Converting PSX games from CD

Madmatty · 02-07-07, 12:24 PM

Hello All;
Obviously a newbie question. I've gone through the ripping guide for PSX games provided through the PSXLDR and tutorial link; in other words, CDRWin to rip from the original CD, got .bin and .cue files fine (Star Wars: Dark Forces CD). Then PSM Play, analyze image and save .psm file with .bin and .cue.
Then PSX LDR. I've tried a straight "Rip All", then through the readme file I tried replacing each file with the required blanks and THEN rip all, and also all versions and combinations of PocketISO, and all combinations of Compression methods, all versions.
The best I can get for Dark Forces is; Load Screen, perfect; Start Screen, perfect; Mission load screen, perfect; general load screen mission 1, perfect. Then IN GAME, I only get the floor and ceiling textures (everything else black), invisible enemies who still shoot at me (I can see the laser blasts being shot and hitting me) and labeled doors with no way out, on the map. Everything else about the game seems to work, except I can only speak for the first room as I can't exit the doors.
My question is, where are some more tweaks through this process that I can fiddle with to get the game to funtion properly? Shouldn't it not work at ALL if I'm doing it wrong? Most tries through this entire posted process get a game that won't load - black screen. The straight CDRWin rip to .bin and .cue work as mentioned above. No other treatment through the rest of the tutorial seems to get me a working game at all.
Sorry for the long newbie post, I just wanted to be thorough. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

mphayvanh · 02-07-07, 01:29 PM

Michu might be a better source for this.

For me--I just use CDRWin for the BIN file and use PocketISO 2.1 on Normal Compression with nothing taken out (I like to see the video and have sound in my games) and it worked fine. Try that method for SWDF and see if it makes a difference. Also for GFX driver I found LFB works better. Fast Boot & Frameskip should be checked too.

I've been playing Front Mission, Finanl Fantasy 7 and Saiyuki using those methods and for the most part, I get near full speed with video & audio!

Madmatty · 02-07-07, 01:43 PM

Tried it that way. Exact same outcome. No wall textures, enemies not visible but can attack, can't leave the first room. Everything else functions in the game.

Michu · 02-07-07, 02:19 PM

Jup... can happen, it's a GPU Plugin problem then or even deeper, game specific (well Star Wars games seem to cause troubles more often then others ^^)

Can't do anything about that as you would have to provide the defs with the game ;)

Wrong ripping means that the game crashes, the gameplay/graphics are not affected by ripping a game in general. So either it works (starts) or not, the rest is out of the gamers control.

This is pretty normal when it comes to 3D emulation... things become so complicated when it starts being 3D that good emulation (there is no perfect emulation) is nearly impossible.

Madmatty · 02-07-07, 03:22 PM

Hmmm... can you think of any other way to get Dark Forces (I have PC discs as well) onto the PDA? Is there perhaps another CDRWin type program that could have better luck, or is that one the standard?
I've heard rumors of doing it through PocketDOS but that sounds even more complicated, and less functional...
Is this idea too advanced for PocketSCUMM?

Michu · 02-07-07, 03:35 PM

I'd say it's not emulatable in an other way, sorry ... as the game seems to need way to much recources, the current PC emus do not feature such.

I'm just realistic here.

The only 3D Star Wars game that worked for me with FPSEce is "Jedi Power Battle" but it eats your speed... 20 FPS if you work hard on it but often around 15.
Here is a screen just if you are curious

satani · 03-06-07, 03:18 PM

well, for me, i take the originals of a friend, rip music out, downsample videos to 10% (available in newest version of pocketISO) and play the ripped games on my sd-card. at Command and Conquer 2 - Soviet Disk (only need one disk as i always play skirmish-mode) i get 15-24 fps. without frameskip, with fastboot and vga-driver enabled.
with same coniguration, i get also 17-20 (playable!) fps at tekken 3 ingame (in menu i get up to 50 fps)

so my conclusion is: this is so cool at a dX50v in automatic mode(!), so why would i need a psp. (as the technical data of a psp or even nintendo ds is awful!)
so don't ever try to compare a console with a pc (or a handheld-console with a pocketpc) in technical view of processor/ram/video and other hardware! you would end up laughing. (but nevertheless this port of fpsce IS great!) (but i don't want to change my dell to ANY PSX,PSP or other Console!)