GNSB/UFC-3-PS4-PORT-LINUX-WINDOWS

EA SPORTS UFC 3 (PlayStation 4, CUSA06534, update 1.14) running as a native x86-64 program on Linux and Windows. This is not a CPU emulator: the game's original code runs directly on the PC's processor, a dedicated runtime replaces the PS4 system libraries, and a renderer derived from shadPS4 translates the PS4's GPU work to Vulkan.

It is built on SacredFire (Crash Team Racing: Nitro-Fueled), which itself comes from bbport, the native Bloodborne port. All code is GPL-2.0-or-later.

No game files are included. You need your own dump of UFC 3 (CUSA06534) and its 1.14 update. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Electronic Arts, Sony Interactive Entertainment or the UFC. EA SPORTS UFC, PlayStation and related marks belong to their owners and are named only to identify the game.

Current release: 0.1.5 (notes). What's new: write windows on Windows again (a Career fight on an RTX 3060 laptop goes from about 30 to 60–70 FPS), blood and sweat on hits are back, a fixed GPU hang in the Career fighter editor, a possible fix for AMD freezes, new Windows and Linux launchers, private online play with working rematches, and experimental 2K/4K.

Playable. Menus, loading, fights (including the menu's attract-mode fight), sound, controller and saves. What works today:

• Career: it saves, it no longer crashes on entry, and changing hair/head repeatedly in the fighter editor no longer hangs the GPU.
• Blood and sweat on hits, with the created fighter's skin still correct.
• PS4 Pro mode (the game renders 1080p instead of 900p), with a checkbox in the Windows launcher (BB_NEO=1 on Linux).
• 2K / 4K (experimental): 2560x1440 and 3840x2160 internal resolution in the launcher (validated on Linux only; see Launcher settings).
• 90 FPS in the launcher's FPS limit, next to 60 / 120 / 144 / 240 / Unlimited.
• Hair and beards with proper coverage instead of square cards.
• Created-fighter skin that survives repeated editing (no black or garbled patches).
• Shadows without acne or flicker from the emulated depth format.
• Career portraits and the post-fight screen: your fighter shows up on the post-fight menu, in the career pause menu and on the Saved Careers cards.
• Game language selector in the Windows launcher.
• Launchers on both systems (Windows: UFC3.exe; Linux: a GTK launcher), with Offline / Join server / Host server.
• Online between friends (private hosting, rematch included); see Online.

• Tested by the maintainer on NVIDIA (Linux and Windows); AMD fixes come from @luscamovi's RX 9070, and players have reported on other AMD and NVIDIA cards (RX 7800 XT, RTX 4090…).
• Write windows (a faster CPU/GPU memory path, see Performance) are on on both Linux and Windows since 0.1.5: UFC-48 fixed the Windows heap corruption of 0.1.4.

Known issues

• Fights on Windows still run below Linux.
• Keep the log folder on a local disk for the best FPS.
• "Clear the shader cache at start" recompiles every shader on each start: leave it off.
• AMD freezes and closes may be fixed in 0.1.5 (late EOS labels were being dropped): AMD users, please report whether it helps.
• Moving the window to another monitor during startup can crash the NVIDIA driver (Swapchain::Destroy).
• Some long hairstyles leave a slightly lighter line at the base of the neck.
• Portuguese (Portugal) (BB_LANGUAGE=7) is listed but the game has no text for it: pick Portuguese (Brazil) (17).

• x86-64 CPU with AVX (the game code, built for the PS4's Jaguar, uses AVX).

• GPU with Vulkan 1.3. ≥ 6 GB of VRAM recommended (below that a more aggressive texture collector kicks in).

• A dump of the game: the CUSA06534 base folder and the 1.14 update, for example:

  PS4/CUSA06534          (base game, eboot.bin)
  PS4/CUSA06534-patch    (1.14 update; -PATCH, -update, _patch… also work)
  

  scripts/merge_update.py merges them automatically into CUSA06534-merged using hard links (no extra disk space; on drives without hard links the files are copied).

1. Download the zip from Releases (or build it, see Building) and extract it.
2. Open UFC3.exe. Pick the CUSA06534 folder (the base game; an update next to it is detected automatically) and press Play.
3. On first launch the game is prepared (a few seconds) in %LOCALAPPDATA%\UFC3Native. Each session's log goes to %LOCALAPPDATA%\UFC3Native\logs\; the launcher's Open logs folder button opens it. If the game crashes, send us that session's .log (with Frame statistics checked if you can reproduce it).

Since 0.1.5 the launcher has a UFC 3 dark/gold look, with your dump's own artwork in the banner.

Environment variables you already have set take precedence over the launcher (for example a .bat with set BB_WRITE_WINDOW=0 before starting UFC3.exe).

# dependencies: C/C++ compiler, CMake, Vulkan, SDL3 and Python 3 (see shell.nix / build.sh)
git clone <this repo> ufc3 && cd ufc3
git submodule update --init --recursive
bash build.sh                                       # builds the runtime + renderer
python3 scripts/merge_update.py /path/PS4/CUSA06534 # base + 1.14 -> /path/PS4/CUSA06534-merged
BB_GAME_DIR=/path/PS4/CUSA06534-merged bash run.sh  # defaults to orig/CUSA06534

run.sh detects the ufc3 profile and applies the game's defaults; any variable can be overridden on the command line (BB_FPS_LIMIT=0 bash run.sh).

There is also a GTK 4 launcher (game folder, player name, language, resolution, Offline / Join / Host) that needs Python PyGObject and GTK 4: python3 launcher/ufc3_launcher.py from the repo, or ./ufc3.sh with no arguments in the Linux package (./ufc3.sh --play /path/to/CUSA06534 plays from the command line). Logs go to ~/.local/share/UFC3Native/logs/.

Private hosting between friends: one player runs the server on their own PC, with no public matchmaking. Either Windows or Linux can host, and the two PCs may run different systems; both need the same port build and the same game dump/update.

• The host picks Host server in the launcher, selects their address, shares it (Copy IP) and presses Play. The friend picks Join server, enters that address and presses Play.
• Both enter Online → Quick Fight and search at about the same time. Rematch works.
• Outside your LAN, use a VPN such as Tailscale on both PCs and share the host's VPN IP (never 127.0.0.1).

Step by step: docs/ufc3/HOW-TO-PLAY-ONLINE.md; ports, logs and troubleshooting: docs/ufc3/ONLINE-HOSTING.md.

Advanced: the launchers set BB_ONLINE_SERVER=<host address> for the game (without it the console stays offline). An inherited BB_ONLINE_SERVER overrides the launcher's Offline/Join choice. You can also run the server yourself (python3 tools/ufc3_server.py --bind 0.0.0.0) and have both players use Join server. BB_NET_LOG=0 silences the network log (on by default in this mode). Details: docs/ufc3/ONLINE_IMPLEMENTATION.md.

bash scripts/build-windows.sh                 # llvm-mingw cross-compile, LTO on
BB_ALLOW_DIRTY=1 bash scripts/package-windows.sh
# -> dist/UFC3Native-windows-x86_64.zip  (UFC3.exe, bin/, embedded Python, scripts/)

Write the notes in docs/ufc3/releases/<version>.md, commit, then:

bash scripts/release.sh <version>   # tags ufc3-v<version>, builds, packages, pushes, creates the GitHub release

There are also purely diagnostic switches (*_TRACE, *_SKIP, *_DRAWS…); they are described in the release notes.

• Native execution. eboot.bin is converted offline (scripts/prepare.py, link_libc.py, link_modules.py) into a flat memory image with the game's own PS4 libc and libSceFios2 linked in as native code. TLS accesses (fs:) are rewritten (gs: on Linux, the TEB TLS slot on Windows).
• Runtime (src/runtime_*.c): memory, threads, mutexes/semaphores/event flags, files, audio (ATRAC9, and MP3 for AJM), controller (SDL), saves, user services and network/online stubs. On Windows: SRWLOCK-based mutexes, high-resolution timers, timeBeginPeriod(1), raised priority and EcoQoS disabled.
• GPU (gpu/): an adapted shadPS4 renderer. PM4 commands are decoded on one thread and draws are recorded into Vulkan on another (a two-stage pipeline), helped by draw-preparation and recording threads. GPU-written memory is page-protected so CPU reads and writes keep it coherent.

1. Unlocked frame rate. The game asks for 30 Hz through its present interval function (guest 0x1182a0); the port ignores it and uses a 480 Hz virtual vblank.
2. Windows on par with Linux. Windows Sleep calls ran on the system's 15.6 ms tick; they were replaced with high-resolution timers plus a spin for the last 100 µs (the present loop was running at half speed).
3. BB_WRITE_STEP. A CPU write to a page with ≤ 256 GPU-written bytes runs with the trap flag (TF) set, and only the words it changed are uploaded to VRAM, instead of waiting for the GPU and downloading the page. Menus no longer sync with the GPU every frame (240 FPS). On by default (write windows need it); BB_WRITE_STEP=0 turns it off.
4. BB_WRITE_WINDOW (the big fight improvement). A new per-site counter ("Readback sites" in the log) showed that almost every wait came from the EA engine: its dynamic buffers (a lock with discard at 0x64b50 → 0xf4120, e.g. the fighters' 48-byte bone matrices) share pages with small shader outputs (e.g. a 408-byte binding at 0x1001338ee0). Every CPU write forced a wait for the GPU and a page download. Now the page stays open for the CPU until the next SubmitGfx/SubmitAsc; it is then protected again, compared with the copy taken when it was opened, and only the changed words are uploaded (skipping the GPU's). Result on Linux: readbacks 380 → 120 per second and fights from 105–113 to roughly 140–190 FPS on an RTX 4070 (the detailed run recorded 137–196 FPS uncapped). In 0.1.4 the windows corrupted the game's heap on Windows (crashes loading the second fight or signing the career contract), so that launcher turned them off. UFC-48 made them coherent; since 0.1.5 BB_WRITE_WINDOW=1 is the default on Linux and Windows (validated on an RTX 3060: second fight and contract without a crash). An explicit value (BB_WRITE_WINDOW=0) wins on either platform.

The full technical write-up (diagnostics, failed experiments, measurements) is in docs/ufc3/GROK_HANDOFF.md, docs/ufc3/HANDOFF.md and docs/ufc3/PERF_240_PLAN.md.

• tools/ufc3-iter.sh — builds, runs with a timeout and summarizes where the run stopped.
• tools/ufc3-shot.sh out.png — screenshot of the game window only (Hyprland).
• BB_WATCH_GPU_WRITE=<addr>[,<addr>…] — logs which GPU-written bindings cover a page.
• BB_SKIP_SHADERS, BB_SKIP_FILE, BB_CAPTURE_ON_FLIP, BB_PATCH_SHADERS — isolate shaders and capture frames.
• BB_DISCARD_HOOK=1 (experimental, Linux) — reports the ranges handed out by the discard lock.

• SacredFire — the base runtime, renderer and Windows packaging (its original README is README.SacredFire.md).

• bbport — the native port model.

• shadPS4 — renderer and shader recompiler.

• The God of War III Windows port and eltutz's work, as references for Windows tuning (timers, priorities, GPU readback model).

• @luscamovi (on X) — the AMD (RX 9070) patches, PS4 Pro mode and the career save fix (also the AMD octagon floor grain, the 90 FPS option and the launcher's Pro checkbox).

• mancelli and their shadPS4 fork — hair (DB_ALPHA_TO_MASK), created-fighter skin, depth bias and NaN fixes.

• Upstream shadPS4 authors whose PRs were backported: TheTurtle, Claudio Godoi, kiwakiwaa, artemkaVG, DanielSvoboda and Chris Chreece (original commits in gpu/VENDOR.txt).

• HeuZ — Windows RTX 4090 logs that located the write-window crash; pvict (GitHub) — Portuguese testing with BB_LANGUAGE that motivated the Windows language selector. Thanks to everyone who sent Windows logs and reports.

• Flawlessix (Reddit) — testing on AMD.

• LibAtrac9, minimp3, FSR, Dear ImGui.

Detailed release notes and patch credits: 0.1.3, 0.1.4 and 0.1.5.

GPL-2.0-or-later, like bbport, SacredFire and shadPS4 (see LICENSE).