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Progress Report - Q2 2026

· 21 min read
barg034
barg034

Tons of bugfixes post-Jak 3 release, new features for mods, and a fresh look for the launcher!

Release Info​

This month's OpenGOAL Tooling (jak-project repo) release is 0.3.4.

Community Spotlight​

Jak and Daxter: The JET-Board Legacy​

HatKid has done the lord's work, and backported the JET-Board (with Jak 3 mechanics) to Jak 1! This feat was only possible after the decompiler was extended to support proper animation exporting, which was also implemented by HatKid.

 

info

If you want to play these mods (and others), follow the instructions here to set up the mod list for the OpenGOAL launcher.

Launcher​

Launcher redesign ​

  • Redesign for header, sidebar, GameControls, locale selection page, mod pages
  • Settings page for configuring background videos
  • Light mode fixes
  • Fixes playtime maxing out at 23:59:59
  • Handles edge case where iso_data folder has been removed
  • Removes splash screen
  • Improves version selection page
  • Standalone mod page/sidebar entry
  • Supports per-game name/description overrides for mods
  • Fixes uninstall workflow on Linux
  • Adds options to hide playtime, titles on game pages
  • Adds button to choose random mod
  • Categorizes launcher as "Game" to OS
  • Makes launch string consistent regardless of active version
  • Misc internal fixes

Various support improvements ​

  • Logs kernel uptime diagnostic in support packages
  • Improves logging on command.spawn errors
  • Improves logging for game_gpu_test
  • Migrates logging to tracing, instrumentation
  • Updates image for support package guide
  • Improves requirements and bypass handling
  • Misc related bugfixes

General Changes​

Translations ​

Thanks to the users who submitted translations for Jak 1 Portuguese subtitles, Jak 3 French subtitles, and subtitles for the Jak 3 developer commentary!

All translations from Crowdin should now be updated and added to the games. This includes changes for

French, Spanish, Catalan, Czech, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Croatian, and Portuguese (Brazilian)!

If you're interested in contributing translations, check out these guides.

Update to SDL 3.4.10 ​

Updates the version of the SDL library used across OpenGOAL. Notably this fixed an issue with how the cursor was shown/hidden, and adds support for the new Steam Controller.

Improved decompiler stack variable support ​

Previously, stack variables were not always properly detected, e.g. in let blocks and other expressions. This would result in messy decompilation results, where the code was often awkward to read.

These changes improve decompiler support for detecting stack variables, making the resulting code a bit easier on the eyes (and likely closer to how it looked in ND's code). For example, this before/after snippet from citadel-obs.gc:

-(let ((s4-0 sound-play-by-name)
-      (s3-0 (make-u128 #x7061 (the-as uint #x7a2d646c65696873)))
-      (s2-0 (new-sound-id))
-      (s1-0 1024)
-      (s0-0 0))
-  (set! sv-96 0)
-  (set! sv-112 1)
-  (let ((t2-1 (target-pos 0)))
-    (s4-0 (the-as sound-name s3-0) s2-0 s1-0 s0-0 sv-96 (the-as sound-group sv-112) (the-as symbol t2-1))))
+(sound-play "shield-zap" :position (the-as symbol (target-pos 0)))

Misc decompiler cleanup ​

Some cleanup of decompiler code and scripts. Adds a tool to hash the contents of each function, which can be useful to check if a function is unchanged across games (e.g. will the code for Jak X's vector-xz-cross! be identical to what we have for Jak 3).

Support Sony splash screen ​

Adds back the Sony Computer Entertainment splash screens on boot, which had been missing in OpenGOAL.

Support animation exporting and master art-groups ​

Adds initial support for exporting foreground models with animations - still has issues with some models in Jak 2/3.

The build-actor tool was also changed to support custom art groups linking their animations to a different master art group. In particular this lets you add custom animations to vanilla art groups - like the JET-Board animations added in the new Jak 1 mod!

Include blerc data in GLTF exports ​

Adds blerc data from merc models as shape keys in the exported GLB files, such as the blend shapes used for facial animations.

Also fixes materials that use texture animations so they now have their base texture in the export, rather than using the default material. Materials now also get named after their base texture for easier recognition.

Reduce memory usage during texture pack installation ​

Rewrites some of the texture replacement code to reduce memory footprint. This should help users trying to install larger texture packs on devices such as the Steamdeck.

Update to latest version of libco ​

Updates to the latest version of libco, a cooperative multithreading library used in OpenGOAL.

Fix pressure sensitive axis handling ​

Fixes a bug in controller event handling that may have impacted controllers with pressure sensitive buttons.

build-actor set shader-cnt to 0 for dummy merc-fragment ​

Addresses an issue when using custom actors, which could cause crashes during level unloading as textures get unlinked.

Support regions for custom levels ​

Adds support for defining regions in custom levels - a big missing feature for Jak 2 and 3 mods!

Allow manual reloading of fr3 data ​

Adds a feature that lets you reload custom levels and textures on the fly with the game running. This is another useful feature for custom level building, letting you quickly iterate and test changes.

Support camera entities and custom keyframe values for custom levels ​

Adds support for using camera entities in custom levels, and for setting custom keyframe values, which allows for properly configured cameras and water volumes.

Include merc normals for glb extraction ​

Adds normals from MercVertex as part of the exported GLB files.

Support controllers with identical names in imgui menu ​

Fixes a bug where players could not select a second controller if it had an identical name as the first controller.

Implement bulk of ARM64 instructions from x86 ​

Implements a bunch of ARM64 instructions for goalc, part of a larger ongoing effort to support compiling OpenGOAL for both x86 and ARM architectures.

Jak X​

Initial base files ​

There has indeed been some initial work for Jak X. However, all that has been done so far is copying over stuff that we have confirmed to be 100% identical between Jak 3 and Jak X.

This does NOT mean that we have officially started working on decompiling Jak X, let alone making a PC port. These PRs simply aim to lay the foundation so that anybody looking to pick up work on Jak X (whether it be us in the future or somebody else right now) will have an easier time getting started.

As of right now, most of the core devs are not interested in continuing work on Jak X for the foreseeable future and would rather work on other things for the time being (e.g. squashing any remaining bugs and improving the tooling for the existing games so modders have more features and capabilities for creating custom content).

If Jak X officially releases in the future, it will be on the jak-project repo on GitHub and be available in the official launcher, as has always been the case. Any other source is not vetted by us and should only be used at your own risk.

Jak 3​

Version 0.3.1 Updates​

See the update on the previous Progress Report about the handful of fixes we released in version 0.3.1 following the Jak 3 beta release.

Fix broken Secrets option on title screen ​

Some of the progress screens were rewritten for the PC port, and the title screen had a couple small bugs causing the Secrets option to always be drawn.

Fix bigmap icon stretching and scanlines for wide aspect ratios, scrolling at high FPS ​

  • Expands scanlines to cover whole screen, not just 4:3 area
  • PS2 16:9 incorrectly squashes map icons, this fixes it for wider PC aspect ratios
  • Adjusts map scrolling speed for high FPS

Improved projectile focus fixes ​

There was already a setting added in OpenGOAL to fix projectile focus, and this addresses some edge cases to further improve this. Most notably, the tentacles in final boss should no longer be targeted once they are dead.

Add JET-Board trick name/score display ​

Ports over the trick display feature that was added in OpenGOAL for Jak 2, adding a new color for the L2 tricks.

This also fixed a couple bugs in the scoring logic, where we wouldn't count the last trick in a 16-trick combo, and where the score wasn't properly reset after dismounting.

If you want to see the full details of how tricks are scored, see this comment.

New flags for PC port languages ​

Adds some new flags for languages that we've added support for in the PC port. These are all hand-crafted using a limited set of stripes, triangles, etc - thanks Aloqas!

Fix sound mode default ​

Previously the game would try to default to Surround Sound, which OpenGOAL doesn't properly support. Now it will default to Stereo.

Fix Dark Ship mech carry bug at high FPS ​

Fixes a bug at higher FPS where the Dark Ship mech would pick up boxes but could not put them back down.

Prevent infinite loop in ff-squad-control bubble sort ​

Addresses one symptom of a larger underlying issue where some actors end up with NaN position coordinates, which we have yet to pin down.

The Freedom Fighter squad-control code sorts the guards based on their distance to the target enemy, but if one of the guards has NaN coordinates, it leads to an infinite loop in the "bubble sort" algorithm, causing the entire game to hang. This patch just ignores any guards with NaN coordinates and only considers valid guards.

Prevent NaN propagation in spydroid attack state ​

Similar to the above, this addresses another symptom of the underlying NaN coordinates issue. Bugged guards will return NaN coordinates for their bullseye-joint, and since this is referenced in the spydroid attack code, it can propagate to the spydroid's position, making it have NaN coordinates as well. The patch here will just uses the guard's overall position instead of the bullseye-joint position if it's NaN.

In the Defend HQ mission, the KG carriers are only supposed to spawn a set number of spydroids, and if you hang around long enough this can result in an interesting situation. If the max number of spydroids are spawned and all end up with NaN coordinates, the mission appears bugged, with no KG enemies visible.

We suspect this may also be related to the issue where the guards spawn with only half of their model visible.

Fix death Daxter cutscenes not playing ​

Fixes a bug causing the occasional Daxter cutscenes after dying to never play.

Add speaker option to subtitles ​

Ports over a feature added in Jak 1, which adds options to show the name of the person speaking in the subtitles. This is now supported in both Jak 2 and 3.

Fix Dark/Light Eco vent powerup animation ​

Fixes a bug causing the powerup animations when touching a Dark/Light Eco vent to play incorrectly. It would use the animation intended for Light Eco vents when touching Dark Eco vents.

This is another bug that just happened to luckily work out on PS2 hardware - the Eco vents send an event to Jak to make him go into the powerup state, but do not pass any event arguments which determine what animation to play and at what speed/start frame. For the Dark Eco vents, PS2 manages to somehow get the correct value of 7, but OpenGOAL was not so lucky.

As a side effect of this fix, we also get the originally intended behavior for the Light Eco vents of playing the full powerup animation from the start at a slower speed, rather than the much shorter one you see on PS2.

Track orbs in crates for debug option ​

In Jak 2 OpenGOAL a "Track Skill" feature was added to the debug menu, which would draw a red line from Jak to all of the currently spawned Precursor Orbs (internally called skills). This feature was ported over to Jak 3, but until now it didn't handle the new cases where Orbs were hidden inside of crates, urns, etc.

Fix Dark/Light Eco HUD flashing bug ​

Fixes an original game bug where the Dark/Light Eco HUD elements would stop doing the intended flashing effect after your save file was several hours old.

The code determines how much to flash by referencing the game-clock from your save file as part of the formula, which uses a sine function to achieve the smooth flashing rhythm. The game-clock counts the number of ticks that have passed while playing the game (300 ticks per second), so after several hours it ends up being a very large number. OpenGOAL's sin function breaks down when you give it extremely large floating point values, and will start to return a constant value - thus pausing the flashing effect indefinitely.

The number of ticks is effectively interpreted as degrees, sometimes with a multiplier to adjust the rate of flashing, and passed into the sine function. Since we know the sine function repeats every 360 degrees, we can avoid extremely large floating point values but achieve the same intended results by using the tick value modulo 360.

Make actor LoD setting affect lightning quality ​

Copies over a change added in Jak 2 to use higher lightning-quality when the high LoD option is set, improving the appearance of elec-gates from afar.

Support ocean environment mapping ​

Adds proper environment mapping for the oceans. While the resulting envmap looks accurate compared to PCSX2 in Renderdoc, the end result does not seem 100% identical, but it is a big improvement over the default placeholder texture previously used. This is also supported in Jak 2 now.

Fix zoom blur flashbang in retail mode ​

Fixes a visual bug where the zoom blur effect would incorrectly render as a bright white texture. This was probably most notable in the cutscene with Seem near the beginning of the game.

When do_zoom_blur sets up its draw, it doesn't update the blend settings, so it ends up inheriting the previous values.

In retail mode, the previous draw is from a texture animation, which sets up the blend in a specific way that causes it to draw a white texture over the screen. In debug mode, right before the zoom blur is drawn, the debug text is drawn, which modifies the blend settings to something that makes the blur look as it should.

Various speedrun fixes ​

  • Fixes the starting condition for speedruns - previously it required Jak to be in the target-stance state, so would fail if you were already moving on frame 1. This mainly affected Hero Mode runs, so it was less noticeable in Jak 2, but has also been fixed there.
  • Fixes starting new game from title screen in speedrunner mode to skip intro cutscene, start autosplitter, and show verification text.
  • Fixes endlessly looping bubble sound effect when resetting while being grabbed by ocean tentacle.
  • Adds autosplitter option for Precursor Robot Skip, since the skip doesn't fully close the task.
  • Adds option to speedrun menu to select unlocked Secrets for Hero Mode runs, as runners have different preferences.

Add speedrun categories for Act 2, 3, post-game ​

Adds options to the speedrun menu for starting Act 2, Act 3, and post-game (All Open Orbs) categories.

Implement 989snd/overlord functionality for ambient sounds ​

Implements the functionality for the PLUGIN_MESSAGE grain and the 989snd VAG plugin system, allowing sounds to queue up VAG streams. This fixes missing ambient sounds like wind, thunder, crowd cheering, etc. This applies to Jak 2 as well.

Detect light-trail-tracker-spawn macro ​

Adds decompiler support for detecting a macro used when spawning light trails, another improvement to readability of decompiled code.

For example, see this snippet from h-torpedo.gc:

-(let ((s5-2 (new 'stack-no-clear 'light-trail-tracker-spawn-params)))
-  (set! (-> s5-2 tracked-obj) (process->handle this))
-  (set! (-> s5-2 appearance) *torpedo-wake-trail*)
-  (set! (-> s5-2 max-num-crumbs) (the int (* 0.5 (the float (-> s5-2 appearance max-age)))))
-  (set! (-> s5-2 track-immediately?) #t)
-  (let* ((v1-34 (estimate-light-trail-mem-usage
-                  (the-as uint (-> s5-2 max-num-crumbs))
-                  (the-as uint (= (-> s5-2 appearance lie-mode) (lie-mode use-two-strips)))
-                  )
-                )
-          (s4-2 (get-process *default-dead-pool* light-trail-tracker-torpedo (+ v1-34 8192) 1))
-          )
-    (when s4-2
-      (let ((t9-15 (method-of-type process activate)))
-        (t9-15 s4-2 this "light-trail" (the-as pointer #x70004000))
-        )
-      (run-now-in-process s4-2 light-trail-tracker-init-by-other s5-2)
-      (-> s4-2 ppointer)
-      )
-    )
+(light-trail-tracker-spawn
+      light-trail-tracker-torpedo
+      :to this
+      :param-list ((tracked-obj (process->handle this))
+       (appearance *torpedo-wake-trail*)
+       (max-num-crumbs (the int (* 0.5 (the float (-> *torpedo-wake-trail* max-age)))))
+       (track-immediately? #t)
+       )

Decompile some debug tooling ​

While not needed for retail gameplay, there were some debug/development features that hadn't been decompiled until now. This includes:

  • visvol-edit
  • editable
  • editable-player
  • mysql-nav-graph
  • nav-graph-editor
  • nav-mesh-editor-h
  • nav-mesh-editor
  • cam-debug
  • hover-nav-edit
  • pilot-recorder

Jak 2​

Add missing inline declaration in vector*! ​

Fixes an issue in the vector*! definition for Jak 2 which caused the function to not be inlined, resulting in differing compiled output.

Add speedrun categories for Act 2, 3, All Open Orbs ​

Adds options to the speedrun menu for starting Act 2, Act 3, and All Open Orbs categories.

Jak 1​

Fix crash when touching lightning moles on foot ​

Fixes an original game bug where the game would crash if you touched a lightning-mole while on foot

This is another case of an event sent between processes missing proper arguments, similar to the Dark/Light Eco vent animation issue above. Unlike the Eco vent example however, PS2 hardware does not get lucky on this one, and also crashes.

Cleanup control-info naming ​

One more benefit to the codebase resulting from HatKid's work on the JET-Board mod - as he compared target code between Jak 3 and Jak 1 to make sense of and backport the JET-Board code, he was able to give meaningful names to some fields and enum values.

For example, (water-flags wt24) is now (water-flag dark-eco), (-> *target* control unknown-dword51) is now (-> *target* control attack-count), etc.

Show max of flying-lurker distances on HUD ​

Fixes a minor issue with the extra HUD element added in OpenGOAL for the flying-lurker Mountain Pass race. The HUD is supposed to show how many meters away the lurkers are, as the mission fails if any of them gets 500m away. However the value shown on the HUD was only checking against flying-lurker-1, so it was possible to fail while the HUD showed a value less than 500. Now it will show the maximum distance of the 3 lurkers.