RanggaCasper/Black-Android

An unofficial native Android port of the original Xbox version of Black, with touch controls, gyroscope aiming, controller support and extended graphics options.

The game's x86 code is statically recompiled ahead of time to C++ with XboxXBE-Recomp, then built for arm64. Drawing goes through Vulkan, and windowing, input and audio through SDL3. No emulator is involved.

_{▶ Gameplay on POCO F6, max settings + gyro aim}

1. Install the APK.
2. Open Black Android and allow all files access when it asks (on Android 10, the storage permission).
3. Copy the game into /storage/emulated/0/Black, or into a Black folder at the top of your SD card: the USA or Europe release, either as a disc image (.iso) or as default.xbe with its data folders. The app creates the folder on the phone's storage once access is allowed, and starts the game as soon as it finds the files.

If you don't grant that access, Android/data/com.racas.black/files/assets works too.

Settings (black.toml, android.toml, layout.toml), saves (hdd), logs and the shader cache are stored in Android/data/com.racas.black/files.

The settings are in the game's own options menu, each page under its own button: Graphics, Touch Controls, General, Mouse and Keyboard and Cheats. Within a page the settings are grouped under headings, and arrows above and below the list show there is more to scroll to; tap them to move the list one row. In the pause menu, the Page row switches between the pages. Android's back button opens the pause menu.

• Display
  • Render Resolution: 20% to 200% of the screen's height (67% by default), instead of the original 640x480.
  • Field of View: horizontal FOV from 45 to 140 degrees during gameplay. The game's default is 70.
  • Viewmodel Field of View: FOV of the first-person weapon and arms.
  • FMV Scale: Fill zooms the 4:3 videos to fill the screen; 4:3 keeps their original aspect ratio.
• Performance
  • V-Sync, off by default.
  • Max Frame Rate: unlimited by default, or capped at the display's refresh rate or a custom value. This replaces the Xbox's 30 FPS limit.
  • FPS Counter.
• Quality
  • Anisotropic Filtering, applied to all textures.
  • Draw Distance: 2x, 4x or 8x the game's level of detail and draw distances.
  • Reload Blur: turns the blur while reloading on or off.

• Touch: the left side of the screen is a movement stick, and dragging on the right turns the view. On-screen buttons cover fire, aim, reload, use, melee, grenades, crouch, weapon switching and the suppressor. Dragging from a fire button turns the view while firing. The controls hide over loading screens and cutscenes.
• Menus: a D-pad and a back button move through the menus and the options; tap an arrow to step one row, or hold it to keep going.
• Touch Sensitivity: how fast a drag turns the view, separate from the mouse's sensitivity.
• Controls Layout: pick a preset (Default, 3 Finger or 4 Finger) and set the controls' opacity and overall size.
• Edit Controls Position: drag each control where you want it. To resize one, select it and tap − or +, or pinch it with a second finger.
• Motion Controls: aim with the gyroscope by turning the phone, or a DualShock 4 or DualSense on Android 12 and newer, either always or only while firing, with adjustable sensitivity. The controller's gyroscope is used while you play with the controller, the phone's while you use the touch screen.

• Controller: any controller SDL3 supports, with rumble. The touch buttons hide while a controller is in use. Controllers that some phones pass on as a virtual device (a DualShock 4 on MIUI, for example) work too.
• Keyboard and Mouse, with rebindable controls, mouse sensitivity and invert look. In play the mouse is captured as on a PC: no pointer on the screen, and the view keeps turning past the screen's edge.

• Language: English, French, German, Italian or Spanish where the disc has them, plus Indonesian for the port's own text.
• Skip Intros skips the intro logos.
• Audio Output: automatic, mono, stereo or 5.1 surround.
• Check for Updates: the app checks GitHub for a new release each time it opens. This button checks right away.
• Background Pause: the game and its sound pause while the app is in the background.

• Weapons: infinite ammo, infinite grenades, rapid fire (2x to 4x) and no recoil.
• Player: god mode and one-hit kills.
• Game: game speed from 25% to 200%.

• Android 10 or newer, arm64.
• GPU with a Vulkan 1.1 driver, for example Adreno 6xx or newer, Mali-G7x or newer, or Xclipse. Drivers without dynamic rendering or timeline semaphores are supported.
• Memory: 4 GB.
• Storage: 2 GB for the game files and saves.

Building requires a Windows PC.

git clone https://github.com/RanggaCasper/Black-Android.git

Put default.xbe from the USA release in assets/, or put the USA disc image (.iso) in assets/ or iso/. The build extracts default.xbe from the image.

• Visual Studio 2022 with Desktop development with C++. The recompiler runs on the PC.
• Android Studio. In its SDK Manager, install Android SDK Platform 34, NDK 28.2.13676358 and CMake 3.31.6.
• Python, needed only to extract default.xbe from a disc image.

Run build.bat. It builds the recompiler, recompiles the xbe into generated/game, then builds app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk with Gradle. The first build compiles the whole game for arm64 and takes 30 to 90 minutes.

Install the APK with:

adb install -r app/build/outputs/apk/release/app-release.apk

• XboxXBE-Recomp by TGP482: the static recompiler and the portable runtime (Xbox kernel, XDK libraries and Direct3D 8) this port is built on.
• SDL, glslang, toml++ and Dear ImGui.
• xemu and Cxbx-Reloaded, which XboxXBE-Recomp used as references for Xbox hardware and API behavior.

Black is a trademark of its respective owners. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.