pcsx2 Zombeaver's PCSX2 Configs / Simple 1-Click Installs With PCSX2 Configurator

[Zombeaver]

Introduction

If you’ve tried your hand at PS2 emulation with PCSX2 for any length of time, you’ll know that it’s an impressive but thoroughly imperfect emulator that needs a guiding hand more than most. There’s really no one-size-fits-all setting solution when it comes to PCSX2 configuration (other than setting it to software mode and leaving it there, and even then you’ll still run into some issues, just much less frequently) which means that you really need to create configurations on a per-game basis to get the most out of it. This is often a slow, tedious, and incredibly time-consuming process of testing, making changes, reading wiki and forum posts, testing, making more changes, and then testing some more. In some cases, it’ll never be perfect, regardless of settings used but with some adjustments you can get it “pretty close”. Some cases are nigh on perfect and others are a broken mess with any setting (even software, in a few cases). There are a significant number of one-off fixes that are often necessary in games, from special hacks, to fixes like running all FMVs in software mode, to things like skipdraw for disabling buggy post-processing effects and TC offsets to fix sprite alignment issues - all kinds of things that are needed to offset various visual bugs brought on by upscaling. It’s just the nature of the thing.

I’ve been using PCSX2 for a while now - since version 1.2.1 (2014). My Launchbox library had been a mishmash collection of configs for versions 1.2.1, 1.3.1, and 1.4.0 so several weeks ago I decided to finally break down and go through the process of updating all of these to 1.5.0 (1.6.0 now) and then try to add more once that was complete. The thought occurred to me though, that if I was going to go to the trouble of doing this, I might as well share them here for others to use as well. That presented a question, however, as to how best to distribute them. PCSX2 is a bit more complicated when it comes to creating and using custom configs - you have to duplicate not one, but several .ini files that contain various settings that PCSX2 will use, and then direct these specific .inis to PCSX2 via command-line (--cfgpath “[path\to\the\config]”).

User @alec100_94 created a great plugin for Launchbox called PCSX2 Configurator that helps automate the configuration creation process by duplicating sections of your current .inis into a new folder named after the game title, then injects the appropriate command-line parameters into that game’s Launchbox library entry. As an added bonus, it can even create independent memory cards for each game. I thought this might be a way to at least help simplify the process for people so they could more easily use the configs, so I contacted him about it about a week ago to get his thoughts on it. To my surprise, not only was he willing to help me in my attempt to streamline the process for people, he offered to come up with a way to incorporate the configs into the plugin and allow users to download and apply them directly from within Launchbox. So we had a lot of back and forth over the course of the last week and did a lot of testing and now we’ve ended up with something I’m really happy to say works very well. Exciting! Major props to Alec for all his hard work on this (and for putting up with all my picky crap ).

Note: All tech support requests for the plugin itself need to be directed to Alec on the Launchbox Discord, not here. Our Discord server can be accessed here: https://discord.gg/AFxfhnv Go to the plugins channel and message @alec100_94#4327

Getting started

All you need to do is download and install the plugin, then right-click on a Playstation 2 game in your library, and then click on the "PCSX2 Configurator" option at the bottom of the right-click menu.

From here you can either click "Create Config" to create your own config (or overwrite your current config) or "Download Config" to download mine. If I've created a config for the game, the "Download Config" option will be enabled (lit) - if I haven't, it won't be (note that a takes a second or two for a match to be made, so "Download Config" won't immediately be lit even if I've created a config for it). If I've updated a config since you originally downloaded it, an update option will be lit which can be clicked to update the config to the newest version. Once you've downloaded or created a config, the "Remove Config" and "Configure with PCSX2" options will be usable. Clicking "Configure with PCSX2" will open PCSX2 for you to edit that config as you see fit. Once a config is present, the right-click "Configure" option will do this as well.

The games must be scanned and matched with the LBGDB first! The LBGDB ID is how configs are matched, so you must do this first. Once they're scanned/matched you're ready to go - just right-click -> PCSX2 Configurator -> Download Config and you're all set!
  

First and foremost, and I cannot stress this enough, is that these configs are designed specifically for PCSX2 1.6.0. Do not use 1.4.0 and don't use a 1.5.0 dev build unless it's a very late one. These were specifically tested with 1.5.0-dev-3400 which was post-1.6.0 release candidate.

The configs

Now that everything's squared away with the plugin, I'll be able to get back to working on more configs going forward. Right now I’m at 86 configs [EDIT: up to 285 currently]. Not a whole lot, I know, but it’s a start. I’m open to requests, but understand that I’ve already got a stack of about 200 more games that I have set aside to work through as a start (to-do list is at the bottom). I’m prioritizing stuff that’s 1) of interest to me and 2) don’t sound like they have huge game-breaking issues based on their PCSX2 wiki page. The PCSX2 compatibility wiki is kindof a mess that isn’t particularly well-documented and, in my experience, is frequently full of outdated and/or outright incorrect information, but it’s at least a sortof starting reference point for whether or not I decide to try out a game. Also try to keep in mind that this is often a very time-consuming process so don’t expect to see 20 new configs added in a day. In cases of really severe complications, it can be 30 minutes to multiple hours of testing and tweaking for one config.

I have an ongoing spreadsheet detailing what’s in each config as well as some additional notes where appropriate and a rating of what I consider to be the relative significance of emulation issues present for that game, from minor/nonexistent to moderate to broken. Software mode is generally only used as a last-resort when no other hacks or fixes could resolve various issues brought on by hardware rendering, but be aware that there are some configs that use software rendering because of this. I’ll periodically be making updates in this thread to note new configs that are added, and of course the spreadsheet will be kept up to date.

>> PCSX2 Config Spreadsheet <<

The configs are fairly moderate in terms of system requirements, as my PC is about 4 years old (EDIT: 7 years old) at this point (specs at the bottom) and can often push these a bit higher than what’s included in the configs, depending on the game, but realize that there’s going to be some variance in performance depending on your hardware. Because of this, I wanted to provide some tips below on how these can be altered to improve performance.

Performance improvement tips (if necessary)

As part of the update process from 1.5.0 configs to 1.6.0, I went through and benchmarked all configs with the framelimiter off, and made adjustments as necessary. The end result should be better performance (at the very least, better maximum performance, whether you actually need that or not) for everyone. Some key elements that can be used to improve performance (and generally have been used already where appropriate) are listed below.

Enabling MTVU is often a good starting point for improving performance. It has high compatibility and is an easy go-to. There are some cases where it causes problems in a game that I've noted on the details spreadsheet. This is generally enabled where appropriate and where there was an actual impact on performance in testing.

If necessary, you can also try dropping the scaling by 1x at a time until performance improves. It should be noted that some games are more CPU-limited than GPU-limited, in which case reducing the scaling can have little to no impact on performance. It's something to try if performance is poor, however.

You can also try disabling Large Framebuffer. This is a parameter that used to be on by default but no longer is. It serves a primarily niche purpose as it only affects a small number of games (FMV flickering with it off) but can often negatively impact performance. I've generally disabled this in cases where appropriate, didn't cause an issue (or the issue could be remedied in an alternate way), and actually did improve performance in testing, but there may be additional cases where disabling it would be beneficial.

Enabling Allow 8-Bit Textures can also improve performance depending on your hardware and the demands of the game. It basically shifts the demand on the CPU and GPU.

One additional thing you can try is changing the sync mode in the SPU settings from timestretch to async. I mention this one last because it has the highest probability of causing problems, but compatibility is still quite good overall. Basically what this is doing is changing it so that audio and video no longer have to be 100% synced at all times, which sounds like a bad thing but in practice it’s not. With timestretch there can be times where, if the game is performing poorly, you’ll get this really awful, stuttery, warbled mess for the audio because it’s going out of its way to keep them in sync and it creates a bit of a mess. Async can make these problematic moments much less noticeable. It's useful for games that have occasional and brief dips in performance - if a game is just constantly running at 50% speed though, the only thing it's going to do is make the audio way out of sync from the game.

You can also try adjusting the EE Cycle Rate, but I don't recommend doing this unless you really have no other option. It can be helpful on occasion, but it has a significantly higher probability of breaking things, so leave it alone unless absolutely necessary. I would highly recommend that you never change EE Cycle Skipping at all, as it has an even greater chance of breaking things, causing dropped frames, giving false speed numbers... just leave it alone.

My hope is that the vast majority of people won’t have to change anything at all, but I wanted to give some pointers here in case your system is struggling.

My current to-do list:

Spoiler

007: Agent Under Fire
007: Nightfire
10,000 Bullets
18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker
187: Ride or Die
50 Cent: Bulletproof
7 Blades
7 Sins
Aeon Flux
Agent Hugo
Agent Hugo: Lemoon Twist
Akira Psycho Ball
All Star Fighters
Altered Beast
Another Century's Episode
Another Century's Episode 2
Another Century's Episode 3
Ape Escape: Pumped and Primed
Aqua Aqua
Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Zombie Ninja Pro-Am
Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica
Ar tonelico: Melody of Elemia
Arc the Lad: End of Darkness
Arcana Heart
Arcana Heart II
Armored Core: Formula Front
Armored Core: Nexus
Assault Suits Valken
Asterix & Obelix: Kick Buttix
Asterix and Obelix XXL 2
Asterix at the Olymic Games
Astro Boy: The Videogame
Atelier Iris 2: The Azoth of Destiny
Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm
Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana
ATV Offroad Fury
ATV Offroad Fury 4
Auto Modellista
Berserk
Bully
Cold Winter
Coloseum: Road to Freedom
Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex
Cy Girls
Dai Senryaku VII - Modern Military Tactics Exceed
Darkwatch
Dead to Rights II
Devil May Cry 2
Dot Hack GU 1
Dot Hack GU 2
Dot Hack GU 3
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 2
Dragon Ball Z: Budokai 3
Drakengard 2
Dreammix TV World Fighters
Dual Hearts
Eternal Poison
Evil Twin: Cyprien's Chronicles
Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel
Fight Night Round 3
Final Fantasy X-2
Final Fight: Streetwise
Fire Blade
Fire Pro Wrestling Returns
Firefighter F.D. 18
Flower, Sun, and Rain
Free Running
Freedom Fighters
Front Mission 5 (English)
Full Spectrum Warrior
Genji: Dawn of the Samurai
Gitaroo Man
God of War 2
Graffiti Kingdom
Gran Turismo 4
Grand Theft Auto San Andreas
Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
Grandia: Xtreme
Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, The
Grim Grimoire
Growlanser Generations
Gungriffon Blaze
Headhunter
Headhunter: Redemption
Heatseeker
Heavenly Guardian
Hidden Invasion
Hobbit, The
Hokuto No Ken
Homura
Hypersonic Xtreme
Incredible Hulk, The: Ultimate Destruction
Indiana Jones And The Emperor's Tomb
Jet Li: Rise to Honor
Katamari Damacy
Kill.switch
Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix
La Pucelle: Tactics
Legacy of Kain: Defiance
Mad Maestro
Magic Pengel: The Quest for Color
Makai Kingdom
Manhunt 2
Masters of the Universe
Matrix, The: Path of Neo
Mercenaries
Micro Machines V4
Midnight Club
Midnight Club 2
Mister Mosquito
Mojo!
Namco x Capcom (English)
Naval Ops: Warship Gunner
Need For Speed: Underground 2
NFL Blitz 2002
Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams
PES 2010
Phantom Brave
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Project: Snowblind
Punisher, The
Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando
Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal
Raw Danger
Rebel Raiders: Operation Nighthawk
Red Dead Revolver
Red Ninja: End of Honor
Rez
Ridge Racer V
Rise to Honor
River King: A Wonderful Journey
Rogue Trooper
RTX: Red Rock
Rumble Racing
Samurai Champloo: Sidetracked
Samurai Warriors
Savage Skies
Second Sight
Shadow Hearts: From The New World
Shepherd's Crossing
Shifters
Shining Force EXA
Shining Force Neo
Shox
Silent Scope
Silent Scope 2
Silent Scope 3
Simpsons, The: Road Rage
Ski-Doo: Snow X Racing
Sky Odyssey
Sled Storm
Sly 2
Sly 3
SMT: Devil Summoner 2
Smuggler's Run
Smuggler's Run 2
SOCOM
SOCOM 2
SOCOM 3
Soul Calibur II
Space Channel 5: Special Edition
Space Invaders: Invasion Day
Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory
Spy Fiction
Spyhunter
Spyhunter 2
Spyro: A Hero's Tail
SSX On Tour
Star Trek: Conquest
Star Trek: Encounters
Star Trek: Shattered Universe
State of Emergency 2
Suffering, The
Suffering: Ties That Bind, The
Suikoden IV
Suikoden Tactics
Super Monkey Ball Deluxe
Suzuki TT Superbikes Real Road Racing
Sword of Etheria
Tekken 4
Tekken's Nina Williams in: Death By Degrees
Thunder Force VI
Timesplitters
Tokobot Plus
Transformers (2004)
Ty the Tasmanian Tiger
Van Helsing
Viewtiful Joe 2
Warriors of Might and Magic
Warship Gunner 2
We Love Katamari
Winback
Winback 2
Winning Eleven - Pro Evolution Soccer 2007
World Destruction League: Thunder Tanks
Wrath Unleashed
Xenosaga 2
Xenosaga 3
XIII
Xyanide
Yakuza Fury
Ys: The Ark of Napishtim
Zapper: One Wicked Cricket
Zoids Struggle
Zombie Hunters
Zombie Hunter 2
Zombie Virus
Zombie Zone
Zone of the Enders
Zone of the Enders 2

...and lots of other stuff I'm sure I forgot.

Likely to have major issues based on PCSX2 wiki:

Crash Twinsanity
Destroy All Humans
Destroy All Humans 2
Klonoa 2

Broken according to the PCSX2 wiki:
Shadow Man: 2econd Coming
True Crime: Streets of LA

My PC:

i7 4770k CPU
GTX 780
32 GB RAM
256GB SSD System Drive
Windows 7 Pro (64-bit)

 

pcsx2-v1.5.0-dev-2711-g8307cfc54-windows-x86.7z

[LogicalEgo]

My PS2 library is not huge in any sense but this looks great. I can finally make the jump to 1.5. All my of configs I did manually 3+ years ago, I will scrap them in favor of this and start over.

[Zombeaver]

Just now, keltoigael said:

My PS2 library is not huge in any sense but this looks great. I can finally make the jump to 1.5. All my of configs I did manually 3+ years ago, I will scrap them in favor of this and start over.

Yeah that's what prompted these in the first place. I got tired of having this mess of old configs across different versions of PCSX2, most of which don't transfer from one version to the next because their plugins change pretty dramatically over time. PCSX2 1.5.0 actually has a significant number of improvements over 1.4.0 and earlier, so I just started from scratch.

Still a looooooooooong way to go to get through the initial stuff that I want to get through. So far it's a lot of RPGs and survival horror, with some other good stuff sprinkled around. Gotta start somewhere though.

[LogicalEgo]

17 minutes ago, Zombeaver said:

Yeah that's what prompted these in the first place. I got tired of having this mess of old configs across different versions of PCSX2, most of which don't transfer from one version to the next because their plugins change pretty dramatically over time. PCSX2 1.5.0 actually has a significant number of improvements over 1.4.0 and earlier, so I just started from scratch.

Still a looooooooooong way to go to get through the initial stuff that I want to get through. So far it's a lot of RPGs and survival horror, with some other good stuff sprinkled around. Gotta start somewhere though.

Majority of mine are also RPG's.

[Zombeaver]

Added configs for the below titles. Details are on the sheet.

Ape Escape 2
The Bouncer
Dead To Rights
Rule of Rose
Samurai Western

[kmoney]

@Zombeaver I just wanted to say great job on the configs and thanks for them. Honestly I never spent much time messing with pcsx2 because you would get one game running great and then the next game would not run as great with those same settings. Your configs makes it so much easier now and I actually want to play the games.

[Zombeaver]

Thank ya sir!

It's a slow process for sure. Lotta fiddling with settings then testing, fiddling some more, and testing some more haha.

Have fun! Let me know if you run into any problems.

[Zombeaver]

Added configs for the below titles. Details are on the sheet.

.hack//Infection
.hack//Mutation
.hack//Outbreak
.hack//Quarantine
Dirge of Cerberus: Final Fantasy VII

[Zombeaver]

Added configs for the below titles. Details are on the sheet. We're up to 100 configs now!

God of War
Maximo: Ghosts to Glory
Maximo vs The Army of Zin
The Nightmare of Druaga

I also updated the config for Bujingai: The Forsaken City from an interlacing mode of "Auto" to "Bob tff". It looks clearer now. If you've already downloaded a config previously, you can have it re-check by holding down left ctrl when you click the "Configure" button.

[MazJohn [Mr Arcade]]

Just commenting to say WOW...thank you for this and keep up the great work> ...this is a greatly needed feature for those emulating PS2 with Launch box. Simply incredible and very functional.

Edited November 11, 2017 by MazJohn [Mr Arcade]

[Zombeaver]

I've updated the Tales of Legendia config. I wasn't quite happy with it originally because it seemed blurry for reasons that I couldn't quite determine (it wasn't from deinterlacing and some of the normal tricks that I try when a game is blurry didn't seem to do anything). I took another crack at it and found that the Merge Sprite hack worked quite nicely to clear it up. The screenshots below have to be viewed at full size, but the difference is quite noticeable.

No hacks:

Merge Sprite hack:

I also added a new config for Drakengard.

[Suhrvivor]

How are memory cards handled with this plugin? I'm using folder memory cards instead of big .ps2 files since I found them more convenient. Is this compatible with that option?

[Zombeaver]

5 hours ago, Suhrvivor said:

How are memory cards handled with this plugin? I'm using folder memory cards instead of big .ps2 files since I found them more convenient. Is this compatible with that option?

You can either leave it at default PCSX2 behavior (Mcd001.ps2 and Mcd002.ps2 at all times) or you can select "Use Independent Memory Cards" in the plugin settings which will create a memory card named after the game title, inject it into the ui .ini into slot 1, and leave Mcd002.ps2 in slot 2. The cards that are created are .ps2 format.

[Zombeaver]

I've updated the Tales of the Abyss config from GL to D3D11. GL is technically the more accurate renderer (it's more up-to-date because there isn't an active D3D developer on the PCSX2 team currently), so when I initially started making these configs I just used it all the time. The thing is, the D3D11 renderer has one advantage that GL doesn't - MSAA. The way I've been making these more recently is to start with D3D and if there are problems with it (and sometimes there are) switch to GL to see if they can be fixed that way. If there aren't any visual bugs in the D3D renderer, I use it so I can use MSAA. MSAA can make games look really nice though it can have an impact on performance as well, depending on the game. TotA looks very nice with 4x MSAA and was still giving me a consistent 60fps at all times.

GL:

D3D11 with 4x MSAA:

[Suhrvivor]

On 11/8/2017 at 4:17 PM, Zombeaver said:

VERY IMPORTANT: These configs are designed to be used in conjunction with the widescreen patches so that they're in 16:9 without stretching. When you download 1.5.0, there will be a zip named "cheats_ws.zip" which needs to be extracted into PCSX2's "cheats_ws" folder. You'll also want to make sure that "Automatic Gamefixes", "Enable Cheats", and "Enable Widescreen Patches" are all enabled (I believe they are by default) for when you create your own configs - these settings will already be enabled for any downloaded configs though.

Are you sure you need to extract the files? I didn't and they're used anyway (I checked the console to make sure).

I'll wait for the Tekken 5 config, I couldn't make it work properly in hardware mode without graphics errors in some stages.

[Zombeaver]

6 minutes ago, Suhrvivor said:

Are you sure you need to extract the files? I didn't and they're used anyway (I checked the console to make sure).

I thought they came extracted by default, but someone else told me in Discord the other day that they tried a game and it was stretched and after checking none of the patches were in the cheats_ws folder. It'll be a non-issue after the next version of the plugin releases anyway, as Alec developed a way to make the plugin check and extract them if they're not present. I've tested it and can confirm it works quite well. A couple other improvements will be implemented as well

6 minutes ago, Suhrvivor said:

I'll wait for the Tekken 5 config, I couldn't make it work properly in hardware mode without graphics errors in some stages.

I'll take a look today.

[kmoney]

@Suhrvivor I checked the pcsx2 log and it looks like it checks for the cheats_ws folder zipped or unzipped. I just keep mine unzipped as well because its not like its a huge file.

[Zombeaver]

1 minute ago, kmoney said:

@Suhrvivor I checked the pcsx2 log and it looks like it checks for the cheats_ws folder zipped or unzipped. I just keep mine unzipped as well because its not like its a huge file.

I'm not sure why the game would've been stretched for the other person if that's the case. Especially since he said extracting them fixed it. I dunno ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Like I said, the plugin is going to take care of it regardless on the next update.

[kmoney]

Just now, Zombeaver said:

I'm not sure why the game would've been stretched for the other person if that's the case. Especially since he said extracting them fixed it. I dunno ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Like I said, the plugin is going to take care of it regardless on the next update.

One other thing I noticed is the cheats_ws folder that comes with the development builds and the stable builds is outdated and its better to download the one in the pcsx2 widescreen thread on there forums as it is updated with all the new patches.

[Zombeaver]

4 minutes ago, kmoney said:

One other thing I noticed is the cheats_ws folder that comes with the development builds and the stable builds is outdated and its better to download the one in the pcsx2 widescreen thread on there forums as it is updated with all the new patches.

Eh, I haven't had any issues with the ones that come with the dev build honestly.