Haunting Ground Recomp 0.2 (test release)

The second test build of the native Windows and Linux version of Haunting Ground (PS2, North American release,
SLUS-21075). As before: no game code in the download; you need your own disc dumped to a plain .iso, and the game
is built on your PC on the first start. Thank you to everyone who tested 0.1 and reported back!

What is new in 0.2

• Widescreen (Options > Aspect ratio): the 3D view really widens, up to 21:9; the camera sees more at the sides
  instead of stretching, while menus, text and movies stay 4:3 in the middle.
• Smoother 60 fps: the stutters at heavy moments (Debilitas' entrance in the hallway, the chase after it) are gone.
  The renderer no longer waits for the in-between pictures, and on the test PC the hallway now runs with about 25 %
  to spare.
• Sharper at 4K: AMD FSR 1 (Options > Upscaling): when the rendered picture is smaller than your screen, FSR
  scales it up with sharp edges instead of a soft stretch. That makes lower resolution settings look much closer to
  4K on slower GPUs.
• The game's glow at full resolution (Options > Soft focus): the soft glow the game lays over its scenes used to
  turn into doubled edges and lines at high resolutions (outdoors especially, on Fiona). It is now drawn at the
  upscaled resolution: the same soft look, without the doubling. "Original" keeps it as the game draws it.
• Faster at high resolutions: the GPU renderer's memory layout and shaders were reworked: x6 costs about a third
  less GPU time.
• HD text: the game's own letters, redrawn cleanly at high resolution from the original glyphs (same shapes,
  spacing and soft edge as on the PS2), for all text colours.
• Keyboard prompts: playing on the keyboard, the PlayStation button symbols in the game's text (menus, tutorials)
  become keycaps showing your keys, and follow your bindings. The Controller page lists the keyboard key for each
  button. Use a controller and the PlayStation symbols come back.
• Smooth with a frame-rate cap: a cap a few fps below the refresh (NVIDIA's Max Frame Rate 117 on 120 Hz, a common
  setting for G-Sync and frame generation) made 0.1 judder constantly: only 87 % of pictures stayed up evenly. 0.2
  notices the cap after a few seconds and times each picture itself: 99.9 % on the test PC with a 117 cap. The
  display's refresh rate is also measured more robustly (a few slow moments at the start can no longer cost the lock).
• If the GPU stops (a driver reset), the game now carries on with the software renderer instead of a black screen.
• Fixes: the see-through bar behind the examine text in widescreen; a skipped movie showed stretched wide for a second
  in widescreen while it faded out; a hitch at every start before the Capcom logo; the Linux release build's compiler
  made the 60 fps pictures slow on AMD CPUs.
• Security hardening: replays never follow links in a recording's folders, damaged .dds textures and disc images
  are rejected cleanly, and the Windows launcher's buffers are checked.

Suggested settings

The renderer reproduces the PS2's graphics chip exactly for every sample, so its cost grows with the square of the
resolution factor. For 60 fps on a 4K display: fast GPUs (RTX 4080/5080 class and up) x4 to x6; mid-range (RTX 3060
Ti to 4070 class) x2 to x3 with Upscaling on FSR; older or integrated GPUs native or x2. If the F3 overlay shows less
than 100 % or SKIP in heavy scenes, pick the next lower resolution (these are estimates from one RTX 5090: please tell
us how your GPU does).

Requirements, reporting bugs

As in 0.1: Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit) or 64-bit Linux, a Vulkan GPU recommended, your own SLUS-21075 disc as .iso,
about 6 GB of disk space. To report a bug, open an issue with logs/play.log, logs/launcher.log and, if you can,
the newest recordings/<date>/ folder's pad.txt and its card folder (needed to replay a session that loaded
a save). Press F9 in the game at the moment something looks wrong: it marks that moment in the recording. Never
attach anything from game, bin, textures or crashes, or your disc image.

Downloads

File	For	Size	SHA-256
HauntingGround-Recomp-0.2-win64.zip	Windows	1,592.5 MB	dc27e11b36147025160401f8d79fd0dd34013a318f9b6675c2a5f310434a19e5
HauntingGround-Recomp-0.2-linux-x64.tar.gz	Linux	1,651.4 MB	261a7d9f53b40eabc5c319da606b1dd27874948d7c058730fed626f0c507ba5d
HauntingGround-Recomp-0.2-compiler-sources-win64.tar	Source of the compiler in the Windows zip (not needed to play)	334.6 MB	dabe5331537fb6838f0ad90c8496c999a05e770ed60adf1eec71335c429498d4
HauntingGround-Recomp-0.2-compiler-sources-linux-x64.tar	Source of the compiler in the Linux archive (not needed to play)	263.1 MB	2f01eba0da4814dc08564a3eb1c1223f4b4f4b5f68865ead09da8d2a740ae698

Both downloads hold the sources of commit 6ef0327 (engine/src/COMMIT.txt); the compilers are the same as in 0.1.

Third-party licences: THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt in the download (new in 0.2: AMD FidelityFX Super Resolution 1, MIT).

Haunting Ground Recomp 0.1 (test release)

The first public test build of a native Windows and Linux version of Haunting Ground (PS2, North American release, SLUS-21075). The game's program is statically recompiled to C and compiled on your PC from your own disc; a hand-written runtime stands in for the PS2 hardware. It is not an emulator and it does not use PCSX2 code.

No game code is in this download. You need your own copy of the game, dumped to a plain .iso. The launcher checks your disc image, copies the files the game needs, and builds the game on your PC with the compiler included in the download (about a minute on a fast PC). Nothing needs to be installed and nothing is downloaded.

HD textures are included. The textures folder holds high-resolution versions of the game's own textures (Capcom's artwork), upscaled with AI models; they are used only together with your own disc. Delete the folder, or set HD textures to Off in the Options menu, to play with the original textures. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Capcom or Sony.

What is in 0.1

• Windows: unzip, double-click HauntingGround.exe, choose the .iso, play. Linux (64-bit, glibc 2.34 or later: Ubuntu 22.04, Fedora, Debian 12, Arch, SteamOS desktop mode): unpack, run HauntingGround.sh, choose the .iso; needs python3 and SDL2 (installed on most desktops). The first start builds the game; later starts go straight to it.
• GPU renderer (Vulkan), pixel-identical to the project's reference software renderer at native resolution; upscaling up to x6 (x5 is about 4K); 60 fps by frame interpolation (120 at native resolution); software renderer as a fallback.
• HD textures for the stages, the characters and the menus (BC7-compressed: a quarter of the video memory of plain images), with an HD textures On/Off row in the Options menu.
• Settings inside the game's own Options menu (Down past Screen Position): renderer, resolution, frame rate, display, V-Sync, HD textures, keyboard and controller remapping, vibration strength, light bar colour. Saved in hg.ini.
• Native DualSense, DualShock 4 and Xbox controller support (USB and Bluetooth), with the game's vibration.
• Sound and cutscenes in sync: the sound processor keeps the console's own timing.
• Saving and loading on a memory card folder (memcards/port0), verified at the first save point.
• Every session's input is recorded, so bugs can be replayed exactly.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit; or Linux, 64-bit (see above). A Vulkan GPU is recommended.
• Your own Haunting Ground disc, North American release (SLUS-21075), dumped to .iso. Other regions are not supported yet.
• About 6 GB of free disk space (most of it the HD textures and the game files copied from your disc).

This is a test release

Tested in depth: the opening, the castle grounds, the first castle rooms and the first meeting with Debilitas, on one PC (Ryzen 7 9800X3D, RTX 5090; Windows 11 and CachyOS Linux). We are looking for playtesters: how far can you get, and what goes wrong on your hardware? Known issues: docs/known-issues.md.

Reporting bugs: open an issue with what happened, your PC (Windows version or Linux distribution, CPU, GPU), and logs/play.log, logs/launcher.log and, if you can, the newest recordings/.../pad.txt from the game folder. Never attach anything from game, bin, textures or crashes, or your disc image. Details: docs/release/crash-reports.md.

Downloads

File	For	Size	SHA-256
HauntingGround-Recomp-0.1-win64.zip	Windows	1,574.6 MB	285bcfa7d74ffd3490ed8ed04edbaad878d1a1751ea77b6685fe6ebdf1ff940a
HauntingGround-Recomp-0.1-linux-x64.tar.gz	Linux	1,633.7 MB	778902f977cddabab9a97f82d0bdc554576095d77e5481e570acec9b69a8534b
HauntingGround-Recomp-0.1-compiler-sources-win64.tar	Source of the compiler in the Windows zip (not needed to play)	334.6 MB	dabe5331537fb6838f0ad90c8496c999a05e770ed60adf1eec71335c429498d4
HauntingGround-Recomp-0.1-compiler-sources-linux-x64.tar	Source of the compiler in the Linux archive (not needed to play)	263.1 MB	2f01eba0da4814dc08564a3eb1c1223f4b4f4b5f68865ead09da8d2a740ae698

The Windows zip bundles unmodified GCC, binutils, MinGW-w64, SDL2 and Vulkan loader binaries from MSYS2 and Python from python.org; the Linux archive a GCC toolchain from Bootlin and the SDL2 and Vulkan headers. Each keeps its own licence (THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.txt in the download); the source code of the bundled compilers (GPL and LGPL) is attached here as the two compiler-sources files. The project itself is GPL-3.0; its source is this repository at the tagged commit, and a copy of the sources the build uses is inside each download (engine/src). The HD textures are not covered by the project's licence (see above).

Windows may warn that HauntingGround.exe is from an unknown publisher (it is not code-signed): "More info", then "Run anyway".