A question about PC porting.

[AmberSword]

Now I know what you're expecting, a rant about the poor state of PC ports.
No. Actually.. I'm here to throw out a very random question.

Is there any way someone can port a game from a console to a PC by themselves? It only needs to work on one particular PC, I realize every PC's architecture is different. I'm also not asking about emulators, just to get that out of the way.

Anyways, is it actually possible to do this? Or is the code required kept by the devs? I'm like a fish out of water here, not even sure if I'm asking the correct questions, but I think my point is pretty clear.

 

[AmberSword]

You need the source code. Even though the PS4 and XB1 are based on the same hardware architecture, games developed for them expect different operating systems.

Sorry, but without the source code (which may not even be portable without rewriting large chunks of it) you're not going to get anywhere. Even art assets are built differently for different platforms.

I'm curious though: what game are you trying to port, any why only for one particular PC?

I'm not actually out to port anything, I barely know anything about this stuff, I'm no expert. (though I do hope to be one some day )

I was just very curious, because I've been reading about the PS3's 1 core 6 sub-core very complicated cell architecture and some other stuff about the original xbox/360/xb1/PS4 and stuff. I understand emulating that hardware at out current level of commercially feasible and available technology is basically impossible. This got me thinking about the software aspect though.

The reason I say one particular PC is because you have to start somewhere, making a working port for all PC's is much harder than just one, because all of them have different hardware, so I wanted to exclude working on different shaders/ direct x versions and all those irrelevant stuff, just to make the task more doable.

Now I understand that it's better to just buy a game and play on a relevant system than bother with all this, I'm just here to ask some hypothetical questions.

So.... back to the point. If someone somehow managed to get their hands on leaked source code... Does it mean they could actually attempt a port?

Edit: Also, what determines whether a game is easy to port? Is it inherent to the game's genre, or is it purely based about how the developer chooses to go about making the game.

 

[Albino Boo]

Its highly unlikely that a single person could attempt a port with just the source code. You would have to have the design documents as well. You have to be able to trace all the api calls and all the cpu threading throughout the code. Then you would have to have enough knowledge to rewrite all of that. Normally the porting is done by team 10-20 people each with specialist knowledge. You would have the directx person the cpu person and so on and so forth. Even if you did have all the knowledge you would have to have access to a compiler with all the relevant libraries. Many of which would have been in house creations and would have gone with code to be ported.

In short even if you did have the source code, you would have to spend 2-3 years of your life working to duplicate the all the combined effort of the team that does the porting.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Potentially you could reverse engineer all processing calls and find an analog for them with just the commercial game. But I probably don't have to tell you how incredibly difficult that is.

Source code is a far easier route but you still need to get a compiler that understands the code and works for your platform, otherwise you need to make yourself a compiler which is no small task.

The best case scenario however is porting games with a multi platform engine, so you just poach the assets from the commercial product and stick them into the engine on your platform and if the devs kept all features within the engine things should work.

 

[AmberSword]

Great answers I'm getting here, quelled a lot of my doubts, and also gave me some insight as to why PC ports aren't made by default by all game developers.

There's a saying that if there's even a little motivation, some one, some where will do it. I guess attempting a port really is a totally fruitless endeavour.

 

[pearcinator]

Just jam the disk into your PC drive. I promise it will work.