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Case study

Lighthouse: a Banjo-Kazooie PC port built on the decompilation

A native Windows, Linux and macOS port of Banjo-Kazooie that compiles game C sources, many tagged with their Banjo-Kazooie decompilation file paths, against libultraship, a reimplementation of the N64 SDK. Torch extracts the user’s ROM into an asset archive, and the port adds Anchor multiplayer, romhack and language-pack support and a randomizer. Unlike Banjo: Recompiled, it builds from decompiled source rather than statically recompiling the ROM’s code.

Requirements and limitations

  • Requires a supported retail ROM in .z64 form, identified by SHA-1 in the README: US 1.0, US 1.1, Japanese or PAL. It is extracted into a local bk.o2r archive; other regions can be added as language packs, and romhacks need the US 1.0 base. The repository includes no copyrighted game assets.
  • Release 1.1.0 “Hatteras Alfa” (2026-08-17) ships Windows x64, Linux and macOS archives. Rendering backends are DirectX 11 (Windows default), OpenGL on all platforms and Metal (macOS default).
  • Source builds need the libultraship and Torch submodules and CMake, plus Visual Studio 2022 (MSVC v143), Python 3 and at least 8 GB RAM on Windows, GCC or Clang with Ninja and the listed SDL2, libzip, tinyxml2, spdlog, Boost and Vorbis packages on Linux, or Xcode and the listed packages on macOS. Build targets extract bk.o2r from the ROM and package port assets as lighthouse.o2r.
  • The README publishes no matching or fidelity checks. Most supported romhacks are not fully tested, and CI nightly builds are for playtesting and may crash; nothing was built or run here.
  • The repository is dedicated under CC0 1.0; submodules keep their own licenses, and the game is not covered. The README discloses AI assistance for information gathering and accepts AI-assisted pull requests under the HarbourMasters policy; no REA use is documented.

About this entry

Type
Case study
Category
Independent reconstruction cases
Relationship
Independent reconstruction project
Targets
Game

Sources reviewed

The description was reviewed against primary sources. This does not establish runtime testing, security auditing or verified compatibility.

Primary sources

  1. README.md GitHub · HarbourMasters/Lighthouse · Revision 4e8dfd2
  2. docs/BUILDING.md GitHub · HarbourMasters/Lighthouse · Revision 4e8dfd2
  3. src/core2/ba/anim.c GitHub · HarbourMasters/Lighthouse · Revision 4e8dfd2
  4. CMakeLists.txt GitHub · HarbourMasters/Lighthouse · Revision 4e8dfd2
  5. .gitmodules GitHub · HarbourMasters/Lighthouse · Revision 4e8dfd2
  6. LICENSE.md GitHub · HarbourMasters/Lighthouse · Revision 4e8dfd2
  7. README.md GitHub · Kenix3/libultraship · Revision 62e973a
  8. README.md GitHub · HarbourMasters/Torch · Revision 72960ca
  9. https://github.com/HarbourMasters/Lighthouse/releases/tag/1.1.0