Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[Rincewind]

Outside of the improved framerate, I didn't like the PS4 remake of SotC at all. It suffers from some of the same problems as the Demons Souls remake by the same company - it butchers the artstyle and overall feel of the original game. This is a game that really benefits from the "aethereal" quality of low-res textures and the very specific type of overblooming that Team Ico was so fond of in the PS2 days. This allied with the limited view distance of the original really made you feel like you were in an alien, mysterious - and most of all barren, lifeless, melancholy world, and of course that is in itself important to the game's narrative. All of that is pretty much ruined in the recent remake, it's too colourful, too "alive", too banal shit boring.

I tend to agree with you on all that, was just curious of your opinion. I'm not even sure the 60fps framerate is such an improvement; I prefer the "cinematic" 30fps plus motion blur of the original.

Reminds me a bit of people increasing the render distance to the max in Morrowind, "clearing up the fog", so to speak, and proudly posting screenshots/videos of the "improvement". Errr, nope.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Outside of the improved framerate, I didn't like the PS4 remake of SotC at all. It suffers from some of the same problems as the Demons Souls remake by the same company - it butchers the artstyle and overall feel of the original game. This is a game that really benefits from the "aethereal" quality of low-res textures and the very specific type of overblooming that Team Ico was so fond of in the PS2 days. This allied with the limited view distance of the original really made you feel like you were in an alien, mysterious - and most of all barren, lifeless, melancholy world, and of course that is in itself important to the game's narrative. All of that is pretty much ruined in the recent remake, it's too colourful, too "alive", too banal shit boring.

I tend to agree with you on all that, was just curious of your opinion. I'm not even sure the 60fps framerate is such an improvement; I prefer the "cinematic" 30fps plus motion blur of the original.

Reminds me a bit of people increasing the render distance to the max in Morrowind, "clearing up the fog", so to speak, and proudly posting screenshots/videos of the "improvement". Errr, nope.

Well, the framerate of the original PS2 version would often dip in the single digits, especially towards the end (the final Colossus is just borderline unplayable). Although I can conceive of an argument that a low framerate increases tension and somehow contributes to the struggle of Wander hanging on to these huge creatures, it's a really contrived point and I would never make it. The PS3 remaster is perfectly fine however, and the 30fps target is achieved most of the time. I'm just really sensitive to framerate and I pretty much always prefer faster input response in all cases.

Re: fog, yeah... it's another one of those cases where limitation breeds creativity and taking it off diminishes the overall effect/atmosphere. Same thing in many games, i.e. the original Tomb Raider.

 

[Rincewind]

Outside of the improved framerate, I didn't like the PS4 remake of SotC at all. It suffers from some of the same problems as the Demons Souls remake by the same company - it butchers the artstyle and overall feel of the original game. This is a game that really benefits from the "aethereal" quality of low-res textures and the very specific type of overblooming that Team Ico was so fond of in the PS2 days. This allied with the limited view distance of the original really made you feel like you were in an alien, mysterious - and most of all barren, lifeless, melancholy world, and of course that is in itself important to the game's narrative. All of that is pretty much ruined in the recent remake, it's too colourful, too "alive", too banal shit boring.

I tend to agree with you on all that, was just curious of your opinion. I'm not even sure the 60fps framerate is such an improvement; I prefer the "cinematic" 30fps plus motion blur of the original.

Reminds me a bit of people increasing the render distance to the max in Morrowind, "clearing up the fog", so to speak, and proudly posting screenshots/videos of the "improvement". Errr, nope.

Well, the framerate of the original PS2 version would often dip in the single digits, especially towards the end (the final Colossus is just borderline unplayable). Although I can conceive of an argument that a low framerate increases tension and somehow contributes to the struggle of Wander hanging on to these huge creatures, it's a really contrived point and I would never make it. The PS3 remaster is perfectly fine however, and the 30fps target is achieved most of the time. I'm just really sensitive to framerate and I pretty much always prefer faster input response in all cases.

Re: fog, yeah... it's another one of those cases where limitation breeds creativity and taking it off diminishes the overall effect/atmosphere. Same thing in many games, i.e. the original Tomb Raider.

I absolutely agree on the fog. I spent some time with the PS2 version years ago in PCSX2 but never finished it. Yeah, there were frequent framerate drops even on my i7 4790 4.4 GHz machine. Probably the performance of the PS3 version will be even worse in RPCS3 but we will see... I quite like 30fps, probably because 60fps seems to trigger my motion sickness a bit more easily.

 

[unseeingeye]

There are 3 hdm floppy files I presume?
Disk a is just the intro, nothing else (uniquely stupid).
Disk C opens up the party management in which you need to setup your party members. Check the youtube video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlBL_dIh-kI&t=531s
Disk b, fuck if i know, but it is probably the actual game.

Ok so I think that it is supposed to be 3 floppies, but the reason I was so confused is because within every copy I found online whether the Neo Kobe or elsewhere for the PC-98, there were 3 separate archives and two of them were labeled as FD 'sets' and indeed when extracted yield 3 disk files, in this case in the hdm format. However, one of the archives is for a single disk only, is named with [Alien Zukan] and shows as Disk D. This is how the disk files are named when extracted:

Last Armageddon (Disk A).hdm
Last Armageddon (Disk B).hdm
Last Armageddon (Disk C).hdm

Last Armageddon [Set 1] (Disk A).hdm
Last Armageddon [Set 1] (Disk B).hdm
Last Armageddon [Set 1] (Disk C).hdm

Last Armageddon (Alien Zukan) (Disk D).hdm

Now, other copies of the game for different Japanese computers, contained 7 disks (!) which even further messed me up, because this one similarly has a total of 7 and had me thinking that perhaps the three disks in [Set 1] were actually the B sides of the same disks? I tested this, and it was a combination of one disk from the first set and one disk from the second set that actually got me to the screen you see in that video you linked me to, where there were three options and selecting the middle option appeared to load a saved game. The copies of this game for other computers that clearly have 7 disks (and I verified this by looking up photos of the actual game boxes) are labeled A through G, so I don't know if this is just a different naming convention, or a matter of having an original and then a patched version, plus a boot disk or save disk?

Whatever the case may be, later on when I'm at home I'm going to try getting back to the party creation screen as I managed to before, and see if I can follow the steps taken by the player in that video. My trouble though is that when I did try the other options, it brought up an insert disk prompt, and I have no idea what disk is what!

 

[Duraframe300]

Outside of the improved framerate, I didn't like the PS4 remake of SotC at all. It suffers from some of the same problems as the Demons Souls remake by the same company - it butchers the artstyle and overall feel of the original game. This is a game that really benefits from the "aethereal" quality of low-res textures and the very specific type of overblooming that Team Ico was so fond of in the PS2 days. This allied with the limited view distance of the original really made you feel like you were in an alien, mysterious - and most of all barren, lifeless, melancholy world, and of course that is in itself important to the game's narrative. All of that is pretty much ruined in the recent remake, it's too colourful, too "alive", too banal shit boring.

I tend to agree with you on all that, was just curious of your opinion. I'm not even sure the 60fps framerate is such an improvement; I prefer the "cinematic" 30fps plus motion blur of the original.

Reminds me a bit of people increasing the render distance to the max in Morrowind, "clearing up the fog", so to speak, and proudly posting screenshots/videos of the "improvement". Errr, nope.

Well, the framerate of the original PS2 version would often dip in the single digits, especially towards the end (the final Colossus is just borderline unplayable). Although I can conceive of an argument that a low framerate increases tension and somehow contributes to the struggle of Wander hanging on to these huge creatures, it's a really contrived point and I would never make it. The PS3 remaster is perfectly fine however, and the 30fps target is achieved most of the time. I'm just really sensitive to framerate and I pretty much always prefer faster input response in all cases.

Re: fog, yeah... it's another one of those cases where limitation breeds creativity and taking it off diminishes the overall effect/atmosphere. Same thing in many games, i.e. the original Tomb Raider.

I absolutely agree on the fog. I spent some time with the PS2 version years ago in PCSX2 but never finished it. Yeah, there were frequent framerate drops even on my i7 4790 4.4 GHz machine. Probably the performance of the PS3 version will be even worse in RPCS3 but we will see... I quite like 30fps, probably because 60fps seems to trigger my motion sickness a bit more easily.

SOTC on PS2 had framerate drops by nature. The emulator isn‘t going to solve that.

Not sure how well SOTC plays on RPCS3, but there‘s every chance its going to run better for you.

 

[abnaxus]

I tested it myself

Disk A is opening disk, disk C user disk and disk B program disk.

Disk A + disk B plays opening movie. Disk C + disk B starts the game. Pick first option and make three parties. Second option continues game, and since it's no blank user disk you basically continue someone's game from 27 years ago:

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS STILL UPDATING MY EMU PACKAGE TO MY CURRENT DISPLAY THE 50 INCH TV FUCKS EVRYTHING BUT I AM MAKING PROFRESS

I CANT FIGURE OUT HOW TO RESIZE 4DO AND PSX FULL SCREEN

TRIED SWITCHING TO MEDNAFEN FOR PS BUT GETTING ERROR MESSAGE

FOR MAME MY FIX IS ADDING THE CHICKEN SHIFT BEZEL TO MOST GAMES IT MAKES THE 4 3 RATIO A PERFECT SIZE FOR MY DISPLAY AND IS VERY UNOBRTUSIVE

NEXT STEP IS FIXING DEMUL SCREEN SIZE AND MAKING SURE SEGA MODEL 2 EMULAONTN WORKS

 

[Derringer]

BROS STILL UPDATING MY EMU PACKAGE TO MY CURRENT DISPLAY THE 50 INCH TV CARES EVRYTHING BUT I AM MAKING PROFRESS

I CANT FIGURE OUT HOW TO RESIZE 4DO AND PSX FULL SCREEN

TRIED SWITCHING TO MEDNAFEN FOR PS BUT GETTING ERROR MESSAGE

FOR MAME MY FIX IS ADDING THE CHICKEN SHIFT BEZEL TO MOST GAMES IT MAKES THE 4 3 RATIO A PERFECT SIZE FOR MY DISPLAY AND IS VERY UNOBRTUSIVE

NEXT STEP IS FIXING DEMUL SCREEN SIZE AND MAKING SURE SEGA MODEL 2 EMULAONTN WORKS

If you get any resize issues make sure it isn't the DPI, I'm not really sure what kind of issues it'd have past 7.

 

[Puukko]

Ace Combat 6 is in a better state now on Xenia. Not perfect, but entirely playable by the looks of it.



There are issues with audio glitching out in cutscenes and instruments being out of sync, but if you unlock the fps like you should (feels much much better to play) then you'll be skipping the cutscenes anyway.

I was getting a good 90 fps before being GPU bottlenecked. There's FSR and FXAA built in now.

 

[unseeingeye]

I tested it myself

Disk A is opening disk, disk C user disk and disk B program disk.

Disk A + disk B plays opening movie. Disk C + disk B starts the game. Pick first option and make three parties. Second option continues game, and since it's no blank user disk you basically continue someone's game from 27 years ago:

So I was right, it was an old save game! Haha

Seriously though, you have done me an immense kindness here, I cannot thank you enough! I can finally get into this game with confidence knowing now what to do. I don't know that I can do anything to thank you, but please know that I am sincerely grateful.

 

[Rincewind]

Double-post, but what the hell

The PhilsComputerLabs guy started doing a series on DOSBox Staging. It's very informative, highly recommended to watch for all DOS gaming enthusiasts.

It's great to see he went through the same "shader journey" as myself and many others, I assume (from "100% sharp pixels or GTFO" to "I can't play any old game without proper period-authentic CRT shaders anymore").

 

[unseeingeye]

Double-post, but what the hell

The PhilsComputerLabs guy started doing a series on DOSBox Staging. It's very informative, highly recommended to watch for all DOS gaming enthusiasts.

It's great to see he went through the same "shader journey" as myself and many others, I assume (from "100% sharp pixels or GTFO" to "I can't play any old game without proper period-authentic CRT shaders anymore").

Going to start seriously looking into this, Rincewind.

Most of my other immediate projects are finished; got Nokia N-Gage to launch directly into pre-installed games from within LaunchBox, got Policenauts CD version on PC-98 up and running with sound in-sync, poster above resolved Last Armageddon for me, and finished importing dozens of computers and obscure consoles with everything set up beautifully. Now to move on to Staging

 

[unseeingeye]

I tested it myself

Disk A is opening disk, disk C user disk and disk B program disk.

Disk A + disk B plays opening movie. Disk C + disk B starts the game. Pick first option and make three parties. Second option continues game, and since it's no blank user disk you basically continue someone's game from 27 years ago:

So I got it to work by making a m3u for the C and B disks as you mentioned, and was able to create a party and start the game!

However I cannot control the party; none of the keys will move them and I can only use the menu interfaces. I am guessing that party movement might be controlled by numpad keys? If so I'm screwed lol. Maybe I can throw Joy2Key up in the mix..

 

[Nutmeg]

Dream emulator feature: Ability to increase frame rate without fucking the audio pitch (samples can play over eachother that's fine). Would make so many jrpgs so much more playable.

 

[Viata]

Dream emulator feature: Ability to increase frame rate without fucking the audio pitch (samples can play over eachother that's fine). Would make so many jrpgs so much more playable.

Agreed. I used the option to turn the audio off whenever I increase the frame rate, it's as bad as the song playing fast, sadly.

 

[Hirato]

Dream emulator feature: Ability to increase frame rate without fucking the audio pitch (samples can play over eachother that's fine). Would make so many jrpgs so much more playable.

It doesn't work for most consoles, but PCSX2 actually supports this.
there's a special audio mode called 'Async mixing' that decouples audio timers and the game time.

Some games happen to use Audio Interrupts for timing, so this actually doubles as a speedhack if it can't maintain 50/60 FPS.
You will get mixed results based on whether games use primarily midi for audio or not.
If they do, then the tempo will be heavily sped up. If not, then the audio will generally play normally.
Only exception I've found are movies, sometimes very weird things happen, at other times you get overflows (audio skips).
Some games also use audio cues to sequence events (particularly in game cutscenes), which can cause some really odd things to happen.

I streamed a turbo mode FFX some years ago.
You can get a quick taste of the experience here if you want. It actually gives a rather fascinating insight to how FFX was built.

 

[Nutmeg]

That's good news. PS2 is probably the system where I want this feature the most (for Busin, which is particularly egregious w.r.t the length and speed of its battle animations).

 

[flyingjohn]

Emulation is a gift that keeps on giving.
Newest Amd drivers broke every single older Nippon Ichi game on pc and the only solution is to emulate.
Gonna give a little primer:

-Phantom brave: Switch or psp.
Psp has slowdowns while switch is a lazy but decent port.

-Makai kingdom: Switch or psp.
Switch has more features.

-Disgaea 1: Switch or psp
Switch complete version, has qol features not present in pc.

-Disgaea 2: Psp or ps2
PSP is preferred.

-Disgaea 3: Ps3 or vita
Vita by far. More stuff and seems to work fine in emu.

-Disgaea 4: Switch or ps3
Switch has more features

-Disgaea d2: Ps3
Only option.

 

[index.php]

 

[Puukko]

Oh yeah, on that note. I noticed some time back that emulator speedup on Retroarch would suddenly look choppy regardless of core. Internal fps looked right and the game would speed up, but output would hover around 50 fps. Went through all video related settings to no effect. It kind of feels like there's something obvious I missed, but I've never seen this before and it started happening on its own. I do have a fresh install of Windows so might as well get clean Retroarch later as well and see if it's any different.

 

[v1rus]

Out of nowhere, Flycast on RetroArch started acting weird - Turning on shades breaks every single game for some reason. Wasnt like that couple of weeks ago (Perhaps updating it messed it up?) and shaders still work flawlessly on every other core.

I've tried a number of shaders, and the problem persists.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Did you change your rendering backend by any chance? (For example, from OpenGL to Vulkan or vice-versa)

 

[Nutmeg]

I had this happen due to an Nvidia driver update and updating it again a few days later fixed things. But I locked my flycast core for other reasons at one point too (stopped being able to save due to an update). I rarely update my cores tbh. I do like a yearly thing where I update and check everything when I have some free time.

 

[v1rus]

Did you change your rendering backend by any chance? (For example, from OpenGL to Vulkan or vice-versa)

I had this happen due to an Nvidia driver update and updating it again a few days later fixed things. But I locked my flycast core for other reasons at one point too (stopped being able to save due to an update). I rarely update my cores tbh. I do like a yearly thing where I update and check everything when I have some free time.

Hm. I'm trying my hardest to pinpoint what could have I possibly changed from the last time Flycast used to work properly. I did update the core recently, but the shaders should have worked after that. I'm quite sure I havent changed my rendering backend too. But nvidia driver update? Now, theres a chance that happened. I'll update the drivers and let you know how it works.

Ty bros

 

[v1rus]

No luck, updating the drivers didnt do anything

On a side note - anyone tried running PCSX2 on RA? Is it as bad as people say?