Squaresoft... and other stuff...

[CaptainCanada]

What's up with Square games? I see tons of posts about how many problems there are with the FF series, and other Square games... is there something special about these games and the way that Square made them? They seem to be difficult to emulate.... just curious.....

Oh also... are all the 2-D backgrounds supposed to look crappy in 2-d background/3-d character games? Like in Resident Evil or FF games, is there any way to increase the quality of the background image? Am I doing something wrong, or do they look like that for everyone? In my (limited) experience with ePSXe so far, 3-d games look great emulated, but 2-d games turn out like ****e in comparison to running them on an actual psx....

My 2 cents,
CC

[Amberion]

Squaresoft games aren't any more difficult to emulate than most other playstation games. They're just more popular. 2 FF games have been ported over to the PC, remember, and a lot of PC gamers have become hooked. Since FF9 isn't available for the PC, and likely won't be, PC gamers look to emulation to get their fix. Hence the larger than normal amount of complaints about these games.

Now the reason why 3d games look so much better is because they're being displayed at MUCH higher resolutions than the Playstation can support. Jaggies are gone, and modern 3d accelerators can do some really neat things that the playstation can't, to make things look nice. 2d backgrounds, sprites, etcetera, can be blurred to an extent, but sadly, since they're not 3d models, the effect is not a crisp image but a blurry one. I wish I could explain it better. But suffice to say 3d models are accelerated and enhanced; 2d sprites are not.

Amberion

[CaptainCanada]

I see what your saying about the 3-d models and stuff, but I'd think that the 2-d images would at least be Playstation quality, I mean, the backgrounds in RE, and FF games is sub-playstation.

At least for me... the backgrounds in FF7, 8 and 9 for me, look like they are in 320x240... I never expected them to be in a higher res than the playstation version like the 3-d models are.... I know that's impossible... but you'd think that they would have at least the same quality as the PSX game...... maybe my video is configured weird or something, but the backgrounds look like absolute ****!!! As in, worse than they do when I run the game on the psx.... anyway, I'm sure you got my point by now... LOL

Any suggestions?

CC

[Kane]

what video plugin you using?

The backdrops should be just as good as the PSX (mebbe slightly better due to filtering)

[CaptainCanada]

Pete's.... sometimes OGL, sometimes d3d.....

??? They should be psx quality? because mine aren't I'll post a screenshot in a few minutes....

CC

[CaptainN]

The reason they look like crap is because when the playstation outputs to TV it does so at a low resolution (usually around 320x225 or so). PC games becuase of the superior moniters have to display at higher resolutions to look nice.

It's the same reason that snes games look very different on an emu than on a tv.

If you can work it, try outputting the emulation picture (at around 640x480) to a TV. The smoothness will astound you. when you play epsxe on a TV it looks more like a dreamcast than a playstation! So in actuality the graphics are better on the emu than on the original psx, we just suffer from our high res superior moniters (that is why they cost so much more than TVs).

The new HD TVs that we are all hearing so much about these days is infact nothing more (well little more) than a really big Moniter.

Hope this helps.

[Demigod]

Yeah, computer monitors are capable of a much more sharper image than TVs so rendering 2D PSX graphics looks rather bad. All the little details that the TV screen misses are displayed. Trying to filter the 2D backgrounds also results in a tiling effect, since each tile is rendered seperately.

The VGS emulator and Pete's software plug-in enables DirectDraw filtering, which filters the entire screen, which vastly improves the 2D backgrounds, but makes the 3D models crappy. If your videocard supports it try enabling Full-Scene Anti-Aliasing (FSAA) which also filters the entire screen, 2D and 3D.

[Ranma Kawaii]

I had this problem with Pete's Open GL, when the color were set to 5551 or 8888 the backgrounds where totally messed up and crapy-looking. Switching to D3D, it worked fine.

Maybe you should try D3D DX6 too. Just to test this.

[CaptainCanada]

Oh... OK, thanks for the info guys..... I never realized how low the res was on TV's, it just looked ok because it was blurry... hmmm interesting. I'd try that fullscreen anti-aliasing thing... but that would defeat the purpose of emulating (for me at least) because it would blur the 3-d models as well.

Hmmm..... stupid high-res monitors! I guess I'll just suffer with pixelated backdrops and highres models lol.... or play purely 3-d games.....

By the way, I posted about this before, but no one really had an answer.... can I set the mouse to control the right analog stick? It would be great for first person shooters... like Alien resurrection and MoH... they run suh-weet on ePSXe..... and no crappy 2-d backgrounds either!

CC

[average_guy]

i read many problem which everyone asking about ff9 lock up, ff8 garphic sucked hell, ff7 won't load and such like that. Get real, PSX isn't all that expensive like PS2, and you spend all that money upgrading your PC sure could afford a PSX.:o :o :o
Oh, i'm not saying that you HAVE to buy one, only if you wish to spend your time to play the game, another than fixing problems.

[CKemu]

Maybe, but most of the time they don't need to upgrade, simply they just need to tweak a couple of settings, so as a rulesetting tweaking is cheaper than buying a PSX!!!!!

[Kane]

The reason people like to play the PS on the PC is for Hi-Res and Biinear filtering. Also, if you move around a lot, and have a PC, it's easier to just lug the PC than lug the PC, the PS and a TV. (I know you can play PS through a TV card, but the picture is invariably s***.)

[CaptainCanada]

I have a PSX, and a PS2..... I emulate so the games look better, not because I'm cheap.... most games DO look better emulated. For example, Driver is a million times better, I will never play it on my PSX again, same with MGS, and all the other fully 3-D games.

Until they figure out a way to make these 2-d backdrops work well on ePSXe, yes, I will probably still play my FF and RE games on the PSX (well, actually the PS2 probably...).

CC

[Kane]

Yeah... hold up the backdrops are fine for me.... better even: they are not pixelated!

[fivefeet8]

Actually CAptain,

with the proper settings and video card, you can make 2d look just as good and sometimes better than the 3d.. Check this shot of RE2 out..

The best Settings for 2d\3d games:

640x480 resolution (less pixel stretching)
4xFSAA enabled if you can


I use this for all my 2d\3d games and they all look great..

[fivefeet8]

Here is how FF9 looks on my computer with those settings.. Petes gpu pluggins has a sprite smoothing option which resembles FSAA but without any noticeable performance hit..

[fivefeet8]

Pixel stretching can't be avoided, but can be lessenned by using a resolution that is a multiple of the original, or as close to as possible, psx resolution.. The RE games uses a 320x240 on a real psx which is why 640x480 looks so good with those games.. FF8 and FF9 used 320x224.. There isn't an exact multiple match with this resolution on modern pc video cards but the closest match is still 640x480.. FF7 on the other hand used the same resolution for 2d scenes as the RE games.. Thereby it has the advandtage of having better looking 2d scenes with the above mentioned settings.. Here is a shot of FF7 so you can see what I mean..

[CaptainCanada]

WOW! I Have never gotten my backdrops to look that good! Thanks guys, I will mess around with my vid settings more now that there is hope! Woohoo! My res was set at 1600x1200 (stupid me thinking highest res would be the best... when that's only true for 3-d games) Thanks for taking the time to post those screens for me guys - I'll try that fsaa thing too, looks like it can't hurt much....


CC

[Kane]

1280x980 should be ok too as it is a multiple of 6x4

[Amberion]

Actually, I've found if you go much beyond 1024x768 you're looking at diminishing returns, unless you've got a 21" monitor or something. The perfect 4:3 ratio resolution you want would go like this:

320x240
640x480
960x720
1260x980
and so on. Try multiples of 320x480.

Amberion