I backported the latest version of PCSX2, the PS2 emulator, to Windows XP

[blueclouds8666]

Hello Windows XP gaming community. I have what i believe are good news for you, if you are into emulation.

I'm a developer and i've recently modified the latest version of the popular PCSX2 PlayStation 2 emulator to make it run again under the Windows XP operating system, since they removed that compatibility by 2016. The development to my modified version of PCSX2 started in May 2020, just when the latest stable official release was made public (v1.6.0), confirming it wasn't indeed compatible with XP. I wanted to do something about it, so i started peeking the code and considering the options i had. Well, after months of testing and patience, i got the latest v1.6.0 stable release from May 2020 running perfectly fine under XP. This project is called "PCSX2 XP" and is been made available from my website:
http://neonfloppy.sytes.net/projects/pcsx2-xp/

and there is also a github repository:
https://github.com/blueclouds8666/pcsx2_XP

You may also join to my discord server, where you can find about my other projects and chat with other xp fans:
https://discord.gg/KXKXcs4

I will be answering any questions you have regarding my project down below.
I hope you all find this useful.
Thanks for your attention.

Edited October 13, 2020 by blueclouds8666

[RainyShadow]

Too bad that it requires SSE2.

I have some 0.9.x builds that complain about it, but still manage to run somehow. Yours straight crashes at launch.

 

[Duck42069]

Epic gamer moment right here

 

Also you can use the latest beta of 1.5.0's with dx9 gsdx plugin for directx on 1.6.0

Edited October 15, 2020 by Duck42069

[Koishi Komeiji]

On 10/14/2020 at 1:47 AM, RainyShadow said:

Too bad that it requires SSE2.

I have some 0.9.x builds that complain about it, but still manage to run somehow. Yours straight crashes at launch.

 

Would it even run at a playable speed on such hardware, though? You're looking at a pre-2004 CPU here pretty much, I might be wrong when paired with a good graphics card but I imagine more recent versions of PCSX2 are more accurate - thus requiring more powerful hardware to run the same content? I might be wrong, I've seldom if ever used it (though have heard negative opinions about its codebase, lol).

On a side note, anyone tested this under 64-bit Windows XP, or (if native 64-bit is possible) able to compile it for 64-bit? Would be an interesting thing to do.

[blueclouds8666]

10 hours ago, Koishi Komeiji said:

Would it even run at a playable speed on such hardware, though? You're looking at a pre-2004 CPU here pretty much, I might be wrong when paired with a good graphics card but I imagine more recent versions of PCSX2 are more accurate - thus requiring more powerful hardware to run the same content? I might be wrong, I've seldom if ever used it (though have heard negative opinions about its codebase, lol).

On a side note, anyone tested this under 64-bit Windows XP, or (if native 64-bit is possible) able to compile it for 64-bit? Would be an interesting thing to do.

I haven't yet, but it should run perfectly fine under XP x64 edition. Also, the emulator can't be completely compiled for 64-bit platforms, however, i've published a guide on how to compile certain components for 64-bit platforms, as some parts can successfully be compiled in 64 bits. here it is: https://github.com/blueclouds8666/pcsx2_XP/blob/master/COMPILE-TESTING.md

The original PCSX2 has neither binaries published for 64-bits, because they see no improvement with current code and it also gives more troubles than usual

[blueclouds8666]

I've done a couple more advancements towards Windows XP. In special, i was interested on making the DirectX 11 renderer work under XP. It is true there is no native DirectX 11 for Windows XP, but there have been attempts in the past to partially implement it on the system, unofficially of course.

Most didn't seem to work in my context, but there was one that caught my attention and really helped me to partly achieve what i wanted. It is the WineD3D wrapper library, that converts DX11 calls to OGL. Obviously with a performance impact and with occassional bugs, but is interesting nonetheless. Down below you can see a screenshot of the DX11 renderer running with WineD3D. There's a bug with the bios colors but most game runs without any bug at all. I could find about this thanks to posts of fellow MSFN members, so i discovered XomPie's WineD3D libraries, the only ones i could make work. If you are any interested on trying this by yourself, all the information related has been posted on github: https://github.com/blueclouds8666/pcsx2_XP/issues/2

Edited October 19, 2020 by blueclouds8666

[Koishi Komeiji]

Surely interesting find, and extremely impressive! You should show off a few pieces of homebrew and commercial games running in DX11 mode somewhere... if only a YouTube alternative existed that wasn't full of 'le redditors trying to be cool by mocking 2008 YouTube' or literal fascists/communists.

Edited October 22, 2020 by Koishi Komeiji

[kuja killer]

Hi there, im mostly more interested in game emulation, than am i with PC gaming in general. like nes/snes/gb/ds/Ps2/wii etc etc I apoligizing for bumping a thread 1 year later, but i just now decided to try out your custom version, and it works great except for 1 small issue that's been present since older versions, only until it was "finally" fixed in some update for 1.7.0 i think.

It's about the game Megaman X7. The audio seems to always run like 3x faster than normal, and i've confirmed searching all over google and other forums people on other PC platforms experiencing too, and the only solution is to use an older version of the audio plugin from 0.9.x

https://wiki.pcsx2.net/Mega_Man_X7

It works fine on spu2-x-r4600.dll - dated April 2011 - but not any others past that. I have a r5875 dll where the audio problem exists. And it also happens on your 2.0 version. So..

I tried to copy that r4600 file to the plugins folder but your custom 1.5.0 wont add it to the list or recognize it i guess - so then i made a backup of the current file that was there, and renamed the r4600 file to "Spu2-X.dll" just like yours was named...but the emulator throws an error that it cant detect it or not supported or something. If that makes sense.

Did you remove the ability to have more than 1 plugin type avaiable to choose from on the list ? For the audio dropdown. if it's possible for me to add that older plugin to the list somehow. I dont know why it's only "forced" to use the 2.0.0 dll

Edited October 12, 2021 by kuja killer

[blueclouds8666]

On 10/12/2021 at 3:44 PM, kuja killer said:

Hi there, im mostly more interested in game emulation, than am i with PC gaming in general. like nes/snes/gb/ds/Ps2/wii etc etc I apoligizing for bumping a thread 1 year later, but i just now decided to try out your custom version, and it works great except for 1 small issue that's been present since older versions, only until it was "finally" fixed in some update for 1.7.0 i think.

It's about the game Megaman X7. The audio seems to always run like 3x faster than normal, and i've confirmed searching all over google and other forums people on other PC platforms experiencing too, and the only solution is to use an older version of the audio plugin from 0.9.x

https://wiki.pcsx2.net/Mega_Man_X7

It works fine on spu2-x-r4600.dll - dated April 2011 - but not any others past that. I have a r5875 dll where the audio problem exists. And it also happens on your 2.0 version. So..

I tried to copy that r4600 file to the plugins folder but your custom 1.5.0 wont add it to the list or recognize it i guess - so then i made a backup of the current file that was there, and renamed the r4600 file to "Spu2-X.dll" just like yours was named...but the emulator throws an error that it cant detect it or not supported or something. If that makes sense.

Did you remove the ability to have more than 1 plugin type avaiable to choose from on the list ? For the audio dropdown. if it's possible for me to add that older plugin to the list somehow. I dont know why it's only "forced" to use the 2.0.0 dll

I have tested spu2-x-r4600.dll from PCSX2 0.9.8 with other original PCSX2 versions (those provided by the original developers at pcsx2.net), and that issue indeed happens with 1.4.0, 1.5.0-dev and 1.6.0, showing the error "The configured SPU2 plugin file is not a valid dynamic library(LoadCorePlugins)". My PCSX2 builds happen to also have that same issue because it was already present in the originally released versions.

I don't know the exact cause of it, but it probably is down to changes in the emulator plugins code, making some of the old ones incompatible. The latest version to work with spu2-x-r4600.dll is PCSX2 1.2.1, so you can use that one to play Megaman. Does the game runs well with 1.2.1?

Edited October 19, 2021 by blueclouds8666

[kuja killer]

dang. Already was there in earlier versions too? Hmm. Cant possibly find what sort of thing stopped the ability to have more than 1 to choose from ?

And yea actually the 1.2.1 is the one i've had on my computer for many years ever since, until i discovered your thread/github page. And yea i could select the r4600 from the list on there, so the audio works just fine.

I wanted to check out your version to see if i could get a few extra FPS, which i do seem to... i think

I dont have a very good computer in terms of specs - Dell Latitude D620 - Core 2 Duo T7600 2.3 GHZ which is the highest this laptop can support. Integrated Intel Graphics -- i get about 45 to 57-ish depending on where/what on screen and so on. I might be considering a slightly better laptop sometime in the near future (still windows xp only, but a 2nd gen Core i)

anyway here's my shot of the 1.2.1 which i've been using for years.

https://i.ibb.co/F3Tf465/ps2-ver.png

Edited October 19, 2021 by kuja killer