SonsOfSparta-PS5 Native 0.2.2

SonsOfSparta-PS5 Native 0.2.2

God of War: Sons of Sparta for PS5, running on Windows through AnyPS5.

Made possible by the AnyPS5 project. The source code is in this repository.

Changelog

All four changes in this release were contributed by @saulob.

0.2.2

• Fixed: the startup intro video now plays — #13 by @saulob. It used to sit on a dark frozen picture for about 10 seconds and then jump to the menu. The player was running out of output buffers: with only the game's own two, one is always held by the game, so a caller that skips late frames itself never found the next one ready. The decoder now keeps four buffers ahead.
• Native launcher display settings — #7 by @saulob. Window, fullscreen and resolution choices are now real launcher controls, not just the resolution.txt file.
• First-start preparation screen rebuilt — #8 by @saulob. It now shows what it is doing and how far it has got, instead of looking like a stalled window for two minutes.
• Fixed display scaling on high-DPI and mixed-DPI monitors — #11 by @saulob, in both the launcher window and the game window. If the game looked tiny, oversized or blurry on a 4K or scaled display, that is fixed.
• As always: the first run after updating rebuilds its shader cache, so expect a few minutes of visual glitches and stutters before it settles. This is per-build, not a regression.

How to play

1. Download SonsOfSparta-PS5-Native-0.2.2-win64.zip and extract it anywhere.
2. Copy your own decrypted game files into the same folder as SonsOfSparta-PS5.exe:
   eboot.bin (or a decrypted eboot.elf), sce_sys, sce_module and Media.
3. Double-click SonsOfSparta-PS5.exe.

Nothing to install. The very first start prepares the game from your files: a small window explains it and it takes about two minutes. Later starts are fast. Your own files are never modified.

Upgrading from 0.2.0 or 0.2.1: extract over your existing folder (or copy the new SonsOfSparta-PS5.exe and libs\ into it) and keep the game files you already copied in.

Closing the game window ends it within a few seconds. Logs are in the logs folder.

Highlights

• The game's own x86-64 code runs directly on your CPU, with no CPU emulation. The PS5 system libraries and GPU commands are reimplemented through a compatibility layer, similar to Wine and DXVK
• Playable from the logo through gameplay, with music and sound effects
• About 60 FPS in menus and gameplay on our test PC (RTX 5070 Ti)
• Keyboard and any XInput/DualSense/DualShock gamepad; saves are kept next to the game

Controls

Any XInput/DualSense/DualShock gamepad works. Keyboard, mouse and gamepad can be used at the same time.

PS5 button	Keyboard	Mouse
Cross	Enter / Space
Circle	C
Square		Left click
Triangle	I
L1	Q
R1	E / Alt
L2	(no key)
R2		Right click
L3 / R3	Shift / Ctrl
D-pad	Arrow keys	Mouse wheel (up = Up, down = Down)
Left stick	W A S D
Right stick	T F G H
Options	Esc
Touchpad	Backspace / Tab

F11 toggles fullscreen. The middle mouse button turns mouse-aim mode on or off (the mouse is captured and drives the right stick).

Resolution

The game draws its scene at 4K by default and scales it to your window, which is heavy on weaker graphics cards. To lower it, create a text file named resolution.txt next to SonsOfSparta-PS5.exe containing one word: 1080p, 1440p or 4k. Delete the file to leave the game's own setting alone. The choice is applied every time you start the game, including the very first start. The window size is not affected.

Known issues

• First play builds shaders: the first time you play, shaders are built while you play, so you may see visual glitches (missing or wrong-looking effects, brief stutters) until they are cached. This gets better on later runs, and it happens again after each update.
• Rare crashes or freezes can still happen, mostly during loading. Just start the game again.
• The whole game has not been completed, so not all of it is tested. Later areas may have missing graphics, audio problems or crashes.
• Tested on an NVIDIA graphics card only. AMD and Intel are untested.