BoF III (freeze or black screen, and how to fix?)

Heyo! ^.^ I hope this isn't a lame way to introduce myself to the site, but I have a problem that needsa fixin.

I recently decided I wanted to play through Breath of Fire 3 again (as it's been years, and that was one of the big games in my childhood next to Star Ocean 2). It will play perfectly all the way up to the Capcom logo, and then it fades to a black screen like it's going to load the next part and it never does. I have it set to show my fps and it shows a constant 59/60 (which I think is what it should be), but it doesn't change at all so I have no idea if my emulator/rom has frozen, or if it just constantly tries to load the game. I have used ePSXe 1.7 and 1.8 (1.8 first as I decided I would upgrade), and it does not work on either which is wrong, because I know it is compatible with 1.7. I've switched to about 5 different bios trying to get it to work (7502, 1001, 1000, and 2 others that I don't remember at the time), and they didn't work, and I've tried about 10 different video plugins (namely petes plugins but I've tried a few other that are considered to work pretty good), and I still can't get past this screen. I don't know if this information will help but I run windows xp 32 bit, and I have gotten this game to work before. (Like a year ago I think?) I have tried to download a few different roms of it from separate sites and nothing. I don't know what my problem is, and I havn't been having problems with any other games playing. If there is any more information I can give to help then please let me know.

Sorry if this was a lot to read, but if anyone can help me then I thank you, and I can't wait to get to know you all! ^.^ (Also I searched, and I have not seen a similar problem, but I'm not saying it has not been posted before. If there was a similar thread about this problem with BoF3 then please send me a link, and I'm sorry for making a repost of a dead thread)

Just use PEOpS soft video plugin

ePSXe 1.8.0 will do just fine

The bios version makes no difference

Make sure to use the cue file or ccd file, i.e. do not open a bin or img file directly

On a side note do not convert a PSX CD image with Magic ISO or any of it's clones, that will just break the disc image

P.S. it is possible that you just need to tweek the offscreen drawing in the video plugin

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zorlon

Just use PEOpS soft video plugin

ePSXe 1.8.0 will do just fine

The bios version makes no difference

Make sure to use the cue file or ccd file, i.e. do not open a bin or img file directly

On a side note do not convert a PSX CD image with Magic ISO or any of it's clones, that will just break the disc image

P.S. it is possible that you just need to tweek the offscreen drawing in the video plugin

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Well out of all the places I've downloaded the rom from I end up with a zipped folder, and in it will usually have a 1kb .cue, and an ecm in another zipped folder (which I unzip and unecm to make it a bin that equals to about 433,000 kb. The bin is what will load and the cue will do nothing. With most of my games I get an ISO or a cue that is already ready to play (so I may just be doing something wrong), but there seem to be no way to find a link to BoF3 that is ready to play instantly. On a sidenote, I usually do use PEOps soft because that has always seemed to work the best on my computer, but decided to try other plugins hoping maybe they could fix the problem. I'll try tweaking the offscreen drawing and see what happens. I've never had to do that to get a game to work properly so I don't know how this will turn out. Either way thanks for the help! ^.^

How do I tweak the offscreen drawing? I'm not finding that option for some reason :(

ePSXe 1.8.0 runs cue files perfectly they do need to be in the same folder as the bin and bin is not to be renamed as that will make it not work

Open the cue file with notepad though and make sure it is looking for the correct file (cue files are just text files anyway but they tell whatever reads them what is in the bin or img file including CDDA tacks)

offscreen drawing is only in the 3D video plugins

It is very possible by what you have said, that the issue is just to do with you not using the cue file as that game does have a CDDA track and with you just loading the bin file directly you are resulting in the game not having CDDA and some games will just not run without it

I'm so sorry I must seem stupid that I still havn't figured out how to get this to work for me :(. I'm use to gba, snes, and ds emulators and so I'm a little spoiled in how much knowledge it takes to get these to work, and I've been lucky in the ps roms I do use in that I've never had problems above a minor tweak. In any case I am still a little confused, but I promise I'm trying to learn.

http://gyazo.com/34b11203c155a7a77a81caed84ec44b3.png this is how the cue reads in notepad

http://gyazo.com/11d3df240eed6572a1e9364e89bf596e.png and this is how my folder looks.

If I understand what your saying it means I should not rename my bin, and if I'm reading the cue right then it is looking for a bin entitled "Breath of Fire III (USA) (v1.1) (Track 1)" or "Breath of Fire III (USA) (v1.1) (Track 2)". However it naturally unzips as data.bin.ecm meaning it unecms as data.bin so... renaming it would make it so it does not work, but if I don't rename it then it won't find it?

Once again I'm sooooo sorry if I'm missing something simple, and I'm grateful for the help you've given so far.

Ah you have not converted the ape file at all

read ECM and APE Guide

You will need Monkey's Audio and change wav to bin.zip both are in the above guide at the top

that should get the game working, just jump to the part Dealing with ape files

P.S. in the guide it makes you use a virtual drive, you do not need to do that though you can instead convert the image into a single bin+Cue with ISO buster, if you like that option more then skip Faking CD hardware and onward and use the other guide Convert to/Create a bin+cue with ISObuster instead

It looks like I'm just not meant to play this game? :(... I don't know if I have faulty emulators, or finding faulty roms, or if I'm still missing stuff or what, but I CANNOT seem to get this ONE game to work :(. I've followed both of those guides, and tried about everything I can think of, but it just will not play past the Capcom logo. I even ended up actually finding a ready to play iso, and still couldn't get past the logo. I've officially spent too much time trying to figure out how to get this one game to play. Anyone know if psp emulators are any easier, and how much support they have? (I know there was a port for psp so maybe that could work?)

I am probably just a little bit upset though, and maybe if I take a break and get back to it later, then maybe I can figure out exactly what I'm doing wrong. Sorry if I've wasted your time and thank you a lot!

I may do a quick test later.

PSP emulation is much harder to handle, but if you had a PSP you can play it on the PSP with an easy to do softmod

Have you tried using an emulator other than ePSXe? Another option would be using pSX, which requires no special plugins or configuration to get it going.

For the emulator, http://psxemulator.gazaxian.com/pSX_1_13.rar

If it gives you an error saying d3dx9_26.dll is missing, you can download the missing file here; http://www.2shared.com/file/w4NwSSWk/d3dx9_26dll.html. Just unzip the file and stick it in the extracted pSX folder (with psxfin.exe).

If it still doesn't work, try using this particular copy of the game if you aren't already, which seems to be working perfectly on my end with this emulator (also on XP 32bit); http://tinyurl.com/l48qqrx

THANK YOU MaslowK!!!!!!!! You have no idea how much this has began to frustrate me!!! I was about to curse out my laptop and anyone who got in my way lol. Once again thank you so much. ^.^. I thought after ePSXe 1.7 released that the others were supposed to be majorly obsolete, but this worked for me! (I have known about it, but figured if I couldn't get it to work with ePSXe then theres no way I could get it to work with anything else.) This was the second game I owned (so it kind of has a lot of sentimental value to me as well), and it's nice to be able to play it again. I just want to thank you one more time lol.

And yes I do own a psp. Would that softmod come in handy often or would it only work with games that are ports of ps1 games? (Please excuse that if it sounds like a dumb question.)

a Soft modded PSP can play PSP ISO's and PSX games converted to eBoots, it can also play a whole host of emulators such as SNES and Megadrive

Ask about that in everything console also mention the model of PSP you have and the firmware version, if you don't know what the firmware version is just ask how to find that out

The other PSX emulators are as you say, redundant as of 1.5.2, 1.8.0 is recommended over 1.7.0 that has a disc swap bug in the Run ISO option for multi disc games such as Metal Gear Solid

ePSXe is not for everyone but it is the most compatible emulator of the PSX out there, but it can be complicated to some

I also noticed you have the PAL-E version of the game that does require a bit more messing to get working as you need to convert more files and re-make the disc image, so grab the NTSC-U version instead at http://www.emuparadise.me/Sony_Plays..._[U]/36624 that copy is in img+ccd format use the ccd file to run the game (no file converting needed there)

A small hint (E) = Europe (U) = USA (J) = Japan, it's a common mistake to think (E) = English, but it doesn't

I don't have any free USB ports so my setup controls are not going to work without my pad pluged in, I didn't see the problem when I tested the Bin on it's own, both versions played the Capcom logo up to the start menu and started to play the demo screens that is shown if you have it kept on the start menu long enough

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Zorlon

so grab the NTSC-U version instead at http://www.emuparadise.me/Sony_Plays...h_of_Fire_III_[U]/36624

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For future reference, the way vbulletin parses links breaks any URLs containing "[]"'s (i.e., any of the ones that use [U], [E], etc in the url), which is why I normally tinyurl them.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MaslowK

For future reference, the way vbulletin parses links breaks any URLs containing "[]"'s (i.e., any of the ones that use [U], [E], etc in the url), which is why I normally tinyurl them.

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I knows.

I did forget to fix it though for a few seconds lol