Former DuckStation developer Stenzek is on a roll adding features to PlayStation 2 emulator PCSX2. After adding a Vulkan renderer in January and texture dumping/replacement support last month, Stenzek has now made it so that PCSX2 will automatically apply the correct settings to a game for the optimal experience. Since emulation can be finicky, sometimes tweaks are needed to make a game run correctly. Up until now, users would have to look up the fixes on the PCSX2 wiki and apply them manually; now, those settings will be stored in PCSX2's GameDatabase and be applied automatically when launching a game.

Stenzek has updated settings for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and both God of War games, but says the rest of the settings will need to be filled in by the community. It's worth noting that while the GameDB is community-supported, pull requests still need to be approved by the PCSX2 team on GitHub, meaning that fixes will be verified and tested before being applied automatically. This also means that PCSX2 will not download the best setting for a game; they will be pre-packaged along with the app in the new nightly builds, so if your game isn't running correctly, you may need to check the new nightly builds to see if someone has updated the GameDB with the correct settings for your game.

Originally posted as a pull request nine days ago, this feature has just been merged into development build v1.7.2436.

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[XDel]

Bad ass!

 

[gamecaptor]

This is outstanding! Hopefully other emulators fallow suit!

 

[MadMakuFuuma]

now that is what i call a cool feature! the last moths was really good for ps2 emulation with android and now with pcsx2 finally getting some features other emulator had for years.

 

[slaphappygamer]

Folks! This is what happens when you share knowledge. Do it! It helps everyone.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

That's good news. But it would be nicer to have auto updater in the app itself. Weather is just to update the emulator or database. Even a new user would be able to enjoy such a feature without having to constantly check the github page to download patches.

 

[Ericthegreat]

Took long enough.

 

[simbin]

Great news! Should help speed up fixes for improper or outdated settings on the wiki.

 

[Razor1993]

Took long enough.

Then go and develop you're own emulator and be faster at that ...

 

[SG854]

Took long enough.

Ungrateful

 

[the_randomizer]

Took long enough.

Yes because armchair programmers like you could've done so much better, clearly. Who made you an ungrateful smartass?

 

[urbanman2004]

Give this mf a beer . I love Duckstation, and have always had to drill it into the brains of these knuckleheads on other retro/modern gaming forums to deprecate epsxe in favor of Duckstation due to the lack of future updates (and the devs profiting off of commercializing the epsxe emu on Android). I say this Duckstation dev has a bright future on his hands in game preservation.

 

[relauby]

Give this mf a beer . I love Duckstation, and have always had to drill it into the brains of these knuckleheads on other retro/modern gaming forums to deprecate epsxe in favor of Duckstation due to the lack of future updates (and the devs profiting off of commercializing the epsxe emu on Android). I say this Duckstation dev has a bright future on his hands in game preservation.

In all fairness, Duckstation is also not getting updates any more. But regardless, I agree, Duckstation is the best and stenzek is awesome.

 

[urbanman2004]

In all fairness, Duckstation is also not getting updates any more. But regardless, I agree, Duckstation is the best and stenzek is awesome.

Yeah, I knew that, but the quality of life improvements offered by the Duckstation dev (e.g., including a PGXP feature which fixes texture warping in PS1) dwarfs in comparison regarding what epsxe has had to offer all of these years. That alone just makes Duckstation perfect regardless of any future updates in my humble opinion, and not sound like a fanboy.

 

[Zeze]

That's good news. But it would be nicer to have auto updater in the app itself. Weather is just to update the emulator or database. Even a new user would be able to enjoy such a feature without having to constantly check the github page to download patches.

Planned for a while and now coming with the new UI.

Folks! This is what happens when you share knowledge. Do it! It helps everyone.

Pretty much. A lot of these features (UI, Vulkan, Auto Updater, GameDB) have been planned for the 2.0 release originally. That would of course still have taken a while. Thanks to Stenzek and his experience coming in that process has now been completed a lot faster and smoother and freed up other members to focus on their respective fields instead of having to worry (too much) about these things.

 

[PatrickD85]

Very cool to see this development

 

[RichardTheKing]

Does this emulator outright require an actual PS2 BIOS, or can it just run games without it, like most emulators I've come across?

 

[RedoLane]

YES! YEEEESSS! NO MORE MANUAL CONFIGURATION!
HECK YEAH!

 

[Zeze]

Does this emulator outright require an actual PS2 BIOS, or can it just run games without it, like most emulators I've come across?

It requires a Bios. There have been attempts in the past to HLE the bios and the emulator *Play* uses one, but they are not.. very good. Pandubz on the Discord put it this way:

HLE BIOS for us is a hellscape cause the BIOS is fragmented into modules and sometimes patched on the fly by games

So, it would be a massive undertaking in the first place and need additional, special code for a lot of individual games.

 

[64bitmodels]

hopefully the next update involves making the emulation accuarte to the point where game toggles and hardware fixes arent needed. glad to see this progress though