God of War: Sons of Sparta (PPSA28997) on Windows

[nahshongraham97]

God of War: Sons of Sparta (PPSA28997) on Windows

Bring-up notes and compatibility report for God of War: Sons of Sparta (UP9000-PPSA28997_00-SONSOFSPARTAPS50) on Windows 11.

Tested and verified on Windows 11 x64, AMD Ryzen CPU, AMD Radeon RX 6800 XT (24.x Adrenalin drivers), MinGW WinLibs toolchain (GCC 14 / Clang), Vulkan 1.3.

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Status (October 2026)

• ✅ Fully Playable: Boots from cold start, plays all intro logo movies (Sony Interactive Entertainment, Mega Cat Studios, PlayStation Studios), passes the Title / Start Screen ("PRESS ANY BUTTON TO START"), watches cutscenes, and enters full gameplay.
• ✅ Boss & Combat Verified: Successfully fought through the intro stages, defeated the first Cyclops boss encounter, advanced through the River area (Scenes/River.bank), and reached the first in-game save altar/checkpoint.
• ✅ Graphics & Shaders Clean: The severe bloom / LCD-bleed "render vomit" that previously saturated the screen with blinding white/yellow light blobs has been completely eliminated through rasterized stencil replace and MRT color retention (PR fix(agc): preserve ClearMRT color writes and validate stencil clears #1534 / fix(agc): draw with DB_RENDER_CONTROL STENCIL_CLEAR_ENABLE #1479).
• ✅ Persistent Save Data: Full save-data lifecycle verified across GOWSOSSAVE999 (global settings) and GOWSOSSAVE0 (player save slot), with correct directory validation and multi-threaded stream decompression.
• ✅ Audio: 100% functional audio through FMOD Studio, FMOD Core, and Resonance Audio with real Master and level banks.
• ✅ True Fullscreen & AFMF: Launches in true hardware exclusive fullscreen, enabling AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF / AFMF 2) for smooth high-framerate frame generation.

Screenshots

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Detailed Technical Journey: Getting the Game to Launch & Run

God of War: Sons of Sparta is a modern 2024 PS5 title built on the Unity 2022 LTS engine with IL2CPP, leveraging FMOD Studio for audio, Sony's AGC (Advanced Graphics Core) for graphics, and heavy asynchronous multithreading for AssetBundle streaming.

Getting this title from an early crash at 0 seconds to full in-game gameplay required identifying and resolving blockers across the entire stack:

flowchart TD
    A["ELF/SELF Relinking & CRT Guard"] --> B["Dynamic Guest PRX Discovery"]
    B --> C["scriptingGetMem & Handle 0 Lookup"]
    C --> D["FMOD Master Bank Bootstrap & Bus Mapping"]
    D --> E["SaveData Mount Status & POSIX Stat Mask"]
    E --> F["AGC DB_RENDER_CONTROL Stencil Clear & MRT (PR #1534)"]
    F --> G["Vulkan Triple Buffering & Mailbox Present Mode"]
    G --> H["Multi-threaded Stdio Descriptor Locking"]
    H --> I["Full In-Game Gameplay & Checkpoint Save"]

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1. System Libraries & Functions Resolved

Below is the complete ledger of all resolved PS5 system libraries, specifying whether functions were implemented, adapted, wrapped, or stubbed:

A. libkernel & Guest Runtime Loader

• CRT Initializer Guard (_init):
  • Resolution: Patched in GuestImageReader.cpp. SDK-built modules contain a global state check (48 83 3d ?? ?? ?? ?? 00 74 19 4c 89 f7 48 89 de). On Windows, the reconstructed process does not carry the native PS5 loader's initialization contract. The relinker replaces the conditional JE +0x19 with an unconditional JMP +0x19.
• scriptingGetMem & scriptingFreeMem (NID ayuoL6Vjz2k):
  • Resolution: Fully implemented. Unity/IL2CPP dynamically resolves this from handle 0 or kernel exports. Implemented using Win32 _aligned_malloc and _aligned_free with 16-byte minimum alignment. Both readable name and NID alias are registered in PE export tables.
• Handle 0 (main executable) Symbol Resolution:
  • Resolution: Implemented in DynamicLoader.cpp. Handle 0 searches the main executable image exports first, falling back to compatibility kernel exports.
• Dynamic Guest PRX Discovery:
  • Resolution: Implemented in GuestModuleBuilder.cpp. Unity dynamically loads plugins from Media/Plugins/ and Media/Modules/ (e.g. lib_burst_generated.prx, PSN.prx, libfmodstudio.prx). The builder discovers them recursively without bloating static DT_NEEDED closures. libkernel's sceKernelLoadStartModule handles .guest.prx suffixes and extensionless base names.
• Nested TimedWait on Windows (PR fix(libkernel): give each nested TimedWait its own waiter on Windows #1476):
  • Resolution: Implemented. Unity GC handlers run via sceKernelRaiseException as APCs inside sleeping threads. Nested condition variable waits inside APCs now allocate independent waiter instances rather than corrupting the outer thread-local waiter queue.
• Nested APC Sleep Timers (PR fix(libkernel): give a sleep nested in an APC its own timer on Windows #1520):
  • Resolution: Implemented. Nested sleeps inside APC handlers allocate their own high-resolution waitable timers so outer sleeps are not prematurely interrupted.
• scePthreadMutexDestroy (PR fix(libkernel): return EBUSY when destroying a locked mutex #1483):
  • Resolution: Implemented. Returns SCE_KERNEL_ERROR_EBUSY when destroying a locked mutex according to FreeBSD libthr / PS5 semantics.
• Thread-Safe Multi-threaded Positioned I/O (NativePositioned):
  • Resolution: Implemented in Stdio.cpp. When Unity background worker threads decompress AssetBundles (archives_assets_all.bundle, defaultlocalgroup_assets_.bundle), multiple threads call pread concurrently on synchronous Windows file handles. A 64-way descriptor mutex array (descriptorMutexes[descriptor % 64]) serializes SetFilePointerEx and ReadFile per handle, preventing file pointer corruption.

B. libSceSaveData.native & libSceSaveDataDialog.native

• sceSaveDataMount3 Mount Status:
  • Resolution: Fixed in Export.cpp. When SCE_SAVE_DATA_MOUNT_MODE_CREATE2 (0x20) was requested for an existing directory, the driver previously returned mount_status = 1 (SCE_SAVE_DATA_MOUNT_STATUS_CREATED). This caused Unity's C# SaveSystem to assume a brand-new directory and throw System.IO.DirectoryNotFoundException. Fixed to return 0 for existing directories and 1 only when freshly created.
• POSIX Permission Bits in Win32 stat (NativeStat.cpp):
  • Resolution: Implemented. Under Windows, GetFileAttributesW was mapped into FileStat.st_mode without setting standard POSIX permission bits (0755 for directories, 0644 for files). Mono/IL2CPP verifies mode masks when probing directories; compliant POSIX mode bits resolved Directory.Exists returning false on Windows host paths.
• Save Directory Verification:
  • Resolution: Validated across _sd/GOWSOSSAVE999/GoW_SoS999.dat (global settings) and _sd/GOWSOSSAVE0/GoW_SoS0.dat (slot 0 save file).

C. libSceAgcDriver & libSceAgc (Vulkan Graphics)

• DB_RENDER_CONTROL Stencil Clear & MRT Retention (PR fix(agc): preserve ClearMRT color writes and validate stencil clears #1534 by hamb3r & PR fix(agc): draw with DB_RENDER_CONTROL STENCIL_CLEAR_ENABLE #1479):
  • Resolution: Fully implemented. Sons of Sparta clears its 3840×2160 B10G11R11 scene target using DB_RENDER_CONTROL STENCIL_CLEAR_ENABLE. PR fix(agc): preserve ClearMRT color writes and validate stencil clears #1534 decodes DB_STENCIL_CLEAR as a rasterized stencil replace (VK_STENCIL_OP_REPLACE) while preserving all MRT color attachments and scissor coverage. This completely eliminates the blinding bloom highlights and LCD-bleed artifacts obscuring menus and gameplay.
• Vulkan Swapchain Triple Buffering & Mailbox Present Mode:
  • Resolution: Implemented. Upgraded minImageCount from double buffering (surface.minImageCount = 2) to triple buffering (surface.minImageCount + 1). Enabled VK_PRESENT_MODE_MAILBOX_KHR (falling back to FIFO, overridable via APS5_PRESENT_MODE=fifo). Sized state->presentSlots to match swapchain capacity. This eliminates the severe 12.5 FPS / 7.5 FPS / 20 FPS VSync quantization beats caused by double-buffered FIFO stalls on 100 Hz / 120 Hz displays.
• Reversion of PR fix(agc): poll for completions with a high-resolution timer on Windows #1474:
  • Resolution: Reverted. High-resolution timer polling (PollSleep) in QueueWorker.cpp caused severe lock contention on GuestMemory::GpuMutex(), starving CPU submission threads. Retaining condition variable signaling restored smooth execution.
• Wave32 NaN Comparisons (PR fix(shader): emit ordered not-equal through an integer NaN check #1473):
  • Resolution: Implemented. Emits FPOrdNotEqual32 through bitwise integer NaN checks ((bits(a) & 0x7fffffff) <= 0x7f800000), avoiding AMD Windows driver wave32 ballot bugs.
• Transient Surface Aliasing & Depth Memory Reuse (PR fix(agc): prefer the pending image of exactly a sampled surface over an aliasing mip chain #1494 & fix(agc): treat other-shaped views of a depth surface's memory as reused memory #1495):
  • Resolution: Implemented. Handles depth-surface memory reuse without throwing depth-plane format mismatch errors.

D. Audio (FMOD Studio, FMOD Core, Resonance Audio)

• FMOD_Studio_System_GetBus Bootstrap Wrapper:
  • Resolution: Implemented in DynamicLoader.cpp. The title's FMODUnity.RuntimeManager.GetBus looks up bus:/Master Bus/Dialogue before the title has called LoadBankFile. The compatibility wrapper intercepts the initial failing lookup, validates that /app0/Media/StreamingAssets/Master.bank and Master.strings.bank exist, loads them into the FMOD Studio system, flushes commands, and retries.
• Constrained Legacy Bus Name Mapping:
  • Resolution: Implemented. Real bank inspection revealed the bus is named bus:/Dialogue. The wrapper safely maps bus:/Master Bus/Dialogue to bus:/Dialogue and returns FMOD's real bus handle without fabricating dummy objects or swallowing exceptions.

E. libSceVideoOut

• True Fullscreen Launch Support:
  • Resolution: Implemented in DisplayWindow.cpp. Added support for command-line arguments (--fullscreen / -fullscreen) and environment variable APS5_FULLSCREEN=1 to launch directly into hardware exclusive fullscreen (SDL_WINDOW_FULLSCREEN), allowing AMD Fluid Motion Frames (AFMF) to hook into the Vulkan swapchain. Pressing F11 toggles fullscreen at runtime.

F. Network & Commerce Stubs

• libSceSysmodule:
  • Resolution: Added mapping for module ID 0x110 (libSceNpCommerce).
• libSceNpManager:
  • Resolution: Added reachability-state callback unregister entry point (sceNpManagerRegisterReachabilityStateCallback / sceNpManagerUnregisterReachabilityStateCallback, stubbed returning success).
• libSceNpEntitlementAccess:
  • Resolution: Added sceNpEntitlementAccessGetEntitlementKey and individual add-on lookups, returning signed-out/not-found status for consumable network checks without fabricating online licenses.

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2. Fork-Specific Implementations & Revisions

All changes and tests have been pushed to nahshongraham97/AnyPS5@main:

Component	Fork Commit / PR	Description
AGC Presentation	b2a26e9d	Upgrades swapchain to triple buffering and dynamic VK_PRESENT_MODE_MAILBOX_KHR, sizing presentation slots to eliminate VSync frame quantization.
libkernel I/O	b2a26e9d	Thread-safe 64-way descriptor mutex array guarding NativePositioned on Windows during multi-threaded bundle decompression.
VideoOut	21c20f8f	Adds CLI --fullscreen and APS5_FULLSCREEN environment variable support for true hardware exclusive fullscreen (AFMF support).
AGC Rendering	PR #1534 (233e9cf6 by hamb3r)	Validates stencil clear before decoding stencil operations, decodes DB_STENCIL_CLEAR as rasterized stencil replace, and preserves MRT color outputs (eliminates bloom/render vomit).
Kernel Synchronization	PR #1476 (fc659038) & PR #1520 (76de2457)	Gives nested TimedWait and nested APC sleeps their own waiters and timer handles on Windows.
SaveData	Commit 969a4c8e	Corrects sceSaveDataMount3 mount_status reporting and provides compliant POSIX directory mode bits under Windows.
Audio Loader	Commit 969a4c8e	Real FMOD Studio Master bank bootstrap and legacy bus path normalization (bus:/Master Bus/ -> bus:/).

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3. Boot Flow: Clean Boot vs. Resuming Saves

During testing, an interesting engine behavior was observed regarding save data state:

• Clean Boot / First Boot (No Save Present in _sd/GOWSOSSAVE0):
  • Unity detects no existing save. It opens sharedassets1.resource (13.6 MB), decodes and plays the 665-frame intro movie, opens the Main Menu ("PRESS ANY BUTTON TO START"), and smoothly launches intro cutscenes and Cyclops combat.
• Resume Boot (Save Present in _sd/GOWSOSSAVE0):
  • Unity detects an existing save and intentionally bypasses the intro movie and main menu, transitioning directly into background streaming of over 180 MB of AssetBundles (archives_assets_all.bundle, defaultlocalgroup_assets_.bundle, DialogueLOC_en-US.assets.bank) while holding the Sony splash screen.
  • With triple buffering and descriptor mutex locks in place, background decompression completes cleanly and resumes the active level.

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4. How to Run on Windows

1. Extract the dumped game content (eboot.bin, Media/, sce_module/).
2. Build the latest AnyPS5 runtime and relinker:

   cmake -S . -B build -G Ninja -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
   cmake --build build --target relinker libs --parallel

3. Relink the executable:

   build/core/relinker/relinker --module-dir Media/Plugins Media/Modules path/to/eboot.bin build/exact-eboot-run/eboot-current.exe

4. Copy host PRXs to build/exact-eboot-run/libs/.
5. Launch the game in true fullscreen for AFMF compatibility:

   set APS5_FULLSCREEN=1
   .\eboot-current.exe --fullscreen