Lantern Engine

Lantern Engine runs your own copy of Bloodborne on Windows and Linux: a launcher and my engine, built on bbport and shadPS4 and reworked by me for performance. The game's own code runs natively on your CPU; its graphics are translated to Vulkan.

No game files are included. You need your own legal copy of Bloodborne (CUSA03173) with update 1.09, dumped from your own PS4.

Help: Help & FAQ: setup, a graphics settings guide, fixes for common problems and the beta guide. Bug reports go to the #issues forum on the Discord.

Install

1. Download LanternEngine-<version>-win64.zip from Releases and extract it anywhere.
2. Run Lantern Engine.exe and pick your game folder (the one with eboot.bin).
3. Press Play. The launcher updates itself. Bloodborne.exe starts the game directly (add it to Steam as a non-Steam game).

Linux (beta)

1. Download LanternEngine-<version>-linux-x64.tar.gz from Releases and unpack it (tar xzf LanternEngine-*-linux-x64.tar.gz).
2. Run Lantern Engine in the unpacked folder, pick your game folder and press Play. From a terminal: ./lantern.sh /path/to/CUSA03173.
3. It needs a Vulkan driver (Mesa or NVIDIA), Python 3 and glibc 2.38 or newer (Ubuntu 24.04, Fedora 39, Arch, SteamOS 3.6, Bazzite). From 0.9.37 beta 7 the launcher updates itself on Linux too, and DLSS Super Resolution works on RTX cards with NVIDIA's driver (DLSS Frame Generation is Windows only).

Sponsors

Seamless co-op runs on a server in Frankfurt, sponsored by 1337 Hosting. Thank you!

Credits

Lantern Engine	by Awaken: the launcher, the built-in game patches, and the engine reworked from its starting point (native shader compiler, direct draw calls, draw pipeline and memory performance work, PC menus and controls, upscaler integration, cheats, occlusion culling, trophies, fixes)
Engine starting point	DarkIzuku/bloodborne_pc (built on bbport and shadPS4)
Renderer crash fixes	adapted from AwesomeObserver and deadinside28
Online backend for The Hunter's Dream	droogie/bbhost
FSR (FSR 4.1.2 and FSR 3.1.6)	AMD FSR SDK 2.4, AMD's signed Vulkan binaries
Seamless co-op server	1337 Hosting
FSR 3.1 and FSR 4 on Vulkan	FireBurn/FSR-Vulkan and the AMD FidelityFX SDK
FSR 4.1.1	fsr4vk, with the AMD driver fix from 0xCydral
DLSS	NVIDIA DLSS SDK
XeSS Super Resolution	Intel XeSS SDK 3.0.2, Intel's libxess.dll (downloaded by engine/tools/fetch_xess.sh)
Sound	LibAtrac9
In-game menu	Dear ImGui
4K menus	Real-ESRGAN with ncnn, downloaded by the launcher and run on the player's own game files
Controller mappings	SDL_GameControllerDB
UI library	WPF-UI

License

Lantern Engine's own code, the launcher and the built-in game patches are GPL-3.0-or-later with additional terms (see LICENSE and NOTICE): anything that uses or ships them must keep the credit "Lantern Engine by Awaken", changed versions must say they are changed and must not pass as an official Lantern Engine release, and the name "Lantern Engine" is not licensed for other projects. Parts by others keep their own licenses, listed in the engine's licenses/ folder.

Source: the engine's full source is in engine/ (0.9.37 beta 7 on), the launchers' in launcher/windows/, and the Help & FAQ page in faq/.