Need help running Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver

[MagicianFaust]

I'm having issues running this game. I first tried it on the pSX emulator, and it was perfectly playable until it started freezing during a cutscene shortly after the jumping/gliding tutorial(so about 5 minutes into the game). Restarting just had it freeze at the exact same spot. I wanted to try it in ePSXe, but that emulator simply gives me a black screen on startup.

What is going on?

[Zorlon]

EU version (PAL-E) of the game has copy protection that will let you play the game then just freeze up while playing (this can be bypassed)

for ePSXe make sure you get the latest version that being 1.8.0

start off just using P.E.O.p.S soft driver for the Video plugin (keep most of it on defaults infact keep it all on defaults this is just to make sure it works after you can mess on with Direct3D or OpenGL drivers)

for the CD plugin use P.E.Op.S CDR driver you will need to configure it up to read a subchannel file from http://redump.org/disc/1177/

in the config for the CD plugin P.E.Op.S CDR driver look under "Subchannel reading" and change the main option there to "Use Subchannel SBI/M3S" this will enable another option under it, this is the place to add the sbi file you downloaded from http://redump.org/disc/1177/

Now run the CD image as normal via a cue file or a cdd file

P.S. What format is the CD image in at the moment?

[MagicianFaust]

This is where I got the game from: http://www.emuparadise.me/Sony_Plays..._%28E%29/52337

It says "E", so I assumed that meant English. I didn't see anything indicating it was PAL. As for the format, it came as an ecm, which I unecm'd into a .bin file.

[Zorlon]

E = Europe and is PAL aka PAL-E
U = USA and is NTSC aka NTSC-U

If you got a cue sheet with that then use that to run it by (I know the game only has a single track so for this game it's not really needed but in general it is best to use a cue or cdd file to run a game from rather than direct from a bin or img file, this is to enable all tracks)

[MagicianFaust]

Oh. Guess I goofed on the naming conventions. Though, the file still didn't come with a cue or cdd. Just a bin. Is there something special I have to do to get one, or find a different download source?

As for the redump.org thing, I'm probably missing something, but how do I download the thing from there?

Alternately, would I be better off just finding a NTSC-U version? Or would that still have the copy protection?

[Zorlon]

the link I gave has the downloads at the top right next to the text downloads, including cue and sbi files, but for this game it is fine to run it from the bin file directly as it only has one track

I will direct link it for the sbi anyway

http://redump.org/disc/1177/sbi/

Yeah the NTSC-U version does not have that type of copy protection so you can just grab that if you want to wait for the game to download again, but the sbi file is a very small file and it's not hard to use, but it's up to you.

[MagicianFaust]

Ohh, I finally see where the downloads are. I mistook those as some link to direct you elsewhere rather than a download link.

I think I'm just going to get the NTSC-U version. More download time, but should be less work to deal with. Nonetheless, thank you for your help.

Thought I may as well ask in my own topic, but it seems I'm having issues again.

While fighting a pair of enemies, the game locks up and gives me a garbled message. I've reloaded several times, and while it doesn't lock up at the exact same time, it's always sometime when fighting these enemies(and I don't think I can just skip them).

Here's a screenshot of the message: http://oi45.tinypic.com/bex8uh.jpg

[Zorlon]

What emulator are you using this time

[MagicianFaust]

I'm using ePSXe 1.8.0.

[Zorlon]

play with the "Off Screen Drawing" of the Video plugin, I can't give you exacts here as it is hardware dependent 2 or 3 in general seem to work for most users though

[MagicianFaust]

I tried messing with those settings, even with different plugins, but it still freezes like that(though some of them don't show the garbled error message).

For what it's worth, here are the settings of the plugin I've been using up until this point(I'm honestly not sure of the ideal plugin to use for my system, but this one made the game look nice and less pixelated):

Plugin: Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.6
Author: Pete Bernert
Card vendor: ATI Technologies Inc.
GFX card: AMD Radeon HD 7700 Series

Resolution/Color:
- 1680x1050 Window mode
- Internal X resolution: 2
- Internal Y resolution: 2
- Keep psx aspect ratio: off
- No render-to-texture: off

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

Framerate:
- FPS limitation: on
- Frame skipping: on
- FPS limit: 60

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 0
- Framebuffer effects: 0
- Framebuffer uploads: 1

Misc:
- Scanlines: off
- Mdec filter: on
- Screen filtering: off
- Shader effects: 0/1
- Flicker-fix border size: 0
- GF4/XP crash fix: off
- Game fixes: off [00000000]

[skullpoker]

The ePSXe Config Wizard recommends Pete's D3D for ATI cards and OpenGL plugins for NVidia. So try the D3D plugin, should be easy to find on Google if you don't have it.

[Zorlon]

Try

Compatibility:
- Offscreen drawing: 1
- Framebuffer effects: 3
- Framebuffer uploads: 2

[MagicianFaust]

I tried those settings, and the problem persists.

I must have missed that part about which plugins go with which cards, probably since I switched from an nVidia card to an ATI one a few months back. Of the ATI-based plugins, I have Pete's D3D Driver 1.75, and Pete's DX6 D3D Driver 1.75. Not sure the difference between them.

[Zorlon]

Not much try Pete's D3D Driver 1.75

If you are still getting the same problems I'm inclined to think there may be an issue with the actual disc image, you can check that against what www.redump.org has