Silent Hill 2 modders just released a brand new patch addressing a game breaking bug that affects players running the game on PC. The problem which causes crashing on setups with a multicore processor has been annoying fans of the franchise for more than 20 years. When the game was released back in 2001, players with multicore processors may have been few and far between, but these days, they’re pretty common.
The modders in question are working within the framework of a long running project called Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition. This consists of “enhancement packages that make the PC version of Silent Hill 2 compatible with modern hardware and playable in widescreen aspect ratios while improving visuals, audio, and bugs.” The project is “made by a collaborative team of programmers, modders, and artists.”
Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition is all about adding “widescreen camera, high definition resolutions, upscaled fonts and 2D images, PlayStation 2 quality audio, fog, and shadows, restored post-processing effects, better controller support, and much more.”
Similar to so many other PlayStation 2 ports at the time, Silent Hill 2 came out on PC with a variety of different bugs and glitches that made the game practically unplayable. These have only gotten worse over the years through the introduction of newer hardware and modern operating systems.
"Silent Hill 2 is loved by many and considered the example of a horror game done right," one of the key contributors to the project, Ratiocinator, told GameSpot during an interview back in 2020. "For most who play it for the first time, they quickly realize what makes it so special: the visuals and art direction, the atmosphere, otherworldly audio, character stories, and more. This is what makes the game so special to me and important to revisit to allow others to experience it on modern displays and hardware." Ratiocinator went on to describe how "our minimum spec was probably two to three times slower than the consoles and we didn't have the low-level tricks that the console versions could do.”
The release of Silent Hill 2 on PC introduced a game breaking bug which caused a consistent crash when the streaming audio engine tried to interact with multicore processors. The sound would start to skip after several minutes of gameplay before the program ultimately crashed. The result was that players had to disable all but one processor core in order to keep the game running. The modders working on Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition have on the other hand managed to rework the streaming audio engine to ensure stability.
The people behind the Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition project recently released an update video on YouTube detailing the improvements. Fans of the franchise have been quick to express their gratitude. “I don’t really have enough words to show appreciation and gratefulness for all the hard work and passion all of you invest in making Silent Hill 2 the best version it can be,” the YouTube user known as X Leonhart said in a comment. “Because of you, a lot of people can replay this amazing game and a lot of new ones can enjoy it for the first time. You guys are simply amazing. Thanks.”