FF IX: Game on standby when casting certain spells

I'm having a serious problem with final fantasy IX. Most of the problems i've read about is either they can't start the game or the game freezes during the movie of the cargoship leaving Dali (switch to 1.5.2.)

This problem i'm having is some wierd sh*t though...
If the enemy is casting thundaga (lvl3 thunder spell) or i'm casting some kind of water spell (water, blue magic: aqua breath) the game will standby.

As we know, casting a spell is composed of 2 animations:
1. First some kind of flashing animation around the caster.
2. Then the actually magic hitting the target.

Basically, my problem is that the game can't go from 1 -> 2.

This is how it works:

An enemy cast thundaga (lets say a dragon).
The flashy animation around the dragon happens.
Then the dragon just stand there. The game is neither crashing or freezing, all the active time bars is still moving and when they reach the end i can select an action.
But the dragon just can't seem to finish casting the damn spell and he just stands there doing nothing. And since he hasn't cast his spell yet i can't do anything either.

I've tried on both 1.6.0. and 1.5.2. with P.E.Op.S. Soft Driver 1.17, Pete's D3D Driver 1.76 and Pete's OpenGL2 Driver 2.8.
I've also tried both scph7502 and scph1001
I don't think i've tried every different settings though, so if anyone have any idea what settings i should have to make this work, please tell.

I have a Pentium 4: 3.4Ghz
NVidia GeForce 6600
1gig ram

I doubt this has anything to do with my system requirements though...

This is really frustrating because i can just avoid casting any water spell myself, but I can't control what my enemy casts, and if it is thundaga i'm screwed.
I've encountered a monster i HAVE to fight in order to continue the game, and that monster REALLY likes casting thundaga, so basically i can't continue. I suppose theoretically if i manage to kill the monster before he cast thundaga it could be alright (he has about 3 spells/attacks) but thundaga seems to be his favorite and i haven't succeded so far

hello rillel,

hmm...the only think of might be frame skipping might be on. I know in fmv it cause the fmv to pause but you can hear the audio playing and causes missing screens. Need more details of plugins settings to try your settings on my system. Hope that helps.

When i play normally (not trying different settings) i have:

epsxe 1.6.0.
Pete's D3D Driver 1.76:

http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/5751/d3dsettingste9.jpg

With 0x0200 G4 polygon cache (FFIX battles) special game fix.

I just tried your plugin settings on my system. I cast thundaga and it worked fine no problems but, my video card is a Ati x550 256mb, AMD +3200, 512 Cosair Value Select Memory. I would turnig off the following

Hires Textures - 0 Standard
Texture filtering - 0
Alpha Blending - 0
Screen Smoothing - off

and i would try turing on
maskbit - on

See if that works if not maybe its an Nvidia driver problem.

Actually, I think I can cast thundaga, it's only when the monsters cast it that goes wrong.
Try finding a monster who cast thundaga or use Vivi and cast water and see what happens.

Btw, when i fight grand dragon, they sometimes manage to finish casting thundaga but the chance is like 1/6. But it's only the dragons so far, other monster i've fought got stuck.
That's why i said that my problem is some wierd shit -.-

I did try casting water with vivi and it worked fine. What area is there an emeny that casts Thundaga?

You can find Dragons that casts thundaga outside Daguerreo.
The same place where you can find gimme cats...

I just found the dragon on epsxe 1.60. and it cast thundaga with no problem. so i think it must be an nvidia problem or something with your system. Check you to see if have the Nvidia latest driver.

BTW Did you try it with the setting i posted? See if it works.

I tried with your settings and i've installed the latest driver from NVidia. Nothing...

It's doesn't seem like a grafic problem though, it's more like the game itself is bugged :S
I've been chatting with you for a while now, doesn't anyone else have any solutions for this? I can't belive i'm the only one having this problem. I think i saw a thread about a similar (or same problem) a while ago.

Hey it might be a bad image or maybe your cdr plugin which are you using?

Well, i'm using ISO files so the cdr plugin shouldn't matter right?
And if it is a bad image i'm basically screwed -.-
The only thing i can think of is to beat that monster in the game before he casts thundaga, but he does that five out of seven times...
I have like a 1% chance to pull this off, sigh....

Well you could try mooby cdr 2.8 which turns "Run-Cdrom" to an iso reader and works better for some games like Resident Evil 2. Without that plugin the audio goes out in FMV. Or You could try
it with PSXeven_v0.19 and see what happens I have a compatibility list on this forums.

Mooby cdr 2.8 didn't work.

And what is the hotkey for PSXeven_v0.19? I usually run the image and then press the hotkey (F3) to load the savestate, but i can't find the HK for PSXeven_v0.19... -.-

Mooby's cdr didn't work? What do you mean?
You can't use saves states from a different emulator that's why it's not finding the save state when you press "F3". Save your game to a memory card, then copy the memory card to Psxeven memory card folder. Start Up
Psxeven_v.019 go to Memory Card>Browse and select your Memory card.

Ah, sorry. I was a little unclear. Mooby's cdr did work, but it didn't solve the bug problem in the game.

And i'm currently not able to get to a moogle (save thing) in the game, so if i want to transfer a memcard i have to go back from lvl 71 -> lvl 61 (latest time i saved using memcard).

Oh i see... well you can at least try out with the old save and see if you get the same freezing up on that dragon with Psxeven_v0.19.

hey rillel just one more thing that maybe causing your problem might be a
corrupt savestate. Try loading from the memory card and go fight the dragon
see what happens.

I'm pretty sure it isn't a corrupt savestate. I've encountered this problem before and i tried to load it from a memcard without success.

Also epsxe's memcard is a MCR-file and psxeven is a MCD-file.
It can't read the epsxe's memcard...

You can use the epxse memory card. Just change the memory card.mcr to
memory card.mcd, but Psxeven supports both just go into PSXevenv0.19>tools>memcard manager>browse and select your memory card so you can just keep it as is.

Solis said:

You can use the epxse memory card. Just change the memory card.mcr to
memory card.mcd, but Psxeven supports both just go into PSXevenv0.19>tools>memcard manager>browse and select your memory card so you can just keep it as is.

Click to expand...

Please note that both *.mcd and *.mcr file are totally different format even though PSXeven can detect them. (even *.mem file is supported as well.)