(including a small PSEmu Pro compatibility list)
1998 brought a surprise and not a bad one: Final Fantasy VII was released for PCs! First I had some problems running it with my old VOODOO graphics card (a MIRO Hiscore, or, for US readers, a Canopus Pure 3D). But using the latest Canopus drivers, all run well! After playing it until the end (and, with no other good RPGs for the PC in sight), I looked for similar games on the SONY Playstation. FF VII was released on Playstation first, so I hoped for more... and found Breath of Fire III ...and got me a Playstation. Not bad, instead of using ROMs like other consoles, the PSX uses also CDs for storing data, so there is no such silly limitation like 8 or 16 or 32 (or, OK, maybe 64) MBytes for one game as it is on the Nintendo 64 Roms. Perfect for RPGs, I thought. But... sitting behind a TV screen is not very funny (thats true for sure on my old TV). And needing memory cards for saving game stats sucks. And the loading time of games... my god! So still I had to look for an alternative, I wanted to play BOF III on the PC! Searching the web I found some really inspiring guys doing an emulator for the PSX... PSEmuPro! After getting all the stuff from their homepage ( www.psemu.com ) I got all I needed and it looked great... Imagine, you could read and play PSX CDRoms with normal (SCSI-)PC-CD-Rom drives! Using the emulator version 1.0.10, Kazzuya Software Driver 1.3, Seal Audio driver, Kazzuya Gamepad Input driver 0.5 and Duddies Aspi CD Rom Driver 0.7, the games runs on my PC very well. It worked even better as I used the DAO Image Driver 0.4 instead of the CD Rom driver, so I could use my harddrive as CDRom, avoiding the CD loading times. My real Playstation now bites dust, playing with the emulator is even better! OK, some small graphical glitches in the menus occure, but that is bearable. Guys, keep up the good work, maybe I will write someday a GPU driver for the PSEmuPro myself (I have downloaded and optimized the Standard software driver for my Riva TNT video card, but it lacks many features of the other GPU drivers available).
I have decided to make a very small compatibility list for PSSemu Pro. It will only contain games or demos that I own, running on my very own hardware!
Used Hardware: Asus P2B board, 128 MB Ram, Intel PII 400MHz (no overclocking done), Riva TNT graphics Elsa Erazor II (AGP), Diamond VOODOOII (PCI), Adaptec 2940UW SCSI controller (PCI), Plextor CD-Rom PX-32TS (SCSI), Maxi Sound 64 Dynamic 3D sound (ISA), Gamepad Microsoft SideWinder Freestyle Pro (USB), Joystick Microsoft SideWinder Force Feedback Pro (gameport of soundcard), Microsoft Wheel Mouse (serial, I needed the PS2-Mouse IRQ12), LanPro NE2000 network card (ISA).
PSEmuPro : 1.0.20
GPU: Kazzuya Software Rendering 1.3 (Simple stretch)
SPU: none (Seal 0.7 works but it changes speed during play, so I prefere a good audio CD)
PAD: Kazzuya Gamepad DInput Driver 0.5
CDROM: cdrDiskImage 0.9 by Zink88 (http://www.angelfire.com/ab/zink88/); TSG MSCDEX 1.2 works also fine...
Checked: Enable MDEC skipping
Not checked: Disable XA Decode
Not checked: Disable XA Read
Notes: Only with kazz GPU the main sprites are correct. You could also use version 1.1 of kazz, it is a bit faster, and the only effect I have noted compared to 1.3 were some missing rectangles around the text boxes. Sad: some line routines seems to be missing in kazz, so you can not see, which save slot you have selected. Later in the game (Lighthouse) is a puzzle, were also the lines will not be displayed. I changed for this puzzle to Lewpys 3Dfx Glide3 GPU 1.15, the lines are correct, but the sprites are a little bit scambled, so I changed back to kazz after playing this level. Gameplay is great!
Here are some screenshots I have taken from BOFIII:
PSEmuPro : 1.0.19 last beta (1.0.20 hangs by starting the 'ICE CAVERNS' level)
GPU: Nik's Direct 3D Renderer with Riva TNT 1024x768, enable biliniear filtering and use Modulate2X
SPU: Seal Audio Driver 0.7
PAD: TSG Direct Input & Gamepad Driver 0.9 (so I could use my USB SideWinder gamepad)
CDROM: TSG MSCDEX 1.2
Checked: Enable MDEC skipping
Not checked: Disable XA Decode
Not checked: Disable XA Read
Notes: Good gameplay, you have to check the Memorycard Manager before you start the first time, be sure to have "formatted" cards defined, else the game will hang in the title screen. The music is buggy, so start the game first with "no sound drivers", go the the spyro config and turn off the music, leaving the main sound enabled. Save. Now you can change the SPU to Seal, all sound and spech are OK. Using Niks GPU the quality of the game is breath-taking! If you have a RivaTNT card, use Modulate2X! On my hardware the game plays too fast, so I have to use a slow-down program running in the background. All works fine in Version 1.0.19 beta (1.0.20 has a problem with starting the ICE CAVERN level)!
One Spyro screenshot (JPG, a bit messy):
PSEmuPro : none
Notes: Ark of Time is an adventure containing a lotta MDECS. It works on my 'real' Playstation, but PSEmu can not handle that (yet). A friend has given it to me (he told me his girlfriend liked it a lot), but I think the game is quite boring. So who cares?
PSEmuPro : 1.0.10, 1.0.19 Beta 02.12.98 and 1.0.20
GPU: Lewpys 3Dfx Glide3 GPU 1.15 (640x480) or Kazz 1.3
SPU: Seal Audio Driver 0.7
PAD: Duddie's DirectInput Keys Driver 1.1
CDROM: TSG MSCDEX 1.2
Checked: Enable MDEC skipping
Not checked: Disable XA Decode
Not checked: Disable XA Read
Notes: to check demos I made three configs. Try "Crash B. 3 Warped" demo with Lewpy, it's fun.
Oh yeah, some more RPGs are released for PC (1999 seems to become a promising year). At the moment, me and my girlfriend are playing Baldur's Gate together, it rocks...
PSEmu seems to be sleeping, I hope some new guys will take care of that really great emulator. Lewpy released his Glide GPU 1.0.16, and it has become my personal #1 GPU. Why? Mainly because of his frame rate limit on PAL games. On my PC my PSX games were running to fast, and I had to use some tools to adjust the speed. But now... I can enjoy BOF III music (oddly enough, limitations to the frame rate are also adjusting the speed of sounds). And Spyro