Destiny 1 on Sunrise

The build

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every fact in these pages is about one build: the PS4 executable of Destiny 1, version 1.29. Other builds are used for names and cross-checks only.

PS4 version 1.29

property	value
title	`CUSA00219`, the US release
version	1.29
date	September 2016
module name	`tiger_release_final`
executable size	29.1 MB
executable SHA-256	`7271fcb926401df8defb126cb8eb2b247134138b81e401bbacb2ab60791b7954`
compiler	Sony’s clang toolchain, release build
obfuscation	none: no packing and no control-flow flattening
class names	full Itanium RTTI, with 1,380 Bungie `c_` and `s_` type names

The executable is plain. Unlike the Destiny 2 PC build, nothing is encrypted and every string can be read from the file.

The platform layer

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The engine has a thin operating-system layer of its own. It is about 330 functions, most of them one to three lines around one Sony system call. The Xbox One build and the Destiny 2 PC build have the same layer, with the same struct offsets, call shapes and enums. They call Win32 where the PS4 build calls the PS4 kernel or Fios2.

Third-party libraries make most system calls themselves. Havok, Wwise, CRI, Demonware, NP Toolkit and Oodle each have their own small platform layer. The engine’s layer does not cover them. About 1,021 of the 1,189 kernel call sites outside the C library sit in the upper part of the image, mostly in that library code.

Time and frame pacing

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The game runs at a fixed 30 ticks a second and one tick a frame. Gameplay time is counted in ticks, not seconds. A slow frame slows the game down; it does not catch up.

The same “time control” engine is in all four builds checked: Destiny 1 PS4, Destiny 1 Xbox, Destiny 2 PS4 and Destiny 2 PC. They share the config struct, the pump loop, the tick accumulator and the published frame record. How Destiny 2 PC changes it is in Compared with Destiny 2 PC.

Compared with Destiny 2 PC

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Destiny 1 is a console build. It has no frame rate setting, no vsync choice, no mouse or keyboard, no resolution change and no field-of-view setting. The Destiny 2 PC build, 86657, has all of them, built on the same engine. This page lists what Destiny 2 PC does for each feature and what the Destiny 1 code has in its place.

Frame pacing

Both games use the same time control engine. See Time and frame pacing for Destiny 1’s. Destiny 2 PC changes four things:

Rendering

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The engine renders through a thin Bungie render API. Under it sits Sony’s own graphics library, linked into the executable. Nothing outside the render layer writes GPU commands. What reaches the render API is GPU-level data: raw texture, sampler and buffer descriptors, render targets as raw register sets, and shader structs that point at GCN machine code.

Two layers

layer	what it is
render API	Bungie code: contexts, draws, state, clears, queries, recording and submission, plus frame, surface and job code
libGnm, GpuAddress, libGnmx	Sony’s library, linked statically: descriptor helpers, the command packet writers, tiling math, and `GfxContext` with its constant update engine

Code outside the render layer calls Sony’s library only to set up descriptors and to do tiling math: the surface allocator, lookup textures and the crash screen. The UI draws through the same render API as the world.
One function submits work to the GPU. It is the only caller of both Sony submit calls.

The backend boundary

There is no virtual render interface in any Tiger build. Each platform links its own version of the same plain functions, with the same engine-side arguments. Destiny 2 PS4’s RTTI names no device, context, resource or state class either.

The Activity Host

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

In Destiny 1 a light server process, the Activity Host, runs the mission script. It decides mission progress from small facts the clients report. It does not simulate the world. Simulation runs on the players’ consoles: one console is the physics peer, and every console runs its own actors, movement and combat.

Two sources describe this. Bungie’s own talk gives the design. The PS4 client’s code confirms the parts on this page that name a message or a state.

Actors and AI

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Actors run on each player’s console, not on a server. This page covers how an actor chooses and blends its actions, how factions are stored, and how objects are filtered.

The action system

Bungie described Destiny 1’s animation in the SIGGRAPH 2014 course Destiny Character-Animation System and Lessons Learned. Its networking section was never published, so the course says nothing about the wire.

An action is one behavior: locomotion, a melee, an emote. Destiny 1 has 75 action types.