WIP 0.1.5

Warning

This is still an early work-in-progress test release. Expect bugs, crashes, graphical problems and stutters.
WIP 0.1.5 uses much less memory and has shorter shader-compilation freezes, but the frame rate is similar to
0.1.4 (the heaviest scenes still run below 30 FPS), and the memory corruption behind most crashes is not
fixed yet.

Important

No game files are included. You need a decrypted dump of the original PS4 Until Dawn (CUSA02636) with
the 01.03 update, made from your own legally obtained copy of the game. This download does not contain
the game.

What's new in 0.1.5

0.1.5 concentrates on memory use, shader-compilation freezes and the renderer's own work.

Memory

• About a third less RAM: at most about 8.2 GB in RAM instead of 12.7 GB, and at most about 17 GB
  committed instead of 22 GB. The game's memory no longer grows by hundreds of MB during play (+44 MB instead of
  +640 MB in ten minutes). What changed:
  • The game's many small memory heaps are committed in steps as the game uses them, instead of 64 MB or more each
    up front; memory pools grow in 64 MB steps instead of 512 MB.
  • Translated shader programs are freed once the graphics driver has its own copy; shader modules that are not
    being used are destroyed and rebuilt when needed from a compressed copy; the translator's cache is packed.
• Video memory sized to your GPU: the renderer's buffer copies and memory mirror now take at most a quarter
  and an eighth of the GPU's video memory, instead of a fixed 6 GB and 3 GB on every card.
• A memory report in the log every 60 seconds and at exit, useful for crash and memory reports.

Shader compilation

• Compute shaders are compiled in parallel, like the other shaders, instead of one after another on the
  renderer thread. A 38-second freeze reported with 0.1.4 on a 6-thread CPU held 30 seconds of such compiles. With
  no shader cache, the time spent waiting for compiles in two test scenes on the development PC fell by 16% and
  24%. With compute shaders made to fail on purpose, the pictures were the same as with the old way.

Renderer

• Less redundant work: pipeline, viewport, scissor, blend constants, shader constants and index buffer are only
  sent to the driver when they change between draws — about 3% less renderer time in test scenes.
• Cheaper memory checks: the per-submit check for memory the game has written saves most of its reset calls
  (0.3–0.4 ms less per frame in play). Verified to miss nothing in about 1.1 million skipped ranges.
• Moved textures reused: when the game moves a texture to a new place in memory, it takes over its existing
  copy in video memory instead of being uploaded again (about 1.3 GB less uploading on the test route). Reuse
  requires every byte and the layout to match.
• Textures lying across two neighbouring blocks of game memory are no longer refused.

The frame rate is similar to 0.1.4, slightly better in places: on the development PC light scenes often reach
60 FPS, busy scenes run at about 35–45 FPS and the heaviest scenes (the prologue's "stranger" shots) at about
22–27 FPS.

Known issues

• Crashes from overwritten game memory — not fixed. Now and then the lowest byte of a pointer in the game's
  memory is set to zero (in the cases examined, at the start of a 4 KB page), and the game crashes later. Seen on
  the development PC and on players' PCs with 0.1.3 and 0.1.4, and twice (without a crash) in the final 0.1.5
  test; 0.1.5 does not change it. Saves are kept. Logs with EBOOT POINTER LOW BYTE CLEARED lines help the
  investigation.
• Laptops with two GPUs (NVIDIA plus integrated graphics driving the screen): very slow frame presentation,
  hangs ending in "device lost", and flickering UI in the Status / Collectibles menus have been reported
  (#2). Try Windows' Graphics settings → UntilDawn.exe
  → High performance, or the laptop's discrete-GPU (MUX) mode.
• Characters occasionally deform for a frame or two (most likely the same memory problem).
• Graphics: light squares on Emily's eyes and dark squares on a wall in the prologue; the arm and inspected item
  invisible during item inspection on one PC (#3); the
  Skip prompt's "Skip" text as white boxes on some movies; black mouths in some close-ups, a red flash in the
  Episodes menu, smeared end-credits text; fog that disappears for a frame in the second "stranger" shot.
• Frame rate: the heaviest scenes are still below 30 FPS. Shader compilation still causes freezes on the
  first play-through, of 10–20 seconds or more on CPUs with few cores.
• No vibration or light bar on PlayStation controllers yet.
• New in this version: 0.1.5's changes have only been played on the development PC (NVIDIA). Nothing in them
  is written for one GPU make, but they are untested on AMD and Intel: reports from AMD and Intel GPUs, and from PCs with 16 GB of RAM, are especially
  welcome. If 0.1.5 crashes or stutters where 0.1.4 did not, please report it.

Full list: Known issues

Updating from 0.1.4

Copy the new UntilDawn.exe and the text files into your 0.1.4 folder. Do not overwrite
Config\settings.ini, savedata\ or Game\ (your settings, saves and game). Or extract 0.1.5 to a new folder and
copy your settings.ini, savedata and game files over. There are no new settings, compat\ is unchanged, and the
shader cache (Cache\) from 0.1.4 stays valid. From 0.1.3 or 0.1.2, also copy compat\ud_compat.exe.

Download check: UntilDawn_WIP_0.1.5.zip SHA-256
7af63a61e5b91492366482f3eb610df06867c64fed5ce69a958b5996777a9ea9

Getting started

1. Download UntilDawn_WIP_0.1.5.zip below and extract it to a folder you can write to.
2. Put your game files in the Game folder (so that Game\eboot.bin exists), or set game_dir in
   Config\settings.ini.
3. Start UntilDawn.exe.

Full instructions: Installation guide
· Controls

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
• CPU with AVX, F16C, BMI1, LZCNT, POPCNT and MOVBE (Intel Haswell / AMD Ryzen or newer)
• 16 GB memory recommended; keep the Windows page file on
• GPU with a current Vulkan 1.3 driver (NVIDIA tested; AMD tested with 0.1.3; Intel untested)

Help wanted: hardware testing

Reports from AMD and Intel GPUs are especially welcome. Run compat\run_compat.bat and attach the resulting
compat_report.zip to a compatibility report,
with screenshots if anything looks wrong, and say whether you changed renderer_thread.

---

Unofficial fan project. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Sony Interactive Entertainment or Supermassive
Games. Do not ask for, share or upload game files.

WIP 0.1.4

What's new in 0.1.4

All fixes from 0.1.3 are kept: long folder paths and the AMD graphics fixes. The shader translator still produces
exactly the same GPU programs as in 0.1.3.

Fixes

• See-through hair. Fog and light-shaft effects behind characters were drawn over their hair, so hair looked
  hazy or see-through, for example Hannah's in the prologue. On the PS4 a compute shader writes the hair's depth
  into the depth buffer; that depth now reaches the renderer's depth buffer too. Confirmed in play.
• More movies can be skipped: the butterfly-effect tutorial, the movie that opens the prologue and the Chapter 1
  bus ride. As before, press any button, then Cross (Enter / Space). These movies now show the same Skip prompt as
  the intro logos and the end credits (its "Skip" text still shows as boxes on these movies; see Known issues).
• Stability: two changes aimed at the occasional crashes caused by overwritten game memory. New game memory is
  now registered with the graphics driver before the game gets to use it, and game file reads go through the
  program's own buffers. Both still need confirming with more play time. The memory safeguard also logs one more
  kind of damage, seen in a 0.1.3 crash report.

Improvements

• Performance. On the development PC (RTX 3090 Ti, Core i9-12900KF), the heaviest scenes measured, the two
  "stranger" shots in the prologue, went from about 5 FPS in 0.1.3 to 21–25 FPS. Busy scenes (2,000–3,000 draws)
  now run at about 35–45 FPS, and light scenes reach 60 FPS more often. What changed:
  • Shader translation is about 3 times faster, and earlier translations are reused about 97% of the time instead
    of 29%. Most frames no longer translate anything.
  • The renderer runs on its own thread, alongside the game, instead of inside the game's frame. The new setting
    renderer_thread = 0 in Config\settings.ini switches back to the 0.1.3 behaviour.
  • Fewer GPU synchronisation steps, more frames in flight, cheaper texture checks and uploads, textures written by
    the GPU no longer stall the renderer, faster memory copies.
• The renderer changes were reviewed for GPUs other than the development NVIDIA card. Two rare cases are fixed: an
  image could be freed while the GPU still used it after a batch was split in the middle of a draw, and two
  buffers now fall back to other memory when the preferred kind is not available (PCs without resizable BAR).
• The compatibility tester (compat\run_compat.bat) uses the new shader translator.

Known issues

• Frame rate: the heaviest scenes are still below 30 FPS (21–25 FPS on the development PC). The first
  play-through still has shader-compilation pauses of 10–20 seconds.
• In the second "stranger" shot of the prologue, fog and haze can disappear for a frame or two just after the
  stranger walks past.
• Occasional crashes are still possible (saves are kept). Characters occasionally deform for a frame or two.
• The "Skip" text of the Skip prompt shows as white boxes on the butterfly-effect tutorial and the movie that
  opens the prologue, and can do so in the later "Previously on" clips (the Cross button is right, skipping works).
  The game's own text in that overlay movie is affected too, so it is a renderer fault; it is being investigated.
• Black mouths in some close-ups, a red flash in the Episodes menu, smeared end-credits text.
• No vibration or light bar on PlayStation controllers yet.
• New in this version: the performance changes have only been played on the development PC (NVIDIA). They are
  not specific to one GPU make, and the shader programs are unchanged from 0.1.3, but reports from AMD and Intel
  GPUs are especially welcome. If 0.1.4 crashes or stutters on your PC where 0.1.3 did not, set
  renderer_thread = 0 in Config\settings.ini and tell us whether that helps.

Full list: Known issues

Updating from 0.1.3

Copy the new UntilDawn.exe, compat\ud_compat.exe and the text files into your 0.1.3 folder. Do not
overwrite Config\settings.ini, savedata\ or Game\ (your settings, saves and game). Or extract 0.1.4 to a
new folder and copy your settings.ini, savedata and game files over. Your saves and settings work as they
are; renderer_thread does not need to be added (it defaults to 1). The shader cache (Cache\) from 0.1.3
stays valid, because the translated shaders are the same.

Getting started

1. Download UntilDawn_WIP_0.1.4.zip below and extract it to a folder you can write to.
2. Put your game files in the Game folder (so that Game\eboot.bin exists), or set game_dir in
   Config\settings.ini.
3. Start UntilDawn.exe.

Full instructions: Installation guide
· Controls

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
• CPU with AVX, F16C, BMI1, LZCNT, POPCNT and MOVBE (Intel Haswell / AMD Ryzen or newer)
• 16 GB memory recommended
• GPU with a current Vulkan 1.3 driver (NVIDIA and AMD tested with 0.1.3; Intel untested)

Help wanted: hardware testing

Reports from AMD and Intel GPUs are especially welcome. Run compat\run_compat.bat and attach the resulting
compat_report.zip to a compatibility report,
with screenshots if anything looks wrong, and say whether you changed renderer_thread.

---

Unofficial fan project. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Sony Interactive Entertainment or Supermassive
Games. Do not ask for, share or upload game files.

WIP 0.1.3

WIP 0.1.3 — AMD graphics and long file paths fixed

The second work-in-progress release of the original Until Dawn (2015) running natively on Windows, featuring improvements to AMD graphics compatibility, shader translation and file handling.

Fixes

• AMD graphics corruption: Fixed noisy textures, black blocks, missing vegetation and blocky lighting on AMD GPUs. These issues were particularly noticeable on character clothing, trees and environmental lighting. The fix has been confirmed on an AMD Radeon RX 9070 XT, which now renders consistently with NVIDIA GPUs, including the same remaining known issues.
• Long folder paths: Fixed an issue where the game incorrectly reported missing files when installed in directories with long paths. Previously, some game files exceeded Windows' standard 260-character path limit. The fix has been verified against an installation that previously reported 40 missing files.
• AMD shader compatibility: Improved shader translation to support AMD GPU requirements, including compute shader memory limits, pixel shader behaviour and wave sizes.

Improvements

• Cross-GPU compatibility: Improved consistency between NVIDIA and AMD graphics cards through changes to the shader translation.
• Compatibility tester: Updated the included hardware compatibility tester with the latest shader fixes and compatibility checks.

Known issues

• Occasional crashes and brief character geometry glitches.
• Some graphical issues remain, including black mouths in certain close-ups, red flashes in the Episodes menu and smeared end-credits text.
• Shader compilation can cause temporary freezes, especially during the first play-through.
• Performance varies significantly, with some sections running well below 30 FPS.
• PlayStation controller vibration and light-bar functionality are not yet implemented.
• Intel GPU compatibility has not yet been verified through gameplay.

For the full list, see Known Issues.

Updating from 0.1.2

You can update by replacing UntilDawn.exe and compat\ud_compat.exe with the new versions.

Keep your existing Config\settings.ini, savedata\ and Game\ folders to preserve your settings, saves and game files.

The shader cache may need to rebuild after updating, so some initial stuttering is expected.

Installation

Download UntilDawn_WIP_0.1.3.zip below and extract it to a folder of your choice.

You'll need your own legally obtained, decrypted copy of Until Dawn (CUSA02636) with the 01.03 update applied. Game files are not included.

See the Installation Guide for instructions.

Hardware testing

Additional testing on AMD and Intel graphics cards is very welcome. You can run compat\run_compat.bat and submit the resulting report through GitHub Issues.

---

This is still an early work-in-progress release. Bugs, crashes and performance issues are expected as development continues.

Unofficial fan project. Not affiliated with Sony Interactive Entertainment or Supermassive Games.

WIP 0.1.2

Warning

This is the first public work-in-progress test release. Expect bugs, crashes, graphical problems, stutters and hardware compatibility issues.

Important

No game files are included. You need a decrypted dump of the original PS4 Until Dawn (CUSA02636) with the 01.03 update, made from your own legally obtained copy of the game. This download does not contain the game.

What this is

A native Windows version of the original 2015 PS4 Until Dawn (not the 2024 remake). The game's own x86-64 code runs directly on your CPU — no console emulation. This project replaces the PS4 system libraries and draws the game with a custom Vulkan renderer that translates the game's GPU work and shaders on your PC.

Highlights

• Playable from start to finish: the whole game has been played through on the development PC.
• Controllers: DualSense, DualSense Edge and DualShock 4 over USB or Bluetooth (touch pad and motion sensors included), Xbox-style controllers with vibration, and keyboard and mouse with mouse aiming.
• "The Road Not Taken" pre-order DLC works if you supply its folder.
• Skippable intro logos and "Previously on" recaps.
• Windowed / borderless modes, frame-rate limit (60 FPS default), on-disk shader cache.
• Startup checks for the game files, CPU and graphics card with plain-language messages.
• Included hardware compatibility tester.

Getting started

1. Download UntilDawn_WIP_0.1.2.zip below and extract it to a folder you can write to.
2. Put your game files in the Game folder (so that Game\eboot.bin exists), or set game_dir in Config\settings.ini.
3. Start UntilDawn.exe.

Full instructions: Installation guide · Controls

First play-through: shaders are compiled for your graphics card as new areas load. The game can freeze for 10–20 seconds at a time, mostly in the first minutes. Wait for it; later runs are much smoother.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit
• CPU with AVX, F16C, BMI1, LZCNT, POPCNT and MOVBE (Intel Haswell / AMD Ryzen or newer)
• 16 GB memory recommended
• GPU with a current Vulkan 1.3 driver (NVIDIA tested; AMD and Intel untested)

Known issues

• Occasional crashes (twice in a full play-through on the development PC; saves are kept)
• Characters occasionally deform for a frame or two
• Black mouths in some close-ups, a red flash in the Episodes menu, smeared end-credits text
• Frame-rate drops: some sections run well below 30 FPS. Performance is not addressed in this test release and will be improved in future releases
• No vibration or light bar on PlayStation controllers yet
• AMD and Intel graphics and AMD CPUs are untested

Full list: Known issues

Help wanted: hardware testing

Only one PC (Intel + NVIDIA) has been tested. If you have an AMD or Intel GPU, or an AMD CPU, please run compat\run_compat.bat and attach the resulting compat_report.zip to a compatibility report — even if everything passes.

Reporting bugs

Open an issue on GitHub Issues with what happened, where in the game, a screenshot for graphical problems, Logs\UntilDawn.log (or UntilDawn.previous.log after a restart) and compat\compat_report.zip. Logs and reports contain folder paths that can include your Windows user name; check them before posting.

---

Unofficial fan project. Not affiliated with or endorsed by Sony Interactive Entertainment or Supermassive Games. Do not ask for, share or upload game files.

SHA-256 of UntilDawn_WIP_0.1.2.zip: 06ceb5e1a1cc25492e9034dc7d9564321a41ebb6bf3a71c6d19a74d1bbfeffe8