Metal Gear Solid 3: Zero Eater - PCSX2 0.9.4 WIP
More news about the 0.9.4 version of the PlayStation 2 emulator for Windows and Linux.
Real Time Clock (RTC) has been recently implimented by Refraction. PCSX2 now takes the current system time from your OS and inserts the value into PCSX2 upon launch, from that point onwards the emulated RTC counts independently from the OS.
So? you wonder, well apart from the BIOS now displaying the correct time and date - you would think this is a minor addition to PCSX2, nothing more than an addition to authenticity? Well you're in for a suprise!
It struck me when talking to Refraction over a cup of coffee, Metal Gear Solid 3 uses system time for various fun aspects of the game - Such as being able to kill The End from old age if you set the RTC 1 year ahead after saving during the battle.
Metal Gear Solid 3 had never done anything under PCSX2, so with the RTC addition to PCSX2 in mind, I popped the disc into my drive, and eureka it booted!! This however was only the beginning of an epic saga between Zerofrog and the Konami programmers!
Zerofrog has spent days wrestling with Knonami's ability to push the PS2 hardware to it's limits by making zeroGS KOSMOS push the limits of GPU's, Metal Gear Solid 3 certainly loves it's post processing! Not only has he managed to get the game looking ..well from absolute garbage to gorgeous, he's also managed to stop Snake from slipping through holes in the universe instantly.
The game still has issues, Snake still manages to find holes in the universe (falls through geometry), and he still likes to get stuck inside trees, rocks or just teleport off the edge of the world (the video demonstrates the latter beautifully!). The game also still suffers from visual issues, such as missing textures and the specular lighting overlay being drawn wrong, hopefully by the time the next incarnation of PCSX2 comes out, these issues will be mostly resolved.
So to celebrate this game going from nothing to ingame and the challenges it threw at us, we're releasing a video and 63 shots! Not all 63 are here though, General Emulation run by our betatester General Plot has 31 exclusive shots, so head there for the rest!
All this maybe great news (especially for MGS fans), but there is more, you may have noticed the nothing status games have been decressing steadily and the playable count is going up on our on site compatibility list, including some rather nice games...and there is a new plugin coming up...but you'll have to wait! Wink
