help with FF4 please

[GenesisX]

just today i made an ISO of FF4 because i heard it can be faster than playing from the CD-rom. so that was that, and im not really sure if its any faster or not, but anyway...im running epsxe 1.5.2 cuz 1.6.0 seems to have its fair share of problems (or so ive heard/seen), and im doing this on a comp with a 8mb radeon mobile gfx card (ew, i know), 128mb ram on the pc, and windows me (could u think of a crappier combination of specs??). anyhow, my problem with FF4 was that sometimes the battles (and regular strolling-around too i guess) would become agonizingly sloooow, like 20-30 FPS. so some battle that should take 20 seconds takes like 2 minutes. the sound's pitch goes up and down and up and down (like a bad record...) and of course the graphics lags too. could anyone help me with this dilemma please?

im using the core epsxe thing for sound (cannot be configured) and im using these settings with P.E.Op.S video plugin (any of the other video or sound plugins either ends in uuuber lagginess/choppiness or a fatal pc crash ):
Plugin: P.E.Op.S. Soft Driver 1.1.16
Author: Pete Bernert and the P.E.Op.S. team

Resolution/Color:
- 640x480 Fullscreen - [16 Bit]
Stretch mode: 0
Dither mode: 0

Framerate:
- FPS limit: on
- Frame skipping: on
- FPS limit: 65

Misc:
- Scanlines: disabled
- Game fixes: off [00000020]

^some things that didnt show up there: im using my PC ram instead of card ram cuz thats probably faster.

and one more kind of annoying problem...i'll post an image of it cuz thats a lot faster...but what could be causing this (<-the black areas where water/other textures should be)?


Thanks

[hagbard]

I'd try Eternal SPU or P.E.O.p.S sound plugins instead ePSXe sound core. And yes, your PC specs looks a bit low, but I don't your kind of CPU and speed (Mhz).

[GenesisX]

thanks for the reply . i tried the Eternal plugins (normal and Lite), and they just sorta sped up really really fast at the beginning of each sound sequence and then just stopped altogether. so the espxe sound core thing worked best, but it does get annoying when it slows down. and i have an AMD duron 800MHz processor, if that explains the bad lag :P. ill give P.E.Op.S sound plugin a try cuz the P.E.Op.S video works fine for me. oh yeah, and is there any apparent reason that the huge black areas happen where there should be water (above image)? Thanks

[hagbard]

No problem

This game is known to have a few graphic problems, but I didn't know they should be so noticeable, plus you're using the P.E.Op.S gfx plugin which is the most compatible. Make sure you got the latest versions of every plugins. E}I{'s GPU plugin might work OK if your CPU supports it.

About sound plugins, Eternal have some options on "Audio out method" (Thread, Timing, SPUasync) and "Async mode" (Simple, Wait, Smooth), that might hit severely the performance. Click "Default" button to get the fastest settings, while "SPUasync" should be the most compatible mode. A higher "Buffer size" value might help too.

Also you can give a try to ePSXe 1.6.0, this game works fine for me, otherwise PSXeven is a good emulator and uses the same plugins, so give a it try

I think mount the ISO on Daemon Tools is better than directly load it with the emulator, you won't miss the CDDA (audio) tracks if the game has some (FFA - FFIV has no audio tracks) plus sometimes is buggy, so use it like a last chance.

AFAIK an AMD Durn 800 MHz should be enough to run almost every PSX game pretty flawlessly.

Hope info helps a little

[Kite]

Wouldn't it be faster to run it on a SNES emulator?

[hagbard]

Off course would be, and you can use the unnoficial translation by J2E which is probably better, but you'd miss the videos plus some extra stuff. Anyway, that's another problem

[GenesisX]

hey, thanks again for the help. so the sound isn't quite an issue anymore somehow since i checked frame skipping and using my CPU's ram...not sure how it magically decided to work better, but i still have the giant black blocks. and now it is really a problem because i just got the part where i get the airship, and EVERYthing on the world map is black (except the airship), so i have NO idea where i am/where im going. i tried using epsxe 1.6.0, but when i boot up FF4, it says there is no memory card inserted, even if i copied and pasted the memory card files from the 1.5.2 memcard folder into the 1.6.0 memcard folder . so i dont know how i can fix that. is there a way to transfer/convert memory card files between different emulators (so like between epsxe and psxeven)? maybe psxeven wont have the same graphics problem...btw, has anyone else gone thru the same graphics problem before? thanks for ur help

[hagbard]

You need to select the memcards on ePSXe "Config" -> "Memory Cards" -> "Select" (slot 1 or 2) -> browse for the Memory Card file you already got.
On PSXeven -> "Tools" -> "MemCard manager" -> "Browse".

As for the gfx bugs, if you can run E}I{'s GPU plugin, or PSXeven...

[Kite]

hey, thanks again for the help. so the sound isn't quite an issue anymore somehow since i checked frame skipping and using my CPU's ram...not sure how it magically decided to work better, but i still have the giant black blocks. and now it is really a problem because i just got the part where i get the airship, and EVERYthing on the world map is black (except the airship), so i have NO idea where i am/where im going. i tried using epsxe 1.6.0, but when i boot up FF4, it says there is no memory card inserted, even if i copied and pasted the memory card files from the 1.5.2 memcard folder into the 1.6.0 memcard folder . so i dont know how i can fix that. is there a way to transfer/convert memory card files between different emulators (so like between epsxe and psxeven)? maybe psxeven wont have the same graphics problem...btw, has anyone else gone thru the same graphics problem before? thanks for ur help

Try a REALLY early version. My Castlevania didn't work on any version above 1.2(or something) because of compatability issues!

[GenesisX]

Kite, thanks for the advice. However it seems hagbard's last little comment bout E}I{'s plugin did the trick! so i went and DLed the E}I{ gpu plugin and voila! no more blank world map . i think the water is still black, but thats bearable. thanks for all the help

You need to select the memcards on ePSXe "Config" -> "Memory Cards" -> "Select" (slot 1 or 2) -> browse for the Memory Card file you already got.
On PSXeven -> "Tools" -> "MemCard manager" -> "Browse".

As for the gfx bugs, if you can run E}I{'s GPU plugin, or PSXeven...