v0.2.0 — playable on the Steam Deck

Status: playable on the Steam Deck. You can create a character, explore the village and go on hunts at a steady 30 fps and at PSP speed on a Steam Deck in Game Mode, with the built-in controls, and on macOS.

This release does not include any part of the game. It is source code only. You need your own copy of Monster Hunter Portable 3rd HD Ver. (NPJB-40001), and the build recompiles the game from it on your machine. See the README.

Verified

This commit was built on a Steam Deck (SteamOS 3.8.16, gcc 14.2 in a Debian 13 container). The binary runs directly on SteamOS. It was then played in Game Mode, launched from Steam as a non-Steam game:

• the village and a hunt;
• about eight minutes at 1440×816, averaging 29.96 fps at 100% speed, and under 28 fps only during loads.

It also builds on macOS (Apple Silicon).

New since v0.1.0

• Steam Deck and Linux support. Native Vulkan on RADV, the built-in controls, and audio.
• The game runs at PSP speed. The emulated clock is now held to real time. Before, the game ran as fast as frames could be presented: 2× on a 60 Hz display, 3× on the Deck.
• The village runs at full speed (#7). Guest memory reads, vertex decoding and texture hashing in the renderer were the bottleneck, not the game code. Render time in the village went from about 29 ms to 10–18 ms per frame.
• Correct colours in Steam Deck Game Mode. Under gamescope the picture was washed out.
• A performance overlay and log, turned on with MHP3RD_PERF=1 or F3:
  • fps and the game's own frame rate;
  • emulation speed;
  • where each frame's time goes;
  • a frame-time graph.
• First-run setup from a disc image. On first start the game asks for your NPJB-40001 image. It copies the image by default and prepares the executable from it. Building with an externally prepared EBOOT.ELF still works as before.
• Esc no longer quits the game. On a Steam Deck in Desktop Mode, Steam's layout sends Esc from the B button. Quit by closing the window.
• Safer, faster builds:
  • ccache;
  • one build per directory at a time;
  • bounded parallelism;
  • overlays built in one Ninja run;
  • unchanged generated code kept on regeneration.

Known issues

• No lighting or fog yet (#3).
• Streamed music is silent (#5).
• Cutscene movies are skipped (#6).
• The game cannot save or load (#1).
• No multiplayer (#2).
• Sound effects ran ahead of the picture (#4). This may be fixed now that the game runs at PSP speed, but it has not been re-checked.
• The first-run setup's dialogs have not been clicked through on any platform, and it has not been tried on Linux or the Steam Deck.
• In Steam Deck Desktop Mode, Steam's desktop layout maps the sticks to the mouse. Play in Game Mode.

Platforms

• Steam Deck: tested.
• macOS (Apple Silicon): builds; the new village and speed fixes have not been re-played there yet.
• Windows (#13) and other Linux distributions (#14) are not tested.

See the compatibility table.