[CosmicBeing]

First, here's some of my specs - I hope it's enough:

-ATI Radeon HD 3200
-AMD Phenom 9100e Quad-Core Processor ~1.8GHz
-4 GB of RAM
-Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit

Next, my ePSXe 1.7.0 settings:

Plugin: Pete's DX6 D3D Driver 1.1.77
Author: Pete Bernert
GFX card: ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics

Resolution/Color:
- 640x480 Window mode

Textures:
- R8G8A8A8
- Filtering: 0
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- VRam size: 0 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limit: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: 200.0

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 3
- Framebuffer texture: 2
- Framebuffer access: 0
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: hardware

Misc:
- Scanlines: off [0]
- Unfiltered FB: off
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: off
- Full vram: off
- Game fixes: off [00000000]


My problems:
The game seems to run fine (mostly), but the title screen is black except for the part where it lists New Game / Continue / Voice Collection.

I can't seem to unlimit the frames to speed up the game for easy leveling either, even when I press the key designated for it. It hovers around 60 regardless of how I play with the settings.

Another small issue: I seem to have this problem where the selection sound echos non-stop when I'm loading a game; but it stops once the loading is done. That isn't such a big deal to me though.

 

[LensLarque]

- The 'black title screen' is a known bug. I don't think there's a fix for this yet.

- Speeding up games by removing frame limit doesn't always work... dunno exactly but maybe it's linked to the audio.

- If you're using the Eternal 1.41 sound plugin, there's a fix for some Tri-Ace games like Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean 2.

Dunno if that will help a lot...

(PS: there's a good method for Valkyrie Profile' sound, I don't know if you're playing that game, but as it's another of Tri-Ace's, maybe it'll be useful for SO 2 too:

In Eternal 1.41 sound plugin:

- check the VP & SO 2 fix,
- set the Audio Out Method to 'SPUasync' & 'Smooth'.)

 

[CosmicBeing]

Wow. Actually, that helped a lot!

Switching to Eternal 1.41 took away the sound glitch -and- allows me to speed up the frames to power-level. Thanks!

EDIT: I guess all I have left to ask is.. how can I make my game look as 'sexy' as possible with my machine? I'm willing to use other plug-ins or even emulators if need be.

 

[LensLarque]

Glad it helped !

About the looks: I see you're on Vista, so OpenGL might not be a good idea for you. Better stick to Direct3D or DirectDraw plugins.

What's your pc monitor's resolution ?

You could try Pete's D3D Driver 1.77:
(settings for DX6 and DX7 versions are the same)

These are quite simple settings, but:
- You should put you own desktop resolution in the fullscreen mode settings (instead of the default 640x480 i've selected. then the picture will look 'sharp'.)
- Or you can let it at 640x480 even in fullscreen, but 'texture filtering' might no longer be of use (the picture will look 'smooth/blurry'.)
- If you get slowdowns or black screens during gameplay, like at the start of a fight ('swirl' effect) you can try to change the two 'framebuffer' settings. It's hard to guess in advance which ones will fit you video card, so it might take a few tries.

If you're ok with just a smooth/blurry look, you can use P.E.Op.S Soft Driver 1.18 instead:

This is simple too, but:
- Again you can choose to replace 640x480 by your desktop's resolution.
- This plugin is CPU demanding, so you may see slowdowns (or not. ya got a quadcore = more tha enough ^^)
- The stretching method is up to your choice, I've set 2xSal but the very first one in the list ('stretch to full window size') is my fav' when combined with a low resolution like 640x480.
- Some stretching methods might not work properly...

Here's one more, it's for Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.9 (best plugin ever if your hardware supports it) but with very basic settings ('smooth/blurry' type) just to check if this works fine or not under Vista:

And finally if you're too bored by this stuff you can try another emulator, like PSX 1.13 (a.k.a 'PSXfin 1.13'). It's much easier to use, very fast, but won"t look as sexy as ePSXe.

 

[CosmicBeing]

Thanks! My screen resolution is 1440 X 900. I've been using Pete's D3D Driver 1.77 because I read OpenGL just doesn't gel with ATI.

I found that I had to set Framebuffer Access to 3 or 4 to get the battle swirls going (finally!). I know that my PC is far from perfect, but I think it's capable of running most of these games with a little tweaking, so I'll stick with ePSXe.

Oh and I've never actually played Valkyrie Profile. If I liked Star Ocean 2 (which I really do), would I like that too?

 

[LensLarque]

(OpenGL is ok with ATI cards actually...but not with Vista. )

Well yes, now you can take time tweaking the plugin's options. You may find some filtering options that more or less suit your taste.

There are tricks like changing the 'screen resolution' or the 'internal X & Y resolution' settings to get a blurrier or sharper picture.
Then 'texture filtering', 'hi-res textures', 'screen smoothing'... you can try various combinations.

I too absolutely love SO 2 :drool: (I won't tell you how many times I finished the game or you might question my sanity ) but Valkyrie Profile is quite a different style of 'RPG'.
It's got the best of the Tri-Ace 'touch' but it's much more difficult, with some very harsh limitations and a non-conventional game system.
The plot and overall atmosphere is very dramatic.
It would take too long to accurately describe the game but... let's say it's got huge flaws, and immense qualities. It's no that popular for nothing !
Not a game for everyone, but I recommend trying it. :thumb:

Have fun !

 

[onebluephish]

In Eternal 1.41 sound plugin:

- check the VP & SO 2 fix,
- set the Audio Out Method to 'SPUasync' & 'Smooth'.)[/I]

I did this and it still gives the high pitch sound when I open the save state. What am I doing wrong?

 

[Squall-Leonhart]

eww, d3d.

 

[onebluephish]

I found a way around the save state by saving the game to the virtual memory card and then chosing 'Continue' before selecting the slot in which I saved the game in. So far so good.

 

[gezeiten]

I've been having a glitch with the synard, sometimes when I get off synard, I cannot open menus or get in random encounters. I can only walk around, and when I enter town it crashes the game. Lost a lot of progress save stating after dismount not realizing glitch took place ;\

 

[shinbok]

I'm having the similar issues when I tried these solutions (in fact, a couple of them caused the emulator to crash) and none of these solutions worked with mine. The title menu works fine, but I can't see the opening. Trying the solutions here either causes the emulator to crash, or would reproduce the TC's problem. I've been looking around and none of the solutions worked. Here's the specs, yes, it's a bit outdated. As for save states, I only used save states for DonPachi and DoDonPachi in case you're going to ask.

ATI Radeon 9600/X1050 Series
1024 Mbytes RAM (DDR)
Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13 Ghz
Windows XP SP2

Here's My ePSXe 1.7.0 Settings:

Plugin: P.E.Op.S. Soft Driver 1.18 (via pec)

Resolution/Color:
- 1024x768 Window mode
- Stretching: Stretch to full window size
- Always dither g-shaded polygons

Framerate:
- FPS limit: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: Autodetect, though I switch to 60 if the speed somehow gets too much

Misc:
- Scanlines: off [0]
- Use system memory: off
- Wait for VSYNC: off
- Stop screen saver: on (I use a controller)
- Debug Mode: off
- Game fixes: off

I wasn't sure if I should start a new topic or not. This is a separate problem... sort-of, but it's still related to Star Ocean.

 

[LensLarque]

You should turn dithering off and vsync on IMO.
Eternal sound plugin set on 'async' & 'smooth' helps for SO2.

But whatever the game or the situation, save states always significantly raise the risk of crashing the emulator.

For training at DDP I don't suggest using ePSXe, use Mame Plus 0.99 or WolfMame Plus 0.99 instead, because these are the only versions to fully support save states.

 

[shinbok]

Cute avatar Lens, i never did manage to 1cc PCB. Anyway, it seems to be working fine now. On a side note, could my video card run Till the end of time without some severe slowdown?

 

[LensLarque]

Cute avatar Lens, i never did manage to 1cc PCB.

Me neither ! :heh:

About Star Ocean III: I don't know, the only thing I can say is that my system isn't strong enough to run it.
(laptop with c2d 2GHz, ATI X1700 512Mb, 2GHz ram)

I read somewhere there's a 'Tri-Ace' fix in PCSX2 because their games have issues... you should look for dedicated threads.

 

[XanOblivion]

About Star Ocean III: I don't know, the only thing I can say is that my system isn't strong enough to run it.
(laptop with c2d 2GHz, ATI X1700 512Mb, 2GHz ram)

Are you serious, LensLarque?! oO

I have an old Dell laptop I hardly use anymore from 2006, and it ran Star Ocean 3 like a dream, and has half the specs yours has! Can we trade?