Repo ↗ · Source README ↗ · Markdown & license bundle
Image reference (original game): Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 · original-game artwork, provided by IGDB. Image rights remain with their respective owners. This illustrates the referenced original game, not the actual visuals of this rewrite or mod.
Source maintainer: chasmlol · Revision: f608f85e407f · Catalogued: 2026-10-12
Source license: Apache-2.0 · LICENSE · Article: Source README (format adapted)
The source README follows, with formatting adapted for this site and images replaced by source links. Feature, completion and testing claims belong to its authors and have not been independently playtested here. The Traditional Chinese translation was prepared with AI assistance.
2010 Rust Rewrite Mashup
Modern Warfare 2, Skate 3 and Minecraft in one game, all running on
IW4L, a from-scratch Rust rewrite of MW2.
- MW2: the multiplayer game, with its maps, guns, killstreaks and HUD.
- Skate 3 mode: press J on any map to drop onto a board with Skate 3’s physics, tricks and grinds.
- A Minecraft world map: a real, endless Minecraft 26.3 world, generated by
MinecraftOSS, which you fight through with MW2 guns. - Controller support: MW2’s console button layouts and aim assist, with every button rebindable.
The Minecraft map
- Minecraft’s own world generation, with its day/night cycle, sky, clouds and lighting. The lighting also falls on your gun.
- Vanilla mobs, both passive and hostile. You can shoot them and they fight back.
- Shoot blocks to break them. Harder blocks take more bullets, scaled by each gun’s real MW2 damage and range. Knife them too. Grenades blow up like TNT.
- Broken blocks drop items that you pick up.
- A Minecraft inventory and hotbar restyled in MW2’s look. Your guns sit in the hotbar as items, and your MW2 character stands in the inventory window.
- Hold a block to place it. With an empty hand you punch and mine with your bare MW2 hands.
- Minecraft’s block, mob and footstep sounds.
- Unlimited ammo and grenades. The Intervention, SPAS-12 and UMP45 are always in your inventory. No time or score limit.
- The minimap shows the Minecraft world around you.
- Skate 3 mode works here too, with full block collision.
You don’t need Minecraft installed. The first time the game starts, it downloads Minecraft 26.3’s own files (textures, sounds, world data) straight from Mojang’s official servers, the same way the Minecraft launcher does. That’s about 125 MB, into iw4l-artifacts/minecraft-26.3. After that it plays offline. Nothing from Minecraft is included in this repository.
What you’ll need
- MW2, only tested with the Steam version.
- Optional, for Skate 3 mode: the Xbox 360 version of Skate 3 (the extracted
default.xexwith itsdatafolder) and a controller. Without it, everything else still works; skating is just off. - For the Minecraft map: an internet connection the first time you play, and
curl.curlcomes with Windows 10 and 11, macOS and most Linux distributions.
How to play
-
Grab the zip from Releases and extract it somewhere you can write to (not Program Files), or build it yourself (see docs/BUILD.md).
-
Double-click
iw4l.exeand confirm your MW2 folder. It then asks whether you have Skate 3: choose Yes and select yourdefault.xex, or No to play without skating. -
To play the Minecraft world, go to Create Game and pick the Minecraft tab in the map list. The map is called overworld.
You can also double-click
Minecraft World.batin the release folder, start the game withiw4l.exe map minecraft:overworld, or open the console with the backtick key (`, under Esc) and typemap minecraft:overworld.
Controls on the Minecraft map
| Keyboard and mouse | Controller | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Mouse / WASD | Sticks | MW2 movement and shooting |
| 1–9, mouse wheel | D-pad left / right | Select a hotbar slot |
| Y | Swap between the first two hotbar slots | |
| E | Open or close the inventory | |
| Q | Drop the selected item | |
| Left click (block or empty hand) | Right trigger | Mine or punch |
| Right click (holding a block) | Left trigger | Place the block |
| J | Click both sticks in | Skate 3 mode |
More about skating in docs/SKATE.md.
Controller
Plug in a controller and play; the game follows whichever controller you last touched. Menus work with the D-pad or left stick, A to select and B to go back.
- Options → Controller: button layout (Default, Tactical, Lefty, Bumper Jumper, Bumper Jumper Tactical), stick layout, look and aim-down-sight sensitivity, invert look, response curve, aim assist, vibration and stick deadzones.
- Options → Controls: every action shows its key and its controller button. Select one and press a key to rebind the keyboard, or a controller button to rebind the controller.
- Aim assist works as it does in MW2 on console: Standard slows your aim over an enemy and follows them as they move; Full also pulls your aim onto the nearest enemy when you aim down the sight. It’s off with the mouse.
- Click both sticks in to switch to and from Skate 3 mode, as J does.
Known issues
- The skateboard is invisible on some maps.
Credits
- IW4L by vladtrc and contributors: the MW2 rewrite everything runs on (Apache-2.0, see NOTICE).
- MinecraftOSS: the Rust Minecraft engine behind the world, mobs and items.
- Minecraft is a trademark of Mojang Studios, and its files are downloaded from Mojang, not redistributed here. Modern Warfare 2 and Skate 3 belong to their owners. You need your own copies. This project isn’t affiliated with any of them.
License and provenance
The README and its translation retain Apache-2.0 terms. Changes comprise translation, links and formatting. Editable Markdown, the original README, LICENSE and NOTICE files are included in the linked bundle. This grants no rights to the original games, their assets or trademarks.
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IW4L
Copyright 2026 vladtrc
IW4L was originally developed by vladtrc.
https://github.com/vladtrc/iw4L
IW4L is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0; see LICENSE.
2010 Rust Rewrite Mashup is a fork of IW4L by chasmlol that adds Skate 3's
skating and a Minecraft world to it.
https://github.com/chasmlol/2010-rust-rewrite-mashup
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Third-party material bundled with this repository
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Both fonts below are compiled into the IW4L binary with `include_bytes!`, so
they are redistributed with every build. Any archive that ships an IW4L binary
ships these two licence texts with it.
Oxanium (crates/ui/assets/Oxanium-Regular.ttf)
Copyright 2019 The Oxanium Project Authors
https://github.com/sevmeyer/oxanium
SIL Open Font License 1.1 — full text in crates/ui/assets/OFL-Oxanium.txt
GNU FreeFont (crates/console/assets/FreeMono.otf)
Copyright (C) 2002-2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
https://www.gnu.org/software/freefont/
GNU General Public License v3 or later, with the GNU font exception — full
text in crates/console/assets/COPYING-FreeFont.txt. The exception is what
makes embedding the font in an Apache-2.0 binary possible: a document or
program that merely uses the font is not thereby covered by the GPL. The
font itself is unmodified and remains under the GPL.
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Third-party source code
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No third-party source code is vendored in this repository, and the build links
no third-party project named below. IW4L's own dependencies are the crates
declared in Cargo.toml, under their own licences.
The fork carries two projects of its own author's in-tree, built as part of
the workspace:
skate/ — the Skate 3 skating engine and its data converter. It reads the
player's own copy of Skate 3; no Skate 3 code or data is included.
third_party/minecraftoss/ — five crates of MinecraftOSS, a Rust Minecraft
engine, copied from its commit 4013a68 (see its README). Its few data
tables are gameplay values measured from Minecraft (food, waxing and
dispenser rules). No Minecraft code, JARs, textures or sounds are included:
the game downloads Minecraft's files from Mojang on first run.
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References consulted during development
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These projects were read while working out how the original games behave. They
are named here because the reading happened, not because anything of theirs is
distributed: none of them is vendored, linked, bundled or otherwise shipped.
OpenAssetTools — https://github.com/Laupetin/OpenAssetTools
Open-source modding tools for older Call of Duty games. Its asset-structure
headers document the on-disk layouts IW4L reads. Licensed under GPLv3.
oat (iw4x-x64 fork of OpenAssetTools) — https://github.com/iw4x-x64/oat
The x64 fork, at revision 3a7442dee5ce040cfdb8da23fdb9fb525b5f743e, is the
tree whose IW4MS headers were read for the 64-bit FastFile layouts.
Licensed under GPLv3, like its upstream. No file in this repository is
compiled against, generated from or distributed with those headers.
IW4x — https://github.com/iw4x/iw4x-client
A custom client for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (2009), with dedicated
servers, security fixes and modding support. Read as a cross-reference for
asset and protocol behaviour, and by the fork for controller aim assist. Licensed under GPLv3.
KisakCOD — https://github.com/SwagSoftware/KisakCOD
A Call of Duty 4 open-source reimplementation. Read as a cross-reference for
engine structure, and by the fork for controller aim assist's defaults. IW4L targets IW4, so this is a neighbouring generation of
the same engine family, not the same codebase.
Ghidra — https://github.com/NationalSecurityAgency/ghidra
The software reverse engineering framework the original game binaries were
read with. A development tool: none of it, and none of its output, is
committed here or distributed with IW4L. Licensed under Apache 2.0.
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Game content
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No Call of Duty or Skate game data, and no Minecraft code or assets, are
contained in this repository or in any release archive. IW4L reads game data from a copy of the game the user already
owns and has installed. Call of Duty, Modern Warfare, Black Ops, related
trademarks and all original game assets belong to their respective owners.
IW4L is not affiliated with, endorsed by or supported by them.
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