Lantern Engine 0.9.42

A release on top of 0.9.41: The Hunter's Dream co-op and invasions with bbhost 0.2.31, seamless co-op for up to 5 hunters, cheats that can't be used online, and the real cause of the freeze reported on 0.9.40 and 0.9.41.

The Hunter's Dream

• Updated for bbhost 0.2.31. Lantern now carries bbhost's online changes up to 0.2.31, taken from their code as it is. Co-op and invasions need bbhost 0.2.31 or newer, or this Lantern version or newer, on both sides. Older versions can't connect to newer ones: the summon times out after about 30 seconds.
• Your character's name shows for other players, and matchmaking starts at Worldwide, as in bbhost 0.2.31.
• Online rules. Players with Lamp2Lamp warps on are kept apart from vanilla players by the server. The Online page and the log say which rules you play by.
• The launcher shows the account state (checking, signed in, expired, could not be checked) with a Retry button.

Seamless co-op

• Up to 5 hunters in one world: the host and 4 cooperators. This is the most the game itself can hold. The host stops summoning when the party is full. A summoned NPC ally takes one of the 4 cooperator places, as in the game.
• Bosses get the game's own scaling for 3 and 4 cooperators (2.5x and 3.0x health). Before, a boss with 3 or 4 cooperators stayed at the 2 cooperator level.
• A full room says so. A hunter who tries to join a full room gets "This room is full (5 of 5 hunters)" in the launcher instead of a timeout.
• Everyone in a room needs this version. Rooms now check the version at join, and a hunter on an older version is told to update.
• Hunters who dropped no longer block the room. A hunter whose game crashed or lost its connection kept their place for 2 minutes, still showed as connected, and newcomers were refused as if the room were full. A held place now never refuses a new hunter, the others see "reconnecting" and then that the hunter left, and quitting frees the place at once.
• Rooms work with the new connection code: its messages are sent reliably through the room, and large packets get through whole.

Cheats

• Cheats are off whenever you play online or in seamless co-op. In 0.9.41 this followed one setting. It now follows every online path, so starting the engine without the launcher or with extra variables doesn't get around it. The Player No Dead, Player Stealth, Player Silent, Enemy Control and debug menu patches are left out while online too. The Cheats page says "Off while Play online or seamless co-op is on".

Fixes

• The freeze with the GPU no longer answering (0.9.40 and 0.9.41). This was the item 0.9.41 worked around by turning the PC memory model off after a freeze. The real cause was in the engine: on CPUs with 12 or more threads, the engine's object motion worker could wait for the GPU command thread while that thread waited for it. Five frozen sessions on Discord (RTX 5070 Ti, RTX 3050, RX 6800) show it. That wait can't happen now. PCs that 0.9.40 or 0.9.41 switched to the model off after such a freeze get it back at the next start.
• Missing walls or floors with large map mods. 0.9.41 put this down to the mod. It was the engine: mods that replace map, character, part or object models now get the larger graphics heaps that high-detail settings use.
• Saves imported in the launcher not used by the game. When the game was started from Bloodborne.exe, the Steam entry or another copy of Lantern, a second launcher could write back an older saves folder, or look in its own package folder. Settings are now merged instead of overwritten, saves can't be changed while any game is running, and the launcher asks before starting with a saves folder other than the last one.
• The GPU watchdog ends a game that has stopped drawing for 60 seconds, and the launcher says why instead of waiting for a closed window.
• The crash report shows the start program's own reason, for example a missing online setting, instead of "exit code 1".
• Seamless co-op: Play no longer starts a room without its invite code (or the host's address for a direct join), and The Hunter's Dream account is no longer asked for in seamless.
• Seamless co-op: a hunter who rejoined showed twice in the F2 list.
• FSR 3.1 can be chosen on Windows again, and the Graphics page no longer switches it to the SDK FSR. The choices from 0.9.41 for Intel integrated graphics and FSR 4.1.1 on AMD stay as they were.
• Frame generation: even pacing now uses the multiplier that is actually delivered, so a 3x setting that delivers 2x paces for 2x. This only applies with Graphics › Frame generation: even pacing turned on.
• Saves page: hunters with the same name can be told apart. With more than one profile the cards read "Hunter (test)", "Hunter (Main)", with the level added when two would still read the same.
• A start that has to recompile saved shaders says so before it begins. It used to show nothing for minutes. Updating from 0.9.41 keeps your saved shaders.
• Save editor: a save whose slots all fail to read now says so, instead of listing nothing.
• 4K menus: a cut-off upscaled menu texture is now found and built again.
• Linux: the engine reads game memory that the GPU driver maps, which some features needed.
• The log says which engine features turned off and why. Each widescreen check that fails names itself.

Not tested

• Played on an RTX 5060 with a Ryzen 5 5600 on Windows only. AMD, Intel and older NVIDIA cards haven't been tried, and the Linux build hasn't been played.
• The Hunter's Dream co-op and invasions weren't played between a Lantern player and a bbhost player. They were checked line by line against bbhost 0.2.31, and bbhost's own connection code was run against ours in tests.
• None of the seamless co-op changes were played with two or more hunters: 5 hunters, the boss scaling, the full-room refusal, the version check and the room changes come from the game's code and their own unit tests.
• The freeze fix follows five logs and the engine code. We couldn't make the freeze happen here.
• The saves fix was checked with tests on the settings file, not with Steam or a second copy of the game.
• Frame generation even pacing was tested with numbers, not played.

Known issues

• A crash on a loading screen inside the game's memory code (one report with a dump on 0.9.41, lamping back to the Hunter's Dream): still open. It is the same kind of crash 0.9.41 listed as "code 139".
• Linux, 6 GB graphics card: characters and objects can turn black after the first death until they are hit (one report, RTX 3060 Laptop). Still open.
• Ultrawide: the image is still stretched for some players. Not looked at in this release.
• Cainhurst: the noblewomen's skirts disappearing is still open.
• Crashes at random places on an i9-14900KF, on 0.9.38 and 0.9.40 alike, each at a different address in the game's code: no pattern that points at the engine was found.
• The known issues of 0.9.41 that aren't fixed above still apply.