shadPS4/documents/Quickstart/Quickstart.md

shadPS4 Quickstart

Summary

• PC Requirements
  • CPU
  • GPU
  • RAM
  • OS
• Have the latest WIP version
• Install PKG files (Games and Updates)
• Configure the emulator

PC Requirements

CPU

• A processor with at least 4 cores and 6 threads
• Above 2.5 GHz frequency

GPU

• A graphics card with at least 1GB of VRAM
• Keep your graphics drivers up to date
• Vulkan 1.3 support (required)

RAM

• 8GB of RAM or more

OS

• Windows 10 or Ubuntu 22.04

How to run the latest Work-in-Progress builds of ShadPS4

1. Go to https://github.com/shadps4-emu/shadPS4/actions and make sure you are logged into your GitHub account (important!)

2. On the left side of the page, select your operating system of choice (the "qt" versions have a user interface, which is probably the one you want. The others are SDL versions, which can only be run via command line).

3. In the workflow list, select the latest entry with a green ✅ icon in front of it. (or the latest entry for whatever pull request you wish to test).

4. On the bottom of this page, select the name of the file, and it should start downloading. (If there is no file here, double check that you are indeed logged into a GitHub account, and that there is a green ✅ icon.

5. Once downloaded, extract to its own folder, and run ShadPS4's executable from the extracted folder.

6. Upon first launch, ShadPS4 will prompt you to select a folder to store your installed games in. Select "Browse" and then select a folder that ShadPS4 can use to install your PKG files to.

Install PKG files

To install PKG files (game and updates), you will need the Qt application (with UI). You will have to go to "File" then to "Install Packages (PKG)", a window will open then you will have to select the files. You can install multiple PKG files at once. Once finished, the game should appear in the application.

Configure the emulator

You can configure the emulator by editing the config.toml file found in the user folder created after starting the application.
Some settings may be related to more technical development and debugging. For more information on those, see Debugging.

Here's a list of configuration entries that are worth changing:

• [General]

  • Fullscreen: Display the game in a full screen borderless window.

  • logType: Configures logging synchronization (sync/async)

    • It can be beneficial to set this to sync in order for the log to accurately maintain message order, at the cost of performance.
    • Use when sending logs to developers. See more about reporting issues.

  • logFilter: Sets the logging category for various logging classes.

    • Format: <class>:<level> ..., <class.*>:<level> <*:level> ...
    • Valid log levels: Trace, Debug, Info, Warning, Error, Critical - in this order, setting a level silences all levels preceding it and logs every level after it.
    • Examples:
      • If the log is being spammed with messages coming from Lib.Pad, you can use Lib.Pad:Critical to only log critical-level messages.
      • If you'd like to mute everything, but still want to receive messages from Vulkan rendering: *:Error Render.Vulkan:Info

• [GPU]

  • screenWidth and screenHeight: Configures the game window width and height.