Silent-hill-2-enhancements: Side effects playing the game at 60 FPS

[Polymega]

Important (noticeably affects audio, visuals, gameplay)

• [ ] FMV playback is affected if FMVs are saved as 60 fps when playing in 30 fps.
  
  
  
  • We only want one version of the FMV Enhancement Pack, so if we make the FMVs 60 fps we need to ensure 60 fps FMVs can also playback correctly if the game is set to 30 fps, for those that want to play at its original framerate.
  
  
• [ ] I'm not 100% certain on this one, but fog speed appears to be moving twice as fast.
• [ ] The noise filter animates the grain twice as fast. It moves so fast you almost can't tell it's even moving.
• [ ] The water animates/moves twice as fast.
  
  
  
  • Water areas: RPT Apartment boss fight, lake water while rowing, and water throughout the Labyrinth/Alternate Hotel.
  
  
• [ ] The water drains twice as fast at the end of the RPT Apartment boss fight.
• [ ] The physics of the bullet casings dropping from the handgun and shotgun become wrong. This causes the SFX of them hitting the ground to wig out. This affects the handgun and shotgun.
• [ ] The "Ritual" prison monster's footsteps go crazy fast.
• [x] AudioClipDetection can crash the game when playing in 60 fps.
• [ ] The animation process whenever James transcribes notes onto his map is twice as fast (too fast).
  
  
  
  • Map transcription areas: Motorhome, BAR Neely's, Town West (at broken bridge), and Hospital Director's Room.
  
  
• [ ] The intensity/effectiveness of the motion blur is reduced by half.
• [X] PS2CameraSpeed moves twice as fast (too fast).

Other

• [ ] The flashlight's light turns on and off twice as fast.
• [ ] The low health indicator flashes twice as fast.
• [ ] The flashlight dies out twice as fast in the prison bug room.
• [ ] The flames in Angela's staircase move twice as fast now.
• [ ] The "static" bugs move around twice as fast in the prison bug room.
• [ ] The visual range of the Lying Figure's spray attack is twice as long. The spray can look like it's hitting James when it actually isn't.
• [ ] The visual range of the Hyper Spray's spray is twice as long. The spray can look like it's hitting enemies when it actually isn't.

[AeroWidescreen]

Honestly, this is going to require _a lot_ of patching and research and I'm not sure I can fix everything either. If I were to attempt this I would need help.

PS2CameraSpeed doesn't work, as you already know, but gosh it'd be nice to have a functioning version for 60 FPS, as well. It's almost unbearable to go back to the PC version's vanilla camera speeds after being spoiled by this mod.

The bullet casing SFX wigs out, as you already know. This affects the handgun and shotgun.

The flashlight dies out very quickly in the prison bug room.

I've fixed these during my own private testing.

The "Ritual" prison monster's footsteps go crazy fast.

I know for a fact I can't fix this. I spent all day trying and found nothing. I thought maybe this was the only problem remaining, but with the other things you've listed I'm afraid I'm going to have trouble fixing those as well.

There's a framerate variable the game uses to determine the speed of many, many things, but apparently the ritual monster isn't one of them.

[Polymega]

Oh, for sure. I didn't mean to overwhelm you with this but wrote this all down for posterity for you or anyone else curious to know how 60 FPS affects things. TBH work on this ought to be lower on the list anyways.

[filipinowhiteboy]

Do you know of a way to remove the shell casing sound effect? For me, it's the only offender when playing that 60 fps.
I've tried editing the sddata.bin file myself and I found the shell casing sfx in question (It is sddata349.wav which not noted in the audio mapping so here you go).
I tried deleting the file first before merging the rest into a new sddata file. But the sfx trigger for the shell casing was moved to the next available file, (sddata350.wav) which is a chainsaw sound effect.
I tried deleting the contents of sddata349.wav while leaving the file to be merged but the problem still persists. Any idea what to do?

[Polymega]

Yes, if you delete the file all other sounds are moved over to fill the space. So sddata350 then becomes sddata349 in the game, sddata351 becomes sddata350, etc.

You simply need to create a silent .WAV file and save it out as sddata349.wav. Be sure you save it as a mono (not stereo) wave file. The length of the silent audio file shouldn't matter here.

Then, repeat the process of re-packaging the sound files to a new sddata.bin and you're good to go.

[filipinowhiteboy]

I see. I thought deleting the content in sddata349.wav and saving it as a blank wav file would be enough though. Am I doing something wrong?

[Polymega]

I thought [...] saving it as a blank wav file would be enough though

Are you just renaming a blank .txt to .wav or something? That would be the problem why, then. You'll need an actual, legit silent audio .wav file for it to work.

You can open a short .wav file in Audacity, select the track , click the "silence" button , and save it out as sddata349.wav. Just be sure to save it as mono and not stereo.

Edit: Here's a roughly 1-second silent .wav file for you to use: sddata349.zip

[Polymega]

I thought [...] saving it as a blank wav file would be enough though

Oh, I think I understand now. You deleted the _entire_ track of sddata349.wav and saved it out as-is? If so, there's no track for the game to play then, so it won't work. There needs to be a track for sddata349. So make it a second or two of silence. When you open the track in Audacity, you need to _see_ some sort of track, if that makes sense.

Edit: Here's a roughly 1-second silent .wav file for you to use: sddata349.zip

[filipinowhiteboy]

I see. Thank you for specifying....and for the instruction on how to create a silent wav file. ^_^

EDIT: Works like a charm! thanks for telling me what to do.
Like I said, I find the shell casing sound effect to be the only problem. The other issues you described seem rather negligible. The game is quite playable at 60 fps after the sfx is removed

[kartur]

This is to be expected due to my aging GeForce GTX 670 FTW

I have a GTX 1060 and expierience framedrops when playing with 60fps, also in SH3. I don't think it's really our hardware not able to keep up with a 15 years old PC game. :)

[Polymega]

True. :) I can't speak for SH3, but I know forcing SH2 PC to run on a single core doesn't take advantage of multi-core processing to help with performance. But we must run the game on a single core to alleviate the severe sound loop bug.

[Keith94]

I'm curious to see the fixes Aero has planned for us. 60 FPS is the only way to play :)

[Polymega]

There's potential for some more really nice fixes down the line thanks to Aero, Elisha, Bigmanjapan, and others. :)

[kartur]

Actually I think I have to revoke what I said earlier. Last time I tried playing with 60fps was one or two years ago, now (perhaps due to the opengl-wrapper?) it actually runs pretty smooth (tested for about 10min).

CPU-Load on Core 0 is always 100%, it doesn't matter if 30 or 60 FPS
GPU-Load is 10-25%

[filipinowhiteboy]

I've been getting fairly consistent FPS myself. The streets are the only areas where the the fps....doesn't drop but hitch for a fraction of a second and it doesn't happen often.

[OregonPacifist]

Can anyone link the edited sound file (replacing the bullet casing sound with silence) on here for easy access? I’d love to be able to play either 30 or 60 fps with as little trouble as possible.

[filipinowhiteboy]

OregonPacifist, Polymega posted a link to the edited sddata file a few comments up. Just remember to back up your original sddata file before using it.

[OregonPacifist]

@filipinowhiteboy thanks for the reply. I was looking for an already edited version of sddata.bin. The only file I saw that was posted is a silent sddata349.wav file.

[filipinowhiteboy]

@OregonPacifist Oh! I see. Give me a second, I'll link mine.

EDIT: Here you go
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/10NfcCB73bsNDkchRLHAY8B7_myTcBIwd?usp=sharing

Now remember, You want to backup your old sddata file in case you change your mind and want to keep the sfx and play at 30fps. Also, the sddata file I sent you, must be placed in the sh2e/sound folder. This file will NOT work with the main sound from the data folder.

[OregonPacifist]

@filipinowhiteboy Thanks for the link. I haven't used any audio editing software before and don't have enough time to learn it lol. I will be sure to save the two different versions of the file separately in case I want to play 30 or 60 FPS. You've just made my day!

[filipinowhiteboy]

@OregonPacifist You're welcome. Let me know if there's a problem.

[DonelBueno]

Are all these issues still present in the latest release when playing at 60 fps?

[filipinowhiteboy]

@DonelBueno Yes, it is. I think they might have updated the enhanced sound file recently. I might have to make a new version of the sdata file if they did.

[Polymega]

Besides any issues checked off, they are still present in the game, yes.