
• Windows 10/11 x64: unpack the zip into a folder and run mkw.exe.
• Either: a Vulkan 1.3 GPU and about 30 GB free. Open Game files, point it at your own dump of Mario Kart World
  1.0.0 or 1.8.0 (its exefs/ and romfs/, or one .nup or .nx file) and press Prepare. Nothing of the game ships here: the setup builds it on your
  machine and downloads NVIDIA's nvdisasm and ptxas (pinned by sha256; 84 MB on Linux, 126 MB on Windows) to
  describe the shader encoding.

Updating

From 0.1.5 on, the start screen offers a newer release (Update to vX) and installs it: it downloads it, checks it,
replaces the program and sets up again only what changed. From an older version, once by hand: Linux, run the new
AppImage; Windows, unpack the new zip over the same folder; then press Prepare again (the steps already done are
skipped).

Known issues

• NVIDIA cards can still lose the device in some races and menus ("instruction pointer invalid", #22); skip_programs
  above helps us find the program at fault.
• Some AMD cards on Linux still hang later on, in a race or a menu, with the compute path (#50).
• Switch 2 controllers over Bluetooth: tested by one player on Windows, where they worked with noticeable input lag;
  the shorter connection interval above is not confirmed yet to remove it, and no one has tried them on Linux yet
  (discussion #113). Over USB-C they are not recognised on Windows.

Reporting a problem

Open an issue with the bug form and attach the logs: logs/mkw.log (the game and the start screen) and
logs/setup.log (the setup's tools), in ~/.local/share/mkw-recomp on Linux and next to mkw.exe on Windows.