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Ascension-R v0.1.0-alpha.7
Ascension-R 0.1.0-alpha.7: the Delphi temple's broken textures kept from spreading, Kratos no longer speckled, and the vertex shaders built before the first start. A native Windows port of God of War: Ascension (PS3) made by static recompilation: the game's PPU and SPU code runs as x86-64 code and the RSX is drawn with Direct3D 12, with no emulator running while you play.
This download holds no code or assets of the game. You need your own copy (the digital US release NPUA80918 at version 1.12, with every update from 1.04 installed) and its license. The launcher builds the game's code on your PC from that copy, once for each version.
This is still an alpha. It boots, plays the cinematics and goes through the menus into the levels, but it has not been played from start to finish, and it has been tried on few PCs so far.
Fixed
- Broken textures and a freeze at the Delphi temple (#9). On one PC, in every session there, a block of the game's own video memory manager got a negative size. Its allocator then handed out space that overlapped other textures or lay past the end of video memory, and its defragmenter moved the block 16 MB at a time: over the textures after it and, since the port let those copies run past video memory into main memory, over the game's own code pointers. On a PS3 the game's own check would have stopped there. Such an allocation or move is now refused and a copy past video memory is left out, so the damage cannot spread, and the log gets a
[vram]line saying which texture it was and what it held. What gives the block that size is not known yet: with the reporter's saves, settings and input the temple plays clean here, on this build and on 0.1.0-alpha.6. - Kratos speckled. When the GPU-resident vertex memory was full, a skinned mesh could have its depth pass from the GPU's vertex pass and its lit pass from a fill on the CPU, or the other way round. The fill rounded the PC's way, so the positions differed in the last bit, and the lit pass, which draws only where the depth is the same, left holes all over the mesh. The fill rounds the SPU's way now.
Changed
- The vertex shaders are built before the first start of each version. A draw whose shader is still being built is left out for that frame, which showed as things missing for a moment in a new place (#8). The first start of each version now builds every vertex shader first, behind a screen of its own drawn in code: about two minutes on a laptop with a Ryzen 5 4600H and a GTX 1650 Ti, and later starts of the same version go straight to the game. Closing that screen quits; Clear shaders in the launcher makes the next start build them again. Fragment shaders are still built when the game first reaches them.
Speed
Unchanged since 0.1.0-alpha.6.
EDGE on the GPU
Unchanged since 0.1.0-alpha.5, whose notes have all seven steps, but for the skinned fill's rounding above.
Install
- Download
Ascension-R-0.1.0-alpha.7-kit-win64.zipbelow and unpack all of it into a folder of its own. Keep thekitfolder next toAscension-R.exe. - Start
Ascension-R.exe. The exe is not signed, so Windows SmartScreen may stop it the first time: More info, then Run anyway. - The launcher looks for the game on every disk. If it does not find it, open the System tab and pick the game's folder with Browse.
- If your copy still has to be decrypted, the same row says what is missing: pick your
rpcs3.exeor press Download RPCS3, and pick the.rapfile if it asks for one. Your game's folder and your RPCS3 are only read. - On the Play tab, press Build: ten minutes or more, at a low priority, with the time left on screen. It needs about 1.5 GB free while it works.
- Pick a preset and press Play. The first start of this version builds the vertex shaders first, with its progress on screen.
Updating from 0.1.0-alpha.6 or earlier: unpack this version over the old folder, or into a new one. Your settings and saves stay where they are, and the launcher builds the game's code again for this version.
Settings, saves, shaders, logs and the game's code you built are in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Ascension-R. To keep them in the program's folder instead, put an empty file named portable.txt next to Ascension-R.exe.
Status
| What | Status |
|---|---|
| Boot, cinematics, menus | ✅ Works |
| The opening: the prison, the first fight, the gate | ✅ Plays: about 30 FPS in the first fight with FSR 3.1 on that laptop |
| Further in: the Hecatonchires and on | |
| The Grotto | |
| The Delphi temple | |
| Saves | ✅ Works, with a backup before each overwrite |
| Keyboard | ✅ Works |
| Controllers | |
| Sound, stereo | ✅ Works |
| Sound, 5.1 and 7.1 | |
| FSR 3.1 frame generation | |
| Ultrawide | |
| Other releases of the game (European, disc) | ❌ Only the US digital release NPUA80918 at 1.12 (#4) |
| Online | ❌ Not supported: single player |
Known issues
- At the Delphi temple, on the PC of #9, a texture may still come out missing or wrong: the guards keep the damage from spreading, not its cause. If your log has a
[vram]line, a report on #9 helps most. - One player saw a crash after playing a while. Its cause is not known yet: if you see one, Report a problem in the launcher's sidebar makes the zip to attach to an issue.
- Fragment shaders are compiled the first time the game reaches them, so a new place can stutter once.
- Decrypting and then building in one go has not been run on a PC whose copy was not decrypted yet.
- The first ultrawide session compiles part of the shaders again.
For testers
What helps most is a report from a PC unlike that laptop: another CPU, an AMD or Intel GPU, a desktop, a real 5.1 or 7.1 system. Report a problem in the launcher makes the zip to attach, and with Include my saves ticked we can load the game where it happened.
The game's code comes out the same on every PC. To check yours, in PowerShell:
Get-FileHash "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Ascension-R\game-code\ascension_game.dll"It should be D686E28434F0D4B13B9ABD8528B8F7E846AC599A423FEDF002194E316A58F309 (with portable.txt, the DLL is in the program's own game-code folder). If yours is not, say so in an issue, with the report.
Files
Ascension-R-0.1.0-alpha.7-kit-win64.zip: the download, 144.7 MB. SHA-256fc5e4923d2e501b27d67e17f51031e59abc07a713903493e8748d4e8f9e56aa7.audit.txt: what the package was checked for before it was zipped, and what was found: no file of the game or made from it, no PS3 keys in the port's files, nothing of the PC it was made on.ffmpeg-8.1.3.tar.xz: FFmpeg's source, as its license asks. You do not need it to play.
Credits
Built on ps3recomp by sp00nznet. RPCS3 decrypts your copy, and its patch list was the map for the game patches. The program carries AMD FSR, SMAA, SDL, FFmpeg, zlib and Zstandard, and the Kit carries Python and LLVM's clang and lld; their licenses are in the zip's licenses folder, THIRD-PARTY.txt first.
The port's own code is under the MIT License. God of War is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment; this project is not affiliated with or endorsed by it.
Ascension-R v0.1.0-alpha.6
Ascension-R 0.1.0-alpha.6: the cause of the Grotto freeze found and fixed, Disable Mesh Trimming in the Grotto, and a problem report's saves load again. A native Windows port of God of War: Ascension (PS3) made by static recompilation: the game's PPU and SPU code runs as x86-64 code and the RSX is drawn with Direct3D 12, with no emulator running while you play.
This download holds no code or assets of the game. You need your own copy (the digital US release NPUA80918 at version 1.12, with every update from 1.04 installed) and its license. The launcher builds the game's code on your PC from that copy, once for each version.
This is still an alpha. It boots, plays the cinematics and goes through the menus into the levels, but it has not been played from start to finish, and it has been tried on few PCs so far.
Fixed
- The freeze in the Grotto (#7). The Grotto runs a second build of EDGE's geometry job, which the earlier levels do not. Ascension-R's native EDGE code keeps some state per thread while a geometry job runs, and only the first build's jobs cleared it when they started. A job of the second build could start with what a job of the first build had left on the same thread, run that job's leftover work on its own memory and return to the wrong place; the game then waited for it for good. Every job starts with none now. With the reporter's save and session played again, the cause shows no more: 12,652 times in one run before, none after. It froze on their PC every time and seldom here, so their PC has the last word.
- Disable Mesh Trimming in the Grotto. The patch edits one instruction in each build of EDGE's geometry job, and only compiled code takes the edit. Most of the second build had never been compiled, since only pointers reach it, so in the Grotto the patch did nothing. That code is compiled now, with the function or two that eight other job modules ran in the interpreter the same way. In the Grotto the interpreter now runs about 2,000 times fewer instructions.
- A problem report's saves load again. "Include my saves" left out the save's icon and the files' times, and the game refused the saves as damaged. Both go into the report now, so a save from a report can be loaded where the problem happened.
Speed
On a laptop with a Ryzen 5 4600H, a GTX 1650 Ti and 16 GB, at 1920x1080 without FSR, the reporter's save played again: the frame rate the overlay showed at the same spot of the Grotto went from 35 and 38 to 44 FPS. That is one moment of each of two runs, not a benchmark. The first fight, Megaera, is the same within its run-to-run spread.
EDGE on the GPU
Unchanged since 0.1.0-alpha.5, whose notes have all seven steps.
Install
- Download
Ascension-R-0.1.0-alpha.6-kit-win64.zipbelow and unpack all of it into a folder of its own. Keep thekitfolder next toAscension-R.exe. - Start
Ascension-R.exe. The exe is not signed, so Windows SmartScreen may stop it the first time: More info, then Run anyway. - The launcher looks for the game on every disk. If it does not find it, open the System tab and pick the game's folder with Browse.
- If your copy still has to be decrypted, the same row says what is missing: pick your
rpcs3.exeor press Download RPCS3, and pick the.rapfile if it asks for one. Your game's folder and your RPCS3 are only read. - On the Play tab, press Build: ten minutes or more, at a low priority, with the time left on screen. It needs about 1.5 GB free while it works.
- Pick a preset and press Play.
Updating from 0.1.0-alpha.5 or earlier: unpack this version over the old folder, or into a new one. Your settings and saves stay where they are, and the launcher builds the game's code again for this version.
Settings, saves, shaders, logs and the game's code you built are in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Ascension-R. To keep them in the program's folder instead, put an empty file named portable.txt next to Ascension-R.exe.
Status
| What | Status |
|---|---|
| Boot, cinematics, menus | ✅ Works |
| The opening: the prison, the first fight, the gate | ✅ Plays: about 30 FPS in the first fight with FSR 3.1 on the laptop above |
| Further in: the Hecatonchires and on | |
| The Grotto | |
| Saves | ✅ Works, with a backup before each overwrite |
| Keyboard | ✅ Works |
| Controllers | |
| Sound, stereo | ✅ Works |
| Sound, 5.1 and 7.1 | |
| FSR 3.1 frame generation | |
| Ultrawide | |
| Other releases of the game (European, disc) | ❌ Only the US digital release NPUA80918 at 1.12 (#4) |
| Online | ❌ Not supported: single player |
Known issues
- One player saw a crash after playing a while. Its cause is not known yet: if you see one, Report a problem in the launcher's sidebar makes the zip to attach to an issue.
- Fragment shaders are compiled the first time the game reaches them, so a new place can stutter once.
- Decrypting and then building in one go has not been run on a PC whose copy was not decrypted yet.
- The first ultrawide session compiles part of the shaders again.
For testers
What helps most is a report from a PC unlike the one above: another CPU, an AMD or Intel GPU, a desktop, a real 5.1 or 7.1 system. Report a problem in the launcher makes the zip to attach, and with Include my saves ticked we can load the game where it happened.
The game's code comes out the same on every PC. To check yours, in PowerShell:
Get-FileHash "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Ascension-R\game-code\ascension_game.dll"It should be 4C9166C75B2340FF18F98E2859784638366B7766B2FE4AD829AF04CC8F4C4A2D (with portable.txt, the DLL is in the program's own game-code folder). If yours is not, say so in an issue, with the report.
Files
Ascension-R-0.1.0-alpha.6-kit-win64.zip: the download, 144.6 MB. SHA-25682b7c382b5b9d46ac93464305f3ad94bec43e23626b954d7c53e62708312d326.audit.txt: what the package was checked for before it was zipped, and what was found: no file of the game or made from it, no PS3 keys in the port's files, nothing of the PC it was made on.ffmpeg-8.1.3.tar.xz: FFmpeg's source, as its license asks. You do not need it to play.
Credits
Built on ps3recomp by sp00nznet. RPCS3 decrypts your copy, and its patch list was the map for the game patches. The program carries AMD FSR, SMAA, SDL, FFmpeg, zlib and Zstandard, and the Kit carries Python and LLVM's clang and lld; their licenses are in the zip's licenses folder, THIRD-PARTY.txt first.
The port's own code is under the MIT License. God of War is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment; this project is not affiliated with or endorsed by it.
Ascension-R v0.1.0-alpha.5
Ascension-R 0.1.0-alpha.5: the Kit builds on any drive, frame generation no longer stops the game at its start, EDGE takes two more steps to the GPU, and the sound goes 5.1 and 7.1. A native Windows port of God of War: Ascension (PS3) made by static recompilation: the game's PPU and SPU code runs as x86-64 code and the RSX is drawn with Direct3D 12, with no emulator running while you play.
This download holds no code or assets of the game. You need your own copy (the digital US release NPUA80918 at version 1.12, with every update from 1.04 installed) and its license. The launcher builds the game's code on your PC from that copy, once for each version.
This is still an alpha. It boots, plays the cinematics and goes through the menus into the levels, but it has not been played from start to finish, and it has been tried on few PCs so far.
Fixed
- The Kit's build on another drive (#1, #6). With the program on D: or E: and its data folder on C:, the build stopped after its first step with
path is on mount 'C:', start on mount 'D:'. It now builds wherever the two are. If you made aportable.txtto get past it, you can keep it or remove it. - An incomplete game, said before anything is built (#2, #3). The launcher checks the game's archives and the lists that name them, by size and content, before it decrypts or builds, and says what is missing or different. A copy with only some of the updates installed stopped on a black loading screen. This game's updates are not cumulative: install the base game, then every update from 1.04 to 1.12, oldest first.
- Frame generation stopping the game at its start. On a laptop whose display runs through its other GPU, a start with frame generation on stopped at the boot logos about every other time. What set it off was how the session before had ended: the game ended its own process. A second copy of the exe now ends it, as if from outside, and in 14 starts since it has not stopped once. Should the GPU still stop behind frame generation, the next start offers to turn it off.
- Controllers in the log. The log now says when an XInput controller connects or drops off, as it did for SDL3, so a pad that falls off its USB port shows in a report.
EDGE on the GPU: two more steps
EDGE, Sony's geometry library, is the heaviest work in an Ascension frame. The PS3 runs it on its SPUs; Ascension-R moves its math to your GPU one step at a time, each step checked against what the SPU code makes. The 0.1.0-alpha.3 notes have the first five. Two more:
- Rigid meshes' transforms in the vertex pass. A mesh that is not skinned no longer depends on its matrix, so in the first fight 92% of these jobs repeat a result kept on the GPU, against 41-43% before. The transforms run in the vertex pass, the CPU's version of them checked bit for bit against the SPU's over 1.34 billion vertexes.
- The velocity jobs kept. With FSR 3.1's moving objects on, the game makes each moving mesh's previous position for its motion vectors. Those jobs were never kept; now 95% of them are, with both of their transforms in the vertex pass (393 million vertexes checked, the positions bit for bit).
Speed
On a laptop with a Ryzen 5 4600H, a GTX 1650 Ti and 16 GB, with FSR 3.1 at 1.5x, its moving objects on, borderless 1920x1080, frame generation and VSync off:
| Step off | Step on | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| The gate after the first fight (rigid meshes) | 40.1 FPS | 44.3 FPS | +10% |
| The first fight, Megaera (the velocity jobs) | 26.7 FPS | 30.5 FPS | about +10% |
Each row is the same build with the step switched off and on. The fight's runs move by up to 10% with the laptop's heat and the boss's moves, and those were not run in alternation, so read its row as a range. One PC.
Sound
- Speakers (System tab): Auto, Stereo, 5.1 or 7.1. The game mixes up to 7.1; Auto sends it as Windows has your output device set up. Pick 7.1 for Windows Sonic or Dolby Atmos for Headphones, which make surround for headphones out of it. The game fills the surround channels only with its own Sound Mode (Options, Audio) on 5.1 or 7.1 Surround.
- Bypass sound effects (System tab, off): the game's sound skips Windows' and the sound card's effects, such as equalizers, loudness and virtual surround, where the driver has a way past them.
- A change of output device (headphones plugged in, a Bluetooth headset, another default device in Windows) moves the sound to the new device within a second. Before, the sound stopped until the next start. So far this has been tried with a simulated change.
- The sound is marked as a game's, which some audio suites use to pick their game profile.
Mods
- A mod folder (
paths.modsinascension-r.ini): a folder laid out like the PS3's paths,dev_hdd0\game\NPUA80918\USRDIR\.... A file there is read in place of the game's, or added where the game has none, and the game's folder is left as it is. - The game's text and subtitles are plain UTF-8 inside its archives, so a translation can go in as a seventh update. The repository's
docs/notes/2026-11-11-game-text.mdhas the formats, andgowa.py textexports the text and builds a translation into a mod folder from a source build.
Install
- Download
Ascension-R-0.1.0-alpha.5-kit-win64.zipbelow and unpack all of it into a folder of its own. Keep thekitfolder next toAscension-R.exe. - Start
Ascension-R.exe. The exe is not signed, so Windows SmartScreen may stop it the first time: More info, then Run anyway. - The launcher looks for the game on every disk. If it does not find it, open the System tab and pick the game's folder with Browse.
- If your copy still has to be decrypted, the same row says what is missing: pick your
rpcs3.exeor press Download RPCS3, and pick the.rapfile if it asks for one. Your game's folder and your RPCS3 are only read. - On the Play tab, press Build: ten minutes or more, at a low priority, with the time left on screen. It needs about 1.5 GB free while it works.
- Pick a preset and press Play.
Updating from 0.1.0-alpha.3: unpack this version over the old folder, or into a new one. Your settings and saves stay where they are, and the launcher builds the game's code again for this version.
Settings, saves, shaders, logs and the game's code you built are in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Ascension-R. To keep them in the program's folder instead, put an empty file named portable.txt next to Ascension-R.exe.
Status
| What | Status |
|---|---|
| Boot, cinematics, menus | ✅ Works |
| The opening: the prison, the first fight, the gate | ✅ Plays: about 30 FPS in the first fight with FSR 3.1 on the laptop above |
| Further in: the Hecatonchires and on | |
| Saves | ✅ Works, with a backup before each overwrite |
| Keyboard | ✅ Works |
| Controllers | |
| Sound, stereo | ✅ Works |
| Sound, 5.1 and 7.1 | |
| FSR 3.1 frame generation | |
| Ultrawide | |
| Other releases of the game (European, disc) | ❌ Only the US digital release NPUA80918 at 1.12 (#4) |
| Online | ❌ Not supported: single player |
Known issues
- A freeze in the Grotto (#7): one of EDGE's jobs takes a path this build has no compiled copy of, and the game waits for it for good. It is being looked into. If you get there, try it with Disable Mesh Trimming (Game patches) off, and say in #7 whether it gets past.
- One player saw a crash after playing a while. Its cause is not known yet: if you see one, Report a problem in the launcher's sidebar makes the zip to attach to an issue.
- Fragment shaders are compiled the first time the game reaches them, so a new place can stutter once.
- Decrypting and then building in one go has not been run on a PC whose copy was not decrypted yet.
- The first ultrawide session compiles part of the shaders again.
For testers
What helps most is a report from a PC unlike the one above: another CPU, an AMD or Intel GPU, a desktop, a real 5.1 or 7.1 system. Report a problem in the launcher makes the zip to attach.
The game's code comes out the same on every PC. To check yours, in PowerShell:
Get-FileHash "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Ascension-R\game-code\ascension_game.dll"It should be 44EE25B2C2F426DFB4844C0C3A1680E34817E2486BA9A7EA894CDD3F30087525 (with portable.txt, the DLL is in the program's own game-code folder). If yours is not, say so in an issue, with the report.
Files
Ascension-R-0.1.0-alpha.5-kit-win64.zip: the download, 144.6 MB. SHA-2568dd27aa98c08ed6dc9218bd21002a6af9d93f5eafbe3b7ea6b6d8470a0b2a77b.audit.txt: what the package was checked for before it was zipped, and what was found: no file of the game or made from it, no PS3 keys in the port's files, nothing of the PC it was made on.ffmpeg-8.1.3.tar.xz: FFmpeg's source, as its license asks. You do not need it to play.
Credits
Built on ps3recomp by sp00nznet. RPCS3 decrypts your copy, and its patch list was the map for the game patches. The program carries AMD FSR, SMAA, SDL, FFmpeg, zlib and Zstandard, and the Kit carries Python and LLVM's clang and lld; their licenses are in the zip's licenses folder, THIRD-PARTY.txt first.
The port's own code is under the MIT License. God of War is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment; this project is not affiliated with or endorsed by ...
Ascension-R v0.1.0-alpha.3
The first public build of Ascension-R, a native Windows port of God of War: Ascension (PS3) made by static recompilation. The game's PPU and SPU code runs as x86-64 code and the RSX is drawn with Direct3D 12: no emulator runs while you play.
This download holds no code or assets of the game. You need your own copy (the digital US release NPUA80918, version 1.12) and its license. The launcher builds the game's code on your PC from that copy. You do this once.
This is an alpha. It boots, plays the cinematics and goes through the menus into the levels, but it has not been played from start to finish, and it has been tried on one PC.
Install
What you need
- Windows 10 or 11, 64-bit, a CPU with AVX2 and FMA, and a GPU with Direct3D 12.
- Your copy of the game, updated to 1.12. The folder of an RPCS3 install (
dev_hdd0\game\NPUA80918) works, and so does an unpacked PKG. - The game's license file (
.rap). If the game is installed in RPCS3, the launcher finds it. - RPCS3, once, to decrypt your copy. If you do not have it, the launcher offers to download the official build and removes it afterwards. RPCS3 needs the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (x64).
- About 2 GB of free disk space: 330 MB for the program, and 1.5 GB while the game's code builds, of which 80 MB stays.
On Windows
- Download
Ascension-R-0.1.0-alpha.3-kit-win64.zipbelow and unpack all of it into a folder of its own. Keep thekitfolder next toAscension-R.exe. - Start
Ascension-R.exe. The exe is not signed, so Windows SmartScreen may stop it the first time: More info, then Run anyway. - The launcher looks for the game on every disk by itself. If it does not find it, open the System tab and pick the game's folder with Browse.
- If your copy still has to be decrypted, the same row says what is missing: pick your
rpcs3.exeor press Download RPCS3, and pick the.rapfile if it asks for one. Your game's folder and your RPCS3 are only read. - On the Play tab, press Build. The launcher turns your copy's code into
ascension_game.dll: ten minutes or more (7:40 on a Ryzen 5 4600H), at a low priority, with how far it is and the time left on screen. Stop ends it, and Build goes on where it stopped. - Pick a preset and press Play. Smooth, the default, leaves out the dynamic shadows, motion blur and MLAA; Balanced keeps the shadows; Faithful draws everything as the PS3 does.
The first minutes stutter while the shaders are built. Precompile shaders, in the launcher's sidebar, builds the vertex shaders ahead, in about a minute and a half.
Updating
Unpack the new version over this folder, or into a new one. Your settings and saves stay where they are, and the launcher builds the game's code again for the new version.
Where your files go
Settings, saves, shaders, logs and the game's code you built (game-code\ascension_game.dll) are in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Ascension-R. To keep them in the program's folder instead, put an empty file named portable.txt next to Ascension-R.exe. The DLL is made from your copy of the game: keep it to yourself.
If something goes wrong
| Problem | What to do |
|---|---|
| The launcher does not find the game | System tab, Browse: the game's folder (NPUA80918), your RPCS3 folder or its dev_hdd0. |
| It says the game is not decrypted yet | Pick rpcs3.exe or press Download RPCS3 in the same row, then the .rap file if it asks. |
| The build stops | Log shows why. Try again goes on from where it stopped. |
| A controller does nothing, or counts twice | Controller API in the Controls tab. With DS4Windows or Steam Input running, set it to XInput. A DualShock 3 needs a driver such as DsHidMini. |
| A crash, a freeze or wrong graphics | Report a problem, in the sidebar, makes a zip of the logs with your paths hidden and no game files. Attach it to an issue. |
EDGE on the GPU
The heaviest work in an Ascension frame is EDGE, Sony's geometry library, which the PS3 runs on its SPUs. It unpacks the meshes, skins the characters, lights the vertices and culls the triangles before the RSX draws them, and it was about half of all the SPU work in this port. RPCS3 runs it on your CPU, and so does every other PS3 port we know of. Ascension-R moves its math to your GPU, one step at a time, each step checked against what the SPU code makes and measured on its own (on the laptop under Speed, at the gate after the first fight and in that fight):
- Lighting is a compute pass before the draws: about 330,000 vertices a frame. +6.6% at the gate.
- Culling is left to the GPU's own face culling. A mesh then no longer depends on the camera, and 91 to 96% of a frame's EDGE jobs repeat one done before.
- Kept results: a job done before is not done again. 4.5 million jobs checked, 0 differences.
- Geometry in GPU memory: the kept results stay on the GPU, as a PC game keeps its meshes, instead of being sent every frame. +10% at the gate, +4% in the fight.
- Skinning in the vertex pass, from those kept inputs. The positions come out bit for bit the same as the SPU's. +3.9% at the gate, +4.7% in the fight.
What still runs on the CPU is native code where it pays. EDGE's decoder and its skinning, normal and lighting loops, and the routines of the game's General6 job, are rewritten as native x86 code. The PPU's AltiVec math, permutes and conversions run as SSE vector code instead of lane by lane.
Speed
The first fight, Megaera, on a laptop with a Ryzen 5 4600H, a GTX 1650 Ti and 16 GB, measured on 2026-11-09:
| FPS | |
|---|---|
| RPCS3 0.0.43 (Vulkan, PPU and SPU on LLVM) with its Disable MLAA patch | 19.6 |
| Ascension-R with Disable MLAA only, the same picture | 25.5, 1.3 times |
| Ascension-R, Smooth preset | 33.7, 1.7 times |
Means of the 10-second windows of two or three runs each, at 720p; the port scaled it to 1080p with FSR 1. The boss and the camera move differently every run, so one run's median can be 20% off another's. One scene, one PC.
Also in this build
- Launcher: a ready check that says what is missing, three presets and every setting. It finds the game, decrypts it and builds its code by itself.
- Picture: internal resolution from 1x to 4x or native, AMD FSR 1 and FSR 3.1 scaling, FSR 3.1 frame generation, SMAA 1x and anisotropic filtering.
- Display: windowed or borderless, ultrawide, VSync, a frame rate cap, and the frame rate and load on screen.
- Shaders: a compressed cache, pipelines built before the title, and vertex shaders compiled before you play.
- Game patches: switch off MLAA, depth of field, motion blur, mesh trimming or the dynamic shadows.
- Cheats: damage to and from Kratos, max red orbs, infinite magic and items, infinite rage and double jumps.
- Controls: Xbox and other XInput pads, and through SDL3 the DualShock 4, the DualSense, Switch controllers and many others; or the keyboard, with the mouse buttons for the attacks. Stick dead zone, confirm button and vibration settings.
- Saves: a backup before the game writes over a save.
- Problem reports: one button makes a zip of the logs, with your paths hidden.
Status
| What | Status |
|---|---|
| Boot, cinematics, menus | ✅ Works |
| The opening: the prison, the first fight, the gate | ✅ Plays, above 30 FPS where measured (Smooth preset, the laptop above) |
| Further in: the Hecatonchires and on | |
| Saves | ✅ Works, with a backup before each overwrite |
| Keyboard | ✅ Works |
| Controllers | |
| FSR 3.1 frame generation | |
| Ultrawide | |
| Online | ❌ Not supported: single player |
Known issues
- Fragment shaders are compiled the first time the game reaches them, so a new place can stutter once.
- Decrypting and then building in one go has not been run on a PC whose copy was not decrypted yet.
- The first ultrawide session compiles part of the shaders again.
For testers
What helps most is a report from a PC unlike the one above: another CPU, an AMD or Intel GPU, a desktop. Report a problem in the launcher makes the zip to attach.
The game's code comes out the same on every PC. To check yours, in PowerShell:
Get-FileHash "$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Ascension-R\game-code\ascension_game.dll"It should be ED41A3DE87F08D4D37733DDB6F98C26658C15501DC6DD57C095F323C0E6DD27E (with portable.txt, the DLL is in the program's own game-code folder). If yours is not, say so in an issue, with the report.
Files
Ascension-R-0.1.0-alpha.3-kit-win64.zip: the download, 145 MB. SHA-256544796a08b7d11802527e484785cf5b02cd3b136f8d98a502e08828947d84eb1.audit.txt: what the package was checked for before it was zipped, and what was found: no file of the game or made from it, no PS3 keys in the port's files, nothing of the PC it was made on.ffmpeg-8.1.3.tar.xz: FFmpeg's source, as its license asks. You do not need it to play.
Credits
Built on ps3recomp by sp00nznet. RPCS3 decrypts your copy, and its patch list was the map for the game patches. The program carries AMD FSR, SMAA, SDL, FFmpeg, zlib and Zstandard, and the Kit carries Python and LLVM's clang and lld; their licenses are in the zip's licenses folder, THIRD-PARTY.txt first.
The port's own code is under the MIT License. God of War is a trademark of Sony Interactive Entertainment; this project is not affiliated with or endorsed by it.