Credit & Thanks

Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition is the culmination of years of hard work by programmers, modders, and artists to fix and enhance the PC version of Silent Hill 2. Thanks to their time, commitment, and talents, we now have a version of this beloved game worthy of calling a true HD experience. From major bug fixes to finer, nuanced adjustments, the attention to detail in this project is done with love by fans, for fans.

Please take a moment to learn how these fine people have helped make your experience with Silent Hill 2 PC better. Please also consider sending these individuals a message of support or a donation for their countless hours of coding and playtesting. Their names, backgrounds, contact methods, and donation links (if provided) are listed below. Thank you.

Spoilers for Silent Hill 2 may be present in the content below.

  • SH2 Widescreen Fix: Co-creator
  • SH2 Enhancements Module: Contributor
  • Enhanced Edition Essential Files: Contributor

With a rich history of modding and x86 assembly programming, Aero_'s contributions for Silent Hill 2 PC are nearly endless. His research and development for Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition is a cornerstone for many of the improvements that are implemented today.

As co-creator of the SH2 Widescreen Fix project, some of Aero_'s contributions to the game include allowing multiple game actions to be assigned to the same controller input; faster camera movement speed; cutscene FOV fixes; an adjustable noise grain filter; disabling of cutscene borders; and many more.

Aero_'s contributions extend to the SH2 Enhancements module with improvements that allow you to save your game on a hard drive larger than 2TB; fixing fog parameters in certain areas; the use of a PS2-like noise grain filter; restoring proper lighting transitions; and more.

Beyond this, some of the most heavily involved adjustments to the game have been created or led by Aero_. Examples include restoring the flashlight levels to their proper values (which affects nearly everything in the game); restoring post-processing effects, such as motion blur and depth-of-field blur; maintaining proper aspect ratios for full screen images when played in widescreen; allowing the map to properly zoom and function in widescreen; and researching/developing the solution for higher resolution textures to be used and display correctly in-game.

Andrew "Bigmanjapan" Bondarenko

  • SH2 Widescreen Fix: Contributor
  • SH2 Enhancements Module: Contributor
  • Enhanced Edition Essential Files: Contributor

Andrew "Bigmanjapan" Bondarenko's importance for Silent Hill 2 modding is well known within the community. His countless years of research and experimentations with modding the game have proved invaluable to further improve Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition.

His extensive knowledge of the game's memory addresses--and what these addresses affect in the game--is the catalyst for which many of the fixes and enhancements are born. If memory addresses can't readily be found, Bigmanjapan probably knows exactly where to look.

Bigmanjapan's contributions to further enhance the game are plentiful. For the SH2 Widescreen Fix project, he adjusted cameras angles so they don't clip through walls; aided with environmental visuals fixes; and more.

For the SH2 Enhancements module, Bigmanjapan's involvement can be seen all over. A few examples of his many contributions include: Increasing the front draw distance; finding the fix for the rowboat animation bug; helping create a PS2-style noise filter; restoring lighting values for many areas; and initial research for restoring the post-processing effects.

  • SH2 Enhancements Module: Contributor
  • Enhanced Edition Essential Files: Contributor

As a hobbyist C/C++ programmer, Belek666's main interest was in the PlayStation 2 homebrew scene, creating and porting various applications to the console. Throughout his years of tinkering and modding game applications, Belek666 was able to dive deep into the inner workings of Silent Hill 2 PC to provide specialized improvements for Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition.

Belek666's work includes the use of high resolution fonts; unlocked language selections for the North American version of the game; translated main menu fonts; general quality-of-life improvements for menu navigation/settings; helping to fixed bugged lighting areas throughout the game; and more.

The original Silent Hill on PlayStation was Belek666's first survival horror game experience and, while it was a truly scary experience for him, his time playing the game was full of enjoyment which piqued his interest in playing more of the series. Belek666 is also interested in modding all sorts of others games and is involved with the Polish fan translation of Silent Hill 2.

Elisha Riedlinger

  • SH2 Enhancements Module: Creator
  • Audio Enhancement Pack: Co-creator
  • D3D8to9: Co-creator

Elisha's extensive Direct3D and C++ programming skills play a vital role for Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition.

The SH2 Enhancements module, created by Elisha, is the "brains" of Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition. This module contains unique game enhancements while also housing enhancement packages made by other programmers and modders, such as the SH2 Widescreen Fix, sh2proxy, and the Fog Fix.

As the lead programmer and developer for the project, some of Elisha's many contributions include: Overall game optimizations and compatibilities; improvements with processing usage and storage accessibility; cleaner Direct3D functionalities; a larger selection of display mode options/features; C++ implementation of game-specific fixes; and much more.

Elisha's programming prowess has also unlocked the ability to use higher quality game files via modifying and increasing memory buffer sizes. And with this, custom game files are able to be stored and used by the game in a unique folder, thus preventing a user from having to place/overwrite files in the game's core directories.

With this potential unlocked, the Audio Enhancement Pack was made possible, which brings the game's audio quality to that of the PlayStation 2's version, which is considered the best. Elisha also took on the monumental task of editing all the PlayStation 2 quality BGM tracks by hand to remove audio loop seams that would otherwise be heard in-game. Similar work was achieved by Elisha to allow for higher resolution textures to be used in the game, as seen in the Image Enhancement Pack.

Elisha's passion for improving PC gaming experiences carries over D3D8to9, where he's heavily involved with ensuring DirectX 8-to-9 compatibility amongst many older PC game titles.

  • sh2proxy: Creator

sh2proxy is one of the earliest Silent Hill 2 PC mods made to improve the game and arguably has sparked the continuation of game improvements you see to this day.

While sh2proxy is no longer in development, its creator, emoose, deserves special recongintion for their work. sh2proxy fixed key components for the game, such as disabling safe mode; forcing the game to run on a single core; auto-creating a local.fix file; and enabling fast transitions.

emoose's time and dedication to the now-discontinued sh2proxy project did not go in vain, as their hard work has been integrated into the SH2 Widescreen Fix project—then subsequently into Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition—for fans to continue to use and benefit from to this day.

FrozenFish24

  • SH2 Enhancements Module: Contributor
  • Enhanced Edition Essential Files: Contributor

FrozenFish24 is a modder and programmer who takes enjoyment out of writing his own scripts/tools to reverse engineer game files and formats. For Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition, his background with Direct3D programming provides many outstanding features.

Never one to shy away from a challenge, FrozenFish24's tireless research and development led to the full restoration of soft and self shadows for Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition, which was one of the most requested features of all time for the project. After this notable achievement—and always hungry to challenge himself more—FrozenFish24 then set his sights on restoring specularity throughout the game. And with his work, specularity (making shiny things look shiny) is also restored and present for Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition.

In addition to his shadow and specular work, some of FrozenFish24's other fine contributions include: Fixing bad vertex normals found in several areas throughout the game; modify meshes for certain areas to hide bad geometry and add missing geometry; fix the issue of wall chunks disappearing when too close to the camera's edge; and restoring the flashlight lens glow for Nvidia GPU users, just to name a few.

  • SH2:EE Configuration Tool: Creator
  • SH2 Enhancements Module: Contributor

Gemini has a long and rich history with restoring various retro PC games to make them playable on modern hardware. While a friend to many old games, Gemini is perhaps best known for his Classic REbirth project; a project that signifcantly overhauls the old Resident Evil series PC ports to make them compatible on modern computers while providing extra features and benefits to the games. Gemini's restoration efforts often involve him partially or totally rewriting huge portions of the game's code to perform as desired. The knowledge and expertise he's gained in this field, along with his general passion for restoring older games, proved to be a winning formula for his involvement with the Enhanced Edition project.

Gemini's contributions to Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition are quite noteworthy. To start, he created the Congifuration Tool (also known as a launcher) for the project, which provides an intuitive and easy way to customize many of the project's configurable settings.

Most exciting, however, is Gemini's contributions to the game's audio. Since day one of its release, Silent Hill 2 PC has suffered from an issue where, when playing the game on a multicore processor, the game's audio would begin to skip infinitely on a one second loop before inevitably crashing. For decades, the "solution" was to play the game on a single core to mitigate the issue. However, this approach was never a proper fix and only masked the still-present issue.

After many attempts by other people in the past to fix the issue, Gemini took it upon himself to entirely rewrite the game's streamed audio engine from the ground up. Now, with Gemini's custom audio solution, the game can run stable on multiple processor cores while providing other great benefits, including an overall smoother gaming experience thanks to less game stutters while playing.

Machine Ambassador

  • SH2 Enhancements Module: Contributor

Machine Ambassador's interest in computers started at a young age. At only 12 years old he was already learning how to program, beginning with the C language. His love of video games and overall interest in how software is written—particularly for games—taught him various programming languages and led him to write his own game engine using the OpenGL graphics API.

All these years later, Machine Ambassador's dedication to his craft hasn't waned. And it's this continued passion that has broadened his skillset to numerous discplines, including binary exploitation, reverse engineering, and x86 assembly programming; skills that have proven essential for his work on the Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition project.

Machine Ambassador's contributions for Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition specialize in quality-of-life improvements for the game. Examples include restoring the "game save" sound effect when saving through the pause menu; fixing sound looping errors that would otherwise ruin immersion; correcting issues where the background music would play the wrong track; restoring fade effects for elements in the game; and more.

  • SH2 Enhancements Module: Contributor

Silent Hill holds a special place in mercury's heart, especially the first three games in the series. It's hard to quantify the impact they've had on him as a person, but it was thanks to the Silent Hill series and other beloved games that mercury started reverse engineering and programming at a young age. These games drove his passion to understand them better at a programming level that, in time, became both his passion and career.

For Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition, mercury has created menu overlays that have proven very useful in a number of ways. These overlays can greatly help with debugging/troubleshooting purposes and also provide invaluable game statistic information for players who are wanting to achieve specific goals in their playthroughs.

Going above and beyond, mercury also took on the tremendous task of adding full mouse support to the game. Previously, the mouse was only utilized for menu and puzzle/riddle usage. But now, thanks to his hard work, you can fully play the game controlling the character with the mouse, scrolling the mouse wheel to change weapons, and using left/right click to perform various in-game actions.

  • SH2 Enhancements Module: Contributor

Over the years, Murugo has taken an interest in reverse engineering file formats for classic games, especially ones for the PlayStation 2. The first game he researched back in college was Kingdom Hearts, trying haphazardly to extract a model of Destiny Islands for a student project with all but a hex editor, emulator, and Python. Murugo's skills have grown significantly since then, with him contributing to noclip.website and OpenKH, along with sharing his own research and tools for various game projects on GitHub. For the Silent Hill series, Murugo investigated model and animation formats for Silent Hill 2 and 3, and documented some previously undiscovered content from the PS2 release of Silent Hill 3 on TCRF.

For Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition, Murugo answered the call in helping to address high framerate issues with the game. Several of the high framerate issues he fixed were unresolved for years, such as audio events and physics-based animations breaking, due to them being complex to research and track down. But now, thanks in part to his contributions, Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition is able to offer a comprehensive 60 FPS mode for the game. Some of Murugo's other great contributions include fixing layering issues with the game's subtitles and noise grain, along with restoring mouse interactions within the game's Inventory screen.

Nemesis2000

  • Fog Fix: Creator

The most immediate downgrade players notice in the vanilla version of Silent Hill 2 PC is the lackluster fog effects. But thanks to Nemesis2000's Fog Fix, the effects of the fog are restored and can be directly compared to the PlayStation 2's version, which are considered the best.

  • SH2:EE Setup Tool: Creator
  • SH2 Enhancements Module: Contributor
  • SH2 Widescreen Fix: Contributor

nipkow's love for game modding began when he discovered the vast world of Grand Theft Auto mods. He started out by creating simple texture and visual mods for Grand Theft Auto: Vice City and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. As time went on, he became more interested in the inner workings of games and software in general, which led him to familiarize himself with a number of programming languages, including C#, C++, and Python.

From the early days, nipkow was present in the SH2 Widescreen Fix project discussions, offering assistance in further improving the game. As time went on and the Enhanced Edition project came to fruition, nipkow was still there to offer help; a testament of his love for Silent Hill 2. Years later, his major contribution to Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition would be a notable one, with the creation of a Setup Tool for the project: A highly requested feature that automates and streamlines the overall process of installing and getting Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition up-and-running.

  • sh2ex: Creator
  • Audio Enhancement Pack: Creator
  • SH2 Enhancements Module: Contributor

A connoisseur in all things audio, Nisto's background with sound and music engineering is the backbone of the Audio Enhancement Pack and to restoring many of the audio features present in Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition.

Nisto is the creator of sh2ex: Software which extracts file system and sound data from various versions of Silent Hill 2. His extraction tool proved indispensable for obtaining lossless PlayStation 2 quality sound files for Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition.

Upon sound data extraction, Nisto was able to write additional scripts to decode the PlayStation 2's post-processing effects for the audio files, thus restoring the reverb effect for a truly authentic-sounding experience in-game.

Ratiocinator

  • Image Enhancement Pack: Creator
  • FMV Enhancement Pack: Creator
  • Audio Enhancement Pack: Contributor
  • SH2 Enhancements Module: Contributor
  • Enhanced Edition Essential Files: Contributor

Ratiocinator's love for Silent Hill 2 started early with the creation of the first-ever fansite dedicated to Silent Hill 2, Letter From Silent Heaven. Over the years, he would create additional Silent Hill sites/forums; help with archiving/preserving Silent Hill's history; and, being inspired by the series, pursue 3D art.

As time went on, Ratiocinator discovered ThirteenAG and Aero_'s SH2 Widescreen Fix project, which led him to offer assistance in further improving Silent Hill 2 PC. As the scope of fixes, enhancements, and party involvement grew for the SH2 Widescreen Fix project, the work branched off and turned into Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition, with Ratiocinator acting as the project manager.

Ratiocinator also acts as the lead playtester and liaison between team members, along with finding additional talents to help with the project, where needed. He utilizes his rich background in graphic design and 3D art, along with his amateur background in modding, to contribute to Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition in a variety of ways.

The Image Enhancement Pack, which upscales, remasters, and remakes images for the game, was created by him to showcase the visual fidelity of Silent Hill 2 in a new light. And the FMV Enhancement Pack, handled by Ratiocinator, uses the best pre-existing versions of the FMVs as a base and upscales them to provide higher quality versions. Ratiocinator also manages the content for Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition's Twitter and YouTube pages, along with this website.

  • SH2 Enhancements Module: Contributor

Game programmer by day, modder at night. Silent started his programming career by creating scripts for the Grand Theft Auto games. This was not enough, however, and over time he gradually expanded his skill set to x86 assembly and C++. At some point, Silent became increasingly annoyed with bugs found in Grand Theft Auto games, which ultimately led to the release of unofficial mega patches for the games, known as SilentPatch.

Vast reverse engineering and programming knowledge gained from these experiences did not go overlooked, and nowadays Silent works on games professionally, hoping to make a difference in their overall quality. Despite that, he still devotes time to fix other games unofficially, since nothing brings him more joy than fixing issues which prevent people from enjoying older classics fully.

For Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition, Silent has paid special attention to gamepad (controller) support. Silent diagnosed issues that prevented various gamepads functionalities, and restored them to their former glory. Examples include: Restoring rumble/vibration for controllers; allowing the D-pad to act as an additional movement pad to control James and navigate menu selections; and restore right joystick functionality to move the search camera around.

Steam006

  • SH2 Enhancements Module: Contributor

Steam006 has a rich and long-standing history with improving the PC versions of Silent Hill games. His interest in fixing these games evolved from a larger interest in programming, modding, and reverse engineering in general. He's always enjoyed the challenge of pushing computers and software to do new things. Silent Hill 3 in particular is what hooked him on the series and, since then, he has created fix packages for Silent Hill 2, 3, and 4 PC.

The work Steam006 was doing for Silent Hill 2 PC paralleled work for Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition in similar ways, so his contributions to the project was a natural progression. Given today's larger storage devices, he has improved how the game displays available storage space by showing this size in KB, GB, or TB. This adjustment makes knowing available disk space easier to understand. Steam006 has also researched and fixed how the game handles saving and loading in unique areas, which prevents crashes and softlocks.

  • SH2 Widescreen Fix: Creator
  • Ultimate ASI Loader: Creator

ThirteenAG's renowned Widescreen Fixes Pack initiative is another cornerstone in which Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition was born from.

While emoose's sh2proxy project is the origins to Silent Hill 2 PC's initial improvements, it was the Widescreen Fixes Pack initiative that made playing Silent Hill 2 PC on modern displays a viable option. Co-created with Aero_, ThirteenAG's work on the SH2 Widescreen Fix project (that is part of the Widescreen Fixes Pack initiative) opened the floodgates for the influx of additional enhancements you see today.

As the lead programmer for the SH2 Widescreen Fix project, ThirteenAG's contributions to Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition are plentiful, and include: The C++ programming implementation of all x86 assembly language fixes used within the SH2 Widescreen Fix; helping create the FMV widescreen compatibility mod; higher resolution support for the game; and much more.

ThirteenAG's Ultimate ASI Loader (UAL) is an important component for making multiple, external fix packages work with one another. The UAL allows for additional DLL mods to be saved, loaded, and run as ASI scripts upon launch. Thanks to UAL, any additional, DLL-based enhancement packages are able to work in tandem with one another.

Additional Software By...

Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition uses additional software designed for global applications. While not directly involved with the project, the talented groups and individuals behind these pieces of software help further improve the experience of the game. Please take a moment to learn how these people have helped make your experience with Silent Hill 2 PC better.

Samuel Grossman

  • Xidi: Creator

Using newer controllers on older PC games can be a challenge due to compatibility issues. But thanks to Xidi, created by Samuel Grossman, it doesn't need to be. Xidi offers a host of improvements for controllers with Silent Hill 2 PC, including converting the inputs of modern, XInput-based controllers to legacy DirectInput (which is what Silent Hill 2 PC uses); allowing an XInput controller to be plugged in and used after the game has launched; and allowing an XInput controller to be switched out while the game is running.

  • ReShade: Creator
  • D3D8to9: Creator

crosire's enhancement packages are universally known and praised for their importance to PC gaming.

D3D8to9 is one such package. D3D8to9 is a pseudo-driver module that improves compatibility and stability in games using DirectX 8 for rendering by converting all API calls and lowlevel shaders to equivalent DirectX 9 ones. For Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition, D3D8to9 converts the game from running on DirectX 8 to DirectX 9, allowing the ability for more improvements to be implemented into the game.

ReShade, the project crosire is probably best known for, is an advanced, fully generic post-processing injector for games and video software. ReShade exposes an automated and generic way to access frame color and depth information for applications that allows for the use of shaders. For Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition, ReShade is integrated into the project to give the game visual improvements via shaders that includes color corrections, level adjustments, and anti-aliasing.

  • OpenAL Soft: Creator
  • DSOAL: Creator

kcat's passion and dedication to restoring proper audio effects for older PC games is essential in restoring Silent Hill 2 PC's sound presentation. kcat's OpenAL Soft is a software implementation of OpenAL, which is a cross-platform 3D audio API appropriate for use with gaming applications, and his DSOAL project is a DirectSound DLL replacer that enables surround sound, HRTF, and EAX audio support for games via OpenAL Soft. For Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition, DSOAL enables 3D positional audio, which restores the sound presentation of the game for a more immersive experience.

Special Thanks

A special thank you to the following people. Their time and assistance has helped with further research and improvements on the Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition project.