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Difference between revisions of "Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut"

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{{Infobox game/row/taxonomy/genres            | Survival horror }}
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{{Infobox game/row/taxonomy/perspectives      | Cinematic camera, Third-person }}
 
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{{Series|Silent Hill}}
 
  
 
'''Key points'''
 
'''Key points'''

Revision as of 23:41, 12 July 2020

Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut
Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut cover
Developers
Team Silent
Windows Creature Labs
Publishers
Konami
Release dates
Windows December 2, 2002
Reception
Metacritic 70
IGDB 90
Taxonomy
Series Silent Hill
Genres Survival horror
Modes Singleplayer
Perspectives Cinematic camera, Third-person
Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut on IGDB
Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut guide on StrategyWiki
Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut on MobyGames
Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut on Wikipedia
Silent Hill
Silent Hill 2: Director's Cut 2002
Silent Hill 3 2003
Silent Hill 4: The Room 2004
Silent Hill: Homecoming 2008
Silent Hill 2 2024

Key points

Silent Hill 2 PC comes with improved flashlight lighting, a quick-save function, real-time weapon swapping and a movie gallery.

General information

Silent Hill Wiki - A wiki for the series
Silent Hill Memories - Informative site
Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition Installation Guide

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
SecuROM 4 DRM. Patch 1.1 removes the DRM.
Released on 3 CDs.
Windows
There are two versions: the North American version and the European Director's Cut version. If the title screen lacks "Director's Cut" on it, it's the North American version. Both versions include the extra scenario Born from a Wish along with an extra UFO ending.

Essential improvements

Silent Hill 2 running at 1920x1080
Silent Hill 2 running at 1920x1080

Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition

Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition is a collection of unofficial mods which implement widescreen resolution support, add PlayStation 2 quality audio and fog that were missing from the PC version, improve controller support and much more.[1]

Silent Hill 2 Audio Enhancement Pack

The PC version's audio is compressed and lacks detail in comparison to the PlayStation 2 version.[2]
The Audio Enhancement Pack replaces the PC version's audio files with the original, higher quality PlayStation 2 ones.

Silent Hill 2 FMV Enhancement Pack

The PC version's FMV videos were re-encoded in Bink format and run at 30FPS instead of 60 on PlayStation 2.[3]
The FMV Enhancement Pack improves the quality and upscales the resolution of the FMVs.

Silent Hill 2 HD Collection Voice Pack

This replaces the original voice acting with the new voices from the Silent Hill HD Collection release.[4]
The HD Voice Pack includes and integrates the Audio Enhancement Pack and FMV Enhancement Pack for its audio improvements.
The HD Collection voices are very divisive and often considered to be inferior to the original voice acting.

Silent Hill 2 PC Fix by Steam006

A fix which adds new features and fixes some bugs.
Do not use this fix if you plan to follow the Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition installation method.
Instructions[citation needed]
  1. Copy all the files to <path-to-game>
  2. Configure the width and height and other options in Silent_Hill_2_PC_Fix.ini.
  3. Start the game with DLLInjector.exe.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\[Note 1]
keyconf.dat stores input bindings.
language.ini stores language settings.
options.ini stores gameplay and volume settings.
settings.ini stores video and audio settings.

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\data\save\[Note 1]

Video

Video settings
Video settings

High frame rate

Change the frame rate cap[5]
  1. Install Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition.
  2. Open d3d8.ini.
  3. Add the following to the [GAME FIXES] section.
; Controls the frame rate limit, but it may cause bugs if increased above 30 FPS.
FPSLimit = 60

Change noise effect resolution

Change IncreaseNoiseEffectRes[6]
  1. Install Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition.
  2. Open d3d8.ini.
  3. Set IncreaseNoiseEffectRes to any value between 128 and 4096 to adjust the resolution.

Input

Controller support

Analog triggers and vibration on XInput controllers won't function without workarounds.
Fix triggers and vibration[7]
  1. Install Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition to restore vibration for XInput-based controllers.
  2. Download and run XInput Plus.
  3. Set the Target Program to sh2pc.exe.
  4. Go to DirectInput and check Enable DirectInput Output.
  5. Assign LT/RT to Button 11/12.
  6. Click Apply and OK.

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Background music and sound effects.
Surround sound
Up to 7.0 output.[8]
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support
DirectSound3D.
May require DirectSound3D restoration software to restore hardware-accelerated 3D sound functionality on Windows Vista and later.

Localizations

Use Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition to restore the language selection in the options menu.
Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
Arabic
Fan translation, download.
Simplified Chinese
Fan translation, download.
French
German
Italian
Polish
Fan translation, download. Includes a widescreen patch.
Brazilian Portuguese
Fan translation, download.
Russian
Fan translation by «HomeTown.ru / Ashigaru».
Spanish
Indonesian
Fan translation, download.

Issues unresolved

Issues when playing the game at 60 FPS

Playing the game at 60 FPS causes various bugs which are as follows.[9]
  • The intensity/effectiveness of the motion blur is reduced by half.
  • The bullet casing sound effects for the handgun and shotgun glitch out.
  • Animation for James transcribing notes onto his map is twice as fast.
  • James' inner monologue (immediately upon exiting the hospital) may run twice as fast now.
  • Water animates/moves quicker in all areas (James rowing on the lake, water in the labyrinth, etc) and drains twice as fast during the RPT Apartment boss fight.
  • The flames in Angela's staircase move twice as fast now.
  • The flashlight dies out twice as fast in the prison bug room.
  • The "ritual" prison monster's footsteps happen way too fast.

Issues fixed

Music fades randomly and sound loops

The game can only run stably on a single core.
Limit the game to one CPU core[citation needed]
  1. Install Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition.
  2. Open d3d8.ini and ensure SingleCoreAffinity = 1 is set.

Game hangs at startup

On Windows 7, having single core affinity enabled through Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition may prevent the game from running.
Disable SingleCoreAffinity on Windows 7[10]
  1. Go to the installation folder.
  2. Open d3d8.ini.
  3. Change SingleCoreAffinity = 1 to SingleCoreAffinity = 0.
  4. Doing this will require manually changing the single core affinity from Task Manager every time you run the game.

Clicking or popping sound effects

Use IndirectSound[11]
  1. Install Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86).
  2. Download IndirectSound.
  3. Copy dsound.dll and dsound.ini to the installation folder.
  4. Open dsound.ini.
  5. Change earlyStopFadeOutTime = 0 to earlyStopFadeOutTime = 0.002.
  6. Verify Software 3D sound is set to Hardware 3D Used in the advanced options menu.

Textures appear as solid white surfaces

Use WhiteShaderFix[12]
  1. Install Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition.
  2. Ensure WhiteShaderFix is set to 1.

"Insert a disc" message in the ending

Rename ending.bik[13]
  1. Go to <path-to-game>\data\movie\.
  2. Rename ending.bik to end.bik.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 8
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Make James run without slowing down

Apply unlimited stamina hack[14]
  1. Open sh2pc.exe with a hex editor such as HxD.
  2. Press Ctrl+G and go to the address 001356D1.
  3. Change the value CF to C8 and save the changes.

Disable background fog

Disable fogging[15]
  1. Download and run DxWnd.
  2. Click on Edit, then Add.
  3. Set the path to <path-to-game>\sh2pc.exe
  4. Disable Run in Window.
  5. Click on the Direct3D tab and enable Disable Fogging.
  6. Click OK, File, Save, and start the game with DxWnd running.

Add icon to executable file

sh2pc.exe may have no icon set by default.
Set icon with Rcedit[16]
  1. Download Rcedit depending on your OS bitness, and copy it to <path-to-game>.
  2. Download sh2_newicon.zip and extract sh2_new.ico to <path-to-game>.
  3. Open a Command Prompt.
  4. Type in and enter cd <path-to-game>.
    • Replace <path-to-game> with the actual path; e.g. cd C:\Games\Silent Hill 2.
  5. Type in and enter rcedit-x64.exe sh2pc.exe --set-icon sh2_new.ico.
    • If you use the 32-bit version, replace rcedit-x64.exe with rcedit-x86.exe above.

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 98, 2000, ME, XP
Processor (CPU) AMD Athlon - 700 MHz
Intel Pentium - 700 MHz
System memory (RAM) 64 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 1.8 GB
Video card (GPU) 32 MB of VRAM
DirectX 8.1 compatible


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).

References