Ixion

Ixion joins Dark Cloud and Dark Chronicle into one program: play any character from either cast, visit any town or dungeon from either world, and use Dark Chronicle's time travel to cross between the two. It is named after the flying, time-travelling train built at the Lunatic Wisdom Laboratories in Dark Chronicle.

It is a fan-made proof of concept built on top of the community PC ports, not a replacement for them:

• TheMoonPeople/Chronicle: the Dark Cloud decompilation and PC port.
• TheMoonPeople/ChronicleTwo: the Dark Chronicle decompilation and PC port.
• TheMoonPeople/Kazarov: the build system and runtime both ports share.

Those projects carry on as they are. Ixion builds on them, and keeps its changes to them as small branches that could be offered back.

No game data is stored here. Both games' data come from your own discs, extracted the same way as for the two ports.

Status

Hop v0 works on Windows: ixion.exe loads both games as modules, keeps both resident, and switches between them at the end of a frame. Press F10 in Norune and Palm Brinks appears exactly where you left it; press it again and Norune resumes on the frame it left. Nothing crosses between the games yet. See docs/HOP-V0.md for the design, the acceptance checks and the open items.

Next: the Ixion launcher. Pick Dark Cloud, Dark Chronicle or both (each disc optional), start at any town or dungeon floor, and use one developer panel for both games.

Layout

• host/ the host program (ixion.exe) and a fiber self-test. It links only SDL3 and never sees game headers.
• include/ixion_api.h the plain C interface between the host and the game modules.
• games/chronicle, games/chronicletwo the two ports as submodules, on branches that add the module build (IXION_BUILD_PLUGIN). Each one's tools/kazarov submodule points at a Kazarov branch that adds embedded mode.
• docs/ the design (DESIGN.md), the architecture options, the Hop v0 spec, a glossary, and research notes on how both games and the shared runtime work.
• tools/ analysis scripts, and sync_upstream.py, which catches the port forks up with upstream (docs/SYNCING.md).

Building (Windows, llvm-mingw)

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/carrdylan52/Ixion

Each port builds as described in its own README, with two extra CMake options that also build its module:

-DIXION_BUILD_PLUGIN=ON -DIXION_API_DIR=<this repo>/include

That gives ixion_c1.dll (Dark Cloud) and ixion_c2.dll (Dark Chronicle). Build the host with host/build-windows.ps1 (see host/README.md), then put ixion.exe, both modules and one shared set of runtime libraries in one folder and run:

ixion.exe --dc1 ixion_c1.dll --dc1-args "--data <dc1 data> --save <dc1 save> --jump edit:0"
          --dc2 ixion_c2.dll --dc2-args "--data <dc2 data> --save <dc2 save> --jump town:10"

Use fresh save folders.

References

Notes cite code with chronicle:, chronicletwo: and kazarov: prefixes for paths inside the three upstream repositories, and ixion: for paths in this repository.

License

Ixion's own files are under the MIT License (see LICENSE). The submodules keep their own terms. Dark Cloud and Dark Chronicle are trademarks of their owners; this project is not affiliated with them.