Demon's Souls on AnyPS5

Screenshots

Posted by testers in the project's threads; the date links to the post. Click to enlarge.

Where it stands

Demon's Souls is one of the furthest-along games in the project. Two testers have shown it going through the logo videos, language and brightness setup, the title screen and the main menu. After that it starts a new game, shows an offline prompt ("Unable to connect to the server" / "Continue Offline"), and loads the first level. The two game IDs are the two regional versions: PPSA01342 on Windows (first boot branch) and PPSA01341 v1.07 on Linux.

The first level is the problem. On Linux the tutorial level shows the on-screen HUD but runs at about 2 fps, because the driver spends nearly all of each frame on the CPU checking thousands of draw calls. The 3D scene is also wrong: it came out fog-white, with bright bars and purple bands. The tester traced this to the sun shadows. The shadow passes were being rejected, so the lighting thought everything was in shadow. One of those rejections (different depth bias on front and back faces) was fixed on main on 2026-10-10. It is not yet reported whether that cleared the white scene.

Menus run much faster than the level: roughly 50 fps at the title screen and 33 to 40 fps in the opening cinematic on Linux, about 10 fps in character creation. On Windows the first boot branch reported about 48 to 50 fps in the pre-gameplay part, and a newer Windows report says the startup movie and main menu work at about 5 fps.

Getting here took a lot of work, much of it still on unmerged branches. The Linux tester needed a stack of unmerged PRs plus local changes. Before the Linux memory-placement fix (merged 2026-10-10) the game crashed about 4 seconds in. With that fix on main it runs 85 to 88 seconds and then stops on a shader validation error, or crashes after 14 seconds in a default build with the shader-checking tools turned off. Other users on Linux report crashes at start-up or undefined-symbol errors. That one was an old release, and current main already has the missing function. One user could not get text to display on an Intel + NVIDIA setup.

What is stopping it

• The tutorial level runs at about 2 fps. Nearly all of each frame is CPU work in the driver's main graphics queue (about 10,000 draws and 4,000 compute jobs per frame). Most of the game's draws are indirect draws, which are not yet pipelined. Thread
• Open work to speed up indirect draws, which make up most of Demon's Souls' draws. Thread
• The 3D scene in the level renders wrong (fog-white, bands) because the sun shadow passes were rejected. The front/back depth-bias rejection was fixed on 2026-10-10; whether the scene now looks right is not reported yet. Thread
• A default build (shader-checking tools off) crashes about 14 seconds after launch; with them on, the game runs to about 85 seconds and then stops on a shader validation failure. Thread
• Linux users on v1.04 (PPSA01342) report a crash in the game's own network library start-up code before the window opens. Thread

How it got here

1. 25 Sep 2026First boot branch posted: the game goes from the SIE logo through the intro video, menus and title screen into a new game on Windows (PPSA01342), then stops at the first level on a draw type the driver cannot do yet. Source
2. 27 Sep 2026The boot branch is merged into main. The pre-gameplay part is now at about 50 fps. Source
3. 30 Sep 2026Missing archive-streaming and network functions the game imports are added, so it no longer stops at load. Source
4. 7 Oct 2026Linux: the game is found to wait forever on a black screen because a file name differs in upper/lower case. Lowercase symlink fixes it; the logos then play. Two missing functions are also declared so the game loads. Source
5. 8 Oct 2026Linux tester reaches the tutorial level with its HUD, at about 2 fps with a wrong-looking 3D scene. Source
6. 9 Oct 2026Multichannel audio streams that crashed the tutorial level are now decoded. Source
7. 10 Oct 2026Merged: fix for a crash 20 to 90 seconds into boot (a graphics job read data before the game had written it), and support for different front/back depth bias used by the level's shadow casters. Source
8. 10 Oct 2026A Windows user reports the startup movie and main menu working at about 5 fps. Source
9. 10 Oct 2026Linux crash reported on a default build: the game segfaults 14 seconds in unless shader-checking tools are turned on. Source

Tested hardware