Configuration for Silent Hill 1

25177 Views 9 Replies 5 Participants Last post by smartynko, Dec 29, 2016

Vaelor

Discussion Starter · May 25, 2005

Hi guys..

As much as I hate to post on a forum for the first time sounding like some ignorant n00b, sometimes you just have to accept that you don't know anything about something, and hope that somebody with more experience than you can show you what to do... =)

I am a complete and total newbie to emulators in general, and I recently bought a copy of Silent Hill for PlayStation and installed ePSXe v1.6.0. I then acquired a BIOS, several video plugins, audio plugins, CD-ROM plugins, and set to work trying to configure the whole mess.

Problem is, I don't know one end of an emulator from the other, so I don't know what half the options mean and hence what they should be set at for optimum performance.

At the moment, I've got the game working, playable, but glitchy. I'm using Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.75 for video, P.E.Op.S. DSound Audio Driver 1.9 for audio, and P.E.Op.S. CDR Driver 1.4 for CD-ROM. The game runs, but the graphics are awkward, blotchy, and tend to shimmer and vibrate in some places, and the audio skips, jumps, and has bassy little pops throughout it. Overall, the game is playable, but for a game that relies so heavily on atmosphere like Silent Hill, it really ruins it.

I'm running an AMD Athlon XP 2400+, with 512Mb RAM, a 128Mb NVIDIA GeForce4 TI4200-8X video card, and a SB Live 5.1 SE audio card. This box is running Windows 2000 Pro SP4, with DirectX 9.0c.

Could somebody please tell me, in detail, which settings (and plugins, if the ones I'm using currently aren't ideal!) I should use for peak optimal peformance to run Silent Hill on this machine using ePSXe?

I've searched the forums already, but my problem is, most threads here only address a specific issue about the game, and even those I don't really understand the answer. I just need a dot point response - set this to that, change that to this, check this, uncheck that, and boom, it'll be perfect. =)

Can anybody help me out here please? Any assistance would really be hugely appreciated. I'm dying to get back into Silent Hill here! =)

(If you need more information on my setup or configuration to be able to advise accurately, please just let me know what I've forgotten to mention and I'll fill in the blanks!)

Thanks in advance.

- Vaelor

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Vaelor

Discussion Starter · #3 · May 26, 2005

Hey Dark Watcher, thanks for your fast reply!

Unfortunately, I already have Masked Bit checked, SPUAsync set on, and SPU IRQ hack turned off. =(

On your advice about the copy settings feature in Pete's OpenGL, I've got my current settings here:-

Pete's OpenGL Configuration said:
Plugin: Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.1.75
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
GFX card: GeForce4 Ti 4200 with AGP8X/AGP/SSE/3DNOW!

Resolution/Color:
- 1280x1024 Fullscreen - NO desktop changing [32 Bit]
- Keep psx aspect ratio: off

Textures:
- R8G8B8A8
- Filtering: 5
- Hi-Res textures: 2
- VRam size: 128 MBytes

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

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 3
- Framebuffer texture: 3
- Framebuffer access: 3
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: on

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Line mode: off
- Unfiltered FB: off
- 15 bit FB: off
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: on
- Screen cushion: off
- Game fixes: off [00000000]

As to my hardware specs, I detailed them in the middle of my initial post - my video card is an NVIDIA GeForce4 TI4200-8X 128Mb (ASUS V9280 VideoSuite), and I'm running an Athlon XP 2400+ with 512Mb RAM. If I'm not wrong, this machine should be more than sufficient to emulate a game like Silent Hill with absolutely optimal visual/audio settings and not suffer any lag/glitches - so long as somebody can help me configure my emulator/plugins correctly! =)

Any advice you can give me?

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Vaelor

Discussion Starter · #5 · May 26, 2005

fireblaster_lyz said:
Create an image for your disc.
Seems like you got a *bad* disc.

Actually, already tried that also. Tried running the game as both an .ISO and an .IMG burned directly from the original disk, when I suspected that the emulator accessing the CD-ROM drive might have had something to do with the delays, but it ran literally exactly the same when I did it that way instead of playing off the CD... =(

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Vaelor

Discussion Starter · #7 · May 26, 2005

Excellent, thanks for your advice Dark Watcher. I'll implement these changes and see if it makes any difference. Will let you know how it goes.

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Vaelor

Discussion Starter · #8 · Sep 5, 2006 (Edited)

Sorry to gravedig this thread, but I've just started trying to play Silent Hill again after a year or so, and since I'm having the same problems with it that were never resolved last time, I thought it better nettiquette to revive this thread than to start another one from scratch and rehash over everything again.

I'm trying to play Silent Hill with ePSXe, but I'm getting a lot of audio pops and visual flickers. My system specs are the same as they were last year (see root post of this thread) except that I have double the RAM now, and my Pete's OpenGL settings are as follows:-

Pete's OpenGL Configuration said:
Plugin: Pete's OpenGL Driver 1.1.75
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
GFX card: GeForce4 Ti 4200 with AGP8X/AGP/SSE/3DNOW!

Resolution/Color:
- 1600x1200 Fullscreen - NO desktop changing [32 Bit]
- Keep psx aspect ratio: off

Textures:
- R8G8B8A8
- Filtering: 5
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- VRam size: 128 MBytes

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

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 3
- Framebuffer texture: 3
- Framebuffer access: 4
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: on

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Line mode: off
- Unfiltered FB: off
- 15 bit FB: off
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: on
- Screen cushion: off
- Game fixes: off [00000000]

I'm using P.E.Op.S. DSound PSX SPU Audio for my sound plugin, and my current settings are:-

Mode: 1 - High
Volume: 3 - Loudest
Reverb: 2 - PSX Reverb
Interpolation: 3 - Cubic

Enable XA Playing - ON
Change XA Speed - ON

All Misc. options are OFF.

The sound crackle and pops I can live with (had to tweak it a lot to even get the sound to not sound like a cat being tortured - perfect would be nice, but I'm not one to push my luck!), but the sporadic flashes of white mess in my video just totally ruins gameplay - especially for a game like Silent Hill where the environment is half the game.

Can anybody please help solve my several year-spanning problem of getting this game to run properly via emulation?! =(

=============================================================================================================

{The Next Day...} (Merged Doublepost)

Okay, please disregard my previous post. This problem has been inadvertently resolved when I solved another problem I was discussing in another thread, about running Silent Hill using "Run ISO" from an image on the HDD, rather than from disc or a mounted image on a virtual drive.

Previously I was running off an Alcohol 120% .MDF file, mounted in Alcohol to a virtual CD-ROM. Now, I'm just loading a CloneCD .IMG straight from ePSXe's "Run ISO" option, and for no reason I can explain, all the audio and visual glitches I was experiencing are now completely cleared up, and the game plays as smooth as I've ever seen it.

So, if anybody happens to read this thread as an archive some day - the above graphics and sound settings ARE the perfect ones for Silent Hill on ePSXe! Just make sure you play from an ISO and not from CD-ROM if you have any problems! =)

Thanks to everybody for your help anyway.

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