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Author Topic: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05  (Read 108171 times)

opt2not

  • Posts: 203
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #280 on: July 06, 2017, 12:11:30 am »
Now that I got my GCW back from repair, I've been catching up on the releases.  WOW! pscx4all is amazing!  (yes, I haven't had my GCW for that long).

I was able to try out a handful of games:

FF7
FF8
FF9
Chrono Cross
Ridge Racer
Gradius Gaiden *
R-type Delta
R-types
Einhander
Castlevania: SOTN
Castlevania Chronicles
Raiden Project *
Raiden DX *

*For Gradius Gaiden, the left side of the screen issue stated in the compatibility list is present, but it doesn't make the game unplayable. The screen is just slightly shifted over a bit, making the display un-centered.

*Raiden Project was unplayable for me.  I was able to get it running to the gameplay using the SCPH-7000 bios, but in-game controls didn't work from there.

*Raiden DX was playable, but had graphic glitches on the right side of the screen during regular display modes. When I changed it to the vertical "arcade" mode, it played perfectly. But it's hard to play vertical orientation on this device. :P

Everything else so far has run impeccably. Thank you!

Senor Quack

  • Posts: 225
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #281 on: July 06, 2017, 08:16:58 am »
*For Gradius Gaiden, the left side of the screen issue stated in the compatibility list is present, but it doesn't make the game unplayable. The screen is just slightly shifted over a bit, making the display un-centered.
Yeah, there's a lot of room for improvement as far as screen scaling / centering goes. A lot of work has been done on it already, it's just quite a chore. Probably will be done before end of summer.

Quote
*Raiden Project was unplayable for me.  I was able to get it running to the gameplay using the SCPH-7000 bios, but in-game controls didn't work from there.
I just tested Raiden Project [SCUS-94402] and can confirm it works great (with screen border issue) but the controls don't work with 'HLE emulated bios' setting enabled. If I had to guess, I suspect you set the BIOS file OK but perhaps left 'HLE emulated bios' setting turned on. Only some games work using emulated HLE bios, and so I don't recommend its use.
« Last Edit: July 06, 2017, 08:21:26 am by Senor Quack »

opt2not

  • Posts: 203
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #282 on: July 06, 2017, 09:23:08 pm »
I just tested Raiden Project [SCUS-94402] and can confirm it works great (with screen border issue) but the controls don't work with 'HLE emulated bios' setting enabled. If I had to guess, I suspect you set the BIOS file OK but perhaps left 'HLE emulated bios' setting turned on. Only some games work using emulated HLE bios, and so I don't recommend its use.
This was it, I must have mistakenly had HLE enabled. I usually have it off.  Thanks!

I was also able to try out some more games that were all running successfully without HLE:

Bushido Blade (USA) *currently not listed in the compatibility list
Dino Crisis (USA) 1.1
Dino Crisis 2 (USA)

Surkow

  • * Administrator
  • Posts: 686
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #283 on: July 06, 2017, 10:08:51 pm »
@opt2not

Feel free to add more games to the compatibility list (the spreadsheet can be edited).

opt2not

  • Posts: 203
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #284 on: July 06, 2017, 10:36:34 pm »
Feel free to add more games to the compatibility list (the spreadsheet can be edited).
Done!
If anyone would like to confirm Bushido Blade (USA) for me, we can call that a commit.

I'll be testing through more games and will call them out as I go. 
« Last Edit: July 06, 2017, 10:38:12 pm by opt2not »

Reds

  • Posts: 117
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #285 on: July 26, 2017, 08:14:16 am »
Is auto-frameskip meant to turn on and then not turn off afterwards? As far as I've been testing it in games like Medievil and Threads Of Fate, once frameskip turns on it doesn't return to zero frames skipped and stays at a minimum of one frames skipped, making 30fps games like those not very playable.

I'm just wondering if that's intentional or not, given how auto-frameskip kicks in well before the CPU load reaches 100%. It seems like it would be ideal if it only turned on when the game is actually slowing down rather than in advance, but it turns on at much lower than that. I'm just wondering what the reasoning behind that is, since it means it's not sensible to turn it on in both the games that need it the most, and games that only need it for a few spread-out moments.
« Last Edit: July 26, 2017, 02:06:51 pm by Reds »

Senor Quack

  • Posts: 225
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #286 on: July 26, 2017, 10:15:59 pm »
Is auto-frameskip meant to turn on and then not turn off afterwards? As far as I've been testing it in games like Medievil and Threads Of Fate, once frameskip turns on it doesn't return to zero frames skipped and stays at a minimum of one frames skipped, making 30fps games like those not very playable.

Nah, it's supposed to turn on/off dynamically depending on current time measurements each frame. I think you might be right after some brief testing of Medieval. What we need is visual display of frames dropped per second. I wanted to add that but ran out of time, so pretty soon I'll add it and verify the problem. Thanks for the bug report!  Please report anything else you find.
« Last Edit: July 26, 2017, 10:49:59 pm by Senor Quack »

Reds

  • Posts: 117
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #287 on: August 03, 2017, 05:55:28 am »
I've found that if you open the start+select menu a few times, the auto-frameksip problem often solves itself, making it turn on and off as intended, at least for a while. It'll eventually start doing it again, but you can brute-force fix the problem temporarily.

So I don't know what causes it in the first place, but that sort of solves it for the time being.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2017, 04:00:28 pm by Reds »

rester159

  • Posts: 10
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #288 on: August 06, 2017, 08:10:17 am »
Hey guys do you know if this emulator can deal with multi-track PSX games? If not, how do you make them work on it?

dmitry_smagin (OP)

  • Posts: 423
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #289 on: August 06, 2017, 03:00:06 pm »
Hey guys do you know if this emulator can deal with multi-track PSX games? If not, how do you make them work on it?

Yes, multi-track and multi-disc games are supported, just choose .cue file and that's it.
GCW-Zero prototype, Dingoo a320, Ritmix rzx-50, Dingoo a380, Xperia Play

Reds

  • Posts: 117
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #290 on: August 06, 2017, 04:14:40 pm »

Yes, multi-track and multi-disc games are supported, just choose .cue file and that's it.

I've been selecting the .bin files for multi-track and multi-CD games. I guess I'll be selecting the .cue files instead from now on, but would this have caused me to experience any problems down the line?

Senor Quack

  • Posts: 225
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #291 on: August 06, 2017, 07:20:34 pm »
I've been selecting the .bin files for multi-track and multi-CD games. I guess I'll be selecting the .cue files instead from now on, but would this have caused me to experience any problems down the line?

To swap CDs, support was added early on: inside the game, return to the main menu (press Select+Start), and you'll see 'Swap CD' menu entry. As Dmitry mentioned, you just select the new .CUE/.BIN and the game that's running will get sent an emulated 'lid-open/lid-closed' interrupt sequence and can thus tell that a new CD is inserted.

Only time you really need a .CUE file is if the game has multiple .BIN CDDA audio tracks. Otherwise, selecting the .CUE is the same as selecting the .BIN.

In the future, if you want to make your life *really* easy, and can find your game packaged as one, use PSP Eboot files (.PBP extension).. they offer multiple advantages: compression, multi-CD packaged in one file, no CUE worries.  You'll still need to swap CDs when the game asks for a different disc, but the 'Swap CD' menu will simply contain 'Disc 1, Disc 2, etc' rather then making you navigate a dir to choose a file manually.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2017, 07:43:36 pm by Senor Quack »

Reds

  • Posts: 117
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #292 on: August 06, 2017, 08:46:25 pm »

To swap CDs, support was added early on: inside the game, return to the main menu (press Select+Start), and you'll see 'Swap CD' menu entry. As Dmitry mentioned, you just select the new .CUE/.BIN and the game that's running will get sent an emulated 'lid-open/lid-closed' interrupt sequence and can thus tell that a new CD is inserted.

Only time you really need a .CUE file is if the game has multiple .BIN CDDA audio tracks. Otherwise, selecting the .CUE is the same as selecting the .BIN.

In the future, if you want to make your life *really* easy, and can find your game packaged as one, use PSP Eboot files (.PBP extension).. they offer multiple advantages: compression, multi-CD packaged in one file, no CUE worries.  You'll still need to swap CDs when the game asks for a different disc, but the 'Swap CD' menu will simply contain 'Disc 1, Disc 2, etc' rather then making you navigate a dir to choose a file manually.

I already knew about swapping CDs and everything, I was just wondering if I wasn't meant to select .bins at all in the first place in general. But PBPs, now that's useful.  I had completely missed that you could use those/hadn't realised .pbp was for eboots, that's very helpful for minimising clutter on some games that have a lot of individual files.

Also, just wanted to say how much I appreciate all of the work done on the emulator. For the longest time I didn't think that the GCW would get a passable PSX emulator let alone one as fantastic as this, so this is really a dream come true on that front. With just a few little improvements (reworking of the memory cards, mapping R2/L2 to analog, autoskip bug fixed) that we'll hopefully see after you're done with the IPU scaling and SIMD acceleration update, I wouldn't have any minor complaints at all.
« Last Edit: August 06, 2017, 08:59:27 pm by Reds »

opt2not

  • Posts: 203
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #293 on: August 07, 2017, 05:37:45 am »
It doesn't matter if you select bins or cues. Cue files are just a text document that points to the bin file and path for launching. The emulator can launch either. in fact, I don't even think there is a need to have the cue files presebt, since the primary function of them are for hardware that didn't read scan each disc track, mainly cd readers.

Senor Quack

  • Posts: 225
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #294 on: August 07, 2017, 07:39:07 am »
It doesn't matter if you select bins or cues. Cue files are just a text document that points to the bin file and path for launching. The emulator can launch either. in fact, I don't even think there is a need to have the cue files presebt, since the primary function of them are for hardware that didn't read scan each disc track, mainly cd readers.

You do need .CUEs for some PS1 games: any ISO rips that include separate .BINs for CDDA audio tracks, as I mentioned a few messages back. If you don't use the .CUE file to start the game, or the CUE doesn't list the correct BIN filenames, the emu/game will fail to see the CDDA audio tracks.

opt2not

  • Posts: 203
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #295 on: August 07, 2017, 07:40:25 pm »
You do need .CUEs for some PS1 games: any ISO rips that include separate .BINs for CDDA audio tracks, as I mentioned a few messages back. If you don't use the .CUE file to start the game, or the CUE doesn't list the correct BIN filenames, the emu/game will fail to see the CDDA audio tracks.
Ah, good to know. I haven't encountered any games with separate CDDA audio tracks. So far I've only dealt with .bins and .cue's.
I'll keep this in mind if/when I do have to deal with audio tracks.

finalmix

  • Posts: 42
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #296 on: August 31, 2017, 05:58:06 am »
Thanks for port and share.
« Last Edit: September 05, 2017, 12:48:47 pm by finalmix »

Reds

  • Posts: 117
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #297 on: August 31, 2017, 06:58:33 am »
Please, do not post feedback for this fork in this thread. Instead, create a seperate one. We will not support it unless the fork author has the desire to contribute his changes. From what I see (https://github.com/steward-fu/gh_gcw0_pcsx4all) he vaguely understands what he's doing: the changes are random and erratic and seem more like quick-and-dirty experiments rather than well constructed fixes. Btw, removing pixel skipping is a bad idea; most probably the guy didn't understand its purpose.

Thanks.

Ah, I see, sorry.
« Last Edit: August 31, 2017, 01:50:34 pm by Reds »

dmitry_smagin (OP)

  • Posts: 423
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #298 on: August 31, 2017, 01:19:08 pm »
Please, do not post feedback for this fork in this thread. Instead, create a seperate one. We will not support it unless the fork author has the desire to contribute his changes. From what I see (https://github.com/steward-fu/gh_gcw0_pcsx4all) he vaguely understands what he's doing: the changes are random and erratic and seem more like quick-and-dirty experiments rather than well constructed fixes. Btw, removing pixel skipping is a bad idea; most probably the guy didn't understand its purpose.

Thanks.
GCW-Zero prototype, Dingoo a320, Ritmix rzx-50, Dingoo a380, Xperia Play

xdplus fanatic-oopsy

  • * AKA Dreamesper
  • Posts: 1338
Re: pcsx4all 2.4 UPDATE 2017-01-05
« Reply #299 on: September 26, 2017, 10:35:25 pm »
@Senor Quack

Any word/update on the APE ESCAPE control scheme we discussed a few months ago through a future update?

 ;D