Silent Hill AI-Assisted PC Port

This project started out as an experimental PC port built on top of the PSX decompilation, and has blossomed into a fully functional PC port with many new features, QoL enhancements, built-in mod support, an active community, and fan translation\multilingual support. It was built using PsyCross (PsyQ SDK Compatibility Layer originally for REDRIVER2), which we now have our own fork of. The code for this PC port was built with heavy AI-Assistance from Claude Opus 4.6, 4.7, and the newer Fable model. However, care has been taken to leave the original game code intact everywhere possible, and to work around it where needed for the sake of the PC port.

Project Website: https://sh1pc.com/
Discord: https://discord.gg/JWuNzVsQbr

Status

The port is playable start to finish — the full game can be completed, and none of the remaining glitches are progression-blocking. Where it stands today:

• Main menu — fully working and now mouse-clickable; logos, FMV intro, options, and save/load all display and respond.
• World rendering — textured environments, fog, snow/particles, buildings and props all render; an experimental "whole-map" draw mode can show the whole town at once (off by default).
• Player movement — runs the original PSX lower-body state machine by default: collision-based walk/run, sidestep, wall collision, floor height, and stairs.
• Combat — handgun, hunting rifle, and shotgun fire reliably; melee connects; break-free, death, and grab all work. Free-aim, high-FPS double-fire, and phantom swings are fixed. Chainsaw and Rock Drill still have issues.
• Bosses — Twinfeeler, Split Head, Floatstinger, the Cybil fight, and Incubus all run; a few late boss effects are still being polished.
• Cutscenes — play in sync at any frame rate after a timing overhaul; a few per-scene pacing details remain (cosmetic, no freezes).
• Camera — the PSX fixed-camera system is 1:1 with the original, plus a full alternate suite: third-person, over-the-shoulder, and first-person, with FOV and aim-zoom sliders and their own control scheme.
• Audio — SFX, BGM, and voices all work; XA streams cutscene voices straight from the disc image. Optional surround 5.1/7.1 with true 3D positional SFX, reverb, and ADSR envelopes.
• Maps — all 43 map sections build as runtime DLLs and load; room and door transitions work. Map editor currently being built.
• Enemies / AI — full enemy AI. A global monster pool lets any enemy spawn in any map (on by default), and the concurrent-enemy cap can be raised past the original six.
• Saves — memory-card save/load works; quick-save (F6) and quick-load (F8) are enabled.
• Graphics — high resolutions, 16:9 (Hor+), high refresh rates, and uncapped FPS. Rewritten optional PGXP perspective correction (off is byte-identical to the original look). Four flashlight modes (Classic / +Shadows / Modern / +Shadows) with per-pixel lighting and shadow mapping, plus tone-mapping and post-process options.
• Regions — PAL/EUR (five localized languages) and NTSC-J (Japanese, with kanji font and story text) are both supported and tested; fan-translation discs work via a disc picker in the launcher.
• Modding — a built-in Mod Manager handles texture packs, loose-file replacement, DuckStation-style packs, and per-palette overrides, plus tools to compose and rebuild character textures.
• Updates — the launcher can check for and install updates; nightly builds are published, with Linux/macOS being a WIP. They are included, but have many bugs. It's recommended to use the Windows version where possible.

Nightly builds: https://github.com/SlickAmogus/silent-hill-pc-nightly

Known Issues / Bugs

The bigger items still being worked on (roughly by priority, no strict order):

• PGXP can still show occasional seams at character joints (much improved since the rewrite)
• Chainsaw and Rock Drill weapons are broken
• Enemy AI needs another pass — some enemies jerk through the floor during combat
• Monsters spawned outside their home map (global pool) play the wrong SFX or none
• Menu re-entry can corrupt some screens on specific paths

Full tracked bug list: #13

Short Instructions

• Extract the release anywhere on your PC.
• Put your game disc image in the gamedata folder. Any filename works — the launcher auto-detects it by region — but Silent Hill (USA).bin is a safe default.
• Run SilentHillPC_Launcher to configure, or run SilentHillPC to play. The build is unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen may block it the first time; run the game once, then the launcher.

Controls

Default keyboard bindings (fixed-camera "Classic" scheme):

PSX Button	Key	In-game
Cross	C	Action / shoot
Circle	V	Flashlight
Triangle	Z	Map
Square	X	Run
L1 / R1	A / D	Sidestep left / right
L2 / R2	Right Shift / Left Shift	View / aim
D-Pad	Arrow keys	Move
Start	Enter	Pause
Select	Space	Inventory

PC-only keys:

Action	Key
Reload	R
Quick save / load	F6 / F8
Change camera style	F9

Rebinding: open the launcher and click Controls to remap keys and controller buttons — click a bind box, then press the key (Esc or Backspace clears it). The alternate cameras (third-person / OTS / first-person) use a separate control scheme; toggle "Alt. Cam Controls" in that window to edit it. Everything is also stored as plain key_* lines in config.cfg. (Reload is fixed to R.)

Building

Prerequisites

• MSYS2 / MinGW64 (Windows). Install MSYS2 from https://www.msys2.org/, then from an MSYS2 MinGW x64 shell install the toolchain:

  pacman -S --needed mingw-w64-x86_64-gcc mingw-w64-x86_64-cmake mingw-w64-x86_64-ninja mingw-w64-x86_64-SDL2 mingw-w64-x86_64-openal mingw-w64-x86_64-libjpeg-turbo
  

• PsyCross — pulled in as a git submodule (the SH-specific fork). From the repo root:

  git submodule update --init --recursive
  

  This populates pc_port/PsyCross. Do not clone PsyCross separately — the build uses the submodule.
• Game disc image — a BIN dump of Silent Hill (USA) (SLUS-00707). Place it at:

  pc_port/build/gamedata/Silent Hill (USA).bin
  

Build

Easiest (Windows): one command.

pc_port\build.bat

Double-click build.bat for a menu (incremental / clean rebuild / build+run / nuke), or pass a mode: build.bat (incremental), build.bat rebuild, build.bat configure, build.bat run, build.bat nuke. It auto-configures (Ninja + map DLLs) on the first run and rebuilds incrementally afterward. If MSYS2 isn't at C:\msys64, set MSYS2_ROOT first (e.g. set MSYS2_ROOT=D:\msys64 && pc_port\build.bat).

Manual — from an MSYS2 MinGW64 shell (first time):

cd silent-hill-decomp/pc_port
cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja -DSH_BUILD_MAP_DLLS=ON
cmake --build build

Subsequent incremental builds: cmake --build build. -DSH_BUILD_MAP_DLLS=ON builds the maps as DLLs loaded at runtime; without it only the starting area is available.

Note: close the game before rebuilding — the linker cannot overwrite a running SilentHillPC.exe (cannot open output file SilentHillPC.exe: Permission denied). build.bat detects this and tells you.

Game Files

The game's assets are packed into two archives (SILENT. and HILL.) on the disc — there is no real filesystem. They're indexed by a 2074-entry table with 6-bit-encoded names; the full enum with paths is in include/main/fileenum.h.USA.inc.

Ext	Type ID	Description
.TIM	0	Texture image
.VAB	1	Sound bank
.BIN	2	Overlay code / data
.DMS	3	Cutscene data
.ANM	4	Animation data
.PLM	5	Map geometry
.IPD	6	Map data
.ILM	7	Character model
.TMD	8	Mesh data
.DAT	9	Demo data
.KDT	10	Audio metadata (sequence / score)
.CMP	11	Compressed data

Extracting and replacing files — launcher → Mod Manager:

• Extract BIN… unpacks a disc .bin into a loose asset tree (<FOLDER>/<NAME>.<TYPE>), the same result as the dev extract with no extra tools. Tick "Convert textures to PNG" to also dump every .TIM as a .png.
• TIM → PNG… / Bulk → PNG… convert one texture or a whole folder to editable PNGs.
• Loose-file overrides — enable loose files (the checkbox on the window) and drop replacements in gamedata/load/<FOLDER>/<NAME> (e.g. gamedata/load/SND/MAP000.VAB); the game swaps them in at load. Replacements must be ≤ the original's size (oversized textures excepted).
• Character textures are one index sheet drawn through several palettes, so a single PNG only recolors part of the model. Use Reference… to build one correct composite from a character's model + texture, edit it in any image editor, then Rebuild… to slice it back into the per-row PNGs the game loads. See pc_port/docs/Modding_And_Extraction_Guide.md for the full workflow.

Console Commands

An in-game console for cheats, warps, and live tuning. Enable it with allow_debug_controls = 1 in config.cfg, then hold ` (backtick / tilde) in-game to open it (the game pauses while it's open). Type a command and press Enter — commands are case-insensitive. Type help or debug to list everything live.

Command	What it does
give <item>	Give a weapon / ammo / health — give allweapons, give ammo, give health (help give lists items)
kill / killall	Kill Harry / kill nearby enemies
spawn <name> [state]	Spawn a monster in front of Harry (spawn list)
unlimited [0|1]	Raise the concurrent-enemy cap
map <name>	Set the New-Game start map — loads on the next New Game, does not warp mid-session
noclip / obst / god	Walk through walls / round-obstacle collision / invincibility
getflags · setflag <n> <0|1> · setending <bad|bad+|good|good+>	Inspect / force story flags and the ending (set before the ending)
pgxp [0|1]	Toggle PGXP perspective correction
flmode <0-3> · shadows [0|1] · fl/wl [color]	Flashlight mode / shadows / flashlight & world-light tint
fov · tpsfov · tpsaimzoom · camcollide	First-person / third-person FOV and camera feel
audioout <stereo|quad|51|71|hrtf> · xavol <0-100> · adsr [0|1]	Speaker layout / FMV volume / SPU envelopes
fmv [name]	Play an intro / ending movie (bare fmv lists them)
quit	Exit the game

Many values are also live-tuning knobs — run one with no argument to read the current value: vfov, hfov, vshift, fogstr, pgxpedge, pgxpnearz, shadowbias, postint, tmint, and the inventory inv* offsets. debug 2 documents them.

Debug Controls

Also requires allow_debug_controls = 1. Debug events echo to the per-run SilentHill_<timestamp>.log.

Cheats & tools (top-row keys):

Key	Action
Esc	Warm reset to the title screen
0	Noclip toggle
4 / 5	New-Game start-map prev / next
6	Kill nearby enemies
7	Invincibility toggle
8	+15 handgun bullets
9	No-target toggle (enemies ignore Harry)
- / =	Give Hunting Rifle / Shotgun (+ shells)
'	Collision visualizer panel
K · , .	Keyframe inspector / scrub

Graphics hotkeys (no dev controls needed):

Key	Action
F1	Toggle PGXP
F2	Cycle post-process effect
F3	Cycle tone mapping
F4	Cycle flashlight mode
[ / ]	Lower / raise the selected effect's intensity
\	Choose which effect [ / ] adjusts

Debug camera (numpad):

Key	Action
Num *	Free debug camera on / off
Num 8 / 5 / 4 / 6	Fly forward / back / strafe left / right
Num 7 / 9	Turn left / right
Num + / -	Tilt up / down
PgUp / PgDn	Move up / down
Num /	Print camera coordinates to the log
Num 3	Reset cam nudge / in-game rescue teleport
Num .	Log Harry's position

With the debug camera off, the same numpad keys nudge the normal game camera — a live camera-tuning aid. (Camera styles — third-person, OTS, first-person — are cycled with the Change Camera key, F9 by default, not a debug key.)

Support

I'm on Discord as @KushAstronaut, and the project has a Discord server: https://discord.gg/JWuNzVsQbr

Silent Hill is © Konami and this does not contain any game assets. You must provide a legally obtained dump of Silent Hill for PSX to use.