Games can now play their videos and use Windows audio decoding. This release also fixes installs for older Steam accounts, the M.2 drive showing as Disconnected, and several crashes and hangs, and ships kit 0.10, the first stable kit.
Warning
Alpha software. Playden signs in to your real Steam account and reads and writes your Steam Cloud saves. Read Before you use it first.
Downloads
| File | What it is |
|---|---|
playden-ps5-0.4.0.zip
| The Playden app (FAKE77031), the console tools (tools/) and the license files.
|
playden-kit-0.10.zip
| Runtime kit 0.10 (hl2-fw1360-dev1): Wine for the PS5, graphics drivers, Wine Mono, video and audio decoding, the Windows environment and the per-game app shell, with SOURCES.md and LICENSES/.
|
playden-update.json
| Used by Playden to update itself. You don't need to download it. |
Updating from 0.3.0: Playden offers the update the next time it starts, or from Settings › About › Playden updates › Check now. It updates the app and the kit together. Your sign-in, games, saves and Game settings are kept. For a new install, follow the README.
New kit versions
Kits are now numbered <generation>.<revision>. 0.10 follows kit H r9 and is the first stable kit; the lettered kits (D to H r9) were test kits. A new revision (0.10 → 0.11) needs nothing from you. A new generation (0.x → 1.0) means Recreate bottle for games set up on the earlier one. See Kits.
What's new
- In-game videos and audio decoding. Kit 0.10 adds Windows Media Foundation playback through GStreamer and FFmpeg. Games that play their intro and story videos this way now show them: Metal Wolf Chaos XD, Fallout 4, Bulletstorm, Call of Juarez Gunslinger and more. Games you prepared before get it the next time you press Play.
Fixed
- Older Steam accounts: games licensed through Steam's oldest package (package 0) installed only their executables and reported success. Team Fortress 2, Half-Life, Portal and others now install in full. When Steam doesn't grant part of a game, the install now says so instead of looking complete (#58).
- M.2 drive "Disconnected": a console's internal M.2 drive showed as Disconnected with no free space. Playden now sets up its games folder there. A drive that is attached but can't be written says "No write access" (#57).
- Black screen with one core busy in games that draw on the desktop window, such as Syndicate (#56).
- Library "Playable" filter: with no games rated, the empty Library offered "Connect Steam", which looked like a sign-out. It now offers "Reset filters", and an empty collection offers "Show all games" (#61).
- Uninstall: games you deleted no longer come back on the Home screen when Playden can't tell whether they're running. The message now says to restart the PS5, and the log records why the check failed (#51).
- Startup hangs: Source games (Portal 2, Team Fortress 2, Black Mesa) sometimes stayed on the loading spinner at startup when played with a controller.
- Crashes that froze: a game that crashed could freeze on a black screen instead of closing. It now closes.
- Call of Juarez Gunslinger crashed a few minutes into play in its audio. Other games that use XAudio2 may benefit too.
- Reinstalling a game whose earlier install stopped partway failed with "staging path is not owned by this install".
- Retrying a preparation that stopped before a kit update failed with "immutable artifacts or template provenance do not match".
- Games on a drive stayed "Not installed" after their folder went missing once. They're now kept as unavailable and come back when the folder does.
- A kit replaced while Playden runs now asks you to restart Playden instead of failing on Play.
- A failed video upgrade of an older game no longer stops it from starting.
What works
See the compatibility list. New or changed since 0.3.0:
- Works: Team Fortress 2 (with a USB mouse and keyboard; online play doesn't work yet), Mullet Mad Jack, DAEMON X MACHINA.
- Partial: Bloody Spell (Chinese text doesn't show), Call of Juarez Gunslinger (gameplay stops and starts every few seconds).
- Broken: Grand Theft Auto IV and Vice City (they need Rockstar's launcher, which can't start yet).
Test reports are welcome, including for games that work.
Known issues
- Team Fortress 2's menus don't react to the DualSense, even with the Mouse controller preset. Use a USB mouse.
- Call of Juarez Gunslinger's gameplay stops for about three seconds at a time.
- Black Mesa no longer hangs at startup, but it still stops with "A Source engine game is required to run mods": it checks for Source SDK Base 2013, which Playden doesn't provide yet.
Thanks
- @dann1k for the detailed reports and analysis behind #56, #57 and #58.
- @jcsepulvedar for #61, and @hallo-mntls for the uninstall report and logs (#51).
- Everyone who sent a test report: @CortezJ88 and @ljk4160.