1) Good find. It was supposed to work like you're suggesting now, but I'm guessing something got broke in v0.0.1 when I made the GPU refresh even if emulation is paused. I'll try to fix it for the next release.
2) Yes, that's my main priority right now, and the only thing that's keeping me away from a decent AVI recording function. I'll see if I can understand how the other emulators handle this, but I guess it'll be very difficult, since I don't know anything about sound...
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Thanks! I can now run my own PSX discs using the new version. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a suitable graphics plugin now... I wish I knew more about my video card.
Just use the provided P.E.Op.S. GPU plugin, any other will give you problems with my version. Also, plugins which don't use software-based rendering (such as Pete's OpenGL and D3D plugins) look like absolute crap.
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Okay, I have everything working now... almost. I don't know how to display the frame or input display... (.) and (,) don't seem to work, and I couldn't find anything in the help file. Sorry if this has been explained or is intuitive.
You need to check the "Show FPS display on startup" box when you're configuring the GPU plugin. Or you can press the "Delete" key once you are in game.
I'll try to make it more intuitive for the next release. Just showing it by default should be fine, I think.
Umm, can someone explain how to set up CDR plugin? It's complaining about "select drive" but the drive drop-list is empty.
Oh and does bios version matters? I have 7502 instead of 1001
I tried mooby cdr, I started recording a play, then playback it goes all the way from begin to end properly - no desync at all. Nicely done so far, MZ.
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
I've encountered 3 very annoying things. One is a bug, one is a request for customizing all hotkeys, and the other is a feature that frankly makes recording impossible (unless I'm missing something.)
1. During play, every so often the input becomes frozen, making whatever input you were pressing become locked for a few seconds so if you were moving in a direction, you continue to go that way without being able to stop. The emulator notices this, it causes the red lag counter to increase as frames where you can't press anything, and the normal frame counter is also red indicating input won't work. This is a very bad thing; during recording it would suck to encounter a 10 second period where the input is locked. Not conducive to making optimal movies.
2. When a ROM is loaded, the menu on the top (file, emulator, configuration, help) disappears. It is essential to use this menu in order to record/replay movies, since nowhere has a shortcut been shown to automatically start movie recording/replay.
3. Please, for the love of god, include a way to customize all hotkeys. I cannot work with P as pause and SPACE as frame advance.
Besides that, the game I've been testing works great. Playing with no sound is no fun, but besides the input lock I haven't encountered any problems.
I've never encountered this problem. Can you find an easy way to reproduce it? It happens to you with every game or is it only with one game (what game?)?
Why would you want to automatically start movie recording? I guess I should create a shortcut for replaying the current movie from start, but for now you can create a savestate at the start of the movie and then load it in read-only mode whenever you want to replay from start.
It's on my to-do list. Maybe I will just make it with a text-file config, since I've found it to be almost impossible to do it otherwise. :(
Also, you can use PAUSE for pause and \ for frame advance, too.
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
The input freeze occurs with Silent Bomber. I was using Mooby CDR 2.8, if that makes any difference. I'm pretty sure I could reproduce it, assuming nothing changes because it was happening like every 2 or so minutes I was playing. (Assuming I can start recording, I can show an example.)
For all emulators, in order to record a movie first you load the ROM, then go to movie->record. Unless I'm missing something, loading the ROM in PSX makes it impossible to go to the movie->record option. Also, having a menu while the game is paused is immensely helpful for many other things, such as replaying a new movie, changing settings/configurations mid game if needed, etc.
I use F for frame advance, and D for pause in every rerecording emulator I use. I have one of the buttons on my USB controller linked to F and one button for D, so that I can frame advance and pause while holding my controller. I don't want to mess around changing all of my configurations for all of my emulators just to accommodate for this one emulator, and I'm 100% unused to either \ or SPACE for frame advancing.
Edit: woopsie daisies, I solved the recording problem.
You don't need to load anything at all before recording or replaying, just make sure you have a CD ready on your real/virtual drive, or your CDR plugin and then select "Start recording" or "Start playback". It will automatically start reading your CD from the beginning (or from a savestate).
You can start replaying a new movie if you press Esc and select "Start playback", and you can change settings/configurations the same way. To resume the game, just select Emulator->Run.
Unfortunately, it's impossible to create a menu while the game is running, because the PCSX window has to be closed each time the GPU window needs to be called.
Joined: 6/13/2006
Posts: 3300
Location: Massachussetts, USA
Yeah, I just figured out my recording problems. I didn't think to try recording BEFORE the ROM was loaded. Dear lord.
Here is a test .pxm I made, using the PSX v 002, and Mooby CDR 2.8 as graphics plugin. I went through the menus optimally, then noodled around to experiment with the frame timings of the moves. At frame 5,087, the Input becomes locked at <^ Square button, and I run into the laser grid without meaning to. I believe you can see the input display not showing a desynch; during recording, both frame counters would be red.
Edit: replaying the movie using sound makes it desynch (I was using no sound for recording.) Should I record WITH sound?
v0.0.3 released with a possible fix for some desync problems and two other minor fixes. See the first post for more information and download links.
There is no "ROM" to load, or CD image or nothing. What you see is the stupid CDR plugin asking you for a disk image each time you try to record a movie or whatever. You shouldn't use that crap anyway. Use P.E.Op.S. CDR plugin and a virtual drive.
Unfortunately, your movie seems to desync for me (I did try a lot different settings, even that ugly Mooby plugin :P). But at least I was able to see the locked input (it was just a > for me), and they both sync exactly the same with sound or without it. I'll see later if the debugger shows something regarding the input bug, but it seems to be an emulation bug with only this specific game...
You may try to record with sound, but it's better without it for most games. I've modified the SPU plugin to make it sync-compatible with the No Sound plugin, so in theory this shouldn't be a problem...
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
Yeah, I already mentioned it, but that seems to be too hard to accept.
Either way, mz... you movie converter is teh failures (at least for FractalFusions WIPs)
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Hah, yeah, I know. But it's not the converter, it's the emulator... It seems it sometimes starts reading the Pad 2, others Pad 1, or something.
Anyway, you need to hex edit FF WIPs and add two bytes at the start of the input stuff, which should be somewhere after position 29, I think.
It kind of reminds me the about box of P.E.Op.S. CDR plugin:
Could it be (related to) the emulator bug Dehacked found while working on his rerecording version where hardware signals to read the pads simply aren't sent any more?(Or something to that effect)
There is a whole new world beyond these walls. Break them down.
On the contrary, it's incredibly useful, at least, it is in RockMan X4 (for reference, fairly frequent desyncs in 0.002, so far 0 desyncs in 0.003), as it allows me to minimize the amount of time spent on the ground walking.
Definitely 2 thumbs up for this version mz, and thanks for your continuing work on it :)
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
Yeah, mz... this version is really the best... except that it doesn't seem to like the shift+8 function, and it crashed on me like 4 times when I tried to rewind the movie wnile recording, and gives some weird eternal pause sometimes and the only way to get out of it is loading a savestate (but it would eventually pause again in the end... if it didn't crash).
So now I always stop the movie before watching it.
And I'm playing Castlevania SotN.
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate
Just a note for those of you considering trying to compile this on OSX - the included OSX Makefile is hilariously old. Among other things, it says:
CPU = powerpc
and in the CXXFLAGS has "-I$(HOME)/local/include"
So, yeah, who knows what's going on there. The Linux version might be worth checking out; I'm not about to lose sleep over it though (and hey, it's bedtime).
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
PCSX crashes whenever I try to use it - running the emulator, running it from a CD, even running from a .img file. I've tried all sorts of different settings (using Daemon's mirror as a CD drive). Help would be appreciated.
My current project: Something mysterious (oooooh!)
My username is all lower-case letters. Please get it right :(
Joined: 8/6/2006
Posts: 784
Location: Connecticut, USA
Are you using Windows? I commonly get the "illegal operation" error (or the WXP equivalent), but I eventually can run it if I keep clicking on it enough times.
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
hey mz, next time you mess with this emulator, set ESC to automatically resume emulation if we're at the menu window. Having to enter a menu is bullshit...
"Genuine self-esteem, however, consists not of causeless feelings, but of certain knowledge about yourself.
It rests on the conviction that you — by your choices, effort and actions — have made yourself into the
kind of person able to deal with reality. It is the conviction — based on the evidence of your own volitional
functioning — that you are fundamentally able to succeed in life and, therefore, are deserving of that success."
- Onkar Ghate