nxnative-easy/dm/games/01007BB017812000

Portal (01007BB017812000)

Update 1.0.3 (v196608) over the base game, SDK 13.3.0. Valve's Source engine as NVIDIA Lightspeed Studios ported it to the Switch: main is a 0.5 MB launcher with SDL, and the engine is 28 NRO modules (nro/*.nro in the RomFS, registered by .nrr/launcher_main.nrr) loaded with nn::ro. It renders with NVN, its D3D9 layer linked into materialsystem.nro. Modules main, subsdk0 (GLSLC), subsdk2 (NintendoSDK_movie) and sdk; subsdk1 is NVIDIA's OpenGL driver and is never loaded.

Current: plays on the Mac at 60 fps: the opening movie, the title menu (its 3D background map), New Game, test chamber 00 with its portals (the view through them included), the pause menu and a saved game, with sound; no red line. About 1.5 GB footprint in the chamber. The unsigned IPA is built (2,823,721,518 bytes, about 2.6 GB); not yet tested on an iPhone.

What it needs

Setting	Where	Why
modules main subsdk0 subsdk2 sdk	game.tsv	main imports from no subsdk; the NROs do: video_nx.nro plays the movies through the movie module and both it and materialsystem.nro call GLSLC (Modules only the NROs import from)
4 GB layout: mem_reserve 0x100000000, mem_alias 0x10000000, mem_stack 0x10000000, app_pool 0xCD500000, sys_resource 0x0	game.tsv	no system resource, so no virtual address memory; the game sets a heap in the 4 GB layout. The rewritten modules fit the default 64 MB of used memory
pad_layout full	game.tsv	first-person: move with the left stick, look with the right
shader_groups /game.zip/=game	game.tsv	the shipped programs come from game.zip; the run-time captures go to other

Rendering

• Resolved: the NSP script took it for an OpenGL game. main imports 20 EGL functions and names glShaderSource (SDL's EGL backend and GL renderer), but draws nothing; materialsystem.nro and video_nx.nro import nvnBootstrapLoader. The first capture boot stopped with [nvn-mtl] FATAL cannot read the shader map from an NVN submit in nro8 (NVN in NROs under an SDL main that names GL).
• About 140 draws a frame at the title and in chamber 00; GPU p50 about 6 ms on an M4 Pro, NVN submit and present under 3 ms.

Shaders

• The D3D9 layer links each Source shader combination (hl2/shaders/fxc/*.vcs, D3D9 bytecode) into one program and keeps the GLSLC output of every program in the game's precache list (portal/glbaseshaders.cfg, 219 entries) in nxcontent/nvsb/<hash>.nvsb: a 0x60-byte NVSB header (version 0x65, the file's length at +8), then one GLSLC output holding a vertex and a pixel shader. The game compiles the rest with glslcCompile: within 30 s of boot, 10 outputs (the movie's and the engine's own).
• Resolved: the split found none of the 219: they are deflated members of game.zip (GLSLC outputs in a zip archive, and those NROs compile at run time). The map has 255 keys, 165 pixel and 90 vertex, 242 from the .nvsb files and 13 from the capture, with 229 vertex and pixel pairs.
• The game writes the programs it has linked to its save, portal/glshaders/glshaders.cfg (-glshadersSaveFS in its boot parameters): 219 entries after chamber 00, the precache list. More entries there mean programs compiled at run time on that route, which a fresh capture boot does not reach; on the iPhone each would give [RED] shader … is not in the shader map.

Files

• The whole game is game.zip (2.7 GB, 41,416 members, Deflate or stored) beside the NROs; the Source file system reads it itself. The profile's romfs_marker is game.zip.
• The boot parameters are nxcontent/rom_boot_params.txt in the zip (-game portal -glshadersSaveFS -nodev -nosteam +mat_queue_mode 2 +mat_picmip 0); host arguments after -- (a +map among them) change nothing.
• Only the merged update is registered. The base game's build has no profile row.

Movies

• The opening movie (1280x720 H.264 with AAC) plays through the host's movie decoder from video_nx.nro, which shows the frames with NVN and plays the sound through its own AudioOut.

Mac routes

• Run the command the NSP script prints for --platform mac (DM_NVN_SHMAP names this profile's shader_map.tsv), with DM_CTL=<file> to drive it (05-debugging.md).
• From a fresh save: the title menu at about 25 s; A (New Game), A (Chapter 1) loads test chamber 00 in about 15 s. The portal opens in the vault after GLaDOS's first lines (about 30 s); the right stick turns, the left stick walks through it. Plus opens the pause menu; Down, A, A saves (portal/save/*.sav in the save).

Found on this game

• Modules only the NROs import from: the provisional profile adds the subsdks the NROs need.
• NVN in NROs under an SDL main that names GL: the graphics API follows the NROs' imports.
• GLSLC outputs in a zip archive, and those NROs compile at run time: the split reads zip members; the run-time capture also runs for NROs that call glslcCompile.
• ro::LookupModuleSymbol for a name the module does not define: the engine's BuiltDebug probe is answered as on Horizon, without a red line.

Open

• iPhone test of the IPA.
• Later chambers (energy balls, turrets, water, the escape) are untested; watch glshaders.cfg and the log for programs outside the shipped 219.