Resident Evil 2 and 3 troubles

[Smokin Kipper]

I finally have epsxe setup to play all my games perfectly but there are just two I'm having trouble with, Resident Evil 2 Dual Shock and Resident Evil 3.

With RE 2 the game plays fine but it keeps freezing during dialoge cut-scenes, specifically the conversation with the gun shop owner and meeting the cop when you get to the police station. Sometimes I can get past these scenes but but any time I go through a door the door opening animation freezes for 10-15 seconds and the same thing happens when I pick up an item making the game near unplayable

With RE 3 the problem isn't as bad, the freezing only happens once in a while when I pick up an item but it doesn't last as long so the game is still playable. Its just annoying.

I have RE Directors cut which runs perfectly and I've tried several different copies of RE 2 Dual Shock and the same thing keeps happening.

Here my spec and the epsxe settings I'm using:

Intel Core 2 Duo CPU E8400 3.00ghz
4.00gb RAM
ATI Radion HD 4800 Series
Vista 64

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.9
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
GFX card: ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series

Resolution/Color:
- 1280x960 Window mode
- Internal X resolution: 2
- Internal Y resolution: 3
- Keep psx aspect ratio: off
- No render-to-texture: off

- Filtering: 4
- Hi-Res textures: 2
- TexWin pixel shader: on
- VRam size: 512 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: 60.0

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 1
- Framebuffer effects: 3
- Framebuffer uploads: 1

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Mdec filter: on
- Screen filtering: on
- Shader effects: 4/1
- Flicker-fix border size: 3
- GF4/XP crash fix: off
- Game fixes: off [00000002]

Many thanks

[fivefeet8]

Are you playing the game from an ISO or using the original disk? Playing from an ISO usually helps with loading scenes such as what you are describing. You can also try the d3d plugins and see if the same thing happens.

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[Smokin Kipper]

I only use bin/cue files and switching to d3d causes even more problems.

[fivefeet8]

You may want to try re-creating the ISO files from the original disks. From your description it seems to be having problems at load points. You could also try a different iso loading program or different CDrom plugin and mount the ISOs.

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Last edited by fivefeet8; July 17th, 2012 at 22:46..

[kubusleonidas]

I didn't know that the game unfreeze after few seconds , anyway I don't know about RE3 but to fix RE2 (I have try it with Biohazard 2 but I think it will work with RE2 too) try ePSXe shark, I've run ePSXe 1.7.0 through ePSXe_shark.exe and game forked fine! (but then again I've play only for 10~15 minutes, so I'm not 100% sure if ePSXe shark really fix the freezing problem) http://www.ngemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=142361 or use ePSXe 1.6.0 from what I know it has no freeze problem but has other problems...

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Last edited by kubusleonidas; July 18th, 2012 at 20:43..

[Smokin Kipper]

Running epsxe shark has made no difference at all.

I downloaded the rar, extracted it, copied everything from the bin file into the epsxe folder and then ran epsxe_shark but it was exactly the same. Did I do something wrong?

[doom_2er]

Hey. I was having a similar problem with Dino Crisis. There was a lot of audio static and corruption, and a bit of a slowdown. I found a helpful thread suggesting to get the newer and much better Dsound Repair 1.10 sound plugin, instead of the default EPSXE 1.7.0 one.

Turns out that it really fixed my problems with that game. You can visit this thread to download it. Get it from the *best build* link.

The settings that I use are:

Driver - 1 (Xaudio2, best for Vista and newer),
Mode - 4,
Volume - normal,
Reverb - 2,
Interpolation - 2.

The last setting is called Emulator, set it either to NTSC or PAL depending on your game region. Finally, Enable XA playing is ticked, and the misc settings are all un-ticked.

Hope that fixes your problem.

[Smokin Kipper]

Thats made quite a bit of improvement. I've been playing for about 10 minutes and the lag between screens has only happened once.

The dialouge is still broken though, characters skip over a lot of their lines or just remain mute waving their arms around

Looks like its been narrowed down to a sound problem, anything else I can tweek?

[Smokin Kipper]

Actually I spoke to soon, the lag between screens is quite common and I'm lucky if I can get one line of dialogue out the characters in cut scenes.

However the game no longer freezes any more so at least its playable now.

[doom_2er]

You can try a few options, yes.

First, are you running the game with the run iso command, or with the run cd-rom? A good thing to try is to use Peops CDR plugin. Mount the game image with Daemon Tools, then make sure you are running and have configured the Peops CDRom 1.4 Plugin. Point the plugin to your virtual drive letter, then run the game using the Run Cd-rom option.

After that, it's good to try re-ripping your games. Some Resident Evil games have copy protection so it's recommended to make the image using CloneCD and then make a profile that has Copy Subchannel data option enabled, and make sure that you aren't skipping read errors. Second, make a subchannel file through the Peops Cdrom 1.4 plugin settings, and use that to run the game. Use the create SBI File option in the plugin settings, then select Use SBI File and browse to the file.

Finally, you can try a sound tweak. Instead of mode 4, try mode 2 or 3 in the Dsound 1.10 settings.

Before any additional tweaking though, you should make sure that you have a working, error-free image file of the game, preferably with the subchannels data.

[Smokin Kipper]

I run everything from bin/cue files I don't really like the idea of changing that.

I've tried the other sound options, 3 made things worse but 2 seems to have fixed the dialogue problems. The lag still remains though and the freezing is back

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Last edited by Smokin Kipper; July 21st, 2012 at 17:07..

[doom_2er]

It's nice to hear that some of your problems are resolved.

About the cue/bin, remember that some copy-protected games simply won't work without the subchannel data. And you can at least try running the game mounted in daemon tools lite, using Pete's 1.4 Cdrom plugin, and then run it with Run CDROM.

Regarding the lag, you can try the following options in Pete's Opengl 2 plugin:

Resolution/Color:
- 640x480 fullscreen mode 32 Bit Color
- Internal X resolution: 2
- Internal Y resolution: 2
- Stretching mode : 0
- Render mode : 2

- Filtering: 2
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- Gfx ram : autodetect
- use pixel shader for psx texture window

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: off
- FPS limit: 60.0

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 1
- Framebuffer effects: 3
- Framebuffer uploads: 2

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Mdec filter: on
- Screen filtering: on
- Shader effects: none
- Special game fixes : unticked

Those settings work great here, games are running at full speed, and they look nice. You should try running the emulator in full-screen. I always get better speed and compatibility when I run it in full-screen mode.

Finally, try it with another emulator like Psx Emulator or Xebra so that you can check if it's an epsxe problem or an image file problem.

[pistolols]

Originally Posted by doom_2er

First, are you running the game with the run iso command, or with the run cd-rom? A good thing to try is to use Peops CDR plugin. Mount the game image with Daemon Tools, then make sure you are running and have configured the Peops CDRom 1.4 Plugin. Point the plugin to your virtual drive letter, then run the game using the Run Cd-rom option.

is there a thread for how to correctly configre peops CDR? i have not been able to get it to work but other CD plugins work fine except i'm have some lags reading discs the music is skipping in between every screen in Parasite Eve so i wanted to give peops CDR a try. I only have the discs i don't have any ISO's.

Also i too get this same freezing with every plugin in RE2. it happens everytime right as zombies bust through window in kendo gun shop.

[doom_2er]

Hello there.

Here are the settings I use. These work fine for images mounted through Daemon Tools Lite, but they should work for real cds as well:

-Interface: Win2k/XP Ioctl Scsi Commands

-Drive : Your Cd Drive letter

-Read Mode : Most often 'Be_2 Atapi Spec 2,' but there is an auto-detection feature, so you can try detecting the best mode as well.

-Caching Mode : None

-Try to limit speed - off
-Don't wait till drive is ready - off

-Try again on reading error - on, 5
-Show messages - off

- Ppf patches - usually off, unless you are using a custom patch for a specific game

- Subchannel reading - if a game does not use copy protection, it's off, otherwise it's best to create an SBI file from a subchannel data file that usually has the .sub extension, then choose the option Use Subchannel SBI

You can use your game CDs, but in my opinion it's always better to create an image file, and use that, as this usually provides better and more stable data reading, and last but not least, your original game discs get fewer scratches in the long run.

[Smokin Kipper]

Ok I've done that but how do I use Daemon Tools Lite and could you post a link for it please?

[doom_2er]

It's very simple.

Here is the download link. Follow the installation instructions, but select custom installation, and make sure not to install the additional browser search toolbars, install just the daemon tools core files + the SPTD driver, and a desktop shortcut if you prefer. You might need to restart after launching the program for the first time, and you will also need to run Daemon Tools with administrative rights. Right-click the icon and choose Run as Administrator. You don't need to run it as administrator after that.

After installation has completed and you have restarted, launch Daemon Tools, right-click on the daemon tools tray icon, select Virtual CD/DVD-ROM, select the drive, it usually says No Media, and then Mount Image, and browse to your image file. Then run the game in epsxe with Run Cdrom. If you restart your PC, you will need to mount the image file again, but after mounting it, you do not need to have Daemon Tools running, so you might right-click the tray icon and close it. That's it.

[pistolols]

Originally Posted by doom_2er

Hello there.

Here are the settings I use. These work fine for images mounted through Daemon Tools Lite, but they should work for real cds as well:.....

Thanks, with these settings peops CDR is working, unfortunately i was still getting the music skipping inbetween each new background screen load with peops CDR. But I quickly made a cue file of the disc (never done before but was very ez) and ran it off that with the same video settings and it ran perfectly without a hiccup, no music skipping. So now it confirmed that my problem was a CD reading problem.

I have only just recently acquired most of these games and was hoping to actually use them instead of just sitting in a box. i don't understand why there is any problem with reading the discs i would think hardware now days would be more than able to compensate.

[doom_2er]

Glad you got it working.

Your computer might have had trouble playing those discs directly due to various reasons. The most obvious being if they were scratched or just weren't agreeing with your cd/dvd drive. During the image creation process, the ripping program might slow the drive down on a couple of hard to read sectors, but it would still create an error-free image, which in result is read perfectly by epsxe.

On the other hand, if you play those scratched discs directly, those hard to read sectors would have been the reason for the lag and skipping that you described earlier. There isn't much you can do about it. It's always best to play from image files. I guess you shouldn't have problems if those discs were brand-new, but that's yet another reason to preserve those rare new ps1 games by creating an image file, and use that to play.

[Smokin Kipper]

Sorry it's been a while since I've had any time to play around with this.

Unfortunatley Daemon tools hasn't made any difference. I can either get the sound working but there is horrible lag between scenes or get the lag fixed and have little to no dialogue. Or have no dialogue and horrible lag between scenes

In Deamon Tools I only have the options to add a virtual DT drive or add a virtual SCSI drive (the one I've been using), is that right?

Looks like this may just be one game that I can't run

[doom_2er]

I have just noticed this thread. It seems that 1.7.0 has broken Resident Evil games.

Get epsxe 1.6.0 and try again.

This time though, use Eternal SPU as a sound plugin. There are two versions, 1.41 and 1.5 beta 2. Test it with both versions, you can download them here.

Keep using Daemon Tools, and yeah SCSI works fine. One virtual drive is enough, no need to add more.

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Last edited by doom_2er; July 29th, 2012 at 17:54..