and program the rerecording function to remember events, and make discontinuous movies ?
like : "press X for 5 frames, wait 10 frames, wait for end of loading screen, press Y" etc. ? or maybe that's too complicated :/
As I said, there shouldn't be any need to treat load times specially. Sure, on a real PSX the disc is a physical thing and it could take different amounts of time to load from it, but I don't think the emulator would bother to simulate that variability, meaning the load times should be deterministic just like everything else in the game.
Bigger problems are how to handle disk switching, and the fact that PSX games are so huge. (Although some of them compress amazingly well - I've seen 700MB ISOs go down to 80MB when compressed normally.)
I don't understand the objection based on game size... with disc-based systems in my opinion emulation becomes a lot easier to do legally, using actual game discs. If you don't have the game to play the input file... buy it, or download the AVI.
someone is out there who will like you. take off your mask so they can find you faster.
I support the new Nekketsu Kouha Kunio-kun.
Well, the objection might be that the second option (download the AVI) isn't possible for the encoders/judges or anyone wanting to watch a submission before it's published. They won't want to go out and buy a new Playstation game every time someone submits a run. It probably wouldn't be practical to handle submissions in the same way when not enough people have or are willing to get the game.
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
But reading the CD from a computer's cd-rom drive will lead to different read times, just like on the real thing. The only way to make it work consistently is from the ISO...
But reading the CD from a computer's cd-rom drive will lead to different read times, just like on the real thing. The only way to make it work consistently is from the ISO...
Not necessarily... I mean, how is an ISO on your hard drive any different from the game on a CD? A hard disk is a physical thing that can have different read times too, and that doesn't stop NES games on your hard drive from working consistently. It's only inconsistent if the emulator lets it be inconsistent. (An emulator is software - if the CD is taking too long it can just pause emulation until it's done.)
Ah, so THAT'S how the X-Box ever got off the ground. It even has two X's, which means two times the cash.
And now that the X-Box Three-Sixty is out...
Sorry for going off-topic. Carry on.
this should be the smallest of our worries. It's more important to have consistent isos. I've been unable to rip my FF7-CDs or play from CD (I don't own a PSX, but after playing a copy of FF9 I bought the FF-games), so I had to download isos for the emulator.
I ended up with broken savegames because all the isos were from different sources, and wouldn't accept savegames from each other. No idea if they were different game versions (at least all of them were english) or if it was a problem with the iso. I managed to get another CD1 from the same source as CD2, replay CD1 from the beginning, then switch to CD2, now I'm stuck at the end of it (and in fact deleted all isos a few days ago)
anyway, I'm afraid crc checking won't help much here (rips from the same cd will end up with different crc values depending on ripping program, target format and other settings), and having equal game versions across players, verifiers and watchers isn't easy.
but then again, we also lack a working open source psx emu. epsxe seems to stay closed for a while, and there isn't much of an alternative yet. Galtor said in 2001 they'd "surely" release the sources when they stopped working on it, but right now they claim to be working on it without any information or releases. weird.
btw, the current epsxe rerecording doesn't match the rules of this site: the movie files aren't input data and can allow undetected cheating.
It's more important to have consistent isos. I've been unable to rip my FF7-CDs or play from CD (I don't own a PSX, but after playing a copy of FF9 I bought the FF-games), so I had to download isos for the emulator.
...
anyway, I'm afraid crc checking won't help much here (rips from the same cd will end up with different crc values depending on ripping program, target format and other settings)
Isn't an ISO just supposed to be an exact copy of the data in the CD? I wasn't aware that different programs will add different things into the ISO depending on the settings (and I've never had problems with making ISOs of my CDs).
Tub wrote:
I ended up with broken savegames because all the isos were from different sources, and wouldn't accept savegames from each other.
If they wouldn't accept save games from each other, different game versions might be the cause, either that or the emulator wasn't set up right to use the same saves for both games, but I doubt that a small differences in the ISOs will alter the save game format to not be compatible between them, unless one of them was nonfunctional.
Tub wrote:
btw, the current epsxe rerecording doesn't match the rules of this site: the movie files aren't input data and can allow undetected cheating.
Of course that would have to change, not simply because of rules but because of the unwieldy movie file sizes.
Isn't an ISO just supposed to be an exact copy of the data in the CD?
yes, but you can choose to omit certain data, like empty tracks at the end of the disc, subchannel data and whatnot. Then there are a bunch of different iso formats. Try Wiki for a short and incomplete overview.
So, a CRC over the whole iso file won't work. A CRC over the CD's user data might, unless there's some cute copy protection generating read errors.
If they wouldn't accept save games from each other, different game versions might be the cause, either that or the emulator wasn't set up right to use the same saves for both games
the emulator was set up correctly, and all the isos worked fine on their own. But why should there be two incompatible english FF7 releases? Anyway, I didn't find any information about FF7 releases and the isos are deleted, so we'll never know ;)
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Loading times are exeptionally fast when using an ISO.
Example: Street Fighter Alpha 3 loading screens load in 1-2 seconds, on the console it normally takes 10-15x this.
This is also true for other games which I have played.
About your unable to load savestates thing; I know that different regions of the same game often don't read each other's savedata.
A friend of mine brought along her PS2 memory card to my house (she lives in America) and plugged it into my PS2. It read fine.
I shoved in my copy of FFIX (Euro), and it couldn't find my friend's FFIX (USA) save.
So yeah. That was your problem. :)
