Ultimate Spider-Man for PS Vita

What is this?

This is a port of the PC version of Ultimate Spider-Man to the PS Vita. It isn't an emulator: the PC game's program was translated, instruction by instruction, into C code that is compiled for the Vita's ARM processor (static recompilation, the same idea as N64Recomp or XenonRecomp). Windows, Direct3D 9, DirectSound and the controls are re-created underneath it, and the graphics are drawn with vitaGL.

The VPK contains no game data: the city, characters, sound and movies are read from your own PC game files.

The whole game

Story missions, free roam, city goals, Venom, the comic-panel cutscenes and the movies, played from the game's own files.

Made for the Vita

16:9 screen, Vita button icons in every prompt, sound and music, and saves on the memory card.

Tuned for speed

Game logic, drawing and the renderer each get their own CPU core. Fog hides the far city, and settings trade detail for frame rate.

Settings menu

A Settings button on the LiveArea lets you change traffic, view distance, resolution and more, without editing files.

Five languages

English, French, German, Spanish or Italian, using the text files from that language's PC release.

Easy to set up

Copy your game folder across as it is. Nothing to convert, and the movies play straight from the original files.

Screenshots

Spider-Man swinging down a Manhattan street — Swinging through Manhattan

Spider-Man on the rooftops with the city around him — Free roam on the rooftops

Spider-Man running up a building — Wall crawling

A comic-panel cutscene — Comic-panel cutscenes

A tutorial box showing a Vita button icon — Prompts with the Vita's buttons

The game's main menu — The original menus

Captured from the port's own renderer (the Vita code running in a PC test build), at the Vita's 960×544.

What you need

A PS Vita or PS TV that can run homebrew (HENkaku / Ensō), with VitaShell.
libshacccg.suprx in ur0:data/: the shader compiler every vitaGL game needs. If you've played another vitaGL port you already have it; otherwise follow the extraction guide.
Your own copy of Ultimate Spider-Man for PC (the 2005 Activision release): its USM.exe and its Data folder.
About 1.6 GB free on ux0: for the game files.

How to install

Download the VPK Get usm.vpk from the latest release.
Install it Copy usm.vpk to your Vita (FTP or USB in VitaShell), then open it in VitaShell and install it.
Copy your game files From the folder where the PC game is installed, copy USM.exe and the whole Data folder into ux0:data/usm/. It should look like this:
```
ux0:data/usm/
├── USM.exe
└── Data/
    ├── movies/
    ├── packs/
    ├── Sound/
    └── ...
```
Copy the files exactly as they are: no conversion, the movies too. Use a full install: cut-down rips are often missing music, speech or movies, and those parts will be silent or absent. Anything else missing can crash the game later.
Play Start Ultimate Spider-Man from the LiveArea. If USM.exe or the shader compiler is missing, the game tells you on screen.

The first start of each area takes a little longer: shaders are compiled once and then kept in ux0:data/usm/shadercache/.

Controls

Button	Action
Left stick	Move
Right stick	Camera
✕	Jump
□	Punch
△	Kick
○	Wall crawl
R	Web swing
L	Web zip
Rear touchpad	Camera lock (R3 on PC)
L / R	Quick-time events (left / right click on PC)
Start	Pause
Select	City map
D-pad	Menus

Settings

Press Settings under the start button on the game's LiveArea page. Pick a line with the D-pad up/down and change it with left/right. ✕ saves and quits, ○ quits without saving, △ restores the defaults. Start the game normally afterwards.

Setting	What it does
People and traffic	How many pedestrians and cars. The biggest speed setting; the default is very low.
View distance	How far you can see before the city fades into fog.
Resolution	Size of the 3D picture, scaled to the screen (default 960×544). Lowering it gains very little.
Texture size	Largest texture kept: sharper, or lighter on memory.
World texture detail	Sharper city textures, but far walls shimmer more.
Far characters	Characters far from Spider-Man animate every other frame, which helps in crowded fights.
Far objects	How far the game still prepares objects it won't show.
Frame rate cap	None, 20, 30 (default) or 60 fps. A steady rate can feel smoother than a varying one.
Fog in cutscenes	Off shows the far city in cutscenes; on is faster.
Smoke and fire detail	Lower draws fewer puffs, so explosions run smoother.
Map detail	How much small detail the map drops when zoomed far out.
Language	English, French, German, Spanish or Italian. Needs that language's PC game files in `Data`, otherwise it stays in English.
Debug options	Log file, culling and core switches, frame dumps: for reporting bugs.

Performance & known issues

The Vita has much less CPU power than the PCs this game was made for. The default cap is 30 fps: expect about 25 fps in typical play, often 28–30 in quieter spots, and around 10–15 in the heaviest scenes, such as big explosions.

Stutter is still the main issue: short hitches happen while new parts of the city stream in, and the worst ones come just after a mission ends.
The map can drop to low frame rates when fully zoomed out.
People and traffic are kept low by default. Raising them in Settings costs a lot of speed.
The far city is hidden in fog to keep the frame rate up. Set the view distance to Everything, no fog if you prefer the full skyline.

Found a bug? Turn on DEBUG: write log.txt in Settings, play until it happens, then attach ux0:data/usm/log.txt to an issue. If the game stopped with an error, add ux0:data/usm/crash.txt too. The launch before the last one is kept as log_prev.txt.

How it works

The translator reads every function of the PC game's program and writes equivalent C code, which is then compiled for the Vita. A runtime underneath stands in for the PC: the Windows calls, Direct3D 9 (turned into vitaGL calls, with the game's shaders translated to the Vita's), DirectSound, DirectInput, and the Bink movie player (FFmpeg's Bink decoder). Some of the busiest code was rewritten by hand, and drawing runs on other CPU cores while the game works out the next frame.

Building it yourself: see the README. The translation is generated from your own USM.exe.