PS VITA / PsTV Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance Vita by Nevak v1.06

[jolek]

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance Vita

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About Installation Changelog and credits

• This is a wrapper/port of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance for the PS Vita.
  The port works by loading the official Android ARMv7 executables in memory, resolving its imports with native functions and patching it in order to properly run. By doing so, it's basically as if we emulate a minimalist Android environment in which we run natively the executable as is.
  
  Known Issues
  
  
  • Low framerate during video playing, including main menu due to CPU video decoding.
  • Slight framerate spikes every few seconds in some levels due to vorbis audio decoding in main thread.
  • Missing real-time shadows from characters and enemies. Temporarily disabled for performance.
  • Achievements not working yet.
  • Some levels with lots of vegetation and water have performance issues. Ex: the Rotting Bog.
  • 2 player coop with 2 controllers is implemented, but only works if both controllers are connected before launching the game.
  
  Notes
  
  • If performance drops in some levels or the game slows down, locking to 30FPS can help. This is done in the game settings menu by enabling Battery Saving.
  • The game will set the language to your Vita's system language. It has been mostly tested in Spanish and English, but other versions such as Italian, French or German might have issues with audio/texts or even crashes. If you find any problems, feel free to open an Issue.
  • For 2-player coop, if you are using a handheld Vita (not Vita TV) you need to install this plugin: https://github.com/TheOfficialFloW/MiniVitaTV
• Setup Instructions (For End Users)
  
  In order to properly install the game, you'll have to follow these steps precisely:
  
  • Install kubridge and FdFix by copying kubridge.skprx and fd_fix.skprx to your taiHEN plugins folder (usually ux0:tai) and adding two entries to your config.txt under *KERNEL:

    *KERNEL
    ux0:tai/kubridge.skprx
    ux0:tai/fd_fix.skprx

  
  Note Don't install fd_fix.skprx if you're using rePatch plugin
  
  • Optional: Install PSVshell to overclock your device to 500Mhz.
  • Install libshacccg.suprx, if you don't have it already, by following this guide.
  • Obtain your copy of Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance legally for Android in form of an .apk file. You can get all the required files directly from your phone or by using an apk extractor you can find in the play store.
  • Extract these files from the APK to your vita:
    • Copy the contents of lib folder to ux0:/data/bgda/lib
    • Copy the contents of assets folder to ux0:/data/bgda/assets
  • Open the file ux0:/data/bgda/assets/world.xvu in a text editor and do the following:
    • Right under the line that says #define lightColor4_extra C(20) add this new line:
      • #define uvScale C(24)
    • Near the end of the file, immediately under the line that says oT0 = inTexCoord; add these two lines:
      • oT0.x *= uvScale.x;
      • oT0.y *= uvScale.y;
  • To verify that you have all the files check the total number of files at the bottom part of the screenshots:
    • Inside ux0:/data/bgda/assets:
      
    • Inside ux0:/data/bgda/assets/res:
      
• Changelog
  
  v1.03
  
  • Support for L2/R2 button emulation using rear touch panel
  • Disabled logs in VitaGL options
  v1.02
  
  • Fixed Italian language not being set correctly
  v1.01
  
  • Fixes for typo in live area game title
  v1.0
  
  • Initial release.
  
  Credits
  
  • TheFlow for the original .so loader.
  • Rinnegatamante for VitaGL, his Android ports, answering all my questions and making changes needed for the game to VitaGL.
  • gl33ntwine for the awesome Android subsystem reimplementation FalsoNDK and FalsoJNI.
  • [withLogic] for the help testing.
  Special
  
  • Dedicado a mi Abuelo Manolo

Source: https://github.com/Nevak/bgda-vita.

 

[jolek]

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance Vita v1.04 is out!

Changelog:

• Fixed crashes/freezes right before the loading screen when entering a new level. This happened after playing for a while and changing levels a few times due to a memory leak from the loading screen thread.
• Fixed crash during the ending cutscene after defeating the final boss.
• Enabled 2x antialias as the impact in performance seems negligible.

 

[jolek]

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance Vita v1.05 is out!

Changelog:

• Fixed glitched textures when playing for a prolonged period of time.
  Caused by leaked texture slots in previous version of VitaGL.
  See the commit that fixed it.

 

[jolek]

Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance Vita v1.06 is out!

Changes:

• Substantially improved video playback performance by passing YUV data directly to GXM, avoiding CPU color space conversion.
• Added playstation button icons and PS Vita diagram in control settings screen. Notes:
  • This works by automatically patching the original game files when the game starts. The game creates automatic backups of files before applying patches (e.g., config.lmp.backup). Backups are only created once and won't be overwritten. The patching code was written with the help of AI tools.
  • This was achieved in part thanks to the cool BGDA Explorer tool for PS2 by Bryce Barbara. The tool was adapted to work with the Xbox texture format and modified to support importing new textures. I will share the modified fork of BGDA Explorer in the future.
• Eliminated periodic framerate stutter every 3-4 seconds. Moved Vorbis audio decoding to a background thread on CPU core 2. Uses a custom fork of libvorbis with a lock-free ring buffer that pre-fills decoded PCM data so ov_read() returns instantly via memcpy. Included as a submodule at lib/libvorbis and built automatically by the build script. Note: The code for this custom fork was written with the help of AI tools, by creating tests to ensure the original libvorbis and the threaded version behave exactly the same for this game's use case.