Posts for Nisto


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turgish wrote:
# i can change the cd to make the FMVs very short and not get the please insert CD screen
I hope you weren't planning on submitting a movie file for a (and I'm not exaggerating it) modded game? Other people would have to edit the game data exactly the way you did... If you want to shorten the video as a whole (not the recorded time), I'd suggest you do it in post instead. They've done that with a TAS of The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask also.
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Nisto wrote:
zeromus wrote:
can you possibly get a savestate (in mednafen) after your last button press before it hangs? it shouldnt take many tries, right? The goal is to get a savestate that's doomed to hang, but before the screen stops fading out.
I was on the verge of giving up after trying to get a save state for nearly an entire hour, but at last I managed!! It felt much harder to reproduce now because making save states directly after loading (confirming) seemed to interfere with the natural order, so to speak. Anyway, I sure hope this will be of some use. Memory Card: Resident Evil 2 (USA) (Disc 1).f671973b24cf4387bc42a59af197f134.0.mcr Save state: Resident Evil 2 (USA) (Disc 1).f671973b24cf4387bc42a59af197f134.mc0
Has this been reported to the Mednafen developers yet? Because I've noticed that if you mash a bunch of buttons within a small window of time after loading my provided save state, it no longer hangs. Maybe this workaround could be helpful for debugging? Also, just for the record, I have no idea if this could be a bug in the game rather than the emulation. But I hope someone can look into it regardless.
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zeromus wrote:
can you possibly get a savestate (in mednafen) after your last button press before it hangs? it shouldnt take many tries, right? The goal is to get a savestate that's doomed to hang, but before the screen stops fading out.
I was on the verge of giving up after trying to get a save state for nearly an entire hour, but at last I managed!! It felt much harder to reproduce now because making save states directly after loading (confirming) seemed to interfere with the natural order, so to speak. Anyway, I sure hope this will be of some use. Memory Card: Resident Evil 2 (USA) (Disc 1).f671973b24cf4387bc42a59af197f134.0.mcr Save state: Resident Evil 2 (USA) (Disc 1).f671973b24cf4387bc42a59af197f134.mc0
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I simplified the steps, check the previous post again please. I was able to reproduce it in the main hall now, too.
zeromus wrote:
it shouldnt take many tries, right?
It can take up to 10-20 tries. Although, since it's appears to be totally random, maybe 50, maybe 100. But in my attempts it's happened typically at least once within 20 tries I'd say.
zeromus wrote:
Which mednafen version?
Still Mednafen version 0.9.38.7.
zeromus wrote:
just to be clear, you can close mednafen and reopen it, or use the in-game reset option; both could result in it hanging?
Yes, both methods can result in hanging.
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No, actually - as I mentioned in the edits in a previous post, it turns out it happens at random. Getting game over first is not necessary to reproduce it after all. Just: - Use Mednafen version 0.9.38.7 - Make sure you have a save on a memory card - Go to "load game" and load a save - The screen should fade to black once the "now loading..." text goes away. It may hang either before any further text appears or after the text "good luck..." goes away - If it loaded properly, press Select and go to "reset" to reset the game and try again
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Well, I think you're right. Made a couple of new saves with Mednafen and tested loading them a few times and I can still reproduce it. Sorry I wasted your time.
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Dang, well, okay. I went to work at it again. Cutting the MC file in half did the trick. To my surprise I was able to reproduce it in Mednafen now (on the first try even, hahah). But I've experienced the issue with multiple saves on Bizhawk, so I'm not exactly sure what to think of all this. Guess I'll keep testing Mednafen to see if it maybe it has to do with the saving procedure?
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@zeromus: Well, I gave Mednafen a shot, but it's giving me a filesize error on the memory card file:
Memory card file "Resident Evil 2 (USA) (Disc 1).f671973b24cf4387bc42a59af197f134.0.mcr" is an incorrect size(262144 bytes). The correct size is 131072 bytes.
Any ideas? I just copied the .SaveRAM file from Bizhawk's \PSX\SaveRAM\ directory over to Mednafen's \sav\ directory and changed the extension to .mcr. I assume you did want me to try the latest version from mednafen.fobby.net (as opposed to mednafen-rr or something)? EDIT: Didn't bother to figure it out, so I just decided to make a proper in-game save at the nearest possible place. And, well, I am unable to reproduce the issue on Mednafen 0.9.38.7. Also, in case you missed them, please read the edits in my previous post. Don't know if it really changes anything, but thought it's best you know.
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Okay, I've experienced this issue several times now.. When I get a game over in PS1 Resident Evil 2 and try loading the latest (memory card) save afterwards, the game gets stuck after the text ("you've once again stepped into the world of survival horror. good luck...") goes away. The disk drive LED light stops blinking after a couple of seconds. I've rebooted the computer since it first happened and the problem remains. The only way I seem to be able to load it is if I reboot the core (alternatively shut down and open Bizhawk again). A simple Soft Reset doesn't help. [ EDIT: Okay, actually, this seems to happen mostly only if played for a longer period. If I get game over within like 5 minutes after loading, I don't have any issues. ] [ EDIT 2: I've tested it a bit more comprehensively now and it seems it happens completely at random in fact... ] I'm playing on disc 1 (Leon) and use Bizhawk 1.11.6. The rip matches the entry on Redump.org for SLUS-00421. OS: Windows XP SP3 GPU: ATI HD 4850 CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8200
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Is your hard drive not actually powering up/being recognized by the system/able to attempt to read data? Or does it just have damaged sectors, which causes it to fail to boot the OS/read or even recognize files? At least if it's the latter, and you still have the drive around, I'd advice to give SpinRite a try. I have pretty much only heard good things of it. It can be a bit of a pain to get it started (on my motherboard I had to get a Win98 boot disk instead of the boot disk shipped with SpinRite), but it's well worth any trouble. It is great for maintenance as well. It can take a while for it to get done with larger drives, but if you leave it running while you're asleep, I'm sure it'll be done when you wake up.
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GoombaHeart wrote:
Edit: Do you think a Mupen inaccuracy effecting the glitch?
I've been wondering the same. Also, does anyone know if DOTA_Teabag was playing it on an emulator or on console in that Twitch video? If the latter, is it possible he unintentionally did a cartridge tilt glitch or something maybe? And what version of the game was he playing on? 1.0 or 1.1 (aka Revision A, Shindou Edition)? I've been trying to reproduce every frame the way he played it from the start of the course until the glitch occurs on Mupen, and I'd say it looks nearly identical at this point, and I've been at it for more than a total of 3 hours myself now without any success. Obviously I'm not the only one trying to reproduce it either, so... I don't know... if he did play it on console, I'm really starting to think at the very least it's not reproducible on Mupen.
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Aah, you just meant disassembly of the bare drivers. I thought you meant disassembling main executables and somehow isolating the music drivers. Probably won't be helpful for me personally then, but that would be interesting to see in action once you finally do get around to it! Greets.
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Honestly, I was mostly concerned because BizHawk failed to play it back. Silent Hill is a project I've been working on ripping for more than a year (on and off) and I'm just recently making some significant progress with it. So if there was something actually wrong/unusual/incompatible with the rip that I would be able to fix I would have wanted to do so before publishing it anywhere. That's an interesting tidbit. I was starting to wonder why you guys added it... How will it be able to help in disassembling drivers? I've only ever hacked out a music driver once (Digimon World) and it's tedious as hell for sure. And by instruments, do you in fact mean instruments/programs with samples, or just samples? Because I have yet to find something that actually rips entire "instruments" instead of just the ADPCM samples.
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Ah, great, thank you zeromus!
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I just noticed the addition of PSF support. Thanks for the awesome work! However, sadly I'm getting this exception thrown at me when attempting to open some files:
A core accepted the rom, but threw an exception while loading it:

System.IO.EndOfStreamException: Unable to read beyond the end of the stream.
   at System.IO.BinaryReader.ReadByte()
   at BizHawk.Emulation.Cores.Sony.PSX.PSF.Load(String fpPSF, Func`3 cbDeflater)
   at BizHawk.Client.Common.RomLoader.LoadRom(String path, CoreComm nextComm, Boolean forceAccurateCore, Int32 recursiveCount)
Any idea what may be causing this? PSF Decoder for foobar2000 has no problems playing any of these files. Here is an example file: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48454461/aud/c.psf This particular PSF uses the music driver from Genso Suikoden II and sound data (i.e. MIDI-like data and ADPCM samples) from Silent Hill 1. They're both Konami games so the driver should work to play the data from Silent Hill 1 just fine (like mentioned, it does in foobar2000 with the PSF Decoder component). PSX J BIOS: ps-30j.bin PSX U BIOS: ps-30a.bin OS: Windows XP SP3 CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E8200
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Hmm yes, very valid points. I never noticed the config was created after the first run. For the batch/command-line idea though, there's a simpler way (at least for Windows users): 1) create a shortcut of EmuHawk 2) add " --gdi" (without quotes) to the end of the path (in Properties -> "Shortcut" tab -> "Target" field) 3) open BizHawk through the new EmuHawk shortcut EDIT: Actually, come to think of it... You can just create a config.ini file from scratch with this code:
{
    "DispMethod": 1
}
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Isn't that what selecting "GDI+" under Config -> Display -> Display Method does? (Or would you need to be able to run on OpenGL by default to even be able to access that option in the GUI?) EDIT: Also, instead of anyone having to downloading an entire config file, you can change it by one single value manually: set "DispMethod" to 1.
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Are you sure, Scepheo? My Lua skills have become quite rusty as its been a while since I wrote that bit of code. However, I don't think I would wittingly keep the code like that if it was actually causing problems or was somehow against the language syntax. Doesn't Lua parse undefined variables as nil or a "blank argument"? I would imagine that's why I wrote it like that, since it skips having to go back and check the documentation for gui.text() if I ever wanted to change the defaults. I could be wrong though... I will try. EDIT: Nope, that doesn't appear to be the issue. I should add that the script does run exactly as expected, it just randomly throws the aforementioned exception and inactivates the script after some time of use - almost seemingly within a certain time interval (EDIT: scratch that, it just crashed on me after only 5 seconds of use... Most of the times I'm able to run it for at least some minutes) Oh and I'm on Windows XP.
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Is the Lua interface still in early development? I keep getting this error: LuaInterface.LuaScriptException: Lua511.LuaCSFunction Or is it just my script maybe? It's very short and simple:
memory.usememorydomain("RDRAM")

while true do
    inputs = input.get()
    if inputs["RightShift"] == true then memory.writefloat(0x00400008, 10.0, true) end
    gui.text(2, 50, memory.readfloat(0x004000A8, true) .. ' - XP', background, forecolor, "bottomright")
    gui.text(2, 35, memory.readfloat(0x004000AC, true) .. ' - YP', background, forecolor, "bottomright")
    gui.text(2, 20, memory.readfloat(0x004000B0, true) .. ' - ZP', background, forecolor, "bottomright")
    gui.text(2, 5, memory.read_s16_le(0x00382670) .. ' - TV', background, forecolor, "bottomright")
    emu.frameadvance()
end
The script is for The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, if that matters. I tested it on BizHawk v1.9.3.
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I got it working. I had to install the DirectX 9.0c SDK (http://www.filehippo.com/download_directx/7692/). So screw that web installer, throw the SDK in the prerequisites archive instead. ;) EDIT: it's back... kinda. But now it's at least resolvable - until the next time I reboot the core. It comes back if I cancel the compression codec window (i.e. test for exception errors) and reboot the core. I notice in the Temp directory, that there are files being created even though no actual file has started recording. Are you making proper use of file handles? (Otherwise it's pretty much indeed solved.)
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I'm using 32bpp. Are there any particular Windows services that BizHawk depends on by any chance? Here is how I usually configure services on XP installations: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/48454461/misc/svcr.htm
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Both have Intel Core 2 Duo E8200.
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I only get a black screen again with GDI+. It does throw an exception too, when I try to record with the aforementioned settings at default.
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...I'll get back to the thread once I've tried the others.
I'm back! Switching plugins didn't really work. However... for WHATEVER reason, enabling all the OSD settings under "view" (i.e. "display FPS" etc.), disabling "display status bar" and then rebooting the BizHawk core "solves" it. I'm not sure why, but maybe this info helps somehow? I've reproduced it without errors by doing this at least three times now (and actually reversing these settings every other time to check if it throws an exception again).
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I never suggested a freshened bizhawk directory would have any effect.
Indeed. But a clean setup may help sometimes with some apps, so I figured I'd try...
But it was a good idea, anyway, since I suppose it might have been affected by your choice of n64 video plugin.
You know, I sort of thought of this at one point, don't know why I didn't try it yet. Until now I've used Glide64mk2. I'll get back to the thread once I've tried the others.
Try using the uncompressed RGB avi codec, (if you can even get that far...?)
It unfortunately does not get that far. The error appears when I click the "OK" button on the dialogue where you choose which writer to use.
your glitchy video card
Hmm. Why do you say glitchy? I mean, is this something you know for a fact? I haven't noticed anything that would suggest the graphics card is damaged, but then.. I haven't run any actual tests in a while. I'll say this though: when I insert this particular graphics card (ATI Radeon HD4850 by the way) into the motherboard, I have to press it kinda hard to be able to properly screw the bracket into the computer case. I don't know if's an "incompatibility" with the case, or the motherboard, but I did recently get a new computer case, and it was as bad with this as the previous case, so that probably rules out the computer case being the problem for that. I can't say I remember it being as difficult with any previous graphics cards I've had...
Why assume the issue has anything to do with XP?
I just assumed most people was dropping support for Windows XP "because it's 11 years old, blahblah..." I still say XP is superior to the cherished Windows 7 though, no matter how many "bugfixes" (or much less important to me, new implementations) it supposedly has. It's good to know you guys are still supporting XP.
except, presumably, a codec pack?
Yes, that and chipset drivers. I never actually installed any graphics card drivers at all on that system actually, so that I can't uninstall. Uninstalling the codec pack won't help, because I actually already tried before installing it. Do you recommend any particular codec pack by the way? And are you saying, what I think you are; that nVidia is recommended over ATI? Or older graphics cards in general even.. ? Because I'm seriously noticing a drastic fall in hardware quality these days (monitors are a nightmare for example).