Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[Great Deceiver]

Actually that's my bad, I played the ps3 version of Siren on RPCS3 and it worked fine. Haven't played PS2 Siren in ages.

But I do remember a lot of games had to be played in software mode due to compatibility issues. It didn't bother me that much.

 

[Perkel]

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on ryujinx emulator is pretty much playable. No graphical bugs and it runs 30ish on my Ryzen 3600. On bigger areas it can hit 20ish fps sometimes dip even below that. It runs full speed with Yuzu but it has graphical glitches and game likes to crash often.

 

[ferratilis]

PS2 Press Discs and Prototypes
From an anonymous donor, this collection of disc images were provided to press outlets for use in reviewing Playstation 2 (PS2) games and titles. As lead time (time between finishing layout and printing) could be as much as 30 or 60 days, developers often would have to send press versions of the games that were not quite ready. These are a selection of those discs.

PS2 Press Discs and Prototypes : Free Software : Free Download, Borrow and Streaming : Internet Archive

 

[lightbane]

I wasn't sure where to put this, but it is worth sharing anyway:
Remember Ni No Kuni? The good one, the OC for the DS? It got a Spanish translation, later an English translation as well. Now though, here's a save-file with all of the DLCs! Note that they do not fully work, but it's something at least, seeing that it is impossible to acquire them legally nowadays. I remember there was a mobile phone game as well, but it was never translated, perhaps for the best.

https://gbatemp.net/threads/ni-no-kuni-translation-eng.373770/
Check thoroughly for the DLC files.

 

[Duraframe300]

CHD Support just got merged into pcsx2, so if you have some bin/cue/iso ps2 games laying around on your HDD you can save some space.

https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/pull/4314

 

[Duraframe300]

And just for those unfamiliar with it:

First you need chdman.exe. You can get it by downloading the latest Mame

https://www.mamedev.org/

Then create a .bat file in your ps2 folder (put chdman.exe alongside it), edit it with notepad and copy/paste the following into it:

for /r %%i in (*.cue, *.iso) do chdman createcd -i "%%i" -o "%%~ni.chd"

Save and double-click on the bat file. It will go through your entire folder and convert everything to CHD. If you have a big PS2 library this can easily save you hunderds of GB of space (quite possible more) with no downsides. For example the entire US PS2 library could be fit into less than 2TB this way.

It's completely lossless as well, so easily reversible.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

And just for those unfamiliar with it:

First you need chdman.exe. You can get it by downloading the latest Mame

https://www.mamedev.org/

Then create a .bat file in your ps2 folder (put chdman.exe alongside it), edit it with notepad and copy/paste the following into it:

for /r %%i in (*.cue, *.iso) do chdman createcd -i "%%i" -o "%%~ni.chd"

Save and double-click on the bat file. It will go through your entire folder and convert everything to CHD. If you have a big PS2 library this can easily save you hunderds of GB of space (quite possible more) with no downsides. For example the entire US PS2 library could be fit into less than 2TB this way.

It's completely lossless as well, so easily reversible.

Is CHD format better than CSO?

 

[flyingjohn]

And just for those unfamiliar with it:

First you need chdman.exe. You can get it by downloading the latest Mame

https://www.mamedev.org/

Then create a .bat file in your ps2 folder (put chdman.exe alongside it), edit it with notepad and copy/paste the following into it:

for /r %%i in (*.cue, *.iso) do chdman createcd -i "%%i" -o "%%~ni.chd"

Save and double-click on the bat file. It will go through your entire folder and convert everything to CHD. If you have a big PS2 library this can easily save you hunderds of GB of space (quite possible more) with no downsides. For example the entire US PS2 library could be fit into less than 2TB this way.

It's completely lossless as well, so easily reversible.

Is CHD format better than CSO?

It compresses somewhat better and can be used for more console games.
You will see a difference between 200-600 mb depending on the game.

 

[Lutte]

Chds work even on segacd (but only with genesisgxplus core emulator from retroarch, other genesis emus are too primitive) and it's a fucking boon. Not a huge amount of good games on the platform, but Silpheed for example goes from 562mb in bin/cue format to 229mb and it's a game heavy on prerecorded video (background animation) and cd audio tracks.

Dreamcast games also heavily benefit. There's a lot of games that should really be compact like arcade shmups with take an ungodly amount of space in native GDI format but are acceptable in chd. Triggerheart Exelica is 1.2gb in gdi format for example, but only 127mb in chd, one of the most extreme examples I could think of for chd compression.

 

[Duraframe300]

And just for those unfamiliar with it:

First you need chdman.exe. You can get it by downloading the latest Mame

https://www.mamedev.org/

Then create a .bat file in your ps2 folder (put chdman.exe alongside it), edit it with notepad and copy/paste the following into it:

for /r %%i in (*.cue, *.iso) do chdman createcd -i "%%i" -o "%%~ni.chd"

Save and double-click on the bat file. It will go through your entire folder and convert everything to CHD. If you have a big PS2 library this can easily save you hunderds of GB of space (quite possible more) with no downsides. For example the entire US PS2 library could be fit into less than 2TB this way.

It's completely lossless as well, so easily reversible.

Is CHD format better than CSO?

What flyingjohn said. That said I've never seen gains of 200MB+ between CSO and CHD in the amount of testing I've done so far. It's still a lot comparatively of course the bigger your collection is. That said if you already have a huge collection in CSO format and you have space to spare I'm not sure it's worth the time investment to convert them twice back to iso and in a CHD.

Also there's a dude on archive.org that uploads collections already in CHD format, so you may just want to wait a *bit* for him to do the PS2 and just *replace* your games. Depending on your internet connection that's probably the faster method if you don't mind going for the seven seas.

 

[Malamert]

I am trying to play Mary Skelter 2 on yuzu/ryujinx (latest versions) but without success so far. While the game show a black screen on yuzu it can be started with ryujinx. My problem with ryujinx is that after the prologue (when the base has been reached and activated), every time I try to save the game, the emulator crashes. I deleted all the cashes and save game folder and tried to play it again from scratch, with the same result.
Has anyone tried it?

Using the latest version of Ryujinx and just got to the base. It saved just fine without crashing.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I am trying to play Mary Skelter 2 on yuzu/ryujinx (latest versions) but without success so far. While the game show a black screen on yuzu it can be started with ryujinx. My problem with ryujinx is that after the prologue (when the base has been reached and activated), every time I try to save the game, the emulator crashes. I deleted all the cashes and save game folder and tried to play it again from scratch, with the same result.
Has anyone tried it?

Using the latest version of Ryujinx and just got to the base. It saved just fine without crashing.

The first time I found the base it worked also for me. It start crashing right after, when I started to explore the dungeons again.

 

[Malamert]

The first time I found the base it worked also for me. It start crashing right after, when I started to explore the dungeons again.

Huh, left the base and walked around a bit in the Underground Cavern. Saved in the cavern then teleported back to base and saved there as well. Worked fine.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

The first time I found the base it worked also for me. It start crashing right after, when I started to explore the dungeons again.

Huh, left the base and walked around a bit in the Underground Cavern. Saved in the cavern then teleported back to base and saved there as well. Worked fine.

That is strange... by the way, I am running the v1.0.2 version of the game.

 

[Malamert]

That is strange... by the way, I am running the v1.0.2 version of the game.

1.0.4 here with all the DLCs.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

That is strange... by the way, I am running the v1.0.2 version of the game.

1.0.4 here with all the DLCs.

I think I found a trick: the game crashes if I try to save in the file position >= 5, I tried to save on previous file positions (< 5) and it seems to work... I will try the 1.0.4 in any case.

 

[Malamert]

I think I found a trick: the game crashes if I try to save in the file position >= 5, I tried to save on previous file positions (< 5) and it seems to work... I will try the 1.0.4 in any case.

That's odd. Saved multiple times and overwrote saves in 5 and above and it worked just fine. Might just be that older version of the game that has issues.

 

[aweigh]

I usually play with Vsync off (I have a g-sync monitor) but it makes no difference in this case. I've tried every sync option under the sun and it makes no difference with regards to pacing. OpenGL seems a little better but there's a lot of stuttering and caching with OpenGL in Yuzu (even with a nVidia card) so I prefer Vulkan by far.

You're not crazy. Ryujinx devs have commented before that the windowing applets that the emulators use can produce inconsistent frame times, with the Ryujinx dev saying Ryujinx is the worse one for this. I read this in a post in r/emulation from someone complaining about how frame pacing felt "weird" on Ryujinx.

For me I find it depends heavily on the game, for example Super Mario Odyssey and Bowser's Fury feel absolutely FANTASTIC for me on current Yuzu at 60fps, they play better and feel better to play than a lot of actual native PC games I have installed, however those two are by far the exception, no other game I have played on Yuzu feels that good.

Both Ryujinx and Yuzu have big updates coming though, both are currently in the process of overhauling how the shader systems work, and at least in Ryujinx's case the dev mentioned in that reddit post that they are specifically planning on replacing the window rendering applet completely eventually.

EDIT: Oh, Ryujinx is also going to be adding VULKAN soon too.

 

[aweigh]

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on ryujinx emulator is pretty much playable. No graphical bugs and it runs 30ish on my Ryzen 3600. On bigger areas it can hit 20ish fps sometimes dip even below that. It runs full speed with Yuzu but it has graphical glitches and game likes to crash often.

I just recently finished Xenoblade Chronicles 1: Definitive Edition on Ryujinx, sank 87 hours into it and it's the best RPG I've played in a long time! I'm completely hooked, line and sinker, on the Xenoblade franchise from now on and am going to jump straight into Xenoblade Chronicles "X" now via CEMU emulator.

As far as performance goes that sounds exactly like my recent experience with Xenoblade 1 DE:

- Originally I started it on Yuzu but moved the save games to Ryujinx because graphics didn't render right.
- On Ryujinx I played through the entire game with average framerates of 25-30fps, with some heavy areas bringing the fps to the low 20s for moments. Heavy fights ranged from 15-30fps and yeah it did cause me to miss button prompts.

Honestly, it wasn't the best experience frame-rate wise but I stuck with it because I just wanted to keep playing Xenoblade. The game is that fucking good. In fact, looking back, I almost can't believe I sunk 90 hours into a game that I played with that performance, I'm usually very snobbish when it comes to that.

However... I can't do it again for Xenoblade 2. I'm going to wait until either: 1) Ryujinx/Yuzu performance dramatically improves for Xenoblade 2, which could take 1 year or more; 2) might even end up buying a used Switch Lite just to play Xenoblade 2.

Meanwhile I'm off to XBC "X" on CEMU at 60fps

 

[Perkel]

Mind you that XCX is much worse game. Superb concept and imho even better combat than XC1 but there are sume huge design issues around quest and how game is presented to you.

As much as i wanted to love XCX because i loved concept i just had to gave up after a while the lack of QOL is just so annoying it is hard to play. And this comes from guy who can really play some nasty games QOL wise if there is something interesting in them.

First of don't even try to play it without guide. Otherwise you will be wasting literally hours to find something and if by chance it will be sidequest that locks you out from main quest progression you can literally spend 10s of hours trying to find something and never find it. There are 0 help in finding anything in game. It works at start but later on you will get some sidequest that will ask you to for example find specific place which has specific RNG monster only at night (which game doesn't inform you about) that has very small RNG change to drop something from its Tail which is btw hard to target. Oh and you need 10 of them.

Also mod the fuck out of that music. Exploration music is great but city music is atroctious garbage
No you can't modify camera speed in buildings. Enjous turing camera for multiple seconds just to change direction.

If there was definiteve edition there and fixed all those problems it would be easily 9/10 from what i have played, sadly without those improvements 6/10 where XC1 for me was 10/10

 

[aweigh]

There are 0 help in finding anything in game. It works at start but later on you will get some sidequest that will ask you to for example find specific place which has specific RNG monster only at night (which game doesn't inform you about) that has very small RNG change to drop something from its Tail which is btw hard to target. Oh and you need 10 of them.

I can definitely see how this would suck. This is the kind of thing that they fixed on XBC1 Definitive Edition, NPCs and your Quest Log make it a point to tell you (sometimes multiple times) exactly where and at what time it is that what you need to do can be done, and in most cases you can even activate a retard pointer that will just let you know immediately where it is or of it isn't there.

I have no experience with the original but I *think* this kind of comprehensive guiding was added to the DE? In any case there were multiple times where I can easily imagine becoming VERY frustrated if I the guiding system didn't point me in the right direction considering the density of crap you have to collect or kill, like for example when an enemy spawns only during a thunderstorm. I can't imagine the frustration I would have felt if the NPC/game didn't tell me that, or rather I can imagine it and I would not want to experience it.

I have heard similar complaints about the game, btw, specifically regarding this kind of thing so you're not the first one I've read to mention it. I'm going in prepared so the second I realize the game wants me to trial-and-error to find something I am going immediately to a FAQ.

I already did some FAQ usage for XBC1DE when NPCs would ask me for random crap; by the time I got to Alcamoth I would just look up on a FAQ to see specifically what monster dropped it or what NPC traded for it, if I could get it by trading I'd get it by trading or if the monster drop was easy to get I'd go do that.

EDIT:

It works at start but later on you will get some sidequest that will ask you to for example find specific place which has specific RNG monster only at night (which game doesn't inform you about) that has very small RNG change to drop something from its Tail which is btw hard to target. Oh and you need 10 of them.

Right, and I imagine the NPC doesn't mention that you HAVE to target the tail, right? Yeah, definitely see how that would sour the game. Thanks for the warning, I'll go in prepared.

As for the exploration music how can one mod it? I know the city and battle themes are awful from watching footage of the game already, huge change from the great music in XBC1DE. Is it an option in CEMU graphic packs?

 

[Great Deceiver]

Bros, I've just gotten myself a RaspberryJamma board (https://arpicade.com/) for my CRT arcade cabinet (basically a JAMMA interface for Raspberry Pi devices, I'm currently using a Pi 3B+) and it's awesome. The guy does them by hand with a custom DAC to convert video and audio into analog for the Jamma board, and he has replicated pretty much all custom video modes and weird timings (54hz for Midway games, 57hz for Sega System 16 games, etc.). He's ported a variety of emulator and emulator cores (custom versions of MAME such as Advmame or specific versions of the Retroarch core) into his operating system (called ARPICADE) and compatibility is pretty high.

Most of the stuff I throw at it runs perfectly at pixel-perfect native resolution and at the correct timings. As the Pi 3 is getting long in the tooth by now, some games don't run at full speed (most later Midway games which are notoriously a pain in the ass to emulate in more recent versions of MAME), but that's a fairly minor quibble.

It's definitely given my cab a renewed breath of life and I expect to buy another one of these for my vertical CRT cabinet. Hard to take pictures of tubes, especially with my shitty phone camera, but here's X-Men:COTA title screen to give an idea of proper 1:1 mapping on a CRT.

Even though I've been playing on emulators for decades at this point, on a proper cabinet this feels 99% like the real thing. I'm selling off all my CPS-2 boards now.

I was thinking of a MiSteR + Jamma board but that would have been much more expensive (300-400USD+ import taxes). I got a local deal for the RaspberryJamma + the Pi 3 B+ plus a 16gb microSD for about 150 USD. Can't beat that.

 

[Baron Dupek]

Gizmondo emulator is a thing?
huh
https://github.com/aidenfoxx/giz-emu

It's packed with the scene release of Alien Hominid (preview version), it does not seem to run any other game atm.

 

[Duraframe300]

So, remember how I said texture replacement was coming to pcsx2?
Well, that's over. Original author decided to tank it and instead only utilize it on his shitty fork.
But you may ask why? What horrible thing happened between the devs to provoke such a reaction?

Read for yourself:

Very recently, a member of the PCSX2 Dev Team, GovanifY, had made some remarks about LuaEngine/LuaBackend in the OpenKH server and has spread misinformation about it. Even though he is stating that none of those remarks were an attack on me personally, it is very clear that was the intention of those remarks, as the information he gave regarding it's usage and purpose, as well as some of the technical details, were highly misleading and incorrect.

After some time thinking about this, trying to get a reason out of him for the reason of those statements came up empty. As a result, I have taken a desicion.

Pull Request #4199 will be closed and separated from the main PCSX2 branch and all plans for LuaEngine's integration will now be cancelled and nullified. However, the texture replacement project will be ported over to the PCSX2-EX fork that FerocityVine initiated and I currently maintain and will continue it's life there. The works on the port will start tomorrow.

As a result, #4199 will no longer rely on #4005. And all builds on #updates will be nullified and invalidated. I apologize greatly for this inconvenience, and I humbly ask for your support on this decision.

 

[Duraframe300]

And the latest update

Once again we are back with another progress report bringing you amazing progress.

Written by lightningterror

Core Improvements
[Enhancement] #4115 PAD/Counters: Make VSync Queue adjustable in the UI. Extra Pad update. By refractionpcsx2.

New UI option (ini option has been there a while) so users can choose between a little bit extra performance or reduced input lag. Also added the PAD Update to the VSync call in Counters as it seemed to reduce input lag marginally.



[Enhancement] #4066 IPU: Return contents of the bottom of the FIFO in CMD except FDEC/VDEC. By refractionpcsx2.

This is based on the work by @PSI-Rockin on Dobiestation but modified based on the theory that it always returns the first 32bits of the FIFO unless an FDEC/VDEC command is executed, however FDEC is basically doing this anyway, but VDEC returns decoded information.

Fixed videos for probably all broken EA games, but namely:
F1 2001
F1 2002
Neo Contra
Shox
Theme Park Rollercoaster/World



[Enhancement] #4225 IPU: Fill Input FIFO on command end ready for next command. By refractionpcsx2.

Dance Summit 2001: So basically what the game does is it does some IPU stuff, but the DMA is left with 1 QWC left to be read on the DMA, on the hardware this will normally be flushed in to the FIFO. The game then does a FIFO reset (To get rid of it) then starts another DMA. The problem we have is because we still had the DMA pending for 1 QWC, it ignored the new DMA start and the IPU would hang up waiting for data to be fed in. This PR resolves that problem.

Test Drive: Also added DMA 4 (To IPU) being flushed if BCLR is called without first stopping the DMA.

Set the Picture type on VDEC to I-Picture if set to 0 in the IPU_CTRL, this fixes a bunch of Eyetoy games which incorrectly set this register.

Fixes EyeToy Play(1-3).
Fixes Bakufuu Slash!! Kizna Arashi.
Fixes Kaiketsu Zorro Mezase! SIF0 and SIF1 stall control.
Fixes Test Drive: IPU hang in middle of Event 5.



[Enhancement] DEV9 improvements:

#4062 DEV9: Support 16bit reads/writes to SPD_R_PIO_DATA & SPD_R_PIO_DIR. By TheLastRar.

This improves #3192, the online beta now sends a DHCP Discover packet, although it appears to be invalid.

#4059 DEV9: Generate unique MAC for TAP. By TheLastRar.

An unique MAC is needed for full compatibility with XLink Kai.

Uses a method similar to what was done for pcap.

#3932 DEV9: Add HDD emulation. By TheLastRar.

#4214 DEV9: Merge _DEV9*() functions into *Net(), and check ethEnable before calling InitNet(). By TheLastRar.

Previously, the ethEnable config value was not checked before starting network RX net thread.

#4219 DEV9: Fix crash on Linux when we fail to open the adapter. By TheLastRar.

#4149 DEV9: Re-add pcap (both bridged and switched) on windows. By TheLastRar.



[Enhancement] CDVD improvements:

#4314 #4045 CDVD: Add CHD compression format support. By rtissera, SleepyMan and siddhartha77.

#4146 CDVD: Increase buffer for DVD_LAYER_DESCRIPTOR. By refractionpcsx2.

#4236 CDVD: Implement mechacon command 0xEF. By F0bes.



[Enhancement] microVU improvements:

ee07f86 microVU: Implement Overflow checks. By refractionpcsx2.

Fixes Superman Returns.

413fd00 microVU: Fix jump caching when using doJumpAsSameProgram. By refractionpcsx2.

c9bc6ea microVU: Fix P flag instance on Ebit. By refractionpcsx2.

Also small fix for flag statuses on M-Bit on Branch.

0f7044a microVU: Removed full flag optimisations. By refractionpcsx2.

They were unused, broken and cluttering up the code.

#4198 microVU: Fix Esin opcode. By kozarovv.

Someone accidentally used bad function to analyze ESIN opcode on microVU, that generated bad values due to wrong register field being used.

Fixes X2 - Wolverine's Revenge.

f9d96f5 microVU: move the overflow flags to the correct position. By refractionpcsx2.



[Enhancement] VIF improvements:

ddffd9ac VIF: Fix MPG VU Address wrapping. By refractionpcsx2.

Fixes Boogie.

8999159 VIF: Clean up some old (incorrect) code. By refractionpcsx2.



[Enhancement] SPU2 improvements:

#4074 SPU2: Attempt 96khz sample rate if 48khz fails (WASAPI). By refractionpcsx2.

WASAPI is terrible and doesn't support sample rate conversion in shared (normal) mode and requires exclusive mode.

This PR basically attempts to double the PS2 sample rate of 48khz to 96khz as this tends to be the other windows default. If this fails it will put a log message to say you need to use Exclusive mode.

Note: When using PS1 game emulation you will need to use exclusive mode, nothing I can do about this (44.1khz doesn't divide nicely from 48khz or 96khz).

#4057 #4085 f1e44bf SPU2: Improve DMA/IRQ timing. By refractionpcsx2.

Fixes The Simple 2000 Series Vol 51 - The Senkan (AKA The Battleship) which was not booting with anything but ZeroSPU2
Fixes The Simpsons, problem was due to an ADMA refill bug.

f5d8906 SPU2: Update voices before DMA reads, reset OutPos on reset. By refractionpcsx2.

Improves the booting reliability of GTA VC, especially on consecutive boots without closing the emulator.

#4134 SPU2: Switch to a more accurate noise algorithm. By Ziemas.

This algorithm comes from PCSX-R and is an implementation of Dr. Hell's research.

The previous implementation was a simple LFSR and did not use the provided noise clock from the ATTR register.

#4171 SPU2: Improve ADMA behaviour/timing. By refractionpcsx2.

Hopefully improves the crackling in burnout 3.
Fixes music looping in Ratatouille.
Fixes Vexx clicking sound (Partial ADMA transfers).
Fixes the Dolby Pro Logic video missing sound in Primal (Partial ADMA transfers).
Fixes Splinter Cell panning audio problem and high pitched noises in cut-scenes.
Fixes Myst 3 panning audio problem.
Fixes Dynasty Warriors 5 stuttering videos when Dolby is enabled.

e039492 SPU2: Tighten AutoDMA IRQ timing. By refractionpcsx2.

Fixes games which monitor the MADR while transferring.

Fixes Tom & Jerry in War of the Whiskers jumpy music.

#4210 SPU2: Adjust interpolation implementations. By Ziemas.

These seems to be have been adjusted to match the output of catmull-rom which is really the one in the wrong by being twice as loud.

As a result of the interpolated output being at a reasonable level we can use ApplyVolume to apply the ADSR volume.

#4203 SPU2: Make sure cache hits match previous block decoded samples. By refractionpcsx2.

Caching blocks of ADPCM is a bit sketchy because the previous samples (which it uses to generate the new ones) can change depending on if it's the start of the voice on or if it has looped around, so you can end up with blips and glitches in the sample stream, this should avoid that problem whilst not making the cache completely unusable.

Should get rid of clicking and popping noises in loops samples.

Fixes Sphinx and the Cursed Mummy sound distortion.

Also fixes remaining blips in Vexx.

#4195 SPU2: Add Gaussian interpolation. By Ziemas.

This implements the actual SPU interpolation as documented by nocash.

#4226 SPU2: Resample reverb input/output. By Ziemas.

The reverb runs at half the sample rate of the rest of the SPU so a change of sample rate is required. The way this is currently done is by decimating when downsampling and duplicating samples when upsampling without doing any filtering.

This adds proper filtering to this process, the filter coefficients are from Mednafen but we think they were originally found by Neill Corlett.

f42befa SPU2: Try to recover DMA pointer after savestate load. By refractionpcsx2.

#4186 SPU2: Ignore LSAL/H Writes after key on if voice sets loop point. By refractionpcsx2.

Fixes behaviour with loop address writes within 4T's of a voice keying on which is what the old Delay Cycles tried to address, if the voice sets its own loop point the write from hardware is ignored.

Fixes Mafia music loops.

ce8047b SPU2: Reset IRQ Status when swapping game in case it got set previously. By refractionpcsx2.



[Enhancement] Memorycard improvements:

#4113 Memorycards: Fix out of bounds array access in folder memcards. By Ziemas.

Don't keep the DataClusterInUse bit when accessing the next cluster.

With this folder memcards work on 64bit.

#2995 Memorycards: Add support for OpenPS2Loader VirtualMemoryCards. By KrossX.

Adds some basic support to OPL VMC files (.bin) that use 512 bytes pages.

Normal pages are 528 bytes long, those extra 16 bytes contain 12 bytes of ECC data.



[Enhancement] Debuggers improvements:

#4252 Debugger: Add "Go to address" for both disasm and memory view context menus. By F0bes.

#4289 Debugger: Require emulator start before enabling Break/Run button. By F0bes.

#4287 #4326 Misc: Support more BIOSes for the Debugger Thread View. By F0bes.

#4271 GS/Core: Implement the new generation of GS Debugger. By GovanifY.

This is a full in-core reimplementation of GSDumpGUI. It will be used for GS Debugging once GSdx is merged in to the core.

One step closer in to merging GSdx in to the core.

[Enhancement] Misc core improvements:

#3011 IOP: Implements IOP breakpoints. By monster860.

#4234 IOP: Execute breakpoints for the interpreter. By F0bes.

#4205 PAD: Don't Destroy() modals.

On macOS it prevents the parent window from regaining focus. By TellowKrinkle.

#4223 PGIF: PS1DRV handles bit 28 of GPU Status register, not PGIF. By Nobbs66.

Fixes several PSX games:

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Twisted Metal

Pink Panther

c695a7e USB: usb-mic: Send 1ms worth of samples for 48kHz and 8kHz sample rates. By jackun.

#4310 USB: Improve Force Feedback test so it doesn't block UI. By CookiePLMonster.

This modifies DirectInput USB Force Feedback test not to block the UI. Instead of performing the test synchronously on the UI thread, a timer gets created which advances the test every half a second.

#4232 USB: Eyetoy mirroring. By Florin9doi.

Fixes Bakufuu Slash! Kizna Arashi.

#4250 Core: Preserve read only bits in the COP0 config register. By F0bes.

The read-only bits in question are the Instruction cache size (IC) and the Data cache size (DC).

Before this MTC0 would freely write to the entire config register.

#4123 Core: Implement proper %s handling for syscall 117 (0x75). By F0bes.

This makes the syscall iterate through the format string which can be considered "slow" but this syscall is only going to be used for debugging purposes.

#4255 Core: Added support for little endian data for patches. By Tupelov.

Allows users to use the leshort, leword, and ledouble datatypes inside their patches. Using these datatypes ensures that values in the memory view appear the same as the values in the patch.

This was made with easing patch development in mind as now developers can make patches without having to reverse endianness. This is especially useful when using programs like ghidra that displays instructions in little endian.



GSdx Improvements
[Enhancement] #4206 GSdx-hw: Implement per pixel alpha blending (PABE). By lightningterror and tadanokojin.

Improves shadow/lighting effects on certain games, both HW renderers support the feature.

So far we have a few games that see an improvement:

Fixes Strawberry Shortcake character shadow/lighting.

Fixes Cartoon Network Racing shadow/lighting.

And for those that enjoy some image comparisons:

Cartoon Network Racing: Before -> After



Strawberry Shortcake: Before -> After





[Enhancement] Misc GSdx improvements:

#3973 GSdx-gui: Some GUI changes. By RedDevilus.

Changed some options:

Large framebuffer renamed into conservative framebuffer.

Dithering context menu re-ordered.

8-bit textures renamed into GPU Palette Conversion.

dabfff8 GSdx-hw: Get rid of some extra branches/conditions in DATE selection. By lightningterror.

#4182 GSdx-gui: Fix alignment of font. By RedDevilus.

Should fix invisible characters.

#4188 #4261 #4320 GSdx: Switch to unicode. By GovanifY, F0bes and turtleli.

This brings GSdx one step closer to be merged with the core.

#4270 GSdx-d3d11: Cleanup gsdevice11.cpp warnings reported on codacy. By lightningterror.

#4131 #4288 GSdx: Use constexpr to initialize AVX vectors without AVX instructions .By TellowKrinkle.

List of removed CRC hacks:

#4082 GSdx-hw: Remove Unofficial CRCs. By tadanokojin.

f6e12f8 Gsdx-hw: Remove Bully crc hack, it broke a bunch of effects. By lightningterror.



TAS (Tool Assisted Speedrun) Utility Improvements
#4019 Recording: Reorganize and realign InputRecordingControls. By sonicfind.

#4060 Recording: GUI Improvements around savestate-based input recordings. By sonicfind.



IPC (Interprocess Communication) Improvements
#4262 IPC: Socket re-usability. By GovanifY.

This avoids port overfills on windows, while increasing performance substantially on platforms that do port overfills.

#4267 IPC: Add a slot system. By GovanifY.

This allows multiple emulator sessions to run at the same time and windows user to configure their used port to their preferred one.

#4272 IPC: Fix type polymorphism & checkbox. By GovanifY.

Some versions of wxWidgets are more sensitive than others on dynamic casting, so instead I used a C style cast to prevent any crash.



GameDB Improvements
4b71dd3 GameDB: Remove patches for Quake 3 videos, no longer required. By refractionpcsx2.

7512c01 GameDB: Removed no longer required FMV skip patches. By refractionpcsx2.

List of removed patches for games include:

BDFL Manager 2005 (EU)

F1 Racing Championship (Japan and EU regions)

Paris-Dakar Rally (EU)

#4259 GameDB: Add improved Xenosaga save crash prevention patch. By RedPanda4552.

Updated patch rewrites a chunk of game code to decrement JPEG quality, rather than just immediately floor it. Allows thumbnails to still look kind of okay.

#4187 #4249 GameDB: Add patches for KOF series. By kozarovv.

Fixes depth precision, game fills upper 16bits of depth with 0xFFFF. This results in a really high 32 bit value which is then converted to float because both HW and SW renderers lack double precision the lower 16 bits of the initial 32 bit value lose precision.



Misc Improvements
#3999 Add GHC Filesystem. By kenshen112.

This adds GHC filesystem to pcsx2 common utilities.

#4073 3rdparty: PortAudio: Upgrade PortAudio to latest master. By refractionpcsx2.

#4277 3rdparty: Update Libsamplerate to 0.2.1. By refractionpcsx2.

#3991 GUI: Keyboard Shortcuts Strings. By RedDevilus.

Based on https://wiki.pcsx2.net/Hotkeys.

#4216 Misc: Fix compilation in path with spaces. By laenion.

#4283 Misc: Fix various DebugTools Codacy complaints. By F0bes.

#4010 Misc: Fix paths on macOS. By TellowKrinkle.

MacOS was using linux paths rather than wx's macOS-specific subclass, which doesn't match how the app is installed in macOS (all paths should be relative to the executable).

Also adds steps to copy missing resources into the app bundle.

#4243 Misc: Purge GSNull plugin entirely. By rtissera.

The plugin is obsolete, GSdx already provides Null(no display functionality).

#4201 GUI: Prevent Vsync setting from being wiped on preset changes. By RedPanda4552.

Reapplies the currently applied vsync mode when changing preset options.

#4230 Common: Remove unused code. By MrCK1.

#4244 GUI: Avoid presets from resetting VsyncQueueSize. By KrossX.

The VsyncQueueSize setting is currently affected by presets, would revert to default on start as well. Since the setting is not grayed out, this change makes it be unaffected.

#3556 GUI: If available, enable menu option to load backup savestate when a game is first launched. By xTVaser.

#4306 GUI: Visually indicate the current savestate slot in the load/save menu. By xTVaser.

#4036 Capture: Optimizations with file names, SPU2 recording, and capture menu gui. By sonicfind.

Addresses some oversights involving transferring a file name between the GS & SPU2 recording setups.

Adds a new audio toggle setting that allows a user to control whether a WAV file should be generated alongside a video recording. In doing this, behavior for when SPU2 recording fails to be setup becomes more defined and consistent.

Additionally, F12 will now route to sMainFrame if GUI is active as to keep the capture menu GUI accurate to the current state.