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I'm really interested in how pcsx2 works in general and I have some questions which bug me for quite some time. Please satisfy my curiosity.

1. How do savestates work? I googled it, but most of the explanations are way to hard to understand for me. Can someone explain that in a few simple words. And why is it not possible to work with savestates in PC games?

2. Some of the games I dumped from my disks are not in the PAL format, because they only exist in NTSC and I had to import them from the US (I live in Germany). I heared PAL and NTSC only matters when it comes to colors? Will I notice any differences between PAL and NTSC games except missing languages? Some games ask me at startup if I want to use NTSC (60hz) or PAL (50hz). Does selecting one of those two make any difference?

3. What is the "cheats_ws" folder?

4.(This is more of a general question and computer experts will laugh at this question) The log says it detected x86 features. As far as I understand, x86 means 32bit. Like Windows 64bit and 32bit. So, these SSE 4.1 etc. are 32bit only? Does it bring any advantages using a 64bit OS except usage of more RAM?

5. Whenever I download the latest pcsx2 build and overwrite the old one, I can import the old settings on startup. I've been doing this for years. Should one configure pcsx2 from scratch from time to time because things like plugins update as well or is this not necessary?

6. Is there a very short an easy-to-understand explanation for the difference between recompiler and interpreter?

7. I have never ever changed the Interlacing option in the GS options menu. Is there any situation where I have to do so? Can someone provide a very short explanation here as well. I read some explanations online, but again, too complicated for me.

8. I use an adapter (USB) for connecting my PS2 controller to my pc. Works perfect. Is there a way to enable vibration?


That's all for the moment, thanks in advance.

2.PAL games are running at 25fps internal speed and NTSC is at 30fps so you may notest that the run slightly smoother
Also NTSC games are running at higher resolution(resized,not actually getting better graphics)

3.It's for wide-screen cheats...making games visible area bigger(simply put)

4.pcsx2 is 32 bit app and it doesn't matter if you are running 32 or 64 bit windows...I think that the are some games that eat a lot of ram and 64 bit windows can help but they are just few games

5.I sometimes(rarely)experience problems with pcsx2 after updating it and then import the setting but that mostly happen when I do a big jump between versions(I don't update often)

6.You want it simple...interpreter translates non stop everything from ps2 language to PC and recompiler only what is new(not translated already)
For example if the ps2 is "saying" 5 thing from which 3 are the same and 2 two other thing but the same...interpreter will translate 5 times but recompiler will translate the first one of the 3 and execute the function 2 more times using the already translated code and will do the same with the other two things(tramslate the first and repeat then second)
So with recompiler the cpu has to do less work and as a result you get better speed

7.If the game looks blury or with weird lines(I am not talking about the lines caused but scaling in some games)or shaking even on auto,try changing the mode(F5)to see if some of the other modes fixes the problem.

Man typing all that on a phone was hard

missing nr 1.

basicly the execution of instructions is halted. the whole content of the entire ps2 memory, it's registers and the instruction pointer are stored in the safestate. when resuming you just load the whole thing and continue at the instruction after the one that was last executed.

why not on pc? if you do it the same naive way you'd have to store gigabytes of memory. tho... the simpler way of storing it is potentially just stripping textures, materials, and audio and all that files that can be addressed with file references. means saving just engine and game relevant states, like ai, animation poses or object locations. i think this is working in gamesaves. dunno any that do that perfectly from the top my head tho.