[ninja]

Hallo. I apologize profusely if my question has been answered a thousand times already, I couldn't find the answer I needed via searching. Can someone recommend me a good configuration for FFVII? My system is based around this hardware:

Athlon 64 3200+ [Clawhammer] with a small overclock
MSI K8N Neo Platinum mainboard [nForce 3 250Gb chipset]
HIS 9800 Pro IceQ
1 GB Crucial Ballistix PC3200 @ 2-2-2-5, 1T
Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 930SB 19" monitor
Blah...

I am using ePSXe v1.6.0, Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.7, and Eternal SPU 1.50. I generally use a 1600 X 1200 screen resolution, refresh rate is 85Hz. FFVII runs OK, but I know that with the right config I can improve it. It's bearable, but I'm getting these weird green lines around objects on the screen. If someone can recommend some plugins to try or the best way to configure these plugins I already have, please post, it would be a great help. )

 

[bluekirby0]

Well, w/o seeing your actual configuration, I can suggest that if you have Hi-Res textures on that you should turn them off, and try setting your X Res to 1 or 2 and Y Res to 2. 1600x1200 is a pretty high resolution, and you would probably not suffer any if you ended up knocking that down a bit, but that shouldn't be necessary unless you start using options like Screen Smoothing or Scanlines that get progressively slower at higher resolutions.

Post your GPU plugin settings (there is a neat "Copy to Clipboard button in Pete's/P.E.Op.S. plugins to make this easy) so we can "tweak" what you have, rather than starting from scratch.

If you want help configuring the audio, post what kind of sound card you have and your current SPU settings.

 

[hushypushy]

are you calling this out of date?

try that out i've been playing FF7 a bit lately with that config, i like it....

 

[ninja]

Yo, sorry for my late reply, I was locked out of the forums after I signed up and wrote my first post, it wouldn't let me enter, saying my password was wrong! Seems to be fixed now though.

OK...

@ blue:

The sound appears to be just fine. I think I found some usable GPU settings now, but I'm still open to suggestions. It looks to me like the older plugins can achieve visuals that sometimes look better than the new ones, and sometimes worse. Using Pete's OpenGL 1.74, I got the FFVII characters to look really good -- totally smooth and sharp, but the backgrounds looked jagged and rough. Using the newer plugin, the backgrounds look good but the characters look rough. I don't understand why! Anyway, here are the GPU settings I am using now, and they work OK, just not great.

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.7
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
GFX card: RADEON 9800 Pro x86/MMX/3DNow!/SSE2

Resolution/Color:
- 1600x1200 Fullscreen - NO desktop changing
- Internal X resolution: 1
- Internal Y resolution: 2
- Keep psx aspect ratio: off
- No render-to-texture: off

- Filtering: 6
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- TexWin pixel shader: off
- VRam size: 128 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: Auto

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 1
- Framebuffer effects: 3
- Framebuffer uploads: 2

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Mdec filter: on
- Screen filtering: on
- Shader effects: 0/1
- Flicker-fix border size: 0
- GF4/XP crash fix: off
- Game fixes: on [00000002]

This looks pretty smooth. There's not too many problems with speed, just when loading the next area the music slows down a little, and when I'm about to enter battles it happens too (I understand everyone has problems with the "battle swirl"), but I can live with that. Apart from these few errors, the game is very playable, I just feel I could do better with some expert help from you guys. Oh yeah, I'm running the game from an ISO I made, and it's a PAL version, if that's any help.

@ hushy: Your config works pretty good, but it doesn't look as good as I think my hardware can get, I think maybe the config can be improved upon, although it seems like a good config to start with. Kinda wish I'd found your thread a long time ago, I have never had much luck with setting up ePSXe until recently, though I've been using the emulator for about 3 years! BTW, I can't use - Internal X resolution @ 2, the emulator crashes straight away.

Thanks very much, both of you, for your replies.

 

[hushypushy]

well...

i have it on Very High X and Very High Y. only Nvidia GeForce4 (NOT mx), the FX series, and 6xxx series support very high Y. for all else (i.e., Radeons), put on High X. it will still look really good.

i'm gonna edit the post to make it more clear, though. just to prevent further misunderstanding.

i dont really know how FF7 can look any better...i mean, it is a PSX game after all. the only thing i can further suggest is to use shaders, perhaps a bit of smoothing or whatever you like. beyond that, while OGL2 is excellent, it's not a miracle maker....

anywho, here's the link to shaders: http://pbernert.com/html/gpu.htm#SHADER

 

[emusnicker]

hushypushy, does Framebuffer Upload 2 as opposed to it being set to 1 change anything? I'm not really seeing a difference.

 

[deamonhunter]

i think this may be weird but use older gpu plugins like petes ogl 1.58, 1.67
i found them better in my own way. any way u can try them if the screen smoothing didnt work for u in the newer plugins old ones give sharper textures and better edges in the same resolutions

 

[ninja]

I understand that it's only a PSX game, etc, but I know it can look better. Some of the screenshots that were posted using older plugins showed very sharp looking characters, but the backgrounds don't look so good, which is the exact oppposite of the results I'm getting with Pete's 2.7. See attached screenshot of my rough looking character. Unfortunately I can't take a screenshot of Cloud using the older 1.74 plugin, only his hair appears!

 

[ninja]

OK, managed to take a shot of Cloud using the 1.74 plugin. See how much smoother this is:

 

[hushypushy]

emusnicker, i remember setting that for a reason, i cant remember what it was at the moment...probably something with battle swirls. but hey if 1/3/2 works...why not eh? if 1/3/1 works for you go for it.

ninja: you can add it to a previous post, just use Edit anywho, the reason is that OGL2 doesnt let you use AA and OGL does. so, OGL draws the polygon and AA's the edges. OGL2 doesnt do that. sadly, since you have a radeon, you cant use Very High X and Y (which would make cloud actually a lot smoother).

 

[ninja]

OK, I understand. It's a shame. Why can't I have the best of both worlds!? Thanks for the info mate.

 

[hushypushy]

its because OGL2 uses render to texture (like Halo) and you cant AA polygons rendered in the P buffer. sorry.

 

[I-Chan]

Ninja, if you are willing to test, pete's site has a section on his forums about user contributed shaders, that can make things look a lot better. You could try those.

 

[ninja]

Great, I'll do that. Thanks, I-Chan.

EDIT: Found an interesting thread but I can't work out what the guy's talking about. I did what he said (in fact I already have all the shaders downloaded from Aldo's site), but it says I'm missing a custom file when I start ePSXe.

http://www.foren.de/system/thread-bestshadersforff7-pete_bernert-266904-1007216.html

 

[bluekirby0]

I played around a bit and found that this setup gives me a pretty nice result on FF7 for Display. My screentshots in the soft plugin don't work correctly, but you may want to try this config as I don't get the problems on character sprites that would require AA to fix:

Plugin: P.E.Op.S. Soft Driver 1.1.17
Author: Pete Bernert and the P.E.Op.S. team

Resolution/Color:
- 800x600 Fullscreen - [32 Bit] (If you set this higher with the stretching I used the display will not fill the screen)
Stretch mode: 11 (This is the HQ2X Unstretched setting, Set to HQ3X Unstretched if you plan on using a resolution higher than 1152x768, I get problems at higher resolutions with my monitor)
Dither mode: 2

Framerate:
- FPS limit: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: Auto

Misc:
- Scanlines: disabled
- Game fixes: off [00000001]


By using Unstretched HQ scaling, you eliminate the need for AA on the character sprites, and this plugin seems to work better for me in FF7 while I use OGL2 for most other games. This may lag on slower systems, but so will complex shaders.

 

[ninja]

Using HQ3X I get a tiny game in the middle of the screen, it isn't full sized. Also my game wouldn't start, it only got to the "Squaresoft" screen and stayed black after that.

 

[bluekirby0]

using HQ3x you will have to use a lower resolution (try in the 1024x768 to 1280x1024 range) as it doesn't stretch the screen to fill it; thus if you use say 1600x1200, it would display the native game resolution x3 and appear tiny within the screen. The only reason I suggest this setup for FF7 is that it keeps the sprites looking natural and doesn't require any sort of special filtering to reduce jagged edges. As for the freezes you are getting, there is a chance that if your resolution is too high using this particular plugin, that the game will either freeze or not display anything that isn't rendered (i.e. the New Game/Continue screen or the in-game menu) w/o actually crashing.

If you get the crash running it at 1024x768 then I will look into a way to fix that. Unfortunately, there seems to be a problem of the display being too wide for this resolution, so when you go into the menus, there is a "ghost" of the part cut off on the right side of the screen overlapping the left side. Stretching would fix this, but mess up the sprites -.-





I tried out the OpenGL2 shaders today as well. What you need to do is make a directory in your ePSXe directory and extract your shaders to it. They should be in pairs, with a set name of gpuPeteOGL2.* if not name them this (keeping the original extensions intact). Set the shaders directory using the "..." button in the plugin next to the "Shader Effects" option.

Now if the shader you want to use is a fp and vp pair, set the OGL2 plugin to "Shader Effects=3" and make sure "Screen Filtering=1" and it will load %ShaderDir%\gpuPeteOGL2.fp and %ShaderDir%\gpuPeteOGL2.vp where %ShaderDir% is where you told the plugin to find the shaders.

For a slv and slf pair, follow the above, except set the plugin to "ShaderEffects=5" and it will load %ShaderDir%\gpuPeteOGL2.slv and %ShaderDir%\gpuPeteOGL2.slf instead.

If you want a way to swap between different vp/fp shaders or slv/slf textures quickly, you can give each texture pair a unique name in the same folder, then make a batch file containing the following for each pair:

del gpuPeteOGL2.slf
del gpuPeteOGL2.slv
copy shader1.slf gpuPeteOGL2.slf
copy shader1.slv gpuPeteOGL2.slv

change "shader1" to whatever your unique name is for that batch file, and change the file extensions as necessary for fp/vp. To make a batch file, just open notepad, put in the text like above, making any necessary changes; File->Save As->change file type to All and save it as shader1.bat or whatever will make it easy to identify which shaders it enables. You still have to change the plugin option if switching form vp/fp to slv/slf or vice-versa, but this will save you a lot of time renaming files if you like several shaders. Perhaps a shader will work for you at a high resolution, try a few out and see how it goes.

 

[ninja]

Hey man, thanks a lot for the great info. I will give this a try soon and let you know how it goes.

 

[sultanoswing]

Try ePSXe 1.5.2 - I have similar specs to yours, ninja, and that was the ONLY thing which eliminated the slowdown when battles started. Now smooth AND nice looking!

SoS