mz: im facing a very strange problem trying to TAS Resident Evil3, while replay load screen between rooms are longer than while recording, any ideas?
Exactly start to happen in the 5th room, while im crossing the door, in replay take like 1400 frames before i got back control, in record take 400 frames
That room have zombies hiding and a script, its probably much heavier room than others (previous ones)
Using 0.0.5, peops cdrom plugin, w2k/xp ioctl scsi commands, atapi spec2, no cache, all rest turned off, got alcol virtual drive
Edit: well somehow i could bypass the problem by wasting a few frames before opening the door... still doesnt answer why it would take 30 seconds to load the room, that definitly not happening in the real game, and the room i travel to get to that damn door is very small, so i believe real time you go nearly as fast as tasing, so i highly doubt for a game bug
Then to progress farther (next incoming room...), no matter what i try, i cant seem able to access it, even killing zombies or wasting many time, i can backtrack from there, but cant access the 6th room (maybe by testing more i could, but that became too odd for me now)
The emulator doesn't work for me. When I start it, it tells me that it needs to be configured, so I do that. Then it tells me it will shut down, and that I need to restart it, but when I do it tells me I have to configure it again. I've tried many times, and I've followed the Wiki, but it keeps telling me it needs to be configured. Why?
Do you have it on a read only drive or the program is marked read only? I'm not sure how exactly it saves the info, but that would be the first thing to check.
So umm... What is the current status with this emulator with regards to these pages:
http://tasvideos.org/EmulatorResources/Features.htmlhttp://tasvideos.org/EmulatorResources/Requirements.html
Let's start with:
-- Does it work on most systems by simply extracting a package, running the executable within, selecting an ISO, and clicking a "load" button, and then just playing, without need to run configuration & plugin selection?
-- Are the most used options accessible on the commandline? I.e. can I launch e.g. "pcsx x.iso test.pxm" to have it bind "x.iso" to the emulated CD drive and playback the "test.pxm" movie, with no pointing&clicking or other types of menu navigation needed?
-- Continuation to the commandline topic: Can AVI recording also be activated from the commandline?
-- Does it compile with free/libris development tools (MINGW/GCC toolchain)?
-- Does it work on Linux? (WINE not accepted; most plugins are high-likely not WINE-compatible)
-- Are all the plugins that are required for TASing, free from requirements of some particular hardware or third-party software versions?
-- Are all those plugins installed by default?
-- Is the rendering quality (audio & video) close to original? (I.e. 15-bit dithering and all)
-- Do most popular games work on it?
-- Is it stable, i.e. does not crash if you navigate menu accidentally in the wrong order or leave some checkbox unchecked?
-- Is the movie file format stable? I.e. does it include all the necessary things?
-- Continuation: Does the movie file format include a way to tell whether the movie begins from a cold reboot (power cycle), from a soft reboot (reset button) or a savestate?
-- Continuation: Does the movie file format include a way to tell the FPS on which the movie runs? Is the said FPS constant throughout the movie? I.e. can the movie length in milliseconds be derived from the movie file alone, tamper-securely?
-- Continuation: Does the movie file format include way to indicate CD changes (including the information about which CD was inserted)? Note: Should also include information about which CD was inserted in the beginning of the movie.
-- Continuation: Does the movie file format include way to include soft reboot (reset button) events in the movie?
-- Is the movie playback robust against differences between whatever memory card the user has inserted in comparison to whatever memory card the player had inserted?
-- Continuation: Is the movie playback safe against memory card alteration? I.e. playing back a movie should not produce changes to your memory cards unless you explicitly want so. Movie playback should _allow_ accessing a memorycard, but the said memorycard should be entirely a simulated one for the purposes of the movie playback, separate from whatever the playback-user has inserted.
-- Continuation: Does the movie file format include a way to determine memory card switch events (and the contents of said memorycards)?
-- Can the movie be paused and/or speed changed during playback, without these actions affecting the sync of the movie?
-- Related question: Can the movie be paused and/or speed changed during playback, without these actions affecting the A/V sync or the playback speed within the AVI that is produced during the playback, if AVI recording is activated?
I think that the emulator can be accepted on this site once the answer to all of these questions is "yes". Maybe a bit earlier if the particular shortcoming is not an important one. Most of these are important, though.
To answer some of your topmost questions (which I personally am most worried about): No, it does not even compile under Linux and even if it did, there's no CD plugin included that loads .iso/.bin/.mdf/.whatever images. Avi creation is supported by some Windows plugins, but strictly vfw-based, I assume.
/Edit: are there really two seperate threads about the same emlator? I was referring to the other thread by mz and PCSX 0.005.
I've currently put this project on hold, since I've been told the next version of pSX is about to be released, and if it has rerecording support then my version of PCSX will be completely useless.
So, I will only answer just in case someone in the future wants to continue this project, or if pSX doesn't support rerecording I'll continue with this myself, since I'm almost finished with it.
(warning: huge reply)
Everything works as you said, except for "selecting an ISO". There's an open source CDR-plugin with ISO support made by the main coder of PCSX (cdriso-1.4), but I haven't tested it, as I mainly use my physical CDs (I have a very small HD) and virtual CD drives.
On the Google Code's SVN there's already a version with command line parameters support, but currently only for loading movies and other stuff, since I've never used the ISO plugin.
I think I was about to add that, but never actually did it as I heard the pSX news. Should be very easy to add.
Yes, I only use those. And the current SVN version compiles under GCC 4 too, so it'd be much easier to port to Linux.
Since I don't have any computer with Linux (and probably never will), I can't test that. But the code probably has some Windows-specific parts which should be very easy to adapt for any Linux coder.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes. I don't know what "15-bit dithering" is, but there's an option for "dithering". :P
Yes.
Yes.
Not the last public version, since I had to add a lot of new stuff on the SVN version (start from memory cards, reset, open/close cd case, etc). The SVN movie file format should be final, as I've added everything it has ever been suggested on this forum (and some more too).
Yes.
Yes. The PlayStation only had constant 60 FPS for NTSC games and constant 50 FPS for PAL games.
The SVN version has all this.
The SVN version does.
The SVN version is.
The SVN version is.
Oops, no. I don't think that's very useful, but if someone thinks he needs it, maybe I could rewrite the movie file format again before releasing a hypothetical 0.0.6 version.
Yes.
Yes.
In my opinion, the only major problem with it is the sound recording: If we use plugins, sound won't be in sync with the video, but that can be easily fixed in Windows with a third-party tool, which produces perfect 60 FPS videos, even on a very slow computer. (Or if you still want to use plugins, you can then slow down the video to 59.6 FPS or something like that.)
And of course, PCSX's accuracy is much lower than pSX's, so in case pSX ever adds rerecording support and PCSX is still in the same state, I wouldn't accept it on the site (except maybe for some games which don't work on pSX, like Megaman 8, for example).
On a side note, ePSXe's and pSX's built-in ISO loaders are not as good as virtual drives or real CDs, as a lot of games don't work at all if you use them.
Also, if you want to accept a new emulator now, you should accept Dromiceius's FBA version, since I think it has all the requirements since several months ago. Even though it still has some bugs, is nothing major. (God knows the FCEU version I used for my TAS was a lot worse, as it didn't have AVI recording, it deleted your movie completely if you made a small mistake, turbo speed didn't work, etc. At least it got me into C coding so my movie could get published...)
Does MUPEN64? Last I heard, it doesn't.
Does Gens? It only has a bit for savestate.
Some of those are extremely nit-picky. Also, I don't believe Gens works in Linux currently.
A bit of research shows that the last time pSX author logged into his own forum was June of last year.
His lap-dog patrickp's response to whether or not pSX 1.14 (the next version) in August of last year said - "I don't know when, and I'll ban you if you ask again."
Thats the only activity I see relevant to pSX 1.14. So, it looks like you are this communities only hope for Playstation TASes.
"Help us mz Kenobi, you're our only hope!"
I still don't believe that is true. Unless pSX author makes it open source, and all of the memory watching/debugging/lua scripting is easier to add than in PCSX will pSX be considered the better alternative.
I think the closed-mindedness of the author of pSX will essentially make PCSX the emulator of choice permanent for this community.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
I agree with FractalFusion and DarkKobold, your work on PCSX is not useless at all.
Also, there's a bunch of Linux oriented work done on this fork of PCSX:
http://pcsx-df.sourceforge.net/
Just got done talking with pSX Author, and he mention that the next release could be before or after the start of the new year. Also he said something about the Mac OS in regards of pSX, but I forget what he said exactly.
Also, I don't think I'm the one who can help this community. :P The sound-recording issue is far beyond my abilities; but I could try to finish everything else, I guess.
DarkKobold wrote:
Unless pSX author makes it open source, and all of the memory watching/debugging/lua scripting is easier to add than in PCSX will pSX be considered the better alternative.
I think the closed-mindedness of the author of pSX will essentially make PCSX the emulator of choice permanent for this community.
The quality difference between pSX and every other PS emulator is really big. I don't think anyone will prefer to make his Castlevania run with rather bad music and SFX emulation, instead of perfect crystal clear sound, even if he can use a built-in memory watch or something like that, for example. (On a side note, pSX's debugger is one of the best ones I've seen on any emulator.)
So, I really do like PCSX, maybe more than anyone else around here (I just finished playing through the huge and amazing Alundra game with it :P), but we have to be realistic about this; pSX is ahead of PCSX in every possible way. For example:
- Much better emulation (graphics, sound, etc). And I mean really much better.
- Much higher accuracy and compatibility. There are probably more than 1000 more games that work with it than with PCSX.
- Probably built-in avi recorder without A/V drift issues. I can't think of anyone who could encode a high quality avi directly within the emulator would prefer to use PCSX for that.
- Great Linux port.
- No plugin hell.
- PS2 emulation. One year ago it was already able to run Final Fantasy X, I wouldn't be surprised if the next version already runs more than 70% of the PS2 games (just remember how pSX Author only hangs around the #PCSX2 channel :P).
You're just fucking stupid, everyone hates you, sorry to tell you the truth. no one likes you, you're someone pretentious and TASes only to be on speed game, but don't have any hope, you won't get there.
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
MZ, regardless of how awesome PSX might be, you are still our hero. You fixed finalburn alpha and was the one who made tasing avaible for us with PCSX. Stop being modest and accept your important role :) We still highly anticipate your next PCSX version so go go go!
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
Joined: 2/28/2006
Posts: 2275
Location: Milky Way -> Earth -> Brazil
Yeah... the only thing I don't like in PCSX is the sound efects in SotN...
HYDROST--*rains*
"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
Bisqwit wrote:
Just got done talking with pSX Author, and he mention that the next release could be before or after the start of the new year. Also he said something about the Mac OS in regards of pSX, but I forget what he said exactly.
Also, I don't think I'm the one who can help this community. :P The sound-recording issue is far beyond my abilities; but I could try to finish everything else, I guess.
Seeing as it is after the new year, I'm not holding my breath...
mz wrote:
The quality difference between pSX and every other PS emulator is really big. I don't think anyone will prefer to make his Castlevania run with rather bad music and SFX emulation, instead of perfect crystal clear sound, even if he can use a built-in memory watch or something like that, for example. (On a side note, pSX's debugger is one of the best ones I've seen on any emulator.)
So, I really do like PCSX, maybe more than anyone else around here (I just finished playing through the huge and amazing Alundra game with it :P), but we have to be realistic about this; pSX is ahead of PCSX in every possible way. For example:
- Much better emulation (graphics, sound, etc). And I mean really much better.
- Much higher accuracy and compatibility. There are probably more than 1000 more games that work with it than with PCSX.
- Probably built-in avi recorder without A/V drift issues. I can't think of anyone who could encode a high quality avi directly within the emulator would prefer to use PCSX for that.
- Great Linux port.
- No plugin hell.
- PS2 emulation. One year ago it was already able to run Final Fantasy X, I wouldn't be surprised if the next version already runs more than 70% of the PS2 games (just remember how pSX Author only hangs around the #PCSX2 channel :P).
I think you are giving pSX way too much credit. I know it has video issues with one of the games I was trying to run. Also, we have no idea how good the avi recorder will be.
Also, one year ago it was claimed that he could run FFX at 20 fps, so lets not get ahead of ourselves.
Anyway, don't dog your importance to this site.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
UI brainfarts such as "no commandline support" or "no ISO file support" are not critical to accepting the emulator. The latter does narrow down the group of encoders to the people who are willing to work with that limitation.
Lack of Linux support is also not critical to accepting the emulator. It just means that the group of encoders is narrowed down to Winblows-folks.
Continuation to the movie length question: You replied that the FPS is constant -- 60 FPS for NTSC, 50 FPS for PAL. Can the NTSC/PAL issue be determined from the movie file? Does the emulator honor this flag? (I.e. it must not be possible to set the flag to cheat the submission system while the emulator ignores the flag and only reads the ROM.)
For many points, you replied with "the SVN version does". Fabled SVN version -- how many have tested it?
You mentioned sound sync as a major problem. It has been a large problem with mupen64 as well. In my recording system, I devised my own A/V sync code into mupen64. For PCSX, I no longer have this option as I'm not going to have much time to work for these anymore. But then again someone else can do that.
mz wrote:
third-party tool, which produces perfect 60 FPS videos, even on a very slow computer.
Sounds useful.
Emulation accuracy is something we have no choice with, so we just have to accept it. I'm keeping a hopeful eye on pSX, but as long as we don't have that, we must work with what we have.
So in fact we have two open critical questions -- one about FPS and the other about SVN.
I cannot tell whether the sound sync problem is a critical problem or not. Perhaps someone who has actually tried the AVI recording could tell?
Continuation to the movie length question: You replied that the FPS is constant -- 60 FPS for NTSC, 50 FPS for PAL. Can the NTSC/PAL issue be determined from the movie file? Does the emulator honor this flag? (I.e. it must not be possible to set the flag to cheat the submission system while the emulator ignores the flag and only reads the ROM.)
It can be determined from the movie file, but only to calculate the run time. The emulator works on "autodetect" normally, but it can be forced to run on NTSC or PAL. I will modify it now so it forces the "autodetect" mode while recording/replaying a movie.
Bisqwit wrote:
For many points, you replied with "the SVN version does". Fabled SVN version -- how many have tested it?
Only me. I've been working on it for several weeks, but I never felt any kind of need of hurry to release it, since I thought FBA or PCSX would never be accepted anyway.
Bisqwit wrote:
I cannot tell whether the sound sync problem is a critical problem or not. Perhaps someone who has actually tried the AVI recording could tell?
With .kkapture I've been able to record 60FPS AVIs without any kind of issues, even with my really poor computer. (See this and this.) But, you can note the music sounds somewhat bad.
Then, some people have encoded this video, which sounds almost perfectly. So the sound quality may depend on some setting or hardware perhaps.
You're just fucking stupid, everyone hates you, sorry to tell you the truth. no one likes you, you're someone pretentious and TASes only to be on speed game, but don't have any hope, you won't get there.
That tas was recorded with screen virtuoso (screen capture) on a E8400, winxp, v0.0.5 (not svn)
Screen virtuoso is a clone of another software i forgot the name
The real video was recorded on 640x480 with a huge bitrate, like 50go video total, at full rate (60fps), then i used movie maker to compress and add the title then uploaded on youtube (limited to 100mo)
Theres basicly near no difference with recording videos on epsxe, and i had not any issue with the sound
If you lower screen resolution to something like 150x100 or similar, a single core comp can do it
On a side note i had trouble while trying to tas resident evil, but that seem to fold in the special cases, for castlevania at least, i didnt had any trouble with anything, from script (not made by me...) to recording avi, it was realy straightforward and no bug
Thanks for the information arukAdo.
I just noticed that ePSXe and pSX sound really bad too for me. :P So, definitely it's my copy of SOTN which sounds really bad. It seems other games sound just fine... Now I need to investigate why the Megaman X4 video sounded so bad then. :/
I will release the next version of PCSX-RR as soon as I finish the file format converter between PXM v1 and PXM v2, write the changelog and update the wiki pages.
The SPU plugin now has a new option which may fix your problem with RE (it fixed mine with Alundra :P), but it's not desync-proof, so it's not recommended. (This option also fixes the "HYDROST--*rains*" problem pirate_sephiroth described, but it always introduces desyncs on SOTN.)
You're just fucking stupid, everyone hates you, sorry to tell you the truth. no one likes you, you're someone pretentious and TASes only to be on speed game, but don't have any hope, you won't get there.
I think my problem with resident evil 3 was something a bit different than sound issue, i believe my main issue is that there is a load screen (door transition) every 30 seconds max, and it mess up with savestates somehow, probably i save in the loading or something like that
I tryed one time to do it "clean", taking caution not to mess with doors, but i wasnt able to go very far in the game, after the first "real" encounter with zombies (many states in same room i mean), the game is looping on next room loading
Might be loading sound issues tough :p so ill give it a try anyway :D
Pirate issue with hydro on castlevania is realy something small honnestly, its nothing near a desync at least
Its like the pic the game distord after beating dracula, i think not any emulator does this perfectly, this is 4 seconds in a 20min run, so i believe its minor
The whole rest (dialogues, sound effects, musics ect...) is just perfect