LBPPC

LBPPC

LittleBigPlanet 3, running natively on PC, with its online world back.

LBPPC runs the PS4 game's own code directly on your PC's processor. It is a native port, not an emulator. The community servers bring back creating, sharing and playing levels together, which ended when the original servers shut down.

Status: 0.1.0, the first public beta. It supports LittleBigPlanet 3 US (CUSA00473), version 1.28. You need your own copy, dumped from your PS4.

Download and guide · Discord · Release notes

What you get

The game, on PC

• 60 FPS with frame generation: DLSS on GeForce RTX 40 and 50 series cards, FSR 3.1 on any other. The game still steps 30 times a second, as on PS4, so physics and timing feel the same.
• 720p to 4K, and ultrawide. The menus lay themselves out for wide screens, online too. Movies and loading screens stay 16:9.
• FSR 1 upscaling with adjustable sharpening, for playing below your screen's resolution.
• NVIDIA Reflex and AMD Anti-Lag 2 for lower input latency.
• Controllers out of the box, motion sensors included. Keyboard controls can be rebound in the launcher.
• Quit Game in the pause menu.

Online

• One account for everything, created in the launcher. The server is play.lbppc.com.
• Ten million archived levels. The community levels saved from LittleBigPlanet's original servers can be played again.
• Online co-op with your friends, through a relay when your connections can't reach each other directly.
• Join protection. Only your friends can join your game. This closes the "force join" exploit that ended LittleBigPlanet's community servers.
• Friends in the launcher: send and accept requests, and see who's online. Friends playing LBPPC show in the Pod's friends list too.

The launcher

• Settings for resolution, frame generation, upscaling, controls and online play, all in one window.
• Make a report packs everything a bug report needs into one zip, without your password or Windows user name.
• An in-game menu (Insert, or L3 + R3 on a controller): the frame rate counter and other overlays, and frame generation, without leaving the game.

Getting started

You need 64-bit Windows 10 (1903 or later) or Windows 11, a graphics card with Vulkan support, and your own dump of LittleBigPlanet 3 (CUSA00473, version 1.28).

1. Unzip a release anywhere except Program Files, for example C:\Games\LBPPC.
2. Start LBPPC.exe. If Windows SmartScreen warns about a new app, click More info, then Run anyway.
3. Choose your game dump's folder and press Play. The first start prepares the game, which takes about a minute. The first time you see something new, it may hitch once while its shaders are built.
4. To play online, choose a name and password under Online, press Create account, tick Play online on the LBPPC server, and add your friends by their online names.

The full guide is at lbppc.com/getting-started, and online play is covered in docs/online.md.

Controls

• Controller: works out of the box.
• Keyboard: the launcher's Controls page sets keys and controller buttons. It writes input.ini next to LBPPC.exe, and F8 reloads it in game.
• Motion: a DualShock 4, DualSense or Switch Pro controller tilts Sackboy's head as on PS4. Without one, the number pad tilts it (4 left, 6 right, 8 forward, 2 back).
• Mouse: off in 0.1.0. Using the mouse as the touchpad, for touch Create Mode, is planned.

Known issues

• Online co-op is new. If the game says the players' worlds diverged, make a report on both PCs.
• Some effects or materials draw wrongly in some levels.
• With a keyboard, the game shows PlayStation buttons. The launcher's Controls page shows which key is which.
• An archived level's first load can be slow, while the server fetches it for the first time.

What's coming

Being worked on for later updates, with no dates yet:

• Native 60 and 120 FPS: the game itself running faster, rather than frame generation filling in between 30.
• Better upscaling: DLSS and FSR temporal upscaling fitted to LBP3.
• Mouse and keyboard: the mouse as the PS4's touchpad (for Create mode), and keyboard keys shown in place of PlayStation buttons.
• Linux and Steam Deck, once tested on more hardware.

Found a problem?

1. Close the game after the problem happens.
2. In the launcher, click Make a report.
3. Attach the zip to a GitHub issue or post it on Discord. Say what you were doing and which level you were in.

docs/troubleshooting.md explains what the log says.

You need your own copy of the game

This repository contains no game files and never will. To play, dump LittleBigPlanet 3 from your own PS4. Please don't post game files in issues or pull requests, and don't ask for them.

How it works

• The game's code runs natively. The PS4 and the PC share the same processor architecture (x86-64), so the game's executable runs on the CPU as it is, with no translation.
• A runtime stands in for the PS4 system. It provides the system libraries the game calls: files, threads, memory, audio, input, save data and the network.
• A graphics layer translates PS4 GPU work to Vulkan. It is derived from shadPS4.
• Online play goes to community servers.
  • Refresh handles levels, profiles and photos.
  • shadNet, with LBPPC's patch, handles sign-in, friends, presence, the co-op relay and invites.
• Online stays in sync. Both players' worlds step in lockstep, so CPU-specific maths shortcuts are replaced with exact versions that give the same results on every PC.
• Small game changes are made in memory. Changes such as Quit Game edit the game's files as they're read; the files on disk are never touched.

Building

Windows, with MSYS2 CLANG64: ./build.sh. The packages it needs are listed in packaging/windows/README.md. The launcher is Python; run.py starts the game from a checkout.

Folder	What's there
src/	The runtime: loads and runs the game's code and stands in for the PS4 system libraries
gpu/	The graphics layer (PS4 GPU commands and shaders to Vulkan) and the online layer
launcher/	The launcher: settings, controls, accounts, friends and reports
scripts/	Prepares the game before a start: links its modules and makes the in-memory game changes
server/	Building and running the community servers, with LBPPC's shadNet patch
packaging/	Release packaging
tools/	Development tools
tests/	Tests of the runtime, graphics layer and input
docs/	Player guides, research notes and design documents

Useful reading: docs/troubleshooting.md (the log, line by line), docs/rendering-fixes.md (how graphics bugs were tracked down) and docs/release-checklist.md.

Credits

LBPPC is built on the work of the Bloodborne PC port and the projects behind it. Its runtime and graphics layer were imported from version 1.9.5 of the Bloodborne PC port, at commit ff42e28, where the full history is.

• bbport, the native port of Bloodborne by deadinside28, and the Bloodborne PC port by Supermedo, nick24051998 and their contributors.
• shadPS4, whose renderer and network, NP and shadNet code are at the heart of the graphics and online layers, and the shadNet server by the shadPS4 team.
• Awaken (BloodBorneButPc), who put together the online code, and Wozzardman's shadp2p, which the first online version was built on.
• fixdag and bashiku, for the low-VRAM profile.
• Refresh, the community server for levels and profiles.

Contributors to the Bloodborne PC port's history: Aljoscha-Ide, 𝗔ᴍʙʀᴏsᴇ, andrecabralgit, Awaken, Axel, ayozetr, Berleis, DarkSpartan, deadinside28, devilismyfriend, DUDUYG, Eric DaRosa, FIocker, fliperama86, gStone, JackRushante, Jgamrot, Joao Ramos, João Pedro Valadares, lewiwiii, Macypor, Maurdekye, Mitra, nick24051998, noatdk, oat018, parsifal295, Pirvondal, RafaelHGOliveira, rattensuppe, Sergey Leonov, Stefano Scalfari, Supermedo, T0ug and yshtonytc.

Also used: FSR-Vulkan and the AMD FidelityFX SDK, the DLSS bridge adapted from IFreemz/shadPS4-Bloodborne-DLSS-FSR, the NVIDIA DLSS SDK, LibAtrac9, SDL3, FFmpeg, Dear ImGui, sirit, magic_enum, miniz, xbyak, wepoll, cpp-httplib, Protocol Buffers, OpenSSL, miniupnpc, JSON for Modern C++, Vulkan Memory Allocator, MSYS2, LLVM, PyInstaller and Pillow.

Licence

GPL-3.0-or-later; see LICENSE. Code taken from shadPS4 and the Bloodborne PC port keeps its own notices.

This is an unofficial fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Sony Interactive Entertainment or Sumo Digital. LittleBigPlanet is a trademark of its owners.