Beta, for testing only. "melee-pc" is a working name. Online play with rollback netcode is in development. This branch includes LAN, internet friend codes, Unranked matchmaking and ranked best-of-three sets. See Netplay for setup and verification limits.

A native PC port of Super Smash Bros. Melee (NTSC-U 1.02), built from doldecomp/melee on top of aurora (GX/OS/PAD/DVD/CARD/THP compatibility layer with a WebGPU backend) and SDL3. Same approach as dusklight.

You need your own disc image. No game data ships here. The decompiled game code is not licensed and is not relicensed by this project; only the port code is GPL-3.0-or-later. Details under License.

New here? The project site has the five-step setup, the FAQ (supported disc, Windows first run, older Intel GPUs, first-use shader stutter, Android requirements, where the log and settings live) and the per-platform known-issues list. Bugs go through the bug report form; questions on Discord.

• Native builds for Linux (x86-64, aarch64), Windows (x86-64, ARM64), macOS, Android and iOS, rendered through Dawn/WebGPU (Vulkan, D3D12, D3D11, Metal) and SDL3.
• RmlUi launcher with disc selection and SHA-1 verification against the Redump database before boot.
• In-game settings overlay on F1, with the game paused underneath.
• Internal resolution from Auto to 10x native (6400x4800).
• Post-processing shaders: area sampling, CRT scanlines, vibrant.
• 4x MSAA and anisotropic filtering up to 16x.
• Gamepad remapping, including C-stick directions, saved per device.
• Software AX audio mixer with Master, Music and SFX volume controls.
• User .ogg / .wav tracks replace stage BGM.
• Dolphin-compatible .gci memory cards and Dolphin-format HD texture packs.
• Cheats: Unlock Everything, hazardless (Frozen) Pokémon Stadium, free pause camera, Wide 16:9 HUD.
• UCF 0.8x dashback and shield drop, and a raw 1000 Hz read path for the official GameCube controller adapter.

What each of those actually covers, including the parts that are unfinished, is in the status table below.

Main menu	Character select
Stage select	Four-player match
Onett	F1 settings overlay

Every mode boots and plays: VS, 1-P Classic / Adventure / All-Star to completion with results and score saved, Training, Stadium (Target Test, Home-Run Contest, 10-Man Melee), Event Match, Trophy gallery, memory card create / load, opening movie and attract demos.

This table is the single source of truth for feature status. The release notes, the project site and ROADMAP.md defer to it; when they disagree, this table is right and the other one is stale.

The phases behind the planned rows, and why they are ordered that way, are in ROADMAP.md.

Builds for every platform are on the releases page. Release notes list the per-platform files, known issues and requirements.

./Melee-x86_64.AppImage                  # open the launcher
./Melee-x86_64.AppImage /path/to/melee.iso

Melee USA revision 2 (NTSC-U 1.02, GALE01) is the supported disc. A Europe (PAL, GALP01) image also boots, with the limits listed in the status table and the mechanics in porting-notes.md. .iso, .gcm, .ciso and .rvz images are accepted. A valid disc path on the command line boots straight in; a missing or invalid one returns to the launcher. Settings and the selected path live in launcher.cfg in SDL's melee-pc preference directory (usually ~/.local/share/melee-pc, %APPDATA%\melee-pc on Windows, or ~/Library/Application Support/melee-pc on macOS).

Verification reads the disc through nod, compressed images included, and compares SHA-1 against the Redump DAT: d4e70c064cc714ba8400a849cf299dbd1aa326fc, 1,459,978,240 bytes. It supports progress and cancellation, and is not cached between launches. Unverified images still play; PAL images have no reference hash and always report as unverified.

Building from source: docs/building.md.

The renderer is WebGPU (Dawn) at its compatibility level, so the floor is Dawn's per-backend floor:

On Windows that means any Intel Gen8 (Broadwell, 2014) or newer, AMD GCN or newer, NVIDIA Fermi or newer runs on Direct3D 12. Direct3D 11 is a compatibility path, not a performance one (FXC shaders, no DXC). OpenGL is never picked automatically: MELEE_BACKEND=opengl exists, but Dawn needs desktop GL 4.4 for it, it draws with wrong (washed-out) colours on X11 and cannot create a surface on Wayland. The log records every backend that was skipped and why, then one summary line with the adapter and driver.

The CPU side is light: any x86-64 (SSE2) or arm64 CPU. A VS match holds a steady 60 fps with the whole game pinned to two 2.5 GHz Meteor Lake low-power E-cores, using about a third of one core in total.

• Keep resources/ (and on Windows the DLLs: webgpu_dawn.dll, dxcompiler.dll, dxil.dll, SDL3.dll, the VC++ runtime) beside the executable. dxcompiler.dll and dxil.dll are the D3D12 shader compiler; D3D11 needs no extra DLL, since d3d11.dll, dxgi.dll and the FXC compiler are Windows components.
• Settings, memory cards, music/ and textures/ live in the melee-pc preference directory above.

Keyboard: arrows or WASD = stick, IJKL = C-stick, X = A, Z = B, C = X, V = Y, Q/E = L/R, Tab = Z, Enter = Start, TFGH = D-pad. Gamepads work through SDL; an official GameCube adapter is read directly instead (see the status table).

F1, or Back/Select on a gamepad, opens the overlay. The game pauses while it is open.

• Display: fullscreen/windowed and VSync apply immediately. MELEE_VSYNC overrides the saved preference.
• Internal resolution and UI scale are sliders. UI scale covers 75% to 150%.
• Post-processing picks the presentation shader and applies immediately.
• Anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering apply on the next launch. MSAA offers only off and 4x because WebGPU guarantees sample counts 1 and 4.
• Audio: master volume, mute, FPS counter, all immediate.
• Controls remaps a gamepad. Pick the port, select a GameCube button, then press the physical button. Escape cancels, Restore resets the port. Back cannot be bound since it opens the menu. Sticks and triggers remap the same way, and a direction accepts either a stick axis or a button.

Melee's own menu sounds play in the overlay. Bindings are stored in aurora's per-device .controller files; everything else shares launcher.cfg.

Diagnostic knobs (MELEE_DEBUG, MELEE_FPS, MELEE_HEAP_CHECK, the AURORA_* draw filters, ...) are listed in docs/debugging.md.

• Discord for questions and testing.
• Project site for setup, FAQ and known issues.
• Bug report form; attach the log (melee-pc.log on Windows, see docs/debugging.md).

Two copies of the game play a rollback match over UDP (src/pc/net.c; design and current state in docs/netcode-plan.md). Both must run the same build and the same game image, with no memory card (--no-card). The LAN lobby announces a 32-bit id of the disc it booted (region, revision, file-table shape and the DOL, so a code mod counts), and a peer on a different image is listed as incompatible before a single game packet is exchanged — same as a different build version. Internet friend-code pairing also binds build and disc identity; the legacy direct-IP environment path retains its older protocol-version-only check.

In the menus: VS Mode → ONLINE → LAN PLAY finds other copies on the local network by mDNS and the first Start elects a host (lowest install id wins a tie). DIRECT CONNECT opens an in-game hub where either player can call a friend's NAME#XXXXXXXX code, enter its eight-character suffix, or choose a clipboard code or recent opponent. UNRANKED searches for an opponent; RANKED runs a rated best-of-three set. PROFILE shows your code and locally verified rating. Internet discovery may take about 30 seconds to bootstrap and some NATs cannot support a direct peer connection. Legacy MELEE_LAN_DIRECT=ip:port remains available for direct-IP sessions. The game port is UDP 41000 by default and discovery uses UDP 5353 multicast; allow both through the firewall (Windows asks on first launch). The install id used for the election is install_id in launcher.cfg.

If the link drops mid-match, the session no longer dies with it: after 7 s of silence it enters a reconnect phase and resumes where it left off if the peer comes back within 15 s and neither side's 64-frame input ring has been outrun. The lobby shows "reconnecting"; a failure that cannot be resumed says "Could not resume" instead of "Connection timed out".

A peer that is loading is not a peer that is gone. Silence is measured from the last datagram the peer sent, not from how long this side has been waiting: a machine whose game thread is inside a stage load, a character load or a first-time shader compile keeps its sender running, so the link carries it however long it takes and the transition screen simply waits. Before that distinction existed, any load over 7 s froze both games on "NOW LOADING" and one over ~22 s ended the session outright, which is what a phone's first match cost.

What works where. Only Linux x86-64 has played real matches, but a Linux recording now replays bit-identical on Windows, so the two builds compute the same game.

All supported builds require simulation snapshot sections and verify their boundaries after linking. Audio/worker state remains excluded. Menus and scene loading still synchronize without prediction; matches use rollback by default. Allocation failure and the explicit debugging switch can still fall back to lockstep. Unsupported compilers are rejected rather than producing a silently lockstep-only platform build.

The link simulator's PRNG is seeded from MELEE_NET_PORT, so a run repeats. Every 600 frames the log prints rollbacks, stalls, ping, jitter, loss and snapshot cost; net: DESYNC, net: cannot roll back and net: peer silent are the lines that mean something went wrong. Two copies on one machine also need distinct MELEE_CACHE_DIR (pipeline cache) and MELEE_KEY_FIFO if you drive them with key injection. Keyboard keys only reach the game while the window has keyboard focus; MELEE_KEY_FIFO keys are deliberately exempt, so harnesses can still drive menus in background windows.

A run that never leaves a menu proves nothing: outside a fight the state checksum covers only the four pads and the RNG seed, so two title screens can neither desync nor roll back. The harnesses below check that a match really started before they report anything.

python3 tools/net_test.py                                  # 2 min, clean link
python3 tools/net_test.py --loss 5 --delay 30 --jitter --reorder
python3 tools/net_test.py --lan --minutes 1
python3 tools/net_test.py --fuzz                           # tools/net_fuzz.py hammers A's port
python3 tools/net_determinism.py --only linux,linux-flip   # ~2 min, no Proton

--exe build/melee, --disc ../melee.ciso, --port 42050 (B uses +1) and --work /tmp/net_test (logs in a.log/b.log) are the defaults.

• docs/building.md - toolchain, packaging, cross-compiling for Windows, Android, iOS and macOS.
• docs/testing.md - unit tests, drive/capture tools, port-bug harnesses.
• docs/debugging.md - log files, crash handler, gdb, heap check, diagnostic environment variables.
• docs/porting-notes.md - the big-endian data model, LP64 bug classes, PAL support.
• docs/architecture.md - layers, threads, memory map, aurora.
• CODING_STYLE.md - coding standards and verification procedure; run python3 tools/check_style.py before opening pull requests.
• ROADMAP.md - scope and sequencing of the remaining phases. It carries no status; the table above does.

Three situations, spelled out in LICENSE.md: the decompiled game code in src/melee and src/sysdolphin is not licensed and remains the property of its copyright holders; the port code in src/pc, tools, platforms, cmake and .github is GPL-3.0-or-later (COPYING); bundled third-party components keep their own licenses. Because the game code cannot be relicensed, the repository as a whole is not distributable under the GPL. No game assets are in this repository.