leolobato/playden-ps5 v0.9.0-beta.3

Playden for PS5 0.9.0-beta.3

on GitHub

More Direct3D 12 games start, The Witcher 3 among them, and Unreal Engine 5 games use Direct3D 12 by default. Choose a game's language and version when installing, get its DLC and updates, and move or uninstall installed games from one screen. Frame generation shows up to four times the frames a game draws. New runtime kit 0.16 brings the latest prospero-win: rumble, the PS5 keyboard in games, USB mouse wheel and fixes for games that ran out of memory or file handles.

Beta 3 fixes .NET games such as Slay the Spire 2, which closed at start on beta 2, installs PhysX for older games whose setup program carries it, and can run a game's own settings launcher once. Batman: Arkham Asylum now starts.

Downloads

Getting the beta (from 0.7.0 or newer): turn on Settings › Updates › Beta updates, then Check now. Playden updates the app and runtime kit 0.16 (430 MB). Make sure console storage has at least 8 GB free first (PS5 Settings › Storage). Your sign-in, games, saves and Game settings are kept.

After the update: games set up with kit 0.13, 0.14 or 0.15 show "Kit update available" on their page. Play updates their runtime first, then starts the game. Until then they keep running on their old kit from PS5 Home.

Updating from 0.6.0 or older: update to 0.8.0 first (see its notes), then turn on Beta updates.

New install: unzip playden-ps5-0.9.0-beta.3.zip into a folder of its own and copy the FAKE77031 folder to /data/homebrew/ (see the README). On its first start Playden offers to download the runtime kit; you can sign in while it downloads.

What's new

• More Direct3D 12 games start, such as The Witcher 3 (next-gen) and WheelMates, and Unreal Engine 5 games now use Direct3D 12 by default. (#118, #148, #135)
• DLC. DLC you own downloads with the game, and free DLC is claimed for you. The install sheet says how many DLC an install includes. An installed game's page says "DLC available" when you get new DLC later. (#175, #251)
• Game updates. An installed game's page says "Update available" when Steam has a newer build, with a sheet to download it. Only the files that changed download; they go in place once the game is closed, files the update removes are deleted, and an interrupted update carries on where it stopped. The game is checked each time you open its page. Games installed by older versions are checked file by file the first time.
• Choose the game's language. Settings › Library › Game language sets the language games download in, and the install sheet has a Language row to change it for one install. Games that ship their translations separately now arrive translated. A game without that language downloads in English, as before. (#45)
• Choose the game's version. The install sheet's Version row lists the public version and every Steam beta branch without a password, with its description and date. The game is installed and started the way that branch is. (#161)
• Manage installed games. Settings › Storage › Manage installed games has three tabs: Updates lists every game with an update or new DLC and updates the ones you pick; Move sends games to another drive (Move from narrows the list to one drive); Uninstall removes games. Each runs in the Queue. A move copies and checks every file, switches the game to the copy, then deletes the old folder; it carries on after a restart and can be cancelled until the switch. A game page's Maintenance › Move to… moves one game.
• Exact update sizes. Updates show what they really download, measured from the files that change: Steam's estimate said 63.5 GB for a Cyberpunk 2077 patch.
• Exact install sizes. The install sheet shows what a game really takes for the chosen version and language. Steam's sum counts shared files twice: Portal said 8.2 GB for a 4.2 GB install.
• Web access. While Playden is open, a browser on the same network opens http://<PS5 IP>:7031/ to read Playden's and each game's logs, or download the same log report as tools/collect_logs.py, without FTP or Python. Account names and IDs are removed from everything it shows. The page also has a Quit Playden button. Settings › Web access shows the address with a QR code and turns it off.
• Rumble strength. Game settings › Rumble now works (0 turns it off) with kit 0.15 and newer.
• Frame generation. Game settings › Display › Frame generation (2×, 3×, 4×) shows 2, 3 or 4 times the frames a DXVK, OpenGL or Vulkan game draws, with MihawkGen in kit 0.15 and newer. While it is on, Frame limit and VSync don't apply. Not tested on a console yet: tell me how it goes. (prospero-win #722)
• PhysX for older games. Games whose Steam install script runs NVIDIA's PhysX setup program now get PhysX on their first Play: Playden takes the installer package out of the setup program and installs it itself, LZX-compressed ones included. Before, it was skipped, and games that need PhysX closed at start.
• Run a program once. A game page's Game actions › Run a program once starts a program from the game folder one time in place of the game, such as a settings launcher, with the Mouse controller preset (left stick moves the pointer, Cross clicks). The next Play starts the game with its own settings again. (#52)
• Batman: Arkham Asylum starts. Its recipe sets the game's language (English), so it no longer opens its settings launcher and closes. Copies installed earlier get it on their next Play. Community recipes can now set values in a game's INI files.

New in runtime kits 0.15 and 0.16 (prospero-win)

Kit 0.15 moves Playden's runtime onto the latest prospero-win. These work in every game, with no setting:

• Rumble. Games now vibrate the DualSense when they rumble, L2 and R2 included. (#695, #712)
• The PS5 keyboard in games. A two-finger touchpad click opens the PS5's on-screen keyboard over the game; what you type reaches the game as key presses, with Enter at the end. Good for chat lines, save names and console commands. (#726)
• Touchpad Back and Guide. In XInput mode a touchpad click on the left half is Back (Select), on the right half Guide, so Back no longer needs Create, which also opens the PS5's capture menu. Clicks land on the right half more reliably, too. (#721, #724)
• Closing a game takes a 3-second Options+Create hold, so games that use Start and Select together (emulated PS1 games among them) no longer close by accident. (#720)
• USB mouse wheel. A USB mouse's scroll wheel now reaches the game. (#715)
• Less memory for threads. Thread and fiber stacks take the memory Windows gives them instead of all of it up front. Games that make thousands of fibers (Assetto Corsa EVO used about 2.7 GB for them) no longer run out of memory at start. (#727)
• Room for the graphics driver. Wine's own memory now leaves headroom in the PS5's direct memory, so heavy games at high resolutions don't starve the GPU of it. (#470)
• .NET games that scan big folders, such as Stardew Valley's SMAPI going through its Mods folder, no longer fail at the first subfolder or with "Too many open files". (#696, #697)
• Emulators and other programs that recompile code see writes to the pages they protect, so they no longer jump into stale code (DuckStation showed a black screen). (#718) In kit 0.16, the part that reports frequent writes next to a protected page is off by default, because it closed .NET games: if an emulator shows stale code again, add PW_SUBPAGE_REPORT=1 in Game settings › Environment variables.
• Stuck "Closing" screen. A game on a Vulkan display could leave the console on the PS5's "Closing" screen when it quit, until a reboot. The title now waits for the last frames first. (#698)
• Up-to-date root certificates for games' HTTPS connections. (#728)

Fixed

• .NET games closed at start on beta 2, Slay the Spire 2 among them. Since kit 0.14, Wine reported a write the .NET runtime made next to its own code as an access violation, and the game closed about a second after it started. Kit 0.16 no longer does; Slay the Spire 2 reaches its menu and plays.
• Reading a file next to protected memory failed. Since kit 0.14, a file read or network receive into memory that shares a 16 KB PS5 page with a protected one failed or came back short. Kit 0.16 lets those reads through.
• Unity games crawled on beta 1. With kit 0.14, Unity games that use Mono, Darkwood among them, sat on the loading circle for minutes and played at a few frames per second: Wine stepped through every memory access next to a protected page of the game's heap, one instruction at a time. Kit 0.15 stops that once it repeats; Darkwood loads in seconds and plays at full frame rate again.
• Family-shared games were missing from the Library, with about one more showing up per refresh. Playden now fetches their details the way the Steam client does, in the background: a refresh no longer waits for them, and each game shows up as soon as it is named.
• Games that need C:\ProgramData or a Temp folder crashed, such as Dead by Daylight ("Fatal error!"). New bottles have them, and Repair adds them to games already set up. (#253)
• A game Playden couldn't prepare couldn't be removed from the Queue. Its Queue actions now offer Uninstall (Remove from library for imported games). (#184)
• Older 32-bit files could overwrite a 64-bit install. When a game has both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows depots, only the 64-bit ones are installed.
• Downloads resumed at start used the default settings (automatic server, 4 pieces at a time) instead of your download server, slow-network setting and game language.
• Queue: sizes and speeds use decimal units like the rest of Playden (a game no longer reads 4.0 GB on its page and 3.7 GB in the Queue), and Back from a game opened from the Queue returns to the same row.

Known issues

• Online play doesn't work. Games find no servers or say Steam is offline (#115).
• Games that start another program don't start, such as launchers, pre-launchers and games whose interface is drawn by a helper program (#52). A settings launcher can run on its own with Game actions › Run a program once, but it can't start the game: press Play afterwards. Until Playden opens again, the game's Home tile starts that program too.
• Some Direct3D 12 games still don't run (#118):
  • Subnautica 2 stalls at start (#20).
  • CONTROL Resonant draws no 3D geometry (#201).
  • Order of the Sinking Star plays its tutorial, then the next map never loads (#211).
  • Assetto Corsa EVO finds no suitable graphics adapter (#199).
• Some games stop at start before drawing a frame (#117), or because of unaligned shared sections in their program (#116).
• VRR at 120 Hz: for 120 Hz output, turn off the PS5's VRR › Apply to Unsupported Games (#98).

Thanks

• @mpereiraesaa for prospero-win and most of what kits 0.15 and 0.16 bring, @mihawk-99 for MihawkGen, and @jonnylitten, @7tg, @ozcho, @Portablelle and @larryliu985 for their prospero-win changes.
• @dann1k for the download language request (#45), @jonatsoto for the DLC request (#175) @jmed2 for The Witcher 3 report (#148) and @onedawns for the WheelMates report (#135).
• @evoluketion for four test reports, and @mrcrew2016, @TheGoonGoblin, @pl69100, @dragonscales123, @heterostasis and @snyperstyle for theirs.