PCSX2 and demos

[Kamikaze_Ice]

No, not those kinds of demos. I'm refering to the demoscene.

I've tried running a few ps2 demos, and either they never showed, or did what Tales of Legendia does when you try to start a new game--do some wierd calculations that slow your system to a crawl.

Only one, out of the few I've tried, that runs almost perfect in software is Aura for Laura (by soopadoopa) - link to pouet.net.
Link has a download for the actual hardware (via .ELF or .iso) and a link with a video off the real hardware for quick comparing. Not to mention the code so you can see how they do stuff.


Have the PCSX2 and/or plugin developers thought of using some of these demos to improve their code? I would assume having access to the code would help tons.
Example: 4th scene in the demo I linked above (its the blue and black one), using hardware mode--press F9 until no frozen image in HW mode-- you get the FFX-2 "grid" effect at non-native resolutions.
*Note: you have to be in software mode going into scene 4, or you will get a pink or black screen*


*Edit: oops, fixed link.*

[Bositman]

Yeah, they've thought about it. Bad thing is that using these demos as a standard to code the emulator can be very risky, since the smallest bug these could have (and it might not be visible at all) could be a pitfall, since you would code the emulator upon the bug. That way you wasted all that coding time and in the end it's not correct. That's the main reason devs usually stay away from those

[Kamikaze_Ice]

I see your point, as the demo authors could just use improper code that returns what they wanted by mistake and kept it. They could help solve some things tho, right? (like that FFX-2 FMV grid effect mentioned above)

Still, I think they should (eventually) be working proper as, I assume, the goal is perfect emulation of the ps2 hardware.

[arcum42]

Incidentally, while talking about homebrew software being run on pcsx2, the port of ScummVM to the PS2 works relatively well in pcsx2. Or it did, anyways. I haven't tested it in a while, but I spent a good afternoon playing "Beneath A Steel Sky" in it...

Not really worth it, admittedly, because you are better off using the Linux or Windows version of ScummVM, but it was still pretty neat seeing that it worked properly.