Drakengard

Work in progress, not playable yet. The game boots through the logos, title screen and menus. New Game goes through the difficulty prompt, the prologue, "Chapter 1 Beginnings" and the mission briefing, into the first mission: HUD, radar, objective map, in-mission dialogue and textured, lit 3D. The mission runs at about 13 frames per second, there is no sound yet, and the Chapter 1 opening movie is skipped.

Native port (no PS2 hardware emulation left, not even a small part: the shared goal of the fork's ports). Native means the game's draws built straight from its own data (vertices, matrices, materials), with no GIF packet, no GS state machine and no copy of GS memory in between.

✅ works · 🔧 in progress · ⏳ not reached yet

RECOMP_NOTES.md records how the port was brought up, every runtime fix and how it was found, the performance work, and what remains open. docs/async_vif1_plan.md is the current plan for running VIF1 and VU1 alongside the EE.

A fully playable Drakengard as a native executable, from the opening movie to the endings. Accuracy first; once it is playable, widescreen and higher internal resolution.

disc files (game/) ──► Ghidra (headless, EE extension) + ExportPS2Functions ──► function map (CSV)
                                           │
                     ps2_recomp + recomp/drakengard_ghidra.toml ──► C++ (one file per function)
                                           │
                          scripts/sync_runner.py ──► PS2Recomp runner + runtime/zz_drakengard_overrides.cpp
                                           │
   PS2Recomp runtime: EE kernel HLE · DMAC · GIF/GS · VIF/VU0/VU1 · IPU ─┼─► ps2EntryRunner.exe
   PS2Recomp IOP:     R3000A interpreter running the game's own IRX · SPU2 · SIO2

• Ghidra (with the Emotion Engine extension) maps the functions of SLES_523.22; the export script writes them to recomp/ghidra/ghidra_functions_fixed.csv.
• recomp/drakengard_ghidra.toml adds the entry points Ghidra misses: jump and call targets, gap starts and every data pointer into code.
• PS2Recomp turns every function into C++; scripts/sync_runner.py installs the generated code and the Drakengard override module into the runner, copying only changed files.
• runtime/zz_drakengard_overrides.cpp holds the game-specific bindings and the test harness hooks.

The PS2Recomp fork lives in PS2Recomp/ (a separate clone of boubou666/PS2Recomp, branch main), shared with the Valkyrie Profile 2 recompilation. Most fixes made for this port land there, for example the fast VU1 interpreter, the multi-threaded GS rasterizer and the IOP scheduler.

• Windows 10 or 11, Python 3
• MSYS2 with the UCRT64 toolchain, for the game executable: pacman -S --needed mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-{gcc,cmake,ninja,pkgconf,ffmpeg}
• Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools ("Desktop development with C++": MSVC, CMake, Ninja), for the recompiler tools
• To rebuild the function map only: Ghidra 12.1.4 in tools\ghidra_12.1.4_PUBLIC, the Emotion Engine extension for it, and JDK 21
• Your own copy of SLES-52322 (check the hash above), with the disc's files copied into game/

The build scripts currently expect the repository at D:\Drakengard_Recomp, MSYS2 in C:\msys64 (or MSYS2_ROOT) and the default Build Tools location.

git clone https://github.com/boubou666/Drakengard_Recomp.git D:\Drakengard_Recomp
cd D:\Drakengard_Recomp
git clone https://github.com/boubou666/PS2Recomp.git PS2Recomp
scripts\build_tools.bat
PS2Recomp\out\build\ps2xRecomp\ps2_recomp.exe recomp\drakengard_ghidra.toml
PS2Recomp\out\build\ps2xRecomp\ps2_vu_aot.exe game\SLES_523.22 recomp\vu1_aot
python scripts\sync_runner.py
bash scripts/build_runner_gcc.sh

ps2_vu_aot compiles the game's VU0/VU1 microcode ahead of time (recomp\vu1_aot); CMakeLists.txt builds it outside the unity batches at -O3. The game executable is built with GCC because MSVC takes many minutes per microcode file; scripts\build_runner.bat still builds an MSVC runner, without the compiled microcode, in PS2Recomp\out\build-fast. recomp\ghidra\ghidra_run.bat rebuilds the Ghidra function map from game\SLES_523.22 if you need it. The first runner build takes about an hour: the recompiled code is several hundred megabytes of C++.

Run the game from its folder, which the runtime uses as cdrom0::

cd game
..\build\gcc\PS2Recomp\ps2xRuntime\ps2EntryRunner.exe D:\Drakengard_Recomp\game\SLES_523.22

Set PS2X_GS_ASYNC_RASTER=1 to rasterize on worker threads (much faster; it will become the default).

A controller is used when one is connected; otherwise the keyboard (US key positions):

• The mission is slow: about 13 frames per second. Next: profiling it on the GCC build, running VIF1/VU1 alongside the EE (PS2X_VIF1_THREAD) and the GPU renderer (PS2X_GS_RENDERER=parallel, which already draws the mission correctly).
• No sound or music yet.
• The Chapter 1 opening movie is skipped: its MPEG stream shows grey, so the movie is passed over.
• Unchecked against hardware: the sky band and camera framing in the first mission, and the untextured fog on the ground.

Everything derived from the game (game/, generated code, Ghidra databases, VU1 traces, captures and screenshots) is git-ignored. Never commit or redistribute it.

• PS2Recomp by ran-j and contributors (GPL), the recompiler and runtime this port is built on.
• The Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria recompilation, developed alongside this port on the same PS2Recomp fork; many runtime fixes (GS, VU1, MPEG, SPU2, scheduler) are shared.
• Drakengard © Square Enix, developed by Cavia. This is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by them.