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STSPSVITA: building a Slay the Spire Vita pipeline

·1 min read

#vita#homebrew#teavm#slay-the-spire

STSPSVITA is my current attempt at bringing Slay the Spire to the PlayStation Vita.

The shape is simple from the outside: provide desktop-1.0.jar, run one build script, install the VPK, and copy the generated assets to the Vita. Under the hood it is a lot less simple.

Why #

Slay the Spire is a Java/libGDX game. The Vita does not have a JVM, and it is not a desktop OpenGL target, so this is not a normal port where you tweak a few paths and recompile.

The build pipeline verifies and extracts the jar, repacks the assets for the Vita, runs TeaVM’s C backend over the reachable Java code, swaps the desktop libGDX backend for a Vita backend, then compiles the generated C with VitaSDK.

What it does #

The build flow is intentionally boring:

mkdir -p game
cp /path/to/SlayTheSpire/desktop-1.0.jar game/

./build.sh

The default build produces:

  • build/STSVITA-slim.vpk
  • work/assets_vita/

The slim VPK keeps reinstall times reasonable. The asset payload lives separately on the Vita at:

ux0:data/stsvita/assets/

There is also a full VPK mode, but the slim path is the one I expect most people to use.

The pieces #

pipeline/ handles verification, extraction, texture conversion, font pruning, audio options, and LiveArea generation.

backend/ is the libGDX Vita backend: graphics through vitaGL, controls through SceCtrl/SceTouch, audio through OpenAL, and file IO through Vita paths.

transpiler/ is the TeaVM harness that turns the game and backend into C.

native/ is the VitaSDK side: process startup, glue functions, CMake, and VPK packaging.

Current state #

This is pre-alpha. The workflow is now documented and repeatable, but it is still very much a hardware-debugging project.

The goal right now is not a polished end-user release. It is a reproducible build path that can be run, inspected, and improved.