Skies of Arcadia: Is it playable w/o VMU LCD support?

[sofakng]

I'm interested in playing Skies of Arcadia but the game requires VMU LCD support (from what I can tell) and it doesn't seem like NullDC supports that yet. Is this true?

Also, how playable is Skies of Arcadia? Does it require the SOA Patch from the Chankast forums? (the NullDC compatibility chart lists the game as playable, but I'm not sure if that means 100% w/o any bugs or whatever...)

Thanks!

[PsyMan]

It has bugs (that are fixed on private builds). A patch is not needed AFAIK. Unfortunately VMUs are not implemented on nullDC (yet?).

[Cid Highwind]

Originally Posted by sofakng

I'm interested in playing Skies of Arcadia but the game requires VMU LCD support (from what I can tell) and it doesn't seem like NullDC supports that yet. Is this true?

Also, how playable is Skies of Arcadia? Does it require the SOA Patch from the Chankast forums? (the NullDC compatibility chart lists the game as playable, but I'm not sure if that means 100% w/o any bugs or whatever...)

Thanks!

If you've played it on Dreamcast you should've known it doesn't require VMU LCD support. The game does come with a mini game with some nice bonuses, and also does it beep when you can find a Cham. So you'll miss out on those and won't get better weapons for Fina, but otherwise the game is fully playable without a LCD VMU. I hope that answers your question

[sofakng]

Originally Posted by PsyMan

It has bugs (that are fixed on private builds).

Any ETA on these?

[PsyMan]

Originally Posted by sofakng

Any ETA on these?

-90 days (yes it's a negative number and it means 3 months ago... the target date obviously passed)

[Bubbafat]

Why not use chankast or the other demul, one of those had the vmu lcd support. I used it(just looked at it) in marvel vs capcom- so most likely on chankast.

[sofakng]

Chankast runs the game at 60 fps (with v-sync on) but it seems to run waaaay too fast, so I'm assuming this game is meant to run at 30 fps (NTSC?)...

[Dark Mits]

Skies of Arcadia is complete-able on both NullDC and Chankast. The differences I am aware of between the two emulators regarding this game are:

- NullDC does not support VMU => Unless you know by heart where those Chams are (like me ^-^), Fina will have bottom rock Attack for the duration of the game.
- Chankast requires the patch mentioned by the original poster ONLY if you have the Echelon release (or so I've heard). NullDC does not need it, it only shows a white screen after the Dreamcast logo (if using the NullDC graphics plugin, if not then you will see some weird stuff), which you can bypass by pressing Start or the A button 3 times.
- Chankast is VERY unstable with Skies. NullDC is not. The game only hangs rarely when closing the menu (about 1 out of 50 times) with NullDC, whereas the sound will go off around 20 minutes of playtime with Chankast, and that is a sign the emulator will crash after a few moments.
- The graphics look better on NullDC, the sound is better on Chankast (for the time being).

[ScripterX]

The game is playable exept for 2 major bugs/glitches that i encountered.

1. moonstone mine: when you try to exit, thanks to a bug in dynarec. you can't since the game for some reason thinks you are pressing down instead of up. (fix: disable dynarec.)

2. when in the mountain searching for the blue moonstone (forgot the name) in the underwater parts you can't see a thing. ("fix": use the map.)

minor issues:

The game indeed can lockup at times when exiting the menu. (nearly broke my pad when the lockup occured right after crossing south ocean, before reaching a good spot to save.)
Luckily these lockups are very rear. 4-6 times during the time I played the game. (some 50 hours of game time)

Sound may sometimes get laggy or ahead during longer video sequences. (fix: adjust sound buffer)

You will not know when there is a cham (or chom) nearby because there is no vmu lcd support yet. (fix: know where they are)

No downloadable goodies. (fix: none that I know.)

Minor graphic bugs with alpha blending. (some moves look better with the bug than without it.

And thats about it for what I can remember. So with some tinkering at times you can play the game from the beginning to the end.

[sofakng]

Do you know if an SOA_Patch(ed) image will fix those bugs? (espicially the inventory lock-up bug, that one sounds by far the worst)

(If you don't know what I'm talking about, there is an awesome patch on the Chankast forums that fixes most (95%?) of the bugs in SOA. However, this patch was seemingly made for Chankast but the result of the patch is a new CDI image that can easily be used for NullDC as well...)

[Annut]

1. moonstone mine: when you try to exit, thanks to a bug in dynarec. you can't since the game for some reason thinks you are pressing down instead of up. (fix: disable dynarec.)

Also, you can simply change the camera angle and then walk out. You will notice this bug several other places in the game, but exiting the mines is the only time it really posed a huge problem.