PCSX2 is an open source PS2 Emulator
pcsx2.net
pcsx2.net
Unfortunately even with a 12900k and a literal RTX 4090, Shadow of The Colossus still lags below 60fps in many situations. That's my "white whale" for PS2, like Metal Gear Solid 4 is for PS3. That game also doesn't work perfectly in it's PS3 emulator.
Here's what the update dialog looks like: https://files.catbox.moe/fky7br.png
Here's what the emulator itself looks like with real usage: https://files.catbox.moe/pa3m30.png
> Well, SOTC is a game whose frame rate can increase and decrease
> wildly. Actually, we have incorporate the variable frame rate
> in the design - it increases and decreases with load balancing.
> Although there are cases when it reaches 60 fps, there are also
> times when it falls to the 15 fps range, but the motion blur helps
> to smooth over this, and the player's sensation of frame rate
> changes is held down to a minimum.
https://www.eurogamer.net/digitalfoundry-2018-shadow-of-the-...
I just beat it on PS5, it further upscales the PS4 version or something but I’m not invested enough to care about the semantics
Enjoyed ending those Colossi
However, when I revisted it on real PS2 hardware 10 years ago, I was shocked how clunky it was compared to my memories.
GTA:SA looks like a sad and dull imitation of itself on a modern TV.
* Plays original copies from your computer's DVD drive (which may be a bit slower to respond than original hardware though)
* Plays Grandia III very well on my 2012 laptop (3rd-gen i5 and integrated GPU) (needed to change some interlacing settings to get rid of some flashing). Also obviously allows you to save anywhere you want. The original game doesn't have any save points in dungeons! Possibly only playable on an emulator? :p
* PS3 and USB-HID controller support
* Didn't play my Taiko no Tatsujin copy very well, but maybe my system isn't quite up to the task
Oh, kids are yelling? Take a save state. Phone is ringing? Save state.
I can't be in my 30s and tell people "sorry, I was making my way to a save point".
Save points were invented because of a lack of space for proper saves and because yes, coding a full state save is hard. But with today's hardware there is no excuse. And if it's an AAA they can just take 0.001% off the marketing budget and pay a team to do proper saves.
If they just save your character at predefined save points, not really.
You can load games from an external drive over the USB port too but the transfer speeds are much slower than the disc drive so most games have issues. MC2SIO recently came out though, which uses the memory card interface to access games on a microsd card - my understanding is that the transfer speeds over that are much better so it's also a good option.
I think you've got this backwards - the only way to run ps1 games from OPL is via POPstarter, which is an emulator. Speed/compatibility is not great for a lot of titles either.
The reason for this is that when you put an actual PS1 disc into a PS2 the system uses the PS1 CPU inside as the main CPU (it's used as an audio co-processor when in PS2 mode), and there's no way for OPL to trigger this while still loading from the ISO in the background.
Though nowadays it's possible to even play games through the SD -> memory card adapter (which is faster than the USB on the system) or even hw mod that enables internal HD on slim PS2.
Once you get that going, there’s a Bluetooth patch for PS4 controllers, IIRC. :)
It's really great, except for the fact that Browser 2.x becomes hilariously slow to scroll through after around 40 games on the drive. Furthermore the PS2 stores applications as disk partitions, so removing applications creates Mac OS9 style heap fragmentation until you compact everything. Practically speaking this didn't matter at the time, since the PS2 HDD was only ever used for game installs[1] and the firmware was locked to one Sony-blessed model of 40GB HDD.
The NAS route is the only option if you have a Slim PS2. Some of the slim models can be modded to add IDE back in, but not all.
[0] An updated version of the PS2 dashboard - YES, it was updatable - intended to support an online service called Broadband Navigator. It supported e-mail and downloadable demos, including one PS1 game demo that wound up being the basis for the PSP's PS1 support.
[1] Most of which were actually disabled in the US releases
There are PS1 emulators running on the PS2 (one by Sony) but it's not very good.
But you can soft mod a PS2 to run burned PS1 discs. I recently did this because my ffVII disc 2 is scratched.
Would it be possible to just run a Docker container with SMBv1 that only has access to your game ISOs and nothing else? Feels like that'd be better from a safety viewpoint.
FWIW, don't let the "alpha" label fool you, AetherSX2 (https://www.aethersx2.com/archive/) works like a charm on this M1 Mac. Admittedly, I only tested a couple of games, but it has been much better than PCSX2 in every possible way so far.
> Update 2023/01/10: I no longer have any active online presence in any community. Anyone claiming to be Tahlreth, or represent AetherSX2, is impersonating and scamming you. I hope the threats and hate will stop now.
Well that's disheartening :(
Sure, there are lots of people who load their translated roms into emulators without any drama, but they are just as part of the emulation scene as torrent users are part of the warez scene. It is how much you are involved.
You don't have to suffer through wonky PC ports.
What's hard to understand?
If you haven't played the first (and can withstand PS1 era visuals), I'd recommend it as well. It really sets the stage for what the series is about
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRnrSlL-Oug
Grab some popcorn because its a hell of a ride.
If anything, the synopsis was toned down a bit.
I view the MGS games as glorified soap operas. They’re a lot of fun and the plots are addicting, just don’t think about them too hard.
Is it, in theory, possible to make, eg Atari 2600 (or NES, or Sega) emulator from QEMU?
Qemu takes a higher level approach that basically guarantees that over a period of time, one tick of the CPU corresponds to X ticks of the GPU on average and does expose a fair amount of host memory performance characteristics such as TLB/L1/L2 cache misses. PS2 games weren’t built to account for pipeline flushes or memory stalls, for example.
I still find it so funny that they figured the best way to run the GPU was to have 2560 bit wide data bus on 4MB of RAM. So you could go fill rate crazy but on a very limited data set.
QEMU is a great project, but to begin with flexibility was not a primary design goal. Majority of QEMU targets are PC-like hardware and older consoles have unique or alien architecture. To emulate it using QEMU you'll have to patch it internals heavily. It's also written in C so you can't just integrate a lot of fancy libraries into it.
QEMU is also important infrastructure project playing crucial part in *nix virtualization stack. Which means getting any code upstreamed is hard. Emulation projects primary goal is to make games run both accurately and as fast as possible which means developers will use as many shortcuts as possible.
QEMU is a massive code base too. Getting into it will take a lot of time and it could be easier to maintain single-target emulator instead since it's easier for new contributors to start working on it. You'll have to fork QEMU anyway and won't be able to push your changes upstream then what the point to use it?
And the PS4 uses a custom AMD x86-64 chip.
An Xbox 360 is slightly more difficult as that is a PowerPC architecture (RISC vs. CISC of x86) Same for the PS3 except you also have those incredibly weird "SPE" cores to try and emulate as well.
Of course if your goal is to just have games from OG Xbox playable on a PC that is fine (if anything for most games it is an improvement as they'd run smoother) but if you want cycle accurate emulation it doesn't fit the bill. In that case basing the emulator on something like 86box might be better as that has been designed with the goal of achieving cycle accurate PC hardware emulation.
AFAIK DevKitPro (https://devkitpro.org) doesn't support PS yet...
Would love to patch it so Singstar worked with the official dongle 2 player (atm it treats the dongle like any other mic, which means both slots only provide one side of a stereo input source). Zero c++ experience but feels like it would be doable.
Thanks for the great work.