Call of Duty: Black Ops (PPSA34501)

[alexpournaras]

Tested

• Title: Call of Duty®: Black Ops, PPSA34501, v01.008.000. Relinked with its own sce_module.
• Host: Windows 11 Pro, AMD Ryzen 9 9900X, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 (v617.42), 32 GB DDR5-6000, GCC 15.2.0
• Last update: 2026-10-13

Status

On the games/blackops branch (based on main from before #4672): in game on Windows. Campaign starts at Cuba, which is playable with rendering, reflections, music, speech, sound effects and the HUD working. Zombies is also playable in Solo mode.

On current main (c422b57, 2026-10-13): stops at start-up.
Also not working: Multiplayer, Zombies Online, Zombies Split-Screen (No second controller input).

FPS	Main Menu	Cutscenes	Indoors	Outdoors
Performance*	30	60	15-25	5-15
games/blackops	15-20	55-60	5-15	3-10

How to run it

The games/blackops branch is a fork from main c422b57 plus the changes I did to make the game boot and play campaign and zombies solo mode, without multiplayer and zombies online crashing it.

• relink with relinker --windows source/eboot.bin app.exe. Copy build/core/libs/libs/*.prx into libs/. Also copy libSceCesCs.prx as libSceCesCs-module.prx: the title imports Ces under that module name and the build does not make that file. The app0/ data directories are junctions into the extracted data.

Environment variables:

• APS5_TIME_SCALE=4: needed. Guest clocks run 4 times faster, so the game keeps its normal speed at the low frame rates in the table above. Without it the game runs in slow motion. The window title FPS counts host time, so it stays correct with this set
• Optional: APS5_DRAW_CACHE_ENTRIES=131072; APS5_BATCH_CAP=1024; APS5_THREAD_PRIORITY=high

Performance

Performance is currently the main bottleneck, especially in areas with high draw counts.

A 30-second campaign capture replay (9,312 draws/frame, 7,460 shaders) averages 9.52 FPS (~88,690 draws/s). Profiling points to CPU-side draw preparation, shader processing, and resource handling as the main bottlenecks. I'm experimenting with reusable draw templates, multithreaded preparation, and GPU-driven batching to reduce per-draw CPU overhead.

The long-term target is 10,000 draws/frame at 30 FPS.

Pull Requests

• Fixes crash on startup unresolved ELF import ZiDCxUUGbec: feat(ces): implement sceCesUcsProfileInitSJis1997Cp932 #5153
• Fixes crash on startup unresolved ELF import qYu6y1E0Qbg: feat(libSceCesCs): declare sceCesRefersUcsProfileCp1250 #5546
• Fixes crash on startup intro sceVoiceGetPortAttr: attribute 1001 not implemented: feat(libSceVoice): implement sceVoiceGetPortAttr #5956
• Fixes crash when pressing Zombies -> Online: feat(libSceNpCommerce): implement sceNpCommerceDialogOpen2 #3607
• Manual copy of libSceCesCs-module.prx not needed: feat(libSceCesCs): build libSceCesCs-module from the libSceCesCs source #5425