Awakenchan/LanternEngine · Awakenchan

The fifth fork, ten days late, how did it get billed as "the best Bloodborne PC version"

What it is An open-source launcher and engine that lets players run their own Bloodborne, exported from a PS4, natively on Windows/Linux. It's built on bbport and shadPS4.

Why it took off It rode the October wave of native Bloodborne ports. Among a pile of forks, it had the most complete one-click install, auto-update, DLSS/FSR, high framerate, and online play, and it updated most often. YouTube tutorials and Reddit word of mouth pushed it as "the best version."

CHow you could play it Don't build another Bloodborne project. Watch for the next native port or recompilation wave, and within one or two weeks of the source appearing, ship a productized downstream version (one-click install, auto-update, features that look good in videos). Name it early and actively reach out to tutorial creators.

C grade: this Bloodborne wave is already split between Supermedo and Lantern, and there's Sony DMCA risk. What's worth learning is the "capture the productized downstream" play, but it means betting on timing the next wave, and jumping in now isn't worth it. Whispers in the community

Data (updated daily) · Repo created 2026-10-11 · 1,607 stars · 7 days +281: GitHub · stars
Data 2026-10-14 → 2026-11-08 (26 days, 26 observations). Points before 10-28 come from deeply / archive backfill, not every day has one

In Oct 2026, Bloodborne ran natively on PC for the first time, 11 years after release, and over a dozen versions popped up on GitHub at once. A developer named Awaken started 10 days after the source, the tech was also someone else's, and 26 days later it had 1,537 stars and roughly 147k downloads, and YouTubers called it "BEST" and "Definitive" in their titles. Below: what it actually does, where the stars came from, and where you'd need to stand to get the same stars in the next wave.

Oct 11, a fork of a fork

Oct 1, deadinside28 built bloodborne_pc (known in the scene as bbport): it runs the x86-64 code of the PS4 Bloodborne as-is on the PC CPU, with a runtime written just for this game. The renderer was adapted from the PS4 emulator shadPS4. On Oct 6 Supermedo shipped a Windows version, on Oct 7 Wccftech ran a piece titled "Bloodborne gets an unofficial native PC port 11 years after release," and DSOGaming, NeoGAF, and ResetEra followed with discussion. Over the next few days, DarkIzuku, Mrsuss60, a Chinese launcher, a Mac version... forks kept coming.

On the night of Oct 11, Awaken created a repo called BloodBorneButPc, starting from DarkIzuku's fork. The acknowledgments table in his README is candid: the engine starts from DarkIzuku, and DarkIzuku is built on bbport and shadPS4. So it's a fork of a fork, 10 days after the source and 5 days after Supermedo, the one the media covered.

It was later renamed Lantern Engine. By Nov 6 it had 1,537 stars and 66 forks (GitHub, 11-06).

What it actually is

A launcher plus engine for Windows / Linux. Players export the game files from their own PS4 (it ships no game files), unzip, select the game folder, click Play, and that's it. The launcher updates itself and can add Bloodborne.exe to Steam as a non-Steam game.

What makes people pick it is how much is packed in: DLSS upscaling and frame generation, FSR 3.1/4/4.1, XeSS, HDR, up to 240fps, plus physics fixes at high framerates (jump distance, slope speed, cape jitter, which break in the original), a precompiled shader cache to reduce stutter, trophies, a cheat menu, Real-ESRGAN upscaling of menus to 4K, automatic save backups every 10 minutes, the online backend for the official multiplayer area "Hunter's Dream," and seamless co-op running on Frankfurt servers (sponsored by 1337 Hosting). Linux and Steam Deck work too.

Most of these come from others underneath (bbport, shadPS4, the bbhost online backend, AMD/NVIDIA/Intel SDKs), and the README's acknowledgments list more than a dozen entries. What Awaken did was assemble them into something an ordinary player can install and run reliably.

Where the stars came from

Look at the curve. On Oct 18 the single-day gain was +163, its peak. After that, dozens a day trickled in, with +287 in the last 7 days and +435 in the first 7 days, dropping by about a third (GitHub daily stars, 11-06). On Trendshift's C# daily chart it peaked at #5 (10-14). It never made GitHub's official trending page.

Downloads say more than stars do: 141 releases in 26 days, nearly one beta a day. The Windows package has about 147k cumulative downloads, the Linux package about 5 thousand, and launcher self-update checks about 104k. The download count includes the same people re-updating, so the unique-user estimate is tens of thousands (est.). Recently each beta gets 9 thousand to 12k downloads, which suggests a group of people following every update daily.

Traffic came mainly from three places:

YouTube tutorial creators. The big early videos on the "Bloodborne on PC" topic, the ones with 1.52M, 570k, and 490k views, mostly covered bbport or Supermedo, and they're what made the category hot. Lantern rode the later wave of "which version do I install?" IgorL's Nov 1 "Bloodborne now has a PC Port! - Setup Guide" got 54k views, and its first chapter is literally "Lantern Engine Setup." Bryan Fox's "Bloodborne at 220 FPS: The Definitive Way to Play on PC" got 24k; WithinUK's "The BEST Way to Play Bloodborne on PC? | Lantern Engine" got 10k; there are also GPU comparisons and "Most OPTIMIZED Launcher" videos (YouTube, 11-06). 220fps, DLSS frame generation, and HDR are all features that look good on video.

Word of mouth on r/BloodbornePC. A post titled "Awakenchan's port is inarguably the best one out there" got about 293 upvotes and 185 replies. There are also "Awakenchan made me a believer" and "Awakenchan port is amazing," plus posts comparing several versions on a GTX 1650. A typical comparison in the replies: Lantern rarely crashes but is a bit stuttery, while Supermedo stutters less but crashes occasionally. There's pushback too: one poster said "every post is praising Awakenchan, something feels off," and others say it nearly "bricked" their game computer, and some crash after a few warps.

Others are building on top of it. The visual enhancement pack BloodborneFSS uses Lantern as its base (the author's intro video has 14k views). The third-party achievement tool Ammonis explicitly supports "Bloodborne installed with Lantern." The Bloodborne mini-gallery on Korean dcinside has a Lantern installation guide.

No paid acquisition or sponsorship turned up, and almost nobody talks about it on X. Bugs all go through the #issues channel on Discord.

Who it's competing with

Project	What it is	Scale (11-06)	How Lantern differs
Supermedo/bloodborne_pc	The earliest native Windows version, 10-06	5,168 stars, about 720k downloads	The media cite it and it has the most users; word of mouth says "less stutter, occasional crashes"
deadinside28/bloodborne_pc(bbport)	The technical source, 10-01	3,925 star,1,105 fork	Engineering-focused, not a product
shadPS4	A general-purpose PS4 emulator, since 2022	34,064 star	Emulation overhead and manual tuning; Lantern's renderer was adapted from it
droogie/bbhost	Online backend	789 star	Directly integrated by Lantern
Mac ports (Wooloomooloo2 and others)	Apple Silicon version	270 / 64 star	Different platforms.
Paleblood	A true decompilation	158 stars, still doesn't run	Long-term project

Lantern has about a third of Supermedo's stars and two-to-three tenths of its downloads. It's the strongest of the second tier, not the leader. Sony still hasn't released a PC version, so there's no official competitor. But Sony issued a DMCA takedown 2025 years ago against Lance McDonald's Bloodborne 60fps patch (reported by IGN and GameSpot), so projects like this can be pulled at any time.

What it actually wins on

It's not the tech. All the forks are GPL, same code, and features can be ported between them. It wins on three things:

Productization. The source author only handled the tech. Awaken packaged installation, auto-update, a graphical menu, online play, and every upscaling option into one bundle, so ordinary players never touch a command line.
Speed. During the hot window it shipped a beta every day and answered bugs directly on Discord. The reputation for "most stable, most options" was built release by release.
Early branding. It renamed itself from BloodBorneButPc to Lantern Engine and added a license clause: code users must keep the credit "Lantern Engine by Awaken," modified versions may not pass themselves off as official, and other projects may not use the name. In an environment full of forks, this gave tutorial creators and players a name they could remember.

If it were you

Grade: C. There's something to learn, but jumping into this Bloodborne wave now isn't worth it.

Verdict: this Bloodborne wave is already crowded. The source has 1,105 forks, Supermedo and Lantern took most of the attention, and Lantern's own star growth is slowing. Another Bloodborne launcher would struggle to pass a few hundred stars and would carry Sony DMCA risk. What's worth taking away is its position: once a technical breakthrough appears, take the "productized downstream" slot. That slot can be copied, but only if you show up in the first two weeks of the next hype cycle, which is a bet.

Who it suits: developers already in the emulation, reverse-engineering, or game-mod scenes, who can read other people's porting code, build a decent Windows desktop UI, and have time to ship nearly daily for three or four weeks.

Who it doesn't suit: people with no interest in game porting who just want to "build something that gets stars" (this slot means staying up late through a hype window), people who are wary of legal risk, and people who want to build yet another Bloodborne version from scratch.

How to do it:

Watch the source repos of "static recompilation / native port" projects. In October, God of War 3, GT Sport, Melee, and other ports were already surfacing. Watch aggregators like allrecomps.com, Trendshift, and r/emulation.
Move within one or two weeks of the source appearing. Don't compete with the source on tech; build one-click install, auto-update, graphical settings, and save backups, and add the features that look good in videos (high framerate, frame generation, HDR).
Switching platforms is another route too: in the Bloodborne wave, the Mac and Steam Deck versions are clearly underdeveloped (the Mac version tops out at 270 stars), so the next wave will have the same gap.
Name it in week one, add an attribution clause to the license, and open a Discord to collect bugs.

How to get users: Don't wait to be found. Send builds to YouTube creators who make emulator tutorials and GPU benchmarks; they need a "which version is best" topic. Post side-by-side comparisons and gameplay threads in the subreddit for each game. Let others build mods and tools on your version, and they will bring traffic for you.

When the window is: The window is two to three weeks after the hype starts. After that, "the best version" is already taken. The Bloodborne wave's window closed at the end of October.

What would show you're wrong: ① When the next native-port wave arrives and the source author builds the launcher, auto-updater, and graphics menu themselves, the downstream productization gap disappears. ② If Sony issues DMCA takedowns against bbport or Supermedo and the whole category gets cleared, this path carries more risk than reward. ③ The opposite case: if Lantern's stars re-accelerate during the cooldown (say, back above 400 per week), the Bloodborne tail is longer than expected and the cross-platform versions still have a shot.

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Data and sources: GitHub repo page and release download counts (11-06); Trendshift 302591; YouTube video view counts (11-06); r/BloodbornePC post titles and search snippets (full text could not be opened); Wccftech (10-07), IGN and GameSpot coverage of the Sony DMCA; the project README and LICENSE. Unique-user figures are estimates.

GitHub repo ↗

Research notes: competitor table, acquisition evidence, full research report

Competitors

Name	Where	Launched	Scale	How it differs from this one
Supermedo/bloodborne_pc	Open source	2026-10-06	5,168 stars, about 720k release downloads	The earliest native Windows build; press cited it and it has the most users. Lantern came 5 days later, positioned on stability, more options, multiplayer, and Linux.
deadinside28/bloodborne_pc (bbport)	Open source	2026-10-01	3,925 stars / 1,105 forks, about 64k downloads	Technical source, engineering-focused. Lantern productizes on top of it.
shadPS4	Open source	2022-10	34,064 star	A general PS4 emulator with emulation overhead and manual setup. Lantern runs natively with one-click launch.
rainmakerv3/BB_Launcher	Open source	2024-12	545 star	A dedicated launcher on top of shadPS4. Lantern doesn't use an emulator.
DarkIzuku/bloodborne_pc	Open source	2026-10-05	107 star	Lantern's direct upstream, now largely unmaintained.
droogie/bbhost	Open source	2026-10-07	789 star	Online backend, integrated by Lantern.
Wooloomooloo2/bloodborne_mac_port and other Mac ports.	Open source	2026-10-11	270 star	Targets Apple Silicon/Metal.
Yharnam-Hunters/Paleblood	Open source	2026-10-07	158 stars, still doesn't run	A true decompilation route; a long-running project.
Sony's official PC version.	Big-company features	None	Does not exist.	No official competitor; this is the source of demand. Sony has a track record of DMCA takedowns against Bloodborne patches.

Where users come from

Verified YouTube tutorial and review creators: IgorL setup guide 54k views, Bryan Fox "220 FPS Definitive Way" 24k, fromsoftserve 14k, WithinUK "The BEST Way" 10k, Karan Benchmarks 7.7 thousand, 3pi 5.7 thousand (YouTube Data API 2026-11-06).
Verified Media and top-video traffic driven by the category event: Wccftech 10-07 covered the bbport/Supermedo native ports; top videos in the same category include 1155 do ET 1.52M, Venom Gaming 570k, and others. Lantern captures the second wave of "which version is best" searches.
Verified Reddit r/BloodbornePC reputation and comparisons: "Awakenchan's port is inarguably the best one out there", low-spec multi-version comparisons, "Which port is best?", Steam Deck threads.
Verified Forums, aggregators, and overseas communities: NeoGAF main thread, Korean dcinside install guide, allrecomps, githubsignals, indiekings, ammonis.
Verified Trendshift chart: best daily rank in the C# category was #5 (10-14).
Verified Ecosystem lock-in (third-party tools and mods built on it): Ammonis v1.43.0 supports installing Bloodborne achievements via Lantern; BloodborneFSS is built on Lantern.
Verified Retention from Discord and the self-updating launcher: README: bugs go to Discord #issues; the launcher self-updates, with package.json requested about 104k times.
Inferred X / paid ads: x-radar local corpus has 0 entries; no evidence of ads found.

Awakenchan/LanternEngine: why it runs

Research date 2026-11-06. Data sources: our GitHub database (repo_profile / repo_day), the GitHub API (release download counts), the YouTube Data API, and Jina search and page text.

One line

Lantern Engine (formerly BloodBorneButPc) is a downstream integration build in the wave of "native PC ports" of Bloodborne: players supply their own PS4 game dump, and it provides a launcher plus a modified runtime that lets the game code run directly on the PC CPU, with graphics translated to Vulkan. It was not the first to do this, nor does it have the most stars. It got traction for two reasons: it landed right as the "bbport native port" buzz hit in October of 2026, and among a pile of forks it pushed "easiest to set up, most options, updated most often" as far as it would go. YouTube tutorial makers and the r/BloodbornePC community then pushed it as "the best version."

1. Why it took off

Timing: a platform event, with demand built up for 11 years.

2026-10-01 deadinside28/bloodborne_pc (bbport) was created: the PS4 version's x86-64 code runs as-is, paired with a runtime written only for this game to replace the PS4 system libraries, with the renderer adapted from shadPS4. To date it has 3,925 stars and 1,105 forks (GitHub API, 2026-11-06).
2026-10-06 Supermedo released a Windows fork, and 2026-10-07 Wccftech reported "11 years after release, Bloodborne finally gets an unofficial native PC port" (wccftech). DSOGaming, NeoGAF, and ResetEra all discussed it at the same time.
Starting around 2026-10-05, a range of forks appeared together: DarkIzuku, Mrsuss60, yaonikaixin (a Chinese-language launcher), and Mac builds (Wooloomooloo2, bloodborne-native), among others.
2026-10-11 Lantern Engine was created, starting from DarkIzuku/bloodborne_pc (the README's Credits state: DarkIzuku → bbport + shadPS4). So it's a fork of a fork, 10 days after the source.

Demand base: Bloodborne never came to PC, and it's the port FromSoftware fans have wanted for the longest time. Before this, players could only play through the shadPS4 emulator, and Sony issued a DMCA takedown 2025 years ago against Lance McDonald's 60fps patch (IGN, GameSpot). Once "native, high frame rate" became possible, the pent-up demand was released all at once.

Growth data

Stars: 1,537, forks 66, repo age 26 days. Single-day peak +163 (2026-10-18); last 7 days +287, first 7 days +435, now cooling (data card / github repo_day).
Trendshift: in the C# category daily chart, it made the top 25, best rank #5 (2026-10-14) (trendshift). It never made GitHub's official trending, because the repo is under about 60 days old (data card trending_days_any=0).
Real usage says more than stars: 26 days, 141 releases. Windows zip downloads total about 147k, Linux packages about 5 thousand; the package.json that the launcher's self-update pulls was requested about 104k times (GitHub API, 2026-11-06 summary). Download counts include repeat updates from the same users, so unique-user figures should be discounted; estimated in the tens of thousands (unverified). The recent betas each get 9 thousand to 12k downloads, showing a group of active users following updates.
Comparison: Supermedo/bloodborne_pc has 5,168 stars, its 27 releases total about 720k downloads; deadinside28's releases about 64k downloads. Lantern's stars are only 30% of Supermedo's, and its downloads are roughly 20%–35% of it. In this community it's the strongest of the second tier, not the leader.

Where users come from (growth levers)

YouTube tutorial and review creators (main channel). YouTube Data API search turned up videos that name Lantern: IgorL - Emulation Guides "Bloodborne now has a PC Port! - Setup Guide" 54k views (11-01, with "Lantern Engine Setup" as the first chapter); Bryan Fox "Bloodborne at 220 FPS: The Definitive Way to Play on PC" 24k; fromsoftserve "BloodborneFSS…added to Lantern Engine" 14k; WithinUK "The BEST Way to Play Bloodborne on PC? | Lantern Engine" 10k; Karan Benchmarks GPU comparison 7.7 thousand; 3pi "Most OPTIMIZED Launcher…" 5.7 thousand; plus several partnered tutorials and HDR videos in the thousands. The top videos on the Bloodborne PC port topic (1155 do ET 1.52M, Venom Gaming 570k, N-tertainment 490k, Keyvan 290k, Karan 280k) mostly covered bbport or Supermedo early on and built up the category. Lantern captures the second wave of traffic from those creators' "which version is best" follow-ups.
Reddit r/BloodbornePC reception. Threads include "Awakenchan's port is inarguably the best one out there", "I tested the versions by Supermedo, Awakenchan, and Jgamrot" (a benchmark on a low-end GTX 1650), "Which port is best?", "BBHost, BBPort, Bloodborne_PC, Lantern Engine", plus a Steam Deck gameplay thread. One representative reply compares them: "Lantern hardly crashes but it's a bit laggy, Supermedo has less stuttering but crashes occasionally". There are also negative threads, such as "Lantern Engine almost bricked my gaming setup" (the Reddit page was 403, so only the search snippet could be read).
Forums and aggregators: a page-10 post in the NeoGAF main thread shares Lantern's DLSS frame generation beta; the Korean dcinside Bloodborne board has a Lantern install guide; allrecomps.com, githubsignals.io, indiekings.com (10-21), and ammonis.top (10-27) all list it; there is an Instagram reel.
Ecosystem lock-in: third-party achievement tool Ammonis v1.43.0 explicitly supports "Bloodborne installed via Lantern". The fromsoftserve visual enhancement pack BloodborneFSS is built directly on Lantern. Others build on top of it, and in turn that brings it traffic.
Discord community and self-updating launcher: bugs are routed to Discord #issues. The launcher updates itself, so you install once and keep following new versions. Retention and reuse both depend on it.
No evidence of paid acquisition, ads, or creator deals. The project is free (GPL), and the multiplayer servers are sponsored by 1337 Hosting (per the README). A local X corpus search for "Lantern Engine bloodborne" returned 0 posts over 30 to 45 days, so it never caught on on X.

Why it made the list

Lowest barrier to entry: download the zip → pick the game folder → Play. You can add Bloodborne.exe to Steam as a non-Steam game, and the launcher handles its own updates.
Most complete feature set: DLSS SR/FG (RTX 50 supports dynamic multi-frame generation), FSR 3.1/4/4.1, XeSS, HDR, 240fps with high-framerate physics fixes (jump distance, slope speed, cape jitter), precompiled shader cache to reduce stutter, occlusion culling, cheat menu, trophies, a 4K menu via Real-ESRGAN, keyboard/mouse menu, auto-save backups every 10 minutes, Dream Online (bbhost) and seamless co-op (Frankfurt servers), Linux and Steam Deck (see release notes and ammonis).
Extremely fast updates: 26 releases in 141 days, with a beta nearly every day.

2. Competitors

Name	Form	Launched	Scale	How Lantern differs
shadPS4	Open-source PS4 emulator	2022-10	34,064 star	General-purpose emulator with CPU emulation overhead, requires manual config tuning; Lantern's renderer is adapted from it
BB_Launcher(rainmakerv3)	shadPS4-specific launcher / mod manager	2024-12	545 star	Runs on the emulator; Lantern is a native runtime
deadinside28/bloodborne_pc(bbport)	Native port source	2026-10-01	3,925 stars / 1,105 forks, about 64k downloads	Technical origin, leans Linux and engineering-focused; Lantern productized on top of it
Supermedo/bloodborne_pc	Native Windows fork	2026-10-06	5,168 stars, about 720k downloads, 13 languages	The earliest Windows version, cited by media coverage, with the largest user base; reputation is fewer stutters but occasional crashes. Lantern came 5 days later, pitching more stability, more options, multiplayer and Linux
DarkIzuku/bloodborne_pc	Windows fork (Lantern's starting point)	2026-10-05	107 star	Upstream, largely unmaintained after 10-22; Lantern took it over and heavily reworked it
droogie/bbhost	Online backend / "Definitive Bloodborne PC Experience"	2026-10-07	789 star	Leans toward multiplayer backend; Lantern integrates it directly
Wooloomooloo2 / bloodborne-native(Mac)	Apple Silicon port	2026-10-10/11	270 / 64 star	Different platforms.
Paleblood	A true decompilation	2026-10-07	158 stars, still doesn't run	Completely different route, long-term project
CLSAMG22/BBSC, NightwatchCoop	Seamless co-op mods	2026-10	216 / 57 star	Single feature; Lantern already includes co-op
Official	big tech	None	Sony has still not released a PC version	No official competitor, which is itself the opportunity; but Sony has a track record of DMCA takedowns

3. Differentiation, and whether that's why it broke out

Lantern has no exclusive technical foundation; its core code comes from bbport and shadPS4. Its differentiation lies in productization and iteration speed:

an all-in-one WPF launcher that can self-update;
packs every upscaling and frame generation option, HDR, high-framerate physics fixes, multiplayer, trophies and cheats into one package;
releases every day and responds to bugs directly on Discord;
brands itself as "Lantern Engine" (renamed from BloodBorneButPc), and its LICENSE additionally requires keeping the "Lantern Engine by Awaken" attribution and bars others from using the name. In an environment full of forks, it establishes the brand first.

That's exactly why it took off. With stars and downloads trailing Supermedo, it captured the spot of "most stable, most features, best for video demos at 220fps / DLSS frame generation", earning YouTubers' "Definitive / BEST / Most OPTIMIZED" titles. However, this differentiation is easy to catch up with: all forks are GPL, so features can be copied across.

4. Visibility and copycats

Visibility: circulating in small circles. It's well known in the Bloodborne PC player community (r/BloodbornePC, NeoGAF, YouTube emulation channels), but mainstream gaming media covers bbport and Supermedo, and only small sites like indiekings and ammonis name Lantern. It has no voice on X. The project takes no money, so there is no public revenue.
Copycats: the whole category is the same GPL code forking over and over. Projects building on or imitating Lantern include fromsoftserve's BloodborneFSS (visual enhancement version), theitsnschool/bloodborne-windows-native-loader (11-03), and others. Its LICENSE specifically bans others from using its name, which suggests people have already taken its version to pass off as their own or rename and redistribute.

5. What others can learn

The "source-level technical breakthrough + downstream productization" position: source authors usually only handle the technology. Whoever first completes installation, self-updating, graphics menus and multiplayer captures the tutorial authors and ordinary players.
Daily betas plus Discord bug collection staked the claim to "the best version" during the hype window.
Actively building features that look good on video (240fps, DLSS frame generation, HDR, 4K menu) naturally turns into YouTube content.
Renaming early to build a brand, and adding an attribution clause to the license.
The same playbook can carry over to other "static recompilation / native port" waves (October also saw ports of God of War 3, GT Sport, Melee and others).

6. Uncertain

Unique users: many downloads are repeat updates, and unique user counts are unverified.
Discord membership and retention figures were not obtained.
Reddit post bodies were 403; only search snippets were used.
Legal risk: Sony has a track record of DMCA takedowns against Bloodborne patches, and projects like this could be pulled at any time. The project doesn't ship game files, which mitigates some of the risk but cannot eliminate it.
A ResetEra thread calls bbport "vibe coded" (judging by the title, the source may have heavily used AI-written code). The body was not read; unverified.
Momentum is slowing (stars in the last 7 days were about 34% lower than in the prior 7 days). Whether it can hold on long-term depends on Sony's stance and how competitors like Supermedo catch up.

This article was written by AI from public data and the data we collect daily. Numbers are sourced, and inferences are labeled.