Pulling hair out over FF7!

[NikLP]

Hi, I've spent two days trying to get FF7 to work, I've tried everything really...

I've got a spanking new Dell Laptop & Desktop and I really want to be able to FF7 on my laptop. For obvious health reasons I've tried to get the desktop one working first! Nothing will get the damn thing to play properly though. I've tried lots of different configs.

Another problem is it seems to be eating every single CPU cycle it can get its hands on... If people can get this to work on 1GHz machines then surely I shouldn't be struggling with a 3GHz Pentium 4??

Specs:
[Desktop] Intel Pentium 4 3.0GHz, 512MB, ATI Radeon X300, WinXP/SP2
[Laptop] Intel Pentium M 1.6GHz, 512MB, 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller (no I don't know either), WinXP/SP2

Software:
Currently using DaemonTools mounted .bin file burnt from IsoBurner in sPSXe 1.6.0 (via ePSXeLauncher).

GPU: (I start to know not very much right about now)
Tried Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.6, OpenGL 1.75, D3D, DX6D3D etc etc.
My ATI's OpenGL settings are set to accept application defaults.

Currently I'm on GL2 with the following:
Window mode (640x480), 32 bit, PSX aspect ratio on,
Int X: 1, Int Y: 1,
Textures: 0, 0, 128, Off
Use FPS limit (60 FPS)
Compat: 0, 0, 0
Filters off
Misc: MDEC Filter on, Specials on, w/ 0x0002, 0x4000
and it crashed again while I was OK'ing the settings just then! arse.


SPU:
Something weird happens sometimes like when I change the graphics settings then continue it screws up the sound but currently I'm attempting to use Eternal 1.4 with Enable XA on and the Squaresoft doohickey ticked too.

I keep getting a weird Error box coming up all the time too which says outofsync.bmp and loads of garbage encoded text. It doesn't seem to do much but is that bad or what?

It looks awful and its killing my processor - the text rendering is dreadful! As soon as I do anything the whole thing nearly grinds to a halt which can't be good. Also I have black marks around the Hand pointer in battle, the swirl is missing and it gets real slow on commencement of battle...

I really want to get this sorted though...! Will post more when I have time to investigate with the laptop.

[hushypushy]

first of all, let's start with the desktop machine. update your drivers to the newest at ATi.com. next, use these plugins: Pete's OpenGL2 and Eternal 1.41. check this thread http://www.ngemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45533 for settings of FF7.

outofsync.bmp is caused by the PS netplay plugin, delete it.

for the lappy..well that's a POS with intel integrated graphics. go to intel.com and get the newest drivers for it. get Eternal 1.41 and Pete's D3D. try these settings at first:

Plugin: Pete's D3D Driver 1.1.75
Author: Pete Bernert
GFX card: NVIDIA GeForce 6800

Resolution/Color:
- 640x480 Window mode

Textures:
- R8G8A8A8
- Filtering: 0
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- VRam size: 128 MBytes << set this to what you have. 64 i think.

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

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 4
- Framebuffer texture: 0
- Framebuffer access: 4
- Alpha multipass: on
- Mask bit: on
- Advanced blending: none < you may need to tweak this.

Misc:
- Scanlines: off [0]
- Unfiltered FB: off
- Dithering: off
- Screen smoothing: off
- Full vram: on
- Game fixes: on [00000001]

and always turn off "keep PSX aspect ratio."

[dpence]

Personally, I prefer the PEOPS SPU plugin it gives better quality (Acurate/near perfect reverb) with lower CPU usage, at least for me....

[hushypushy]

well, i experience missing sound effects and incorrect music when using Pete's Dsound in ePSXe 1.5.2 and FF7. i havent taken the time to tweak it yet, so it's not to say that it doesnt work. however, Eternal works for me, it always has. if it ain't broke, don't fix it. except for MGS...i highly recommend Pete's SPU over Eternal.

[NikLP]

I will try all this now - any ideas about the horrendous CPU usage problem, or is that just par for the course?

EDIT: Can't see any way of deleting the NetPlay plugin, I've scratched the netsock.dll but that's all I can see that's relevant?

[fireblaster_lyz]

I am wondering whether the laptop would power down itself? What I mean is the laptop uses its Speedstep Technology to decrease power usage. DISABLE THAT.

[NikLP]

Seem to have cured the netplay problem - deleted all relevant other files I could find.

Also the Desktop one is working fine with those settings so thanks. Also I have managed to get the laptop to perform somewhat, although the peformance is limited. The only issue I have is that its quite slow in places this is obviously due to a CPU bottleneck - I was under the impression that the graphics cards would be doing a lot of the work in this scenario, but as this is the first time I've used a PSX emu then I could be wrong! Just curious as people seem to be doing ok with much lower spec machines than I have?

Thanks VERY much for all your help here. Will these settings work ok for all the other FF games and Xenogears too? I have most of these on PSX disc at home but if I can play them on the laptop well.... sweet!

[hushypushy]

Originally Posted by NikLP

I will try all this now - any ideas about the horrendous CPU usage problem, or is that just par for the course?

EDIT: Can't see any way of deleting the NetPlay plugin, I've scratched the netsock.dll but that's all I can see that's relevant?

"horrendous CPU usage"? what are you trying to do, encode Xvid, browse the web, watch a movie, and play PSX games? for one, it doesnt matter how much CPU ePSXe is using. it's not like your CPU is going to explode when it uses 100%. furthermore, you should be playing games, not multitasking! stick to one thing

secondly....i cannot stress this enough (usually because I-Chan stresses it for me) but USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION.

[fireblaster_lyz]

Yes...it will work on (almost) every game.

[gokuson123]

Well in my opinion, Don't Go Dell. Their hardware is crap and u pay alot of money. www.tigerdirect.com is a good, factory-direct store, so it's cheap. And HushyPushy, with my Ccomputer, I usuually do those things :P U just need the right hardware (and the money, unfortunatly) How many people use Intel CPUs? That would affect ePSXe over AMD, and I wouldn't mind finding out in which ways. Maybe u should open a poll?

[hushypushy]

meh, maybe i said the wrong thing.

what i meant was, it doesnt freakin matter that ePSXe takes up 100% CPU. it does it anyway, no matter what. it's not totally maxing out your CPU every second (like say, PRime95 or an encoder would do) so dont worry about it.

[NikLP]

Originally Posted by hushypushy

"horrendous CPU usage"? what are you trying to do, encode Xvid, browse the web, watch a movie, and play PSX games? for one, it doesnt matter how much CPU ePSXe is using. it's not like your CPU is going to explode when it uses 100%. furthermore, you should be playing games, not multitasking! stick to one thing

secondly....i cannot stress this enough (usually because I-Chan stresses it for me) but USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION.

Apologies for the .bmp/search related thing, like I said I'm new to all this and it's not always easy to see 'outside the box', if you get me - I wasn't sure if it was the graphics settings that were causing the error, see? I had actually spent nearly two days searching the net for an overall solution to this problem

As regards the CPU issue, no I'm not doing anything except running ePSXe as I actually wasn't sure how much it needed in the way of cycles - it appears to just want them all!

[NikLP]

Originally Posted by gokuson123

Well in my opinion, Don't Go Dell. Their hardware is crap and u pay alot of money. www.tigerdirect.com is a good, factory-direct store, so it's cheap. And HushyPushy, with my Ccomputer, I usuually do those things :P U just need the right hardware (and the money, unfortunatly) How many people use Intel CPUs? That would affect ePSXe over AMD, and I wouldn't mind finding out in which ways. Maybe u should open a poll?

I've certainly seen better stuff than Dell's but as (technically) a business customer it's important to get other things as well as good hardware like *support* sometimes. Don't know jack about CPUs though, this is my first proper lot of kit ever! (sad...)

[NikLP]

Originally Posted by hushypushy

meh, maybe i said the wrong thing.

what i meant was, it doesnt freakin matter that ePSXe takes up 100% CPU. it does it anyway, no matter what. it's not totally maxing out your CPU every second (like say, PRime95 or an encoder would do) so dont worry about it.

No it just seemed slow in places that's all, I wondered if there was a way to divert some more of the work into the graphics processor, but perhaps I've failed to understand the mechanics of it all. I'm not well up on all that stuff to be honest. For the most part everything works fine, there's just a few places where the games slow to a crawl nearly... not to worry, small price to pay for playing Xenogears on my lappy!

Just a quick PS to say thanks to everyone for the help here it's been very relevant and useful and I have FF7 & Xenogears working (almost) perfectly thanks to it, which has made me a very happy bunny indeed.

Nik

[gokuson123]

In case you happen to read this again, the CPU of you're computer using 100% is spreading it among other areas including graphics. And www.tigerdirect.com has 24/7 free support, no matter what you buy

[NikLP]

Originally Posted by gokuson123

In case you happen to read this again, the CPU of you're computer using 100% is spreading it among other areas including graphics. And www.tigerdirect.com has 24/7 free support, no matter what you buy

Ok like I said this is the first decent set of computer s that I've had so I'm a bit in the dark, also I didn't really follow completely what you were saying but I understand that you are trying to say that the CPU will probably max out just distributing the load?

Also, the Dell that I have is from the UK so the Tiger thing is kinda not relevant sadly. If I lived in the states there woulda bin lots of places I woulda tried before Dell!

Thanks again anyway.

[hushypushy]

two things: there is nothing to worry about with the 100% CPU usage. it really makes so little of a difference in your life that it should never cross your mind. secondly, don't triple post. you can quote multiple times in one post

[NikLP]

Originally Posted by hushypushy

two things: there is nothing to worry about with the 100% CPU usage. it really makes so little of a difference in your life that it should never cross your mind. secondly, don't triple post. you can quote multiple times in one post

1) Ok
2) I know, I was just being lazy, sorry... it was late I'm still very grateful.
By the way, I'm currently watching [music] videos and encoding Xvid and also using Azareus and the CPU is coping just about, so I guess I didn't realise it was that powerful and I've now answered my own question, so thanks even more!