Soulcalibur II HD Online — native build by static recompilation

This project runs the PlayStation 3 game Soulcalibur II HD Online natively on a Mac/PC. It is not an emulator: the game's PowerPC (PPU) and Cell SPU code is translated ahead of time into C/C++ and compiled for your machine, on top of the ps3recomp runtime. Graphics go through Metal on macOS and Vulkan on Linux and Windows, sound through SDL (WASAPI on Windows).

You bring the game. Nothing from the game, from Sony's firmware or from anyone's PS3 is in this repository or in the release zip. On first start the launcher installs your copy of the game, translates it and compiles the result on your computer. The translated code never leaves it.

Status: works on Apple Silicon Macs (Metal), and on Windows (Vulkan; tested on an Intel Core Ultra 7 258V / Arc 140V laptop, see Known issues). The host and the game module also build and run on Linux (a Vulkan window, tried only on a software rasteriser, including under WSL2).

The files look like …SC2HDONLINEGAME1.rap (license), a long-named ….pkg (the game, about 700 MB, often inside a .zip) and UP0700-NPUB31366_00-SC2HDONLINEGAME1-A0101-V0100-PE.pkg (the update). Versions 01.00 (the game alone) and 01.01 (with the update) are supported; the update is optional.

The translated game is compiled with the Xcode command line tools' clang if you have them (on Windows and Linux: a clang on PATH, such as a MinGW clang), otherwise the launcher downloads zig 0.17.0 (about 55 MB, MIT, checked against a pinned SHA-256) into the data directory and uses its zig cc. It asks before downloading (--yes answers for you). Either way the game is compiled for your own processor (-march=native): built for the generic x86-64 baseline it is too slow in a fight on Windows, and most of the sound drops out.

unzip sc2hd-0.1.0-macos-arm64.zip
cd sc2hd
xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine .      # only if macOS refuses to open the downloaded program

# first run: give it the game (the zip is fine as it is) and, optionally, its update; the .rap is found inside the zip
./sc2hd.py --pkg "Soulcalibur II HD Online (USA).zip" --pkg UP0700-NPUB31366_00-SC2HDONLINEGAME1-A0101-V0100-PE.pkg

# every later run
./sc2hd.py

./sc2hd.py is a Python 3.10+ script: on Windows (or if the execute bit is lost) start it as py sc2hd.py or python3 sc2hd.py.

If the license is not in the zip, add --rap <file>.rap. Give the game first and its update (if you want it) second. To add the update later, run again with both packages: the game is reinstalled and translated again (your saves are kept).

The first run takes a few minutes (about two on a fast machine):

1. install (seconds): unpacks the packages and decrypts them with your license;
2. lift (about 10 s): translates the game's PPU code and its five SPU programs to C/C++;
3. compile (about 30 s on eight cores): builds that into one library, game.dylib;
4. run.

Later runs go straight to step 4. Nothing is redone unless the inputs change.

./sc2hd.py [--fxaa | --no-fxaa] [--af N] [--window WxH] [--fullscreen] [--unlock | --unlock-save]

./sc2hd.py --help lists the rest.

The keyboard is mapped like a pad: arrows = D-pad, Z = ✕, X = ○, A = □, S = △, Q/W = L1/R1, 1/2 = L2/R2, Return or Esc = Start (pauses a fight), Tab = Select. Closing the window (Alt+F4, macOS: Cmd+Q) quits. Game controllers go through SDL; the keyboard and controllers are not yet tested thoroughly.

Everything derived from the game is in the data directory (./data unless you moved it):

Delete the data directory to start over (keep hdd0/home if you want your saves). Do not share the data directory or the files in it: they are derived from the game.

• A frame from the end of the previous fight can flash for a moment between the fighter intro and the arena. The game's own screen-copy command is sometimes missing from the stream the recompiled code produces; the cause is not found yet.
• The intro and ending movies are decoded by a built-in H.264/AAC decoder (only what those movies use). The pictures follow the sound as the game takes it, with a fixed 100 ms allowance for the game's own buffering (SC2HD_AV_OFFSET_MS changes it); the game's timing feedback is not used, so the sync can be a little off.
• Online Mode is not available: the game shows its own "sign in to PlayStation Network" message and the menu stays usable.
• FXAA softens the HUD slightly. The game renders at 1280x720; there is no internal resolution scaling.
• MP3 music is decoded on the host; about 9 % of the frames differ slightly from the console's decoder at loud transients.
• Rare dropped frames from display-list decoding failures, mostly while a battle loads.
• Linux: the picture is shown in an SDL2 window through the toolkit's Vulkan backend (X11 or Wayland, closing the window quits). It has only run on Mesa's software rasteriser (llvmpipe), under Xvfb and in WSL2's WSLg, never on a real GPU: the picture is right, but a fight runs at about 10 frames a second there (in WSL2, Ubuntu's Mesa has no Vulkan driver for the GPU, so llvmpipe is what runs). There is no FXAA, no anisotropic filtering and the window is a fixed 1280x720. With no DISPLAY or WAYLAND_DISPLAY (or with SC2HD_HEADLESS=1), and when there is no Vulkan device, the host runs on the toolkit's null backend instead, with no window.
• Windows: the game is drawn through the Vulkan backend in an SDL window (D3D12 is only the fallback for a machine with no Vulkan driver, SC2HD_D3D12=1; it draws nothing after the intro). Menus and movies run at 60 frames a second, and so does a fight on an integrated GPU (Intel Arc 140V) once its stage has loaded (the first seconds, while its shaders are built, are slower); SC2HD_FPS=1 prints the rate. The intro movie now plays in full (about two and a half minutes); Start skips it.

• docs/architecture.md: the pieces (host, game library, launcher), how the game is installed, lifted and built, the ABI check.
• docs/porting-notes.md: what had to be done to the toolkit and to the game's own quirks to make it run.
• docs/licensing.md: the licenses of everything involved.

To build the release yourself you need git, cmake, ninja, Python 3.10+ and a C/C++ compiler (on Linux also the Vulkan and X11 headers, and the PulseAudio or ALSA headers for sound: apt install libvulkan-dev libx11-dev libxext-dev libpulse-dev libasound2-dev, and at run time a Vulkan driver such as mesa-vulkan-drivers):

scripts/build_host.sh     # clones the pinned toolkit, applies patches/, builds the static dependencies and the host
SC2HD_TARGET=windows scripts/build_host.sh   # cross-compile for Windows with MinGW-w64 (clang preferred) into dist/host-windows
                          # (in Git Bash on Windows, plain scripts/build_host.sh builds the same natively)
scripts/package.sh        # a dist/sc2hd-<version>-<os>-<arch>.zip for every host that is built (macOS/Linux, Windows)
./sc2hd.py --pkg …       # in a checkout the launcher builds and runs the host from dist/ itself

In a source checkout ./sc2hd.py needs no --host-dir: it uses dist/host (dist/host-windows on Windows) and runs scripts/build_host.sh first if the host is missing or older than src/, patches/ or the build scripts (on Windows it needs Git for Windows' bash). --no-host-build skips that and uses dist/ as it is.

The code in this repository is free software under the GNU GPL, version 2 or (at your option) any later version (LICENSE-GPL-2.0.txt). The prebuilt program also contains Apache-2.0 licensed parts, so as a whole it is distributed under GPL version 3 or later (LICENSE).

This repository contains no game data: no game code, executables, assets, textures, models, audio or other material from Soulcalibur II HD Online, and nothing from Sony's firmware. Only the recompilation tooling, the host runtime and the patches are here. You need your own legally obtained copy of the game, and everything translated from it stays on your computer.

Soulcalibur II HD Online, its characters, artwork, music and all related intellectual property belong to Namco (Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.), and all rights to the game remain with them. Soulcalibur and Namco are trademarks of their respective owners. This project is an independent, non-commercial effort and is not affiliated with, authorized by or endorsed by Namco, Bandai Namco Entertainment or Sony Interactive Entertainment. The GPL license above covers only the code in this repository, not the game.

ps3recomp (the recompilation toolkit and runtime), RPCS3 (the package and license formats, whose algorithms the installer follows), SDL, glslang, SPIRV-Tools and SPIRV-Cross, minimp3/dr_mp3, and zig.