Pcsx2 1.7 Nightly
Darth Gupta
PCSX2 uses virtual HDD files to emulate a HDD. Although the minimum size is 40GB, on the newest PCSX2 1.7.0 nightly releases, the file will *not* actually take up 40GB on your HDD - it is a "sparse file," which means that it will only take up as much space on the HDD as whatever is installed to it.
Latest builds of PCSX2 have implemented a new function called TEXTURE REPLACEMENT which allows to load custom textures into any game. This tutorial will cover how to configure PCSX2 (now a.k.a PCSX2-qt or PCSX2 nightly) to load and apply your custom liveries for the Ace Combat games for the PS2.
- One "mid-quality" texture (256x256 px) that will used for when the camera focuses on another aircraft causing forcing the previously selected aircraft to switch to a "mid-poly" model and for the wingman model during a mission.
In AC5, for some reason specific aircraft and/or livery color will require an extra "mid-quality" texture that will be used by the wingman's "mid-poly" aircraft model during gameplay. This doesn't seem to apply to ACZ, however.
- One "low-quality" texture (128x128 px) that will be used when wingman is flying to a far distance from the player's current position, switching to a "low-poly" version of the aircraft's model.
This might be a bit confusing to understand, please check the ACE COMBAT 5'S AIRCRAFT TEXTURES section from the ACE COMBAT 5: CUSTOM TEXTURE CONVERSION AND INJECTION tutorial for a slightly better explanation with images.
Latest builds of PCSX2 have finally fixed most of the graphical glitches found when emulating Ace Combat games. User PositronCannon2 uploaded a video showing how configure PCSX2 to solve these issues.
For AC04's tutorial we'll replace the special livery -MRKOS- of the MiG-29A Fulcrum with the -Jagdgeschwader 73- livery created by BelkanLoyalist. Download the file and look for the PNG file. If there's just one single file then make another copy of it.
You'll see that in the MiG-29A -MRKOS- row there are two more cells with alphanumeric strings. The first cell is the filename hash that is used by the aircraft being displayed while selecting/buying one in the hangar/shop. The second cell is the hash that is used by the aircraft during a mission.
We now need to create a path from where PCSX2 will load our textures from. For this step I will use the "texture" folder placed in the same location as the PCSX2 executable. If you don't see this folder create it and rename it textures.
Inside it create another folder and rename it SLUS-20152 (uppercase letters are required). This name is the region code of the US release of AC04. Click on it then create two new folders and rename them as dumps and replacements. The texture directory structure should look like this:
Open PCSX2, go the menu bar and look for the SETTINGS option. Click on it and select GRAPHICS. A window will pop up with the options to configure rendering settings. Click on the TEXTURE REPLACEMENT tab and you'll be shown the following settings.
This is where PCSX2 will load our textures from (as well dump to). By default the custom textures will be loaded from the TEXTURES directory, which is located in the same location as the PCSX2 executable, unless changed. I suggest you to not to change it but if you have a personal folder for your files as long it respects the directory structure previously described then go for it.
Some loading/dumping options. Tick LOAD TEXTURES and leave the rest of the options as they are. I don't recommend having both LOAD and DUMP TEXTURES enabled at the same time because it can cause performance issues.
The process to change the liveries in these games is the same as described in the AC04 section but this time not only you'll need a texture for your aircraft but also for your wingmen's, for both hangar and in-mission display.
Open the ACE COMBAT 5 THE USUNG WAR FILENAME HASH LIST sheet or text file. Just like in the AC04 one the necessary information will be grouped by aircraft, livery color and the hashes used by which aircraft and where.
Look for the F-15E and OSEAN entries under the AIRCRAFT and COLOR columns. Unlike the AC04 hash list, this sheet (as well the ACZ one) also contains the filename hashes for the textures used by your wingman and whose image resolution are lower than the textures used by the high-poly aircraft.
Grab the renamed files then drop them into the replacements folder that we created for AC5. Run PCSX2 and select the F-15E with the osean livery for you and your wingmen. If you followed this tutorial down to the letter then the Garuda's team livery should be visible.
While most of the aircraft roster will require four texture files to completely change a livery, some planes and/or livery colors will require five texture files instead. This extra texture file is used specifically by your wingman's aircraft model during a mission. The resolution of this texture is as same as the one used by the "mid-poly" aircraft model in the hangar.
The reason of why some planes require an extra texture file is unknown. Just like in AC04, you can have up to three custom liveries for each aircraft available in the game. The 512x512 px filename hashes also are compatible with the planes used in the Operation Katina mode.
The steps to change liveries is the just as the same as described in the AC5 section. You can find the filename hashes for this game in the ACE COMBAT ZERO THE BELKAN FILENAME HASH LIST, all grouped by categories.
One thing you must keep in mind when modding PIXY/PJ's livery for the player's aircraft is that the 512x512 px hangar texture used for the player's F-15C/F-16C model is also shared with the wingman's aircraft model. For example, if you have modded the PIXY COLOR livery, when the camera changes its focus to Pixy's aircraft from yours, you'll see that his aircraft will briefly show the livery you modded into the PIXY color.
The filename hashes provided in this tutorial are compatible only with unmodified, "vanilla" ISO files. These hashes are useless if the contents of the ISOs were modified, such as GIM file injections or rebuilt from scratch (in AC5/ACZ cases).
For example, let's say you have an ISO file of ACZ with the S-32 aircraft mod with a custom livery applied in it. You'll need to play the game with the texture dumping option enabled, select the S-32 in the hangar and fly a mission with it then get the filename hashes of the aircraft's textures that were dumped to the dumps folder so you can replace the S-32's livery using the obtained hashes.
If you're planning to submit your own liveries in PNG format for use with PCSX2-qt's texture replacement option, I'd like to request you to name them in a way that will make for the user that downloaded them easy to identify them. As you've read in the tutorial, the games use various texture resolution sizes for an aircraft's livery so I thought in recommending renaming them using the resolution size of the texture as prefix and where it will be used as the suffix, something like this:
Before this tutorial was published most of the liveries provided in the AC04/AC5/ACZ ModDB pages were provided in the native texture format these games use (*.gim) as well in a packed format for custom AC5 ISO files (*.gfp).
If you are creating a custom livery and plan to submit it please consider including them in GIM format (GFP if submitting for AC5) alongside the PNG files. I've gotten reports from users that real Playstation 2 consoles can read ISO files with injected GIM files so they also requested for some liveries to be available in this format if possible. Also there are users that for some reason can't run the nightly version of PCSX2 so they are stuck with the last stable version of the emulator (1.6.0) which doesn't support texture replacement and they will have add custom textures via the GIM injection method.
The emulation requires to be stopped then started again for the emulator to load the new textures. You'll have to do this every time you drop a new livery into the replacements folder.
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Windows XP and Direct3D9 support was dropped after stable release 1.4.0. Windows 7, Windows 8.0, and Windows 8.1 and 32-bit support was dropped after stable release 1.6.0. Despite these are not being officially supported, you can use supported newer nightly builds compared to those stable builds. For example: PCSX2 v1.7.3581 can work on Windows 7 with a few workarounds, you'll need:
For starters, extract PCSX2 in a folder and then extract the 64-bit dxvk: d3d11.dll and dxgi.dll OR extract Reshade.exe: and rename "reshade64.dll" to "dxgi.dll" and then move this file next to the main PCSX2 executable.You'll also need to select Cubeb as the audio renderer. Otherwise, it'll crash with XAudio. And lastly, always pick between Vulkan, OpenGL and Software. D3D11/D3D12 can crash occasionally, and it won't function as intended anyways. Don't expect any official support if you post logs showing you're using Windows XP, 7, 8, or 8.1.
Either that, or you can use the Pokopom XInput Plugin. If you use a DualShock controller running under an XInput wrapper such as SCP Server, then this plugin is a no-brainer. It's very customizable, and you don't have to configure it beforehand. All of the buttons are bound at startup.
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