Display PAL Game Properly On NTSC System

I am able to boot PAL games on my NTSC PS2, but the resolution is too high and the image is cropped. I have searched for and tried solutions on the internet, but the best I have managed is to get more of the screen to show up, but with some of the bottom still cropped. Specifically, I am trying to get then English PAL version of 'C-12: Final Resistance', with BIN and CUE source files, to display properly.

(I am aware that there is an NTSC version, but part of the reason I'm doing this is to gain experience so that I can perform conversions in the future when there is no NTSC alternative)

EDIT: For clarification, basically what I am trying to do is lower the output resolution so that the entire image can fit on a NTSC screen.

A lot of PAL games have a 60Hz option but for those that don't and if your TV set does not fully support PAL display then you have little choice but to patch those games but be warned forcing games into running at a frame rate they are not ment to be able to play at will cause some games to go out of sync or just crash totally

Tools such as NTSCONV do the trick, not sure if that one supports it but you may want a Y pos fixer also

EDIT.....

Just realized your talking about PSX games not PS2 games, then just read the stuck threads ;) I have posted a few tools up, think they are in the files and links stuck thread

There are several options then

Either patch that I don't recommend at all but there are two patch progs think both have Y fixes build in (both find and patch display codes both ways despite one being called PAL4U I think it was)

You don't need the regional patch though, it's only the display patches you need

Or you can use the ImportPlayer Lite that is a boot disc that has display options, you boot that via whatever method you use to boot backups, but be aware that is designed for mod chip users so the CD toc is still an issue so you may end up needing to patch some games, but this is worth a burn just to see the results with the games you already burned, not sure if that has a Y pos fix, I don't remember as I don't use it.

My PSone is chipped and I just patch the region as my chip was never installed correctly I can only play backups (so no originals) and the backups must be from my own region PAL but I just region patch the games, I don't display patch though as my TV can handle 60Hz just fine, my PS2 can play my original though and backups if I wanted


P.s. do read the stuck threads there might be something I missed here, it is full of good info

I have tried the PAL4U and Zapper 2000 methods, but the best that I have been able to get is this (the following is the screen adjustment screen; the game starts normally and I navigate to the screen adjustment for a diagnostic image):
Attachment 41530
Please note that I have only tested this with an emulator (PCSXR) but when I use PCSXR to play a patched image without a Y-POS fix I get the following (which is the same result as with my physical PS2):
Attachment 41531

The ImportPlayer Lite method left me same issue as above.
Even if it is impossible to display the entire image, do you know of a way that I can crop the top of the image instead of the bottom, or a way to crop both so that more of the bottom is displayed than the top?

It may be worth noting that I have one of the newest models of PS2 (SCPH-90001) which doesn't support the earlier softmodding methods.

EDIT: I tried setting ImportPlayer Lite to PAL to see if it would output in PAL, but it only changed the Y offset, effectively cropping even more of the bottom of the screen. Also, it is probably worth noting that I start burnt games with an Action Replay disc.

ADDENDUM: As an afterthought, I have been able to play PAL games with emulators on an NTSC Wii (with Homebrew). It seemed to work by merging or removing certain lines throughout the screen so that the overall image could fit on an NTSC screen. Would it be possible to adapt this concept to PSX patches?

that is what the Y-Pos fix is for

You just set Import Player to NTSC but you do need the Y-Pos fix to move the image up (Not all games will need that), it's not that it has cropped anything but has changed the Display to NTSC 60Hz but will need to be moved for some games, to center the image up

If you google PSX Patches & Trainers you will also find pre made patches, some of those are for patching to NTSC others are for copy protection or inserting cheats & obviously to PAL

Y fixes though need to be experimented with to get the correct value, but the defaults in one of those patchers Zapper2k or PAL4U is usually good for most games it's been a very long time since I looked at those mind but you will need the Y-Pos fix for some games

Again it changes the video mode rather than actually changing any graphics, believe it or not but both PAL and NTSC games use the same size images but the video output for PAL has more lines of display but the original images are the same ones that are on the NTSC version of the same game, video files asides from the FPS are also the same res, they will be 320x240 usually sometimes a funny res that is stretched like 320x120

I tried the general patches from ConsoleCopyWorld (there weren't any patches designed for C-12) as well as some other tools I found through further searching. The ones that worked in any way just changed the game to output to NTSC without changing the resolution scaling.
Since the both versions of the game would have the same internal resolution, it should be possible to re-scale the game to the resolution of the desired output standard. Do you know of any way to achieve this?

(Sorry for taking so long to reply; I needed to finish working on my PlayStation and test the patching software before I could reply.)

Just the video patch engines but because the frame rate is different 50 vs 60 (25 vs 30) the games become unstable out of sync and possibly just crash out

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zorlon

Just the video patch engines but because the frame rate is different 50 vs 60 (25 vs 30) the games become unstable out of sync and possibly just crash out

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While I understand that there is the likelihood of desync, the game still renders well on an NTSC console, only with a cropped image. I may have to deal with desync issues at some point, but currently I am simply trying to adjust the output resolution. Even if I have to aquire an SDK and manually edit the files, I would like to know if it is possible to to change the output resolution.

Also, I may be able to use what was used to make the patches found on ConsoleCopyWorld, though I have no idea what software might have been used.

desync makes games freeze (making completing a game not possible) sometimes makes them not boot at all, very few are fine throughout.

the patches on the mentioned site are created either by hand or via the two common video patchers PAL4U or Zapper 2000

PSX SDK is not going to help, you don't have the source file for the PSX main exec's, that and if you could program that well you would not even be asking

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zorlon

desync makes games freeze (making completing a game not possible) sometimes makes them not boot at all, very few are fine throughout.

the patches on the mentioned site are created either by hand or via the two common video patchers PAL4U or Zapper 2000

PSX SDK is not going to help, you don't have the source file for the PSX main exec's, that and if you could program that well you would not even be asking

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I understand your point, and I will probably drop it after this, but if desync is such a common and game-breaking experience, why are there so many patches to convert the video mode? If it was known that converted games would almost always crash, then why are there so many patches to change video mode, without a warning of this probable outcome?

There is not that many of the PAL PSX games that have PAL to NTSC or PAL/NTSC selection menu's created by scene groups (just a small handful out of the total PAL releases), it was made easy to make such display patches so half got released without full testing and even some of those have issues, while most (not all the ones created by scene groups seem to work fine that was not a lot of the games that got though and even some of those had sync issues)

Same goes for the PS2 PAL to NTSC patches for example FFX can be patched but the game just becomes unplayable

Mostly people like yourself that did not know about the issues but had known of ways to make PAL games display in NTSC mode but like I said even a few of the seasoned scene release patches also have issues like most old scene releases in general, that ended up with a 2nd and 3rd scene release in attempt to fix what was messed up