Way to find out if an ISO is PAL patched?

[BlazeE]

Hey, I was wondering if there was a way to see if an ISO was patched to PAL. Recently, I put up an ISO in the YSI thread thinking it was NTSC, thats what the tag had said. But somebody tried burning it, and it was PAL patched. Does anyone know a way to see if its patched to PAL?

[Zorlon]

there are a number of things you can do to check / fix this

one of the more acurate ways is to run it in ePSXe with the logs enabled in windowed mode

That will not tell you if the boot has been patched but you can just patch the boot yourself with patch it to the region it should be, unlike diplay patches the boot patch is generic so it will work with any PSX CD Image

boot patches are more for PSone one users but can effect what display is used if the game works by reading the boot sector to know what the display type should be used. (There is only one game that I know that this definatly effects but doesn't show in ePSXe - Resident Evil 2 Dual Shock)

[BlazeE]

Hmm... It says Force NTSC cdrom detected. This is the same ISO that was said to be PAL patched. Where would it say if it was patched to PAL or not, so people dont end up burning coasters when they want to play on an NTSC console?

[Zorlon]

Force NTSC? that must be something you set in ePSXe it's never said that for me :/

P.S. did you not read what I said about boot patching?

[Myst]

What game was it you uploaded, some of us might wanna know if we downloaded patched stuff or not :p


your epsxe is set to force-play everything as NTSC.

go in the menus Options -> Country -> Autodetect

run the game, it'll tell you if the game you're running is NTSC or PAL.
Also press [delete] key. It'll show you the fps (frames per seconds) the game i srunning on.

If in the log window (the black DOS window) says it detected the game as NTSC and you see the fps counter peak at 50, that means the NTSC game has been patched to run as a PAL game. if it peaks at 60 than it's a bonafide NTSC game.

Same goes for PAL as well. If it detects a PAL game and it runs at 60, that means it's a PAL game patched to NTSC.

Short version:
PAL = 50
NTSC = 60
if you see the reverse on either, it's a patched game

The NTSC/PAL detection epsxe uses it the official refresh format the CD was originally in, it probably gets that info from the sony ID file (SLUS/SLES/SLPS), something the patches do not edit/remove

[BlazeE]

Ahh, ok. My patcher worked it seems then, I guess my game was PAL. It was Digimon World. I used Patch It! To patch it to NTSC. Using autodetect, ePSXe said it was NTSC after patching, but it peaks at 50. It should be able to run on an NTSC console now though, right?

EDIT: That's weird, I patched it back to PAL just to make sure, ePSXe still detects it as NTSC, even though the patcher says the patch was successful...

[Zorlon]

go in the menus Options -> Country -> Autodetect

Didn't even know that setting was there lol

P.S. It's not too good an idea to force display, some games will just not work like that while others will be out of sync, I don't display patch myself for that very reason for CD's I play on my PSone, I used to a long time back so I know some of the side effects of doing that

[TapproDCF]

maybe ya could use pec to check it for the region by hitting wut drive it is in, then it might point to a certain game telling its region.

[Zorlon]

that doesn't tell you if it's patched or not

[Myst]

Ahh, ok. My patcher worked it seems then, I guess my game was PAL. It was Digimon World. I used Patch It! To patch it to NTSC. Using autodetect, ePSXe said it was NTSC after patching, but it peaks at 50. It should be able to run on an NTSC console now though, right?

EDIT: That's weird, I patched it back to PAL just to make sure, ePSXe still detects it as NTSC, even though the patcher says the patch was successful...

epsxe tells you the format the game ORIGINALY is. Patching cannot change that information. a NTSC patched to PAL will still autodetect as a NTSC.
If epsxe says it's NTSC, that's because the CD is originally the NTSC version. you didn't have to patch it at all. And check in your video plugin if you have it set to [autodetect fps] and not a fixed fps

read my first post again; BEFORE you patched it, if it autodetected as NTSC and it peaked at 60, it was NTSC. But since you patch/re-patched it, it's a big mess now

but if it was a NTSC patched to PAL cd, wouldn't you need to unpatch it back to NTSC using the same program the first person used? using a diffirent program doesn't sound like a 100% guarantee.


Man, this is a big mess. I'll just upload my own copy of Digimin Wold NTSC in YSI.

EDIT: done
http://forums.emuparadise.org/showpo...postcount=2655

[Zorlon]

but if it was a NTSC patched to PAL cd, wouldn't you need to unpatch it back to NTSC using the same program the first person used? using a diffirent program doesn't sound like a 100% guarantee.

Nope thats not always possible

I have had to hex edit a couple of games before to restore it to the original display patched one way fine but didn't unpatch

And it's not something I would recomend unless you realy know what to look for, I couldn't realy make a guide for that because some of it is pure game dependant, one reason why with some games NTSCtoPAL or PALtoNTSC patchers don't seem to find NTSC/PAL display code, not because it isn't there but because there are several ways of doing that

Edit:- that game in the screeny can't be patched back, don't ask me why because it works one way just not to restore it :/, I had the hex it manually back (I was just testing it though I still don't like display patching, specially as I don't need to)



see the counter on the top left thats what we are talking about the purple bit is a shot of the settings you need set in your video plugin for it to show, or you can press delete in game to show and hide the FPS counter aslong as you have auto-detect on and FPS Limit as shown

(It's just purple because of my desktop settings so it's prolly gray for you)

Left is Unpatched NTSC Right is PAL patched

Both detect as NTSC because both are but one has the display patched, the logs are good so you can see what display it was before it was patched

[Myst]

see the counter on the top left thats what we are talking about the purple bit is a shot of the settings you need set in your video plugin for it to show, or you can press delete in game to show and hide the FPS counter aslong as you have auto-detect on and FPS Limit as shown

Left is Unpatched NTSC Right is PAL patched

Both detect as NTSC because both are but one has the display patched, the logs are good so you can see what display it was before it was patched

ummm yeah, that's what I've been trying to say all this time

But the other info you said about unpatching is quite handy. Personally I don't deal with patching at all since I'm a emu guy

[BlazeE]

I know, it did peak at 50, and I did have it set at auto detect FPS. My problem is that the game was originally NTSC, ok, but when I got it it was already pal patched. Is there anyway to figure out what patch was used so I can unpatch it? Or am I stuck with this PAL patched game? Plus, I think when I patched it to NTSC, I think it was a boot patch, because the FPS didn't go past 50 still, but it said the patch was successful. Also the patch I used works for all ISOs, not one in specific, like Zorlon said. Should it be able to at least boot on an NTSC console now, though?

EDIT: Nevermind, I'll just download Myst's. I'm really sorry if I pissed you guys off, I'm still really new to PSX emulation. Thanks Myst for the upload though.

[Zorlon]

It will boot anyway but for those without a RGB SCART, can't play the game because the display will either be black and white (AV conected) or black and white and constantly scroll up and down (Coaxial conected) or just a scrambled image (Coaxial conected)

We all learn at some point so please don't worry about it, it can't be helped if you had no idea about it.

I use RGB SCART myself so thats the reason I don't need to patch any games for display, also not all RGB SCARTS will help with the display I know that some will only work the same as an AV, there are also some AV connections that can decode, these usually have a block to connect normal AV connections between that block and a TV rather than being a self contained AV lead directly from PSX to TV