Oni 2 (Angel Studios)/Running

Running the game

The ISO can be found on epforums.org (registration required) and is playable on a modded PS2 or in an emulator. The only mature PS2 emulator is PCSX2. Although PCSX2 is available for both Windows and macOS, the Mac version has poor performance and exhibits graphical glitches with this particular game. (Lighting problems occur even when playing on a PS2, so it's likely that graphics code was being worked on when this game build was produced.) Thus, if you are on a Mac, you will ideally want to use Boot Camp to run the game in PCSX2 for Windows. PCSX2 has also been reported to work on Macs running Windows within Parallels Desktop and VMware Fusion; it does not seem to run in Oracle VM VirtualBox, which has problems with 3D acceleration as of v5.1.

To prevent glitched shadows when playing Oni 2 in PCSX2, you need to switch the GSdx plugin to Software mode and turn on the "Edge anti-aliasing" setting; this will severely cut performance compared to rendering in Hardware mode.

Playing the levels

Once Oni 2 is running, there is only one level available by choosing New Game. Additional levels, however, can be chosen from the Load Game menu. These are documented on the main page. Levels can take a couple minutes to load, and some do not have loading screens, instead displaying a gray screen until they're done loading. The only levels that could be considered traditionally "game-like" are levels 1 (The Blast Chambers), 6 (Initial Attack), and 8 (The Rooftops). These were the primary levels used to prototype the game. The other levels were used by the developers to test features or scripting, but some are rather substantial, like level 14 (AI Abilities Test).

Launch arguments

Oni 2 accepts various launch arguments. To pass arguments to the game, you must use the package HERE. The syntax for arguments which require a parameter, such as "-layout", is "-argument=parameter". The descriptions given below are taken verbatim from the game, and the effects are based on our testing.

Argument	Description	Effect
-help	--	Lists all the following arguments.
-ui	use the frontend	No effect.
-noui	Bypass the frontend and go to game.	Game starts by loading first level.
-devui	use the dev frontend	No effect.
-fullui	use the full frontend	Same UI for main menu, but game crashes when choosing "Load Game".
-nogame	Never go into the game shell. Useful for testing frontend.
-mission	The "mission" to load.
-level	The level to load
-players	The number of human players in game.
-vsplit	Want vertical split for 2 player mode instead of default horizontal split.
-sharevp	All players share the same viewport.
-diff	Difficulty to use.
-musicvol	Music volume to use for playback.
-sfxvol	Sound FX volume to use for playback.
-voicevol	Voiceover volume to use for playback.
-nocutscenes	Disables in-game cinematics.	No effect?
-noattacking	Prevents AI from attacking player.
-layout	Specify which level to load.	Game starts by loading the layout that you name. Names of layouts are found in the uncompressed RB.DAT archive, which is downloadable from the OBD:Oni2AS page.
-testloadsave	Use test save file to run game.
-oldcam	Start with the old camera system in the game.
-noactorreload	Don't reload actor XML files when doing the "quick" restart.
-defaultcampack	Use the default camera package instead of the campack in the layout directory.
-nocamcollision	No camera collision.
-norumble	No pad rumbling.
-noparticles	No particle effects.
-unbreakable	Player is unbreakable
-polar	Use polar camera by default.
-nohud	Don't draw the HUD.
-recompile	Recompile all used scripts.
-noai	Disables NPC movement/actions.
-notemplates	Don't preload the actor templates.
-nopausemenu	Do not show the pause menu when you press start, just freeze the frame.	Pressing "Start" button removes HUD, brightens image, and pauses the game.
-playerNN	(Where NN is 0->Max players) Sets the specified player's name.
-modelNN	(Where NN is 0->Max players) Sets the specified player's model to use.
-controlcfgNN	(Where NN is 0->Max players) Sets the specified player's control configuration.
-controlmapNN	(Where NN is 0->Max players) Sets the specified player's control mapping (i.e. Player 1 is using controller in port 3).