[bemushroomed]

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness issues

I've tirelessly perused FAQs and forum posts, trudged through plugin README.txt, and come to no conclusion.
I'm running an athlon XP 2800, 1.7 ghz, 1gig pc3200 ram, GeForce FX 6600.
Settings:
CPU running on recompiler (I tried interpreter)
GSdx9 0.8: PS 3.0 Direct3D, linear filtering
SPUnull
PEOPS CDVD driver: IOCTL scsi commands, read ahead, try again on reading error [5]
BIOS USA v.1.60 (07/02/2002) console
EDIT: I got the bios to load properly, and it reaches the 'now loading' but stays there for about two minutes with no action, and then the whole thing dumps. Any ideas?
me.

 

[TWave]

No idea. oO
With the config you have said it should work ok, but....I don't know.

Try with "Run CD" option instead of "Execute" to start the emu.

But this post is asking about a game bug, and the rules do NOT support that.
I think someone will close it.

 

[bemushroomed]

No idea. oO
But this post is asking about a game bug, and the rules do NOT support that.
I think someone will close it.

Damn, I thought I'd read the rules well enough, and seen enough questions about this kind of thing. It happens with all the other games I've run (or attempted to run) too.
me.

 

[stuntcock]

EDIT: I got the bios to load properly, and it reaches the 'now loading' but stays there for about two minutes with no action, and then the whole thing dumps. Any ideas?

The two-minute delay is due to the memcard. When the game loads, it checks whether there is an existing save file (or maybe preferences file?). For me, it had a delay, then told me it couldn't find the memcard (IIRC). I just went ahead anyways, since you can use save/load state.

So, my advice would be to check your memcard settings. Maybe format / reload would help?

Some of the more experienced people on here may be able to offer further support, if you post the console message that appears when it crashes.

 

[-kenshin-]

well.. i was just wondering what type of speeds you guys are getting with disgaea coz i read somewhere that some people could run this pretty much perfectly. anyway my pc specs are

Celeron 1.7GHz
1GB RAM
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX/MX 400

and i'm using

GSdx9 0.8 - Direct 3D - Fixed Pipeline
USA v01.60 Console

for me, the the intro part after you select new game goes at about 3fps and the actual game itself (i.e. when Etna is talking with Laharl after he just wakes up) goes at about 5fps.. so i was wondering if it was just my comp or not..

 

[TWave]

It's your computer.
You have a celeron that (I think) doesn't support SSE2. So you can't use VuRec, and with VuRec the games go much faster.
Disgaea in my specs goes at 15fps(60%) in the intro and 14fps(55%) ingame.

 

[-kenshin-]

i use VuRec thing though.. coz in the cpu config part, here's what it says

CPU vendor - GenuineIntel
Family - Williamette Intel Pentium IV
CPU speed - 1719 MHZ
Features - MMX,SSE,SSE2

so i use Recompiler+VuRecs coz it says it's the fastest.. i guess i'll just need to upgrade my computer then.. do you think a better video card will help? and how come for pixel shading i can only get fixed pipeline whereas in the GSdx9 0.6 plugin i could use ps2.0 and ps1.1?

 

[Vanit]

I thought VuRec 'greyed out' if your computer couldn't support it anyway. So unless some fool has hacked the emu so you can enable it on a computer that doesn't support it, people shouldn't be having the issue of incompatibility with VuRec...

 

[TWave]

Your CPU is quite slow for the emu, so you can't a big frame rate but It won't improbe changing the video card (the problem is on the CPU not on the GPU).
In Gsdx9 you could chose all the Pixel Shaders, even if your card didn't support them (In that case the plugin change it to the higer PS supporter, or Fixed pipeline). But the new version (0.8) now detects your hardware before starting the plugin and shows only the compatible modes with your hardware.

If you can use only Fixed pipeline Is cos your hardware don't support PS.

 

[-kenshin-]

ok then.. so i guess i really have to upgrade my comp.. anyway.. thanks guys for your help

 

[Zetor]

'eyall.

I am using a 2Ghz P4 with 512M RDRAM (yeah yeah *sigh*) and a GeForce FX 5200. I currently get around 10 fps in 320x240 fullscreen with vurecs on -- definitely playable, just a bit sluggish during long battle animations. I'm using the SSE2 version of GSdx9 (latest version).

Are there ways to improve speed from here? I was thinking about
- using f3 to load states instead of "load other" (this is tricky because I don't see which state I'm on)
- switching to a different resolution (windowed is right out, I get 3 fps there)
- switching process priority to high
- switching from SSSPSXPad to another plugin (though I prefer this one)
- dumping the DVD onto an ISO for faster performance
- switching to "Fixed Pipeline" (currently on Pixel Shaders 2.0)
- trying GSsoft in frameskip mode
- switching to linux (I have gentoo installed on partition #2, just never use it, heh)

Grats on the emu, btw -- I wouldn't have expected it to run complex games like Disgaea this early! :thumb:


TIA,

-- Z.

 

[CKemu]

(Specs in SIG)

Disgaea - Hour of Darkness [SLUS 20666] (U)
Fastest Settings (for most other games to)

• CPU Mode: eeREC or if available vuREC.
• GSdx - For 6xxxx cards PShader 2.0, for cards bellow, PShader 1.4 - D3D Mode NOT Software
• SPU2null (This is generally faster, and P.E.Op.S crashes with this game)
• Console OFF
• Use the nonDEV build (DEVbuilds contain debug stuff you won't need).
• Other Settings are negligable
• Be patient, there can be a 'significant' Delay before this game boots with anything visable.

I normally can achieve 26-31 FPS.

Make sure you have the latest drivers for your system, and obviously keep background programs to a minimal, normally I just use AldosCapture for screen grabbing, as it saves having to have an art program in the background.

 

[Zetor]

Thanks, I switched to 1.4 shaders, killed a few processes, set high priority and gained a few FPS, currently I'm hovering around 20 or so (hard to tell, I don't see an fps display in fullscreen). Does resolution affect FPS (one way or the other)? Ie. is 320x240 faster than 640x480 because less processing work is done, or is it actually slower because the calculations are done for 640x480, then resized to 320x240? (I'm assuming that the actual speed difference between drawing a 640x480 image vs a 320x240 image is negligible )


ta',

-- Z.

 

[mithaldu]

currently I'm hovering around 20 or so (hard to tell, I don't see an fps display in fullscreen).

try www.fraps.com

Does resolution affect FPS (one way or the other)? Ie. is 320x240 faster than 640x480 because less processing work is done, or is it actually slower because the calculations are done for 640x480, then resized to 320x240? (I'm assuming that the actual speed difference between drawing a 640x480 image vs a 320x240 image is negligible )

nope, the reason why can be read here: http://www.ngemu.com/forums/showpost.php?p=873921&postcount=30

 

[Simple]

Does the sound work for you in this game?

 

[mithaldu]

with 40%-70% of the original game speed i wouldn't even think about trying to play with sound
a) it'd put more strain on the cpu, thus making the game even slower
b) it'd sound bad because it would either have to play at the same speed as the game itself or okay a sound and then pause so the rest can catch up

 

[Cloud Strife 7]

The sound doesn`t work because Peops (the only plugin for "real" sound) makes the game crash.