[cgil]

Can someone post their setting for MGS on ePSXe 1.4.

 

[benny]

Pete's OpenGL 1.50
EPSXE core SPU 1.4.0
Pete's DirectX Cdrom Plugin (the latest one).

On MGS, EPSXE's new core SPU gives me (much!) better results than Pete (EPSXE's one if faster on that game for me); while Iori has better sound quality but I have to check the SPU IRQ hack option with it, which dramatically slows the emulation.

(my machine is a poor PIII500 with TNT2Ultra)

With the new sound plugin, sound is much better than before, emulation overall is quicker, voice stutter really less. That's quite a nice improvement. Well done EPSXE team!

Btw, anybody has a better configuration for this incredible game ?

 

[fivefeet8]

petes d3d pluggin 1.50
nice settings
standard filtering
8888
graphics card buffer(blurry effects)
special game fixes: better fps counter for certain games.... this option actually make mgs run at the correct speed in epsxe....without it, mgs runs a bit slower than the actual speed of a real psx..... even when the fps says 60.... You have to set auto fs/fps limit for it to be correct.......


petes midus spu....... xa smoothing enabled.....

internal cd rom pluggin

 

[benny]

fivefeet8...

can you explain ur settings 'special game fixes' and the stuff related to auto fs/fps.
?

thanks,

Benny

 

[liquid]

here are my MGS settings
I have a 1Ghz Athlon + Geforce2MX your milage may differ with the same settings.


Pete's GPU 1.50
Fullscreen Mode 800x600 32bit color depth
R8 G8 B8 A8 texture quality
1- Standard Filtering
2- Dyanamic Cache Type
Framerate Limiter: ON
Frameskip: OFF
Auto Detect FPS: ON
Off screen drawing: 3-Enhanced
Framebuffer Textures: 2-Gfx Card buffer
Alpha multipass: ON
Mask Bit: ON
Advanced Blending: ON
Special Gamefixes: ON
(in special gamefixes)
PC FPS Calculation: ON
Frame Buffer: ON

Prodigy sound driver 0.1 SPU
Attributes: 48000hz, 16bit
Buffer length: 40
Block: 4
Interpolation: ON
Disable SPU IRQ hack

CDROM: Internal ePSXe 1.4.0 CDR core

I've tested this setup with both win2k and 9x. This resulted in the best performance (smooth cut sequences) and decent sound & voice.

 

[benny]

Cheers liquid. Ill try that PC FPS calculation thing.

Benny

 

[fivefeet8]

In petes gpu pluggins the options I set the Framerate options to:

use Fps limit.
auto-detect fps/frame skipping limit........this just auto detects the fps limit needed for a game..ie.60 for ntsc and 50 for pal games....


in the misc option I enable:

special game fixes:
use pc fps calculations...... with the auto-detect and this option Metal gear solid runs a 30 fps.... Don't be fooled though..... this is how fast the game actually ran on a real psx.... If you set the fps limit manually to 60 and then set this option, the game would run twice as fast.... So to run it at the correct speed you have to set it to auto-detect.....

The reason why I use this setting is because I have found that the manual fps limit of 60 for ntsc and 50 for pal on mgs doesn't create the same speed as a real psx for Metal Gear Solid.... The game runs slower than a real psx..... Even with lewpys' pluggin I have to set a fps limit of 75 to make it run more like a real psx.... but with petes' d3d pluggin I have found that these settings make the game run at the actual speed of a real psx....

One more thing to remember is that the framerate in epsxe...ie.60/50 is just a percentage of the actual framerate of the game it seems..... If a game is running 60 fps all the time in epsxe then it is actually just saying the game is running full fps or 100% of the actual fps of the game...... If the game is running at 30 fps in epsxe then it is actually running 50% of the actuall speed in a real psx......Not a lot of psx game run a 60 fps.... Metal gear runs at 30 fps on the actual psx.... So at 30 fps in epsxe, Metal gear solid would really be running at 15 fps in a real psx(without the settings I stated above)..... Which is exactly what epsxe simulates when this happens... It says 60 fps, but in actuallity, the game can only run at 30 fps to reach full speed.. which is what you really see on screen....

 

[benny]

Cool. I never fiddled around with this special FPS calculation before, and indeed the speed is really nice like that.

I noticed as well the VERY STRONG IMPACT of the SPU on that game performance. With Prodigy and liquid's settings, vocals are near perfect, music wel balanced, and there are no noticeable slowdowns.

While with the other SPUs (the new core one, Pete's one, or Iori's), the sound just stutters soooo much....

Why is that? Is Prodigy's plugin so different from all those ones ?

 

[liquid]

I'm getting consistent crashes in MGS (ntsc-north american) on ePSXe 1.40 at the exact moment the video sequences begin.

I've tested the it with different SPU's and different CDrom Plugins (including the internal ones) and still the same problem. so now I'm just left to test Nack's Soft GPU (since it is the only other GPU that supports some of the nessary effects required for MGS)

Damn, I just love MGS, but right now I'm getting slightly better results with FPSE, video is screwy though in FPSE with prodigy plugin & my current settings. I'll post them up in the misc forum.

 

[benny]

Strange bug yesterday evening while playing MGS: I got to kill revolver ocelot, then have the 'movie' with the ninja robot, and suddenly, game crashes, epsxe closes, and back to windows...

anybody experienced that already ?

 

[liquid]

yeah in epsxe1.4.0 MGS crashes when it tries to play the video sequence of baker talking about spent nuclear materials. I mentioned that above.

I'm using FPSE now to play MGS and I'm getting better results.
I'm also testing Null 1.34 (not 1.35) SPU plugin with the following setting
Buffer: 25
Block:3
Prodigy sounds great but it's slow during the video playbacks.

 

[Zster]

I typed this before but lost it. I agree with fivefeet8, the standard FPS gives an indication of percentage of PSX speed. The PSX like the PSX can sometimes have too much to handle and FPS can drop to 40FPS. What the fix does is ensure that 60FPS are displayed on the PC’s screen per second. So what if the PSX can only manage 40? Then the plugin allows the emulation to be sped up until 60FPS can be displayed. The result is fast smooth gameplay with no slowdowns, cool …but there’s a catch. Other parts of the emulation are also sped up like sound , and seeing as it’s speed is independent of frame rate the music will generally play faster when the 40 to 60FPS speed up occurs. Samples may also get cut short as the sped up SPU believes it has played to the end. Still cool though, maybe the emulator could be changed to accommodate this.

I notice that benny is using the openGL plugin with his TNT Ultra. Believe it or not since about Nvidia reference driver 5.80 or so (you can get up to 12.90 now) D3D been much faster, try it. Oh and I have set up block transfer and turned of Vsync.

My problem with MGS is that it does this stop start thing during the cut scenes, weird

 

[fivefeet8]

I get start and stop too..... I have found that using different spus lessens the pauses.... I think it was petes midus spu with xa smoothing enabled..... Of course my Mgs disk is pretty scratched so it could be that as well.....

 

[benny]

I know it's not really epsxe related but here you go....

To pass the crash after the videos, I try to use FPSE. But when MGS runs on FPSE, it just doesn't recognize ANY controller input...
I'm using Joy0Demo, which runs otherwise well on any other games....

did anybody experience that and solved it ?
(did u Liquid ?)

Benny

 

[liquid]

Fortuately, I have a gravis Xterminator which can map keyboard strokes to the gamepad. Ironically, I'm too lazy to set it up...so I hardly ever use it. I'm too used to the keyboard I guess. Sorry I haven't had any problems with the FPSE controller plugin, when using with the keyboard (too lazy remember), so I'm totally oblivious if it works with the gamepad or not. I'll try dusting the gamepad off tonight too see if it works.

 

[benny]

it seems I fcuked up... in order to pass the video crash on MGS with EPSXE, I converted my savegame to VGS format, used it to pass Revolver, then converted it back to EPSXE... and now EPSXE doesn't recognize the savegame anymore !!!!!!!!!

Help ....!

Could somebody post me his MGS EPSXE savegame, right after revolver ocelot ?


Benny

 

[benny]

Hey liquid.

Does your controller on FPSE work for MGS ?