[HunterZ]

I've been messing around with ePSXe v1.40 to try to get it working as good as possible with the game Armored Core. I was able to get the sound in the movies ("MDECs" are what I think PSX techies call them) to stop stuttering by enabling accurate CD-ROM timing (this even fixed stuttering when playing Armored Core from the test ISO image I made using CDRWIN)

However, the game also uses XA sounds for the voices that the player hears over his "radio", and for some reason these sounds are extremely choppy/stuttery.

Here is a summary of my current config in ePSXe v1.40:
Video: Pete's OpenGL v1.52
Sound: Null2's Audio Driver 1.4
*Attributes: 48000Hz, 16Bit
*buffer length: 40
*block: 5
*(interval: 8ms)
*use reverb, enable VAG stream, force VAG 48kHz, enable tone-cache
*enable sound, cdda sound, XA sound, XA read, SPU IRQ hack
CDROM: ePSXe CDR WNT /W2K core 1.4.0
*enable accurate cdrom timing
BIOS: SCPH1001.BIN (my own PSX is an NTSC SCPH-7501, but AFAIK there aren't been any publicly released BIOS dumps from that model)

My system:
Intel PII-450
192MB PC100 SDRAM
Geforce2MX 16MB AGP, Detonator driver version 14.40
Sound Blaster Live! X-Gamer
44x IDE ATAPI CD-ROM, UDMA-33 enabled
Windows 2000 Pro, SP2, DX8, IE6
Gravis Gamepad Pro

Other stuff:
- I've noticed that Pete's OpenGL plugin doesn't seem to be rendering the swirl+blur effect in FF7 when the game enters a battle scene. I've been using palettized caching, extended w/o sprites filtering, 8-8-8-8 textures, extended off-screen, gfx buffer framebuffer, alpha multipass, mask blit, advanced blending, and textured window alignment special fix. I'm thinking that maybe setting the framebuffer textures mode to emulated vram may active the swirl effects, but i dont currently have enough patience to sit through the intro movie again :eyes:
- Pete's Direct3D plugin doesn't look very good on my GF2MX - I think maybe there are some texture alignment problems, and/or bounding-box artifacts when using 8-8-8-8 textures in 32-bit color on nVIDIA cards.
- for some reason, the Sony logo doesn't appear when running a game in ePSXe. It only appears when running the BIOS by itself. Maybe it's a difference between the SCPH-1001 and the 7501? Not that I really care - it just makes it take longer to load the game anyways
- After creating a profile, then exiting, ePSXeCutor now freezes if I try to do much of anything in it. I tried smashing everything I could find in my registry, but epsxecutor still lists my profile and freezes when I click on it or tell it to erase its registry settings.
- WWW.EPSXE.COM IS DOWN!!!
- my roommate has given up on ePSXe because the input (e.g. controller emulation) keeps ceasing to work for him, regardless of whether he's using keyboard or joystick controls. Neither of us understand why ePSXe doesn't allow the use of controller plugins (especially since some of them have neat features like rumble support)
- The music that plays at the very beginning of Metal Gear Solid is choppy. I think this may be an XA thing like in Armored Core.

That's all that I can think of right now. Thanks in advance for any input (no pun intended) that anyone might be able to give.

 

[fivefeet8]

wow, thats a lot of questions...

Your controller problems can be fixed by pressing f4 twice or pressing f5 then f4 when they don't work.. Same for some memcard problems..

Epsxe 1.4 supports rumble either through directx or burrutter( enables rumble in psx contollers)

The xa problems in MGS is all too well known.. The only thing to do is either wait for the next version of epsxe to fix it, or try different spu pluggins and test them out until you find one that makes the stuttering less.. Personally, I use petes midus spu as it has an option "XA smoothing" which seems to lessen the stutters..

You may need to delete the whole epsxe executor registry(not the epsxe registry maybe) to try and fix your executor crashing problems.. There are more than one place in the registry where executor keeps its settings..

Instead of using NUlls spu, try iori's spu which is based on NUlls spu.. Seems to work a lot better..

If you want to see the sony logo.. use the command line option and use any command.. ie.. -nomdec .. to turn off mdecs ingame.. Using command lines will show all the psx bootup screens unless you also use this command.. -f

As for your gpu problems, I leave those up to the geforce users.. Since I don't use petes pluggins much.. having a voodoo 5 and all..

 

[HunterZ]

Thanks for the reply, five. Sorry about the long post - I tend to build up a lot of questions and then spit them all out at once so that I can look for replies in one place

I'll tell my roommate about the controller fix (what exactly does it do anyways?)

I tried disabling all XA support in ePSXe and some of the plugins I've tried, and it still played stuttery sounds at the beginning. Apparently it's not an XA issue, but rather a PCM issue of some sort. I tried a dozen sound plugins or so, and all of them chocked on Metal Gear Solid. In fact, ePSXe's internal sound code fared best (suprisingly - or not)

I tried killing everything epsxecutor-related in the registry, but it still shows my "Ben1" profile when I load it up (and still freezes when I try to do anything other than close the program). I even searched my registry for Ben1 but didn't find anything, so I'm totally stumped as to where it's pulling that info from.

When I tried iori's SPU plugin, it didn't seem to work as well as Null2's, but then again I don't know what most of the options do and I didn't mess with it much. I'll give it another shot.

 

[HunterZ]

I take back what I said about iori's plugin! It fixed the stuttering radio sounds in Armored Core! I doubled the two buffer sizes though (sound latency is still unnoticeable to I don't see any disadvantage to the larger buffer sizes)

I think this means that I have near 100% perfect emulation of Armored Core! And of course the graphics look so much better (thanks to texture filtering and hi-res rendering mostly, although even Pete's software renderer blows normal PSX graphics out of the water!)

 

[fivefeet8]

try looking at this key for the executor settings.. This is where it saves all the game configs..

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Vision Thing\ePSXeCutorCFG

If you haven't done so.. F4 disables and enables sio irq.. F5 scrolls through the controller options... ie. digital, analog, analog\digital, etc..

 

[HunterZ]

That seems to have done the trick for epsxecutor...

I'm glad you told me that the F4 trick works for memory cards, because although I haven't been having controller problems, I started having memory card problems.

...looks like i spoke too soon about epsxecutor; it still freezes when i try to create a new config (even though my old one no longer appears).