FFXII Helper

[Metroid]

Final Fantasy XII [0779FBDB US version]

All right folks, I have to start with something that I finished today, to be precisely right now


Status: Playable +200 hours

To FFXII be fully playable you have to use some techniques.

1. You can enable multi threaded GS mode(MTGS) and play with a fairly speed increase but sometimes the emulator reads 2 cores and not just 1, so instead of reading as 16 bits, it reads as 32 bits and after that, the error comes and the emulator simply crashes. The trick is simple, you can enable the multi threaded MTGS as long as nothing is too complex like CG's, movies and hunt agreements. Well another trick is, keep saving your current state by pressing F1 to save the state, if you think something will happen like a heavy scene or a slow enemy, and if some error happen just load back the state pressing F3. You can use F2 to change the state, keep in mind you have 9 slots as save state.
   
   
2. You can use save states but always save your game in the memory card because saving your game in the memory card means a clean saved state, save states are much helpful to find problems regarding the game but it is dirty save.
   
   
3. Never fight radiant or shadow enemies that could possible downgrade your speed to 9 FPS or even to 5 FPS and if there is no way to run, just send your friends to attack it but never look at the enemy because if you look at the enemy that will make your FPS go to 5 and instead of taking 1 minute to finish the combat, it will take like 10 minutes due to the FPS downgrade, keep in mind Gilgamesh part 2 took me 5 hours to defeat him, his dog was just bad to me, it took me 2 hours to kill his dog. The main problem here is due because the emulator uses mainly the processor to read these types of enemies. So for now the graphics card is not much used . It looks the same as if you were doing the CPU Test on 3D mark06 that specifically CPU Test scene that uses just the processor that makes all the work and it runs around 1 - 2 FPS. So let's wait for the next PCSX2 version .
   
   
4. If the FPS gets crazy in a difficult battle like suddenly it goes to 400 FPS, try to save your state game 7 in 7 minutes if not 4 in 4 minutes, keep in mind when I was fighting Yiazmat, Zeromu and Chaos the FPS bug happened in each situation more than 7 times. So this is really a pain when it comes to the mind. The trick is if the FPS bug happens load the game pressing F3 and try to pass by that if it does not go ahead and the FPS keeps happening, go to menu pressing triangle, once done that go to license points that will do the trick fact the emulator will read another game location and after you comes back from the menu, the game will run very fresh .
   
   
5. The text is the major problem here. I love Final Fantasy series and the history is just outstanding. So you may read the text as much as I do. So for me the history is the best part of the game, no matter how much I try but there are parts that the text does not come out. So it is impossible to read what the characters tell on every area. The only trick I found to fix this problem is to keep moving your analog button until it gets the text up.
   
   
6. Please do not play like a maniac, take a rest of 30 minutes on every 2 hours, keep in mind I got some eye problems like redness.
   
   
7. Configure the plugins to best suit you as long as you make the game playable.
   
   
8. Do not sell your loots like crazy for money, if you sell it with a combination of loots you can get good prizes in the bazaar.
   
   
9. Yiazmat is too difficult and without ribbon is a pain, the petrify magic grrrrrr, I hate that . I took 7 hours to give Yiazmat the rest that he needed The best fight so far in the whole game despiting Hell Wyrm that was cool too, and Baggan that has been kicked and sent to the sharks of the hell
   
   
10. Omega weapon got owned, I defeated him without lose any HP, a simple perfect, make sure to use bubble items or magic.
    
    
11. The fishing game is quite funny with this emulator, I did every try a perfect fishing just loading my save states. I have a trick here, the fact you can not read the texts out there when you are fishing. So the commands are difficult to be seeing, So try it, saving your state pressing F1 before making the next perfect fishing commands, if you load your saved state with F3, you will be able to see the commands below, keep loading until you memorize all the commands.. This trick made me very happy because playing on my PS2 you have to be very fast and the commands demand a good eye sight. So after you play a lot you can not see much eheh
    
    
12. The game is just outstanding the battle reminds me Phantasy Star for Dreamcast. I got it very well worked. The arsenal is just great with knives, swords, axes, katanas, bombs and much more making this game very enjoyable.
    
    
13. I got every armor and weapons including Wyrmblade , Tournesol, Masamune, Excalibur, Danjuro, circlet and many ribbons from Rinsho the sad is that I could not get order of ambrosia from Clan Centurio because it requires much more time and I do not have it.
    
    
14. I hope these tricks clear out things about this game and how to play it with PCSX2, if you still have questions to make to me feel free for it I will be very happy to help any Final Fantasy Affectioned.
    
    
15. I placed some images below included the final text The End.
    
    
16. Help Posted by rainbow. If some of you are having problems with FMV's, you can use this method that our member rainbow used to do it to skip it..
    
    
17. Help Posted by rainbow. If some of you are having problems fighting Gilgamesh due to the lag. This is a quite good method that our member rainbow discovered.
    
    
18. Help Posted by rainbow. This game runs quite fast even with a mainstream personal computer. So mods that tends to speed up this game is somewhat misleading or untruth. Mods are not recommended with this game.
    
    
19. Help Posted by RPGW1ZaRD. If you are having problem running Final Fantasy XII on full screen mode, try to play the game on window screen mode as the speed increases and problems decrease. The full screen mode is not recommended with this game.
    
    
20. Help Posted by RPGW1ZaRD. It is quite important to update your drivers using the right one due to some problems occurred as slowdown or lockups of some drivers.. If you are a Nvidia(Geforce Series) card owner you may want to look in this thread right here for tricks, explanations or further info regarding the hardware and RPGW1ZaRD findings.
    

Speed: Ingame = maximum at 230 fps/ minimum at 30 average at 77 FPS.

Bugs: FPS Bug, Speed Downgrade, MTGS Unstable.


Plugins:
Graphics ZeroGS KOSMOS 0.96.0
Sound P.E.Op.S SPU2 DSound Driver 1.6.0
Controller SSSPSX PAD Plugin 1.70
CDVDrom P.E.Op.S Aspi/IOCTL PS2 CDVD driver 1.2.0
CPU EErec [x] VU0rec [x] VU1rec [x] MTGS [x] DC [ ] FL [ ]

PC Specs:
EE6600 2.4 overclocked to @ 3.4Ghz
2 GB Crucial DDR2 777 at 3.3.3.4
Graphics card 7900 GT (core at 577/ memory at 777)
Windows XP SP2

[Backzlash]

Why don't you just use frame limit, then you wont have any crazy fps and the max you will get is 64fps(60fps is full speed on ntsc). And I wouldn't put a playable status on this game since there are many issues with the emulation.

[thc]

congrats, You sure have lot of patience I've given up on running FFXII on emu after a hour or so. (5hrs on PS2)

5 - loadstate shows text for little moment from any angle in every dialog (until "floating nightmare kicks in") like You mentioned in 11.

[zBuffer]

I'm having textures failing to load everywhere (missing icons, missing text, white models, white square effects), might be MTGS or GS issue. No dual core CPU here, guess it's bad luck for me.. Playing at around 15 FPS is tiring... :P

Yet looking at the source code makes me feel like a noob... Guess I need to stare at it everyday to figure how things work in detail and find possible way to synchronize without any PUs waiting for one another... @_@

[tuanming]

Did you really play fair and square without using gamefaqs saves? If so congratz! By the way, when fighting tough bosses do you turn on AAx4 and BF?

[Metroid]

Originally Posted by Backzlash

Why don't you just use frame limit, then you wont have any crazy fps and the max you will get is 64fps(60fps is full speed on ntsc). And I wouldn't put a playable status on this game since there are many issues with the emulation.

Crazy FPS = FPS Bug and there is nothing to do with frame limit or speed. It is playable for me and I had written all my tricks to make it playable to anyone. You should be happy for that and not say something so wasteful.

Originally Posted by tuanming

Did you really play fair and square without using gamefaqs saves? If so congratz! By the way, when fighting tough bosses do you turn on AAx4 and BF?

I played for more than 200 hours so far and I know every aspect of the game, so I'm here to help people to get to the end

It depends the boss, first I face any boss without anti aliasing if the speed is more than 110 FPS I turn the anti aliasing to AAx4 if is more than 90 FPS I turn it to AAx2 and so on, bilinear is also disabled to speed up, but it really depends of the enemy, time and difficult.

The sunflower blade is just beautiful

I hope it helps

Come on people I want more questions to help you out

[tuanming]

Okay, here my question...What skills, weapons, armor, and spells were you using when fighting Yiazmat? Did you maxed out every characters, did you used more than 3 character when fighting Yiazmat? Did Yiazmat ever K.O. any of your character in that long battle? How many tried did it took you before you finally killed Yiazmat and how many hours did that took?

[Metroid]

Originally Posted by tuanming

Okay, here my question...What skills, weapons, armor, and spells were you using when fighting Yiazmat?

Weapons = Masamune, Ragnarock and Tournesol
Armor = black mask , white mask, circlet sometimes changed to magepower shinshak giving a boost on my strenght.
Spells = Just curaga, arise and bubble to double your HP, nothing else. I hate magics. I like the physical attack.
Accessory = Ribbon and sometimes cat wear to boost speed with Masamune to increase combo rates.

Originally Posted by tuanming

Did you maxed out every characters, did you use more than 3 character when fighting Yiazmat?

Level 85 all of them, only 3 character Van, Basch and Balthier. You can not use more than 3 in that battle, because Redas died before in the game storyline in the same stage as you fight Yiazmat..

Originally Posted by tuanming

Did Yiazmat ever K.O. any of your character in that long battle?

God. more than 7777 times I think

Originally Posted by tuanming

How many tried did it took you before you finally killed Yiazmat and how many hours did that took?

I went straight never ran from the battle. It was a straight battle without break and it had taken 7 hours to finish him off.

It was unbelievable battle 50 million HP is just too much. There are moments that you can not attack because he kills 2 men and you have to arise them quickly.

I hope this helps

Post more questions people

[Backzlash]

Originally Posted by metroid

Crazy FPS = FPS Bug and there is nothing to do with frame limit or speed. It is playable for me and I had written all my tricks to make it playable to anyone. You should be happy for that and not say something so wasteful.

It's not "wasteful" since it's true. If you turn on frame limit you won't experience the ultra rapid "bug" wich means you won't need to reload a state to fix it. Also there is no real reason to play a game over 64fps since you will get full speed and the game won't perform better at 100fps.

[El_Diablos]

50 million HP Yiazmat? w00t???
what is Yiazmat and what you'll get if kill him ?

[Metroid]

Originally Posted by Backzlash

It's not "wasteful" since it's true. If you turn on frame limit you won't experience the ultra rapid "bug" wich means you won't need to reload a state to fix it. Also there is no real reason to play a game over 64fps since you will get full speed and the game won't perform better at 100fps.

You really did not understand anything.

Originally Posted by El_Diablo

50 million HP Yiazmat? w00t???
what is Yiazmat and what you'll get if kill him ?

You get the godslayer's medal an item together with 2 other medals to buy the sacred blade Wyrmhero.

I hope this helps

Originally Posted by zBuffer

I'm having textures failing to load everywhere (missing icons, missing text, white models, white square effects), might be MTGS or GS issue. No dual core CPU here, guess it's bad luck for me.. Playing at around 15 FPS is tiring... :P

Yet looking at the source code makes me feel like a noob... Guess I need to stare at it everyday to figure how things work in detail and find possible way to synchronize without any PUs waiting for one another... @_@

15 FPS is really tiring. Well about the icon, texts and white things is kind normal for me too, but the problems really do not bother me at all. I did not take a look in the source code yet but I will surely look after my exams on June. It is always good to know what is behind the program

Best Regards..

[Jestunhi]

Awsome guide, just got my dual core CPU so I can finally try it properly

However I have managed to get stuck, and no amount of tweaking has helped.

I'm at the point where you re-enter Rabanastre for the first time after hunting the Rogue Tomato (iirc the name), the first mob hunting mission.

As soon as I attempt to re-entre Rabanastre I crash and get the Windows error reporting window.

I've tried both versions of the emulator, and every combination of the gfx plugins & disabled / enabled dual core support. I've tried all of the CDVD rom plugins as well.

Nothing seems to work.

PC:

AMD 64 X2 4800+ 939 socket (un-OC'd)
2 Gb RAM
2 x GF 6600 GT Ultra (Sli)

Freshly formatted PC, Win XP Pro SP2

If anyone has any advice I'd be grateful

Jester

[thc]

hint: Use search and enter rogue tomato

http://forums.ngemu.com/pcsx2-offici...t=rogue+tomato

[shafeen]

nice work by the thread starter i think this deserves a sticky

[Jestunhi]

Originally Posted by thc

hint: Use search and enter rogue tomato

http://forums.ngemu.com/pcsx2-offici...t=rogue+tomato

Thanks, I did actually read that thread a month or so ago, but I totally forgot it

Jester

[Metroid]

Originally Posted by Jestunhi

Awsome guide, just got my dual core CPU so I can finally try it properly

However I have managed to get stuck, and no amount of tweaking has helped.

I'm at the point where you re-enter Rabanastre for the first time after hunting the Rogue Tomato (iirc the name), the first mob hunting mission.

As soon as I attempt to re-entre Rabanastre I crash and get the Windows error reporting window.

I've tried both versions of the emulator, and every combination of the gfx plugins & disabled / enabled dual core support. I've tried all of the CDVD rom plugins as well.

Nothing seems to work.

PC:

AMD 64 X2 4800+ 939 socket (un-OC'd)
2 Gb RAM
2 x GF 6600 GT Ultra (Sli)

Freshly formatted PC, Win XP Pro SP2

If anyone has any advice I'd be grateful

Jester

Do you remember the windows error you got? if it was 32 bit counter 5 it means dual core was enabled. I remember before I went to face Rogue Tomato I had saved and also the dual core was not enabled so I did not get the error. Well I can say 2 things below.

First --> with dual core disabled you can play FFXII without any major errors or bugs. The picture named error.jpg below shows the dual core or Multi Threaded GS error, if that happens just disable the dual core support by going to Config/CPU and tick it off --> [Multi Threaded GS Mode] and [Dual core Mode ]. Well I prefer to enable the Dual Core and Multi Threaded mode and get all the errors and bugs and deal with it

Second --> after you accept any hunt mission, the best thing to do is save the game in the crystal, after done that enjoy the hunt and kill it. don't be merciful

Originally Posted by thc

hint: Use search and enter rogue tomato

http://forums.ngemu.com/pcsx2-offici...t=rogue+tomato

Use the search is good but if someone do not get anything just come here to a little help, I will be very happy for that

Originally Posted by shafeen

nice work by the thread starter i think this deserves a sticky

Thanks

Originally Posted by Jestunhi

Thanks, I did actually read that thread a month or so ago, but I totally forgot it

Jester

You are getting my problem of forgetting things, for my landlady I'm definitely a 100% Feather Head

[Jestunhi]

It was just the generic messege asking if you want to send the info about the crash to Microsoft.

Got past it now, solution in the link worked perfectly

Thanks again both of you

[Metroid]

I have seen many FFXII threads with similar problems I got and I'm willing to help.