shadBloodborne

Bloodborne by From Software	Bloodborne by From Software

Bloodborne by From Software	Bloodborne by From Software

General information

shadBloodborne is an early Bloodborne emulator for Windows, Linux, macOS and FreeBSD written in C++.

Important

This is the emulator core, which does not include a GUI. If you just want to use the emulator as an end user, download the QtLauncher instead.

If you encounter problems or have doubts, do not hesitate to look at the Quickstart.
To verify that Bloodborne works, you can look at bloodbornePS4 Compatibility Status.
To discuss shadBloodborne development, suggest ideas or to ask for help, join our Discord server.
To get the latest news, go to our X (Twitter) or our website.
You can donate to the project via our Kofi page.

Status

Important

shadBloodborne is early in development, don't expect a flawless experience.

Currently, the emulator can successfully run Bloodborne, but not every feature is fully emulated.

Why

This project began for fun. Given our limited free time, it may take some time before shadBloodborne can do Bloodborne multiplayer, but we're committed to making small, regular updates.

Building

Docker

For building shadBloodborne in a containerized environment using Docker and VSCode, check the instructions here:
Docker Build Instructions

Windows

Check the build instructions for Windows.

Linux

Check the build instructions for Linux.

macOS

Check the build instructions for macOS.

Important

macOS users need at least macOS 15.4 to run shadBloodborne. Due to GPU issues there are currently heavy bugs on Intel Macs.

Usage examples

Important

For a user-friendly GUI, download the QtLauncher.

To get the list of all available commands and also a more detailed description of what each command does, please refer to the --help flag's output.

Below is a list of commonly used command patterns:

shadBloodborne CUSA00900 # Searches for a game folder called CUSA00900 in the list of game install folders, and boots it.
shadBloodborne --fullscreen true --config-clean CUSA00900    # the game argument is always the last one,
shadBloodborne -g CUSA00900 --fullscreen true --config-clean # ...unless manually specified otherwise.
shadBloodborne /path/to/game.elf # Boots a PS4 ELF file directly. Useful if you want to boot an executable that is not named eboot.bin.
shadBloodborne CUSA00900 -- -flag1 -flag2 # Passes '-flag1' and '-flag2' to the game executable in argv.

Debugging and reporting issues

For more information on how to test, debug and report issues with the emulator or games, read the Debugging documentation.

Keyboard and Mouse Mappings

Note

Some keyboards may also require you to hold the Fn key to use the F* keys. Mac users should use the Command key instead of Control, and need to use Command+F11 for full screen to avoid conflicting with system key bindings.

Button	Function
F10	FPS Counter
Ctrl+F10	Video Debug Info
F11	Fullscreen
F12	Trigger RenderDoc Capture

Note

Xbox and DualShock controllers work out of the box.

Controller button	Keyboard equivalent
LEFT AXIS UP	W
LEFT AXIS DOWN	S
LEFT AXIS LEFT	A
LEFT AXIS RIGHT	D
RIGHT AXIS UP	I
RIGHT AXIS DOWN	K
RIGHT AXIS LEFT	J
RIGHT AXIS RIGHT	L
TRIANGLE	Numpad 8 or C
CIRCLE	Numpad 6 or B
CROSS	Numpad 2 or N
SQUARE	Numpad 4 or V
PAD UP	UP
PAD DOWN	DOWN
PAD LEFT	LEFT
PAD RIGHT	RIGHT
OPTIONS	RETURN
BACK BUTTON / TOUCH PAD	SPACE
L1	Q
R1	U
L2	E
R2	O
L3	X
R3	M

Keyboard and mouse inputs can be customized in the settings menu by clicking the Controller button, and further details and help on controls are also found there. Custom bindings are saved per-game. Inputs support up to three keys per binding, mouse buttons, mouse movement mapped to joystick input, and more.

Firmware files

shadBloodborne can load some PlayStation 4 firmware files. The following firmware modules are supported and must be placed in shadBloodborne's sys_modules folder.

Modules	Modules
libSceLibcInternal.sprx	libSceRtc.sprx

Caution

The above modules are required to run the game properly and must be dumped from your legally owned PlayStation 4 console.

Main team

• kalaposfos13

Logo is done by Xphalnos

Contributing

If you want to contribute, please read the CONTRIBUTING.md file.
Open a PR and we'll check it :)

Special Thanks

A few noteworthy teams/projects who've helped us along the way are:

• Panda3DS: A multiplatform 3DS emulator from our co-author wheremyfoodat. They have been incredibly helpful in understanding and solving problems that came up from natively executing the x64 code of PS4 binaries

• fpPS4: The fpPS4 team has assisted massively with understanding some of the more complex parts of the PS4 operating system and libraries, by helping with reverse engineering work and research.

• yuzu: Our shader compiler has been designed with yuzu's Hades compiler as a blueprint. This allowed us to focus on the challenges of emulating a modern AMD GPU while having a high-quality optimizing shader compiler implementation as a base.

• felix86: A new x86-64 → RISC-V Linux userspace emulator

License

• GPL-2.0 license