Show HN: A static recompilation of God of War Ascension for PC

A static recompilation of God of War: Ascension (PS3, BCES01741) for PC.

The game's PPU code is translated to C++ and compiled for x86-64. SPU programs are compiled ahead of time as well, and some of the heavier SPU jobs (Edge geometry, cloth, parts of the job system) have been rewritten by hand and checked against the original output. The PS3 system libraries the game uses are reimplemented in the runtime, and the RSX command stream is drawn with Vulkan.

The recording was made on Linux with an i7-8700K and an RTX 4070 at 1080p internal resolution. The counter in the corner is the game's frame rate.

This is a hobby project. It is not affiliated with Sony Interactive Entertainment or Santa Monica Studio, and it contains no game code or data. You need your own copy of the game.

The game boots, plays the intro, and is playable from a save through the early levels. It is not finished and not every part of the game has been tested.

On an i7-8700K with an RTX 4070, calm areas run at around 55-60 fps. Large fights run at roughly 35-45 fps and can still drop lower for short moments. Most of the remaining cost is SPU work (mainly Edge geometry jobs), not the GPU.

A dump of your own disc (BCES01741) and the 01.12 update.

PS3 firmware 4.91 and the keys needed to decrypt the game and the firmware modules. These are not included.

Python 3 with pycryptodome for the setup tools.

Linux: clang, CMake, Ninja, SDL3, a Vulkan driver, and optionally FFmpeg (libavcodec) for the videos.

Windows: Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools with clang-cl, CMake and Ninja.

Setup

The setup is still a set of manual steps. The tools in tools/ extract and decrypt the disc, the update and the firmware. After that, tools/setup.py generates all game-derived sources into out/ from your own files:

python3 tools/setup.py --steps all

By default it expects the decrypted 01.12 executable at bin/01.12/ and the decrypted firmware modules at fw/4.91/. Nothing in bin/, fw/, keys/ or out/ is tracked by git.

cmake -S . -B build-linux -G Ninja -DCMAKE_C_COMPILER=clang -DCMAKE_CXX_COMPILER=clang++ cmake --build build-linux

Windows:

build.cmd

Running

Start God of War Ascension from the build folder. A small launcher opens first, where you set the game folder, the update folder and a few options. The settings are kept in user/settings.ini next to the executable. Most options can also be set with GOWA_* environment variables.

MIT, see LICENSE. It covers the code in this repository only, not the game. Third-party components keep their own licenses, see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt. God of War is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment.