Skip to content

Revert: developer docs

Revert is the toolkit that builds THUG2: Violet Vandal Edition, a preserved, modernized, stream-safe build of Tony Hawk's Underground 2 (PC). One front door installs it, three lanes play it (Vanilla, QOL-Modded, Online), and everything is reproducible from your own copy of the game.

These docs are for the engineer who wants to understand how that works and contribute. If you just want to install and play, use the player install guides instead.

Bring your own disc

Revert ships tooling only, never game data. Every build input that is game data or licensed is user-supplied and gitignored: the pristine base, the no-CD exe, the WidescreenFix, the HQ audio/video pack, and the branded-deck / guest-model blobs. The repos hold the orchestrator, the engine, the mod sources, config, and docs.

The shape of the system

Revert is a hybrid of two planes that talk only through a CLI:

  • thugkit (Go) is the deterministic build engine. It takes already-extracted game directories and produces the playable edition: mirrors the pristine base, applies the no-CD exe and WidescreenFix, compiles and injects the mods, installs custom tags and the HUD/glyph .asis, overlays HQ audio/video, and optionally bakes a soundtrack. It has no os/exec, so it stays a single static, cross-compilable binary.
  • revert (bash) is the thin orchestrator. It owns system setup (Wine, DXVK, controller), acquiring your game copy, launching the three lanes under GE-Proton, and the optional Python CAS asset passes. It shells out to thugkit for the build.
flowchart LR
  U[Your THUG2 copy] --> A[revert acquire-game-data]
  A --> P[(game-pristine-us)]
  P --> B[thugkit build]
  B --> E[(game-playable-us)]
  E --> R[revert run qol]
  C[revert.conf] -. shared truth .-> A
  C -. shared truth .-> B
  C -. shared truth .-> R

revert.conf is the single source of truth for both planes: paths, the Wine runtime, and the per-lane / per-edition variables.

Repo topology

The monorepo root is the violetvandal/revert toolkit repo (bash orchestrator + config + shippable non-game assets + these docs). Independent git repos live under it, gitignored by the root:

Repo Language What it is
tools/thugkit Go The mod-apply + build engine. Self-contained via a submodule of the NeverScript fork.
tools/neverscript Rust/… Our patched NeverScript compiler fork (byte-perfect .qb recompiler).
mods NeverScript The quality-of-life mod layer: .ns sources + apply metadata. No game data.
thug2-tag-importer Python Reference image → Create-A-Graphic tag importer (also ported to Go in thugkit).
thug2-skater-extractor Python Renders a created skater from a .SKA save.

The one hard seam: the root repo and thugkit are separate git repos and communicate only through the built thugkit binary's CLI, never a Go import. See Architecture for why.

Build from source

# 1. Clone with submodules (thugkit vendors the NeverScript compiler as a submodule)
git clone --recursive https://github.com/violetvandal/revert.git
cd revert

# 2. Build + test the engine
cd tools/thugkit
go build ./cmd/thugkit
go test ./...          # hermetic: needs no game data

# 3. Build the edition (from the repo root; needs your acquired game data)
cd ../..
./revert doctor        # what's present, what's missing
./revert build         # thugkit build core + Python CAS post-pass
./revert run qol       # play: vanilla | qol | online

revert build rebuilds the thugkit binary from source if a Go toolchain is present; a shipped Revert carries a prebuilt binary. revert build --fast skips the full base mirror and the HQ A/V overlay for a quick mod-only iteration.

Where to next