ryderclanky/BotW-Native

A work-in-progress Windows fork of the BotW Recompiled project: the Wii U game code is translated to C++ ahead of time and drawn through Vulkan, with no emulator or JIT in the loop. It is not a playable full-game release, so treat it as an experiment to build and poke at.

The problem

Someone with a legally owned Wii U copy of Breath of the Wild normally plays it in Cemu, which emulates the PowerPC console at runtime. This project instead aims to take the PowerPC game code, convert it once to native C++ and run that compiled program directly on the PC. The change happens before launch, not during play: you run a recompiler over your own U-King.rpx, build the result, and launch a native binary pointed at your extracted game folder. The payoff is a Windows program with a Vulkan renderer rather than a general-purpose console emulator.

What's different

The mechanism is what matters here. A Python tool recompiles the game executable into C++ source, and CMake turns that into a native binary backed by a Cafe OS runtime and Cemu's Latte GPU layer. That GPU layer comes from Cemu, so the rendering path is not new work from scratch; the fork adds the Windows build and Vulkan backend on top of an upstream iPhone/Mac project that used Metal. Because translation is done ahead of time, the recompile step is a fixed cost every time the game code needs regenerating, and the resulting generated/ directory is not shipped in the repository.

The trade-off is that this is a narrow vertical slice, not a console replacement. The author verified the opening, audio (though audio is also listed as not working), title screen, save loading, combat, the map and fast travel, and Hateno Village at around 60 fps on a recent NVIDIA laptop GPU. Everything else is unchecked, including a long open-world session; DLC is untested. Effects, some controller mapping and cutscene text are explicitly incomplete, and the known-issues list includes a roughly 2-second title-to-intro hitch and first-run shader-compile hitches.

Who should try it

This fits a preservation-minded tinkerer who owns the USA 1.5.0 Wii U game, is comfortable in an MSYS2 UCRT64 shell, and wants to see static recompilation of a large commercial title working on Windows. It also suits people curious about how the upstream recompiler and Cemu GPU layer fit together.

It is a poor fit for anyone who just wants to play Breath of the Wild on PC; Cemu is the mature route, and this build has no audio by its own admission. Linux users should note the fork's verified path is Windows Vulkan — the Linux Vulkan backend compiles, but the documented result is an empty frame and exit, not a play-through. macOS results belong to the upstream project.

Requirements and limitations

You must supply your own legally obtained, already-extracted USA v208 (1.5.0) game folder; the repository contains no game files, keys or decryption tools. The recompiler and patches match that specific executable, and the README gives a SHA256 for code/U-King.rpx to check before building. Windows 10/11 with a Vulkan 1.1 driver is required, and the build is MinGW gcc under MSYS2 UCRT64 — MSVC and clang-cl are not supported. Vulkan is the only graphics backend on Windows.

Compilation is memory-hungry: each job on generated/ peaks around 0.5 GB, so the README suggests sizing -j against available RAM rather than just cores. At runtime, startup commits about 1.4 GB of guest address space (not resident RAM), and a too-small pagefile can fail a later commit. Ongoing upkeep is real: some areas are unverified, mods are documented but untested in game, and the full keyboard/gamepad mapping is promised for a future update, so E/Left Shift/Enter cover only part of the controls today. See the setup instructions and known issues.

HotRepo's take

HotRepo only has a snapshot: this repository was created 2026-10-23 and appeared on the NEW-REPOSITORY board for C++ at #4 with 109 total stars, observed 2026-10-25. That is not a daily growth figure, and with no comparable daily-board history, persistence cannot yet be judged. Before investing an evening in the build, check that your U-King.rpx hash matches the documented one and that your region/version is USA 1.5.0; a mismatch likely puts you outside what the recompiler targets.