Crux2 v1.0.14

What's new since v1.0.0

Added:

• USB controllers (experimental): DualShock 3 / SIXAXIS with pressure-sensitive buttons, Xbox 360 pads, guitars, drums and other USB pads.
• Console language (Settings > BIOS, and per game), and Start the PlayStation 2 menu.
• Statistics on the on-screen display: draws, barriers, render passes, copies and read-backs a frame, and the graphics chip's time by kind of pass.
• Record a GS dump in the quick menu (5 seconds, saved to snaps/), with either renderer.
• Slow moments in the boot log: a slow: line whenever a game stays under full speed for 2 seconds, saying where the time went.
• paraLLEl-GS: its own figures on the on-screen display, Automatic quality steps its samples, Dithering works with it, and its pictures can be shared with the graphics device (experimental, off).
• Render targets without compression and Keep read render targets uncompressed (both experimental, off; Graphics > Advanced).

Changed:

• Frames queue while a game is behind: in heavy scenes the emulation no longer waits at every frame for the graphics thread. A lit scene I test with went from 81% to 95-100% speed (Queue frames while the game is behind, on).
• Far less work at light sources: draws through the rasterizer ordered view keep their render pass (about 4,000 passes a frame down to about 40), fewer barriers and fewer copies of the picture.
• Built on PCSX2 v2.9.142 (was v2.9.138) and Mesa 27.0-devel's RADV (was 26.2.0): cheaper draws, fewer cache flushes, fixes to compressed depth and colour buffers.
• paraLLEl-GS compiles its shaders in the background and keeps them between sessions, takes the display settings, and works with Hardware download mode.
• Renderer is one choice: Hardware (Vulkan), Software, paraLLEl-GS.
• The on-screen display is one panel in sections, with 1% and 0.1% lows and a frame-time graph.

Fixed:

• The graphics chip's own hardware bugs are worked around as for its real generation (shader compiler hazards, two geometry hang guards).
• The driver's shader cache could switch itself off on the console.
• Graphics settings that take effect at the next start now do so at each game's start, not only when Crux2 starts.
• paraLLEl-GS: pictures of dots or a frozen frame, dithering of 32-bit frame buffers, fringes at polygon edges.
• The D-pad's Up and Down stopped working after stepping Renderer through Software.
• Opening Settings stopped Crux2; on-screen figures showed nothing when switched on.
• Games played one after another slowed down: the previous game's textures are freed when it closes.
• The PS2's start-up ran at double speed at 120 Hz.

Known issues

• paraLLEl-GS is slower than PCSX2's renderer in the heaviest game I test with, and its picture is softer by design.
• The free BIOS is early work: many games reach their menus and go no further. Use a BIOS dumped from your own PlayStation 2.
• RetroAchievements' hardcore mode is not offered.

Install or update

1. Copy the PPSA99249 folder from the ZIP to your homebrew folder on the console (/data/homebrew/), over an older one if you have it.
2. Your settings, memory cards, states and games stay: with a folder /data/crux2, Crux2 keeps them there, outside the title folder.
3. Your own games in games/ (or on a USB drive or a share), your own BIOS in bios/. None included, none ever will be.
4. Read LEGAL.txt and README.md in the folder. Shaders are compiled again once after the update.

Reporting problems

Open an issue with crux2-boot.log and logs/emulog.txt from the title folder (Settings > System can copy them to a USB drive), copied before Crux2 is started again. Never attach games, BIOS files, firmware or keys.

Source

This ZIP was built from this release's tag. The source of every part is public: this repository at the tag (the port, its interface, the patches it applies to PCSX2 and to Mesa's RADV, the paraLLEl-GS renderer's patches in crux2recomp/, its tools and tests), PCSX2 at [5675313c6db3390fdc38f75a658ddfc68498103e](https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/tree/5675313c6db3390fdc38f75a658ddfc68498103e) (v2.9.142), and every other part at the revision licenses/README.txt and licenses/components.json in the ZIP name. Crux2 is GPL-3.0-or-later with one additional term: keep the credit "Crux2 by Press5elect" (NOTICE).

Build

Build identity b561da196b65011b

Component	Version
PCSX2	v2.9.142 (5675313c6db3) with ps5/patches/pcsx2/ps5.patch
RADV	Mesa 27.0-devel (main 49d0063365a) with the PS5 changes (PS5_Mesa, ps5/patches/mesa-27), RADV 9d39c4ce743b
PS5_PayloadSDK	b5efad5
PS5_Vulkan	f410e67
paraLLEl-GS	cc6184a
Profile-guided optimisation	profile 7f52d5c1b676

SHA-256 of Crux2-v1.0.14.zip: 08e9ee6b8ca9533455511c631aa4ede366733d3a63f305b5dc706a8a772d1c91

Crux2 v1.0.0

Crux2 v1.0.0

The PlayStation 2 emulator PCSX2 as a native homebrew title for a jailbroken PS5 (PPSA99249), with a Big Picture interface made for the television and the DualSense. The first release.

Important

Piracy is not condoned. This release contains no games, no BIOS files, no console firmware and no decryption keys, and none will ever be provided or linked to. Use only legally obtained backups of games you own, made yourself from your own discs, and a BIOS dumped from a PlayStation 2 you own. Please don't ask for, or post links to, games, BIOS files, firmware or keys in issues or discussions: they will be removed.

Note

An unofficial port. This is not a build of the PCSX2 project and is not supported by it. Please don't report its problems to PCSX2.

What's in it

Added:

• PCSX2 on the PS5: its x86-64 recompilers and Vulkan renderer (through RADV, linked into the title), the software renderer, save states, cheats, PCSX2's patch collection (widescreen and no-interlacing patches applied by themselves), the network adapter and hard drive for online games, RetroAchievements.
• paraLLEl-GS, a second GS renderer: the whole GS drawn on the graphics chip, super-sampled.
• Games from everywhere: the title folder, USB drives, SMB and NFS network shares, the console's disc drive and USB DVD drives. A disc can be read into memory, or made into an ISO, CHD or CSO image.
• A Big Picture interface: ten library views (Shelves, Grid, List, Flow, Bookcase, Table, Showcase, Wheel, Wall, Discs), search, filters, quick views, favourites and collections, covers and pictures of play, 36 skins, an animated mark, interface and text size, music of your own.
• Settings at three levels, Normal, Advanced and Expert (Triangle in the Settings), for all games or one game alone.
• Picture: up to 12x internal resolution, FSR 1, NIS and CAS, Automatic quality, frame generation, black frame insertion, 4K at 60 or 120 Hz, CRT and signal looks, HD texture packs (also downloaded from the Internet Archive's collection).
• Saves: a memory card for each game, a card manager that brings saves in (from a PlayStation 2 on the network, USB drives, shares or card images), sleep-safe saving, states saved by themselves with undo, backups, and memory cards kept in sync with a share.
• Controllers: four players, controller profiles, pressure from R2, GunCon 2 aimed by moving the controller, USB microphones, a USB keyboard, light bars, control from a phone.
• Care for an OLED screen, updates from this page (Crux2 looks at each start, and asks before downloading), a free BIOS fallback (OpenPS2BIOS, early work), and native code modules (experimental).

Default settings: 6x internal resolution with FSR 1 from 4x and Automatic quality, widescreen and no-interlacing patches, 4K output at 60 Hz paced by the screen, no on-screen display, a memory card for each game, the main threads on cores of their own, texture packs loaded and precached. Everything can be changed in Settings.

Tested for this release

On my PS5, with the development builds this release comes from: games start and play from the internal storage, USB drives, an SMB share, the disc drive and a USB DVD drive; the network adapter, the hard drive, RetroAchievements, downloaded cheats and patches, covers, backups to a share and memory cards work. The heaviest scene I test with (a 60 fps patch, full blending accuracy, 6x) held 100% speed for all but four dips of about three seconds in a six-minute run, 59.2 frames a second on average, with the sound's time stretcher at its normal tempo 95-100% of the time.

On the PC, for this exact build: the host tests, the interface tests (every settings row changed every way, 120,000 random button presses with the sanitizers, a picture of every screen) and the release check pass.

Not tried on the console one by one: every setting, paraLLEl-GS in every game, the native code modules, many of the PS2 accessories.

Known issues

• paraLLEl-GS is slower than PCSX2's renderer in the heaviest game I test with, and its picture is softer by design.
• The free BIOS is early work: many games reach their menus and go no further. Use a BIOS dumped from your own PlayStation 2.
• RetroAchievements' hardcore mode is not offered.

Install or update

1. Copy the PPSA99249 folder from the ZIP to your homebrew folder on the console (/data/homebrew/), over an older one if you have it.
2. Your settings, memory cards, states and games stay: with a folder /data/crux2, Crux2 keeps them there, outside the title folder.
3. Your own games in games/ (or on a USB drive or a share), your own BIOS in bios/. None included, none ever will be.
4. Read LEGAL.txt and README.md in the folder.

Reporting problems

Open an issue with crux2-boot.log and logs/emulog.txt from the title folder (Settings > System can copy them to a USB drive), copied before Crux2 is started again. Never attach games, BIOS files, firmware or keys.

Source

This ZIP was built from this release's tag. The source of every part is public: this repository at the tag (the port, its interface, the patches it applies to PCSX2 and to Mesa's RADV, the paraLLEl-GS renderer's patches in crux2recomp/, its tools and tests), PCSX2 at ab0b401f99729ef8da3009f9af28d8ee96e0e7ba (v2.9.138), and every other part at the revision licenses/README.txt and licenses/components.json in the ZIP name. Crux2 is GPL-3.0-or-later with one additional term: keep the credit "Crux2 by Press5elect" (NOTICE).

Build

Build identity 776befdd969b45ab

Component	Version
PCSX2	v2.9.138 (ab0b401f9972) with ps5/patches/pcsx2/ps5.patch
RADV	Mesa 9eb37ae (PS5_Mesa), RADV 884f81d87327
PS5_PayloadSDK	b5efad5
PS5_Vulkan	f410e67
paraLLEl-GS	cc6184a
Profile-guided optimisation	profile 7f52d5c1b676

SHA-256 of Crux2-v1.0.0.zip: 2848f2e068c6d08c19b320cfb8b46e46a60e20a102b215ce502795a5b63c615e