FF8 new game issue...

[iiParadiigm]

I'm new to emulating, and am trying to start FF8 using ePSXe. I have both 1.5.2 an 1.7. On 1.7, when I hit "new game" it gives me some dumb error and closes, so I downloaded 1.5.2 to see how it worked on there. On 1.5.2, when I hit "new game" it does'nt give me an error, but the screen goes black and stays that way.

Using Pete's Open GL2 and whatever the most recent sound one is that Pete released, and scph1001 for bios.

I have no idea what the specs of this computer are, nor does it matter as I won't be using it again as of tomorrow. The system I will start using tomorrow is alright for other games (WoW, other big names) and can generally handle them with slightly less than average settings.

Any help is appreciated.

EDIT: Downloaded 1.6 and the same thing happened as with 1.7.

[deathneko11]

well first off squaresoft games are a little tricky compared to most psx games as far as the emulators are concerned. second, it doesnt matter if you have a powerful pc.......somewhat. we need to know what kind of vid card your running and what kinda cpu you have; if it's a dual or quad core that's very important because the psx emulators were originally designed around a dual core cpu. also we need to know what configuration you have on the epsxe; i happen to know that ff8 works rather well on 1.7.0 as I have beaten it on that emulator. on your emulator video configuration, click copy to clipboard and then paste it onto this thread. also tell us what steps you took to play the file you download; what you extracted and what file you loaded and any applicable software. give us this information and we can further help you.

[Zorlon]

All PAL versions are copy protected, please see ePSXe Anti Copy Protection Patches Archive for a fix

I wouldn't say these games are hard to run, because they are not, they can be a pain to setup so they run smoothly though

We can help with that though if needs be, first though grab the patch for your version of the game and extract it to the patches foler in the folder that ePSXe is stored

[deathneko11]

i didnt say they were hard to run; just hard to setup like you stated. i can give him near perfect configurations for battle swirls and everything if his hardware is anything close to mine.

[Zorlon]

Thats not the problem but I'm sure the extra setup info will come in handy though

I wasn't realy having a dig at your post you just made it sound a lil harder than it is thats all

I could of just said your totally wrong but that would be BS

[iiParadiigm]

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.9
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
GFX card: GeForce 8500 GT/PCI/SSE2

Resolution/Color:
- 768x576 Window mode
- Internal X resolution: 1
- Internal Y resolution: 1
- Keep psx aspect ratio: ô%
- No render-to-texture: ô%

- Filtering: 6
- Hi-Res textures: 2
- TexWin pixel shader: on
- VRam size: 0 MBytes

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: on
- FPS limit: 200.0

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

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Mdec filter: on
- Screen filtering: on
- Shader effects: 4/4
- Flicker-fix border size: 0
- GF4/XP crash fix: off
- Game fixes: off [00000002]


***I will not be using this computer the next time that I post, but when I do post again I will be able to give you the cpu and gfx card that I have.

[deathneko11]

lol sorry zorlon yeah what you say is true.

iiParadiigm i use the same video plugin try these settings:
Plugin: Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.9
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
GFX card: GeForce 6150SE nForce 430/PCI/SSE2/3DNOW!

Resolution/Color:
- 800x600 Window mode
- Internal X resolution: 1
- Internal Y resolution: 1
- Keep psx aspect ratio: on
- No render-to-texture: off

- Filtering: 4
- Hi-Res textures: 0
- TexWin pixel shader: on
- VRam size: 0 MBytes

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

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

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Mdec filter: on
- Screen filtering: on
- Shader effects: 0/1
- Flicker-fix border size: 0
- GF4/XP crash fix: off
- Game fixes: on [00000003]

in special game fixes check 0x0002 ignore small framebuffer moves. these settings i know will work, might need some minor tweeks. if framerate is bad try turning auto off and set it to 60 or 65 fps.

as far as the iso is concerned, use epsxe 1.6 if you are not running daemon tools light. it will help when it's time to swap discs.
after using 7zip to extract files from the original download run epsxe run iso and select cd image. if there is an ecm file, unecm it and select the bin file you retrieve from it. hope this helps

btw if i'm wrong on any data unfortunately I dont have the files anymore i'll redownload it and update here if necessary. also, this will work rather well in fullscreen at 1360 by 768.

[deathneko11]

all right i just walked myself through the steps and tested it out this works on ePSXe 1.6 and 1.7. do these steps one cd at a time for all 4 cd's.

download the NTSCU version; i've beaten it with this version.
extract into your games folder. you should get a separate folder with a cue file, a sub file, and an ecm file.
unecm the ecm file and it will give you a disc image.
on epsxe select run ISO and select the disc image file
enjoy.

if you are interested in mounting the cd image to run it as a cd-rom and are running epsxe 1.7 daemon tools lite will take care of that for you, and it will run the game just fine. You shouldn't need to worry about it though if you are running epsxe 1.6.

[Knightshade]

let me guess the error your getting in 1.6.0 and 1.7.0 is missing zlib.dll

as far as that goes just google it download the file and put it in the folder with epsxe in it.

most new users don't know they have to do this in order to play.

link to ecm tools if you don't already have it

www.emuparadise.org/PSX/ecm%20tools.rar

to unecm. open the ecm tools folder and drag the game to unecm you will see processes running in a cmd window when done you will have a .bin file which is a playable format not to be confused with .bin.ecm which is not playable till it is unecmed

[deathneko11]

heh i forgot about that. yeah what error messages are you getting if you play the iso, cdimage, or bin file?