QEMU Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance PC (2003) -- From Install to Play in 15 Mins

Channel:

KJ Liew

Subscribers:

455

Published on January 8, 2024 10:58:52 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeQifShRBTk

Game:

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (2001)

Duration: 43:54

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10

A direct sequel to Metal Gear Solid PC (2000), Konami brought another timeless masterpiece in tactical espionage action in Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance for PC in 2003. The game was based on Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty released in 2001 exclusively for PS2 console. The PC port arrived 2 years later, including several other consoles ports to end the PS2 exclusivity. Well, it'd better be late than never.

QEMU featuring qemu-3dfx again delivers its commitment in Game Preservation in restoration of Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance PC, though it isn't a quite perfect restoration yet. The Game was very bad at GPUs compatibility and having a hard time with newer GPU generations post-2010 regardless of GeForce or Radeon. It seemed that Konami made use of special middleware "X2W" -- "XBox2Windows" in porting the game for PC. QEMU WineD3D couldn't render the game with OpenGL FBO and had to resort to Wine deprecated legacy Offscreen Rendering through OpenGL "backbuffer". As a result, Shadow Details map posted graphics corruption at final image and it could be observed at the top-left corner. The higher the Shadow Details the more profound the artifact would show up. Similar artifact can also be reproduced in 3DMark2001 in Game 2 Dragothic High-Detail scene but with the Shadow detailed map on lower-left corner.

Next, Model Quality had to be capped, otherwise certain cutscenes would show up incorrectly, such as the cutscene at 30:31. This seems to be a known issue. Otherwise, Model Quality can be maxed out and some cutscenes do show greater details at maxed out Model Quality. An example is at 36:07 where the ship model would have shown greater details clarity at maxed out Model Quality. GOG version of the gameplay footage available on YouTube seemed to have capped the Model Quality, too.

While the game was demo on Windows, it is as easy as to setting up the Game to play on Linux, too, especially for anyone wish the play it on SteamDeck. Compared to other published guides such as Lutris/Winetricks/GameOnLinux, I personally felt using QEMU Virtual Machine is much simpler & straight-forward.

The Game can be played with just typical keyboard & mouse, but the control scheme can be awkward sometimes. QEMU USB Gamepad delivers no-frills game controllers support from any modern Game Controllers in any forms of wired, wireless or Bluetooth connectivity. Gamepads with analog sticks are highly preferred for Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance for sneaked walking or running movement.

So that concludes the Game Preservation for Konami timeless masterpieces of Metal Gear Solid PC series for the last decade in early 2000's. All the Games can now be purchased Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Vol.1 through Steam, a viable alternative to QEMU virtual machines. As for whatever "Trash"Boxes or "脑残のPC"em-U-lation, it will be **A WAIT IN ETERNITY** for CPU to break the impossible performance barrier on emulation. Thanks to such projects **RETARDED** visions in CPU virtualization and GPU acceleration. Their next-in-line ATI RAGE 128 GPU emulation, even if they could make it, isn't good enough to play Metal Gear Solid 2 Substance. The Game requires at least DirectX 8.1 pixel shaders for rendering. GOOD LUCK in emulating one of such GPUs in the brute-force of CPU.

As always, Thank YOU for supporting qemu-3dfx and Game Preservation.

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