Post subject: Having trouble loading Castlevania: Rondo of Blood
Joined: 4/22/2014
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Location: United Kingdom
Hi everyone, long time lurker here. I've downloaded Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo, but I can't seem to open it with BizHawk. I've downloaded and set the appropriate System Card from the Firmware menu, but I can't load the game regardless. The .zip file I downloaded contains the main .cue file of the game, along with several files titled Track## with either the .ape or .iso filetypes. I can't load the main .cue file, but I can load Track02.iso or Track22.iso, but when I press the Run button at the main System Card BIOS screen, the emulator crashes. Any ideas? I would like to play Rondo of Blood with save states, also preferably with BizHawk's sweet rewinding feature as well.
adelikat
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The correct format is a single .cue file and a singe .bin file, and you open the .cue file. BizHawk should also handle a single .iso file. several .iso files by track? I'm not sure what you downloaded...
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If a single cue file properly references multiple bin files, then it can load correctly in Bizhawk. If you have ape files though, you'll probably have to run that through Discohawk first? What error message do you encounter loading the cue?
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1. always run through discohawk before even spending half a second thinking about it 2. what does "can't seem to open it" mean?
Joined: 4/22/2014
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This is the error I get when I try to run the .cue in BizHawk: And this is the error when I try to run it through DiscoHawk: And yes, ffmpeg.exe is present in the dll folder in the base directory. EDIT: Also, it won't let me drag .ape files into DiscoHawk, and although dragging the two .iso files work, I still have the stage crashing issue when trying to run them in the emulator.
adelikat
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Does the file exist that it is saying it can't find? Looks like it is trying to find a .wav file, but you said they were iso or ape. A cue i just a text file, open it up and see what it is trying to do, sounds like you have a bad one.
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I've looked in the .cue file, and all the track files (except Track02 and Track22) are referenced as .wav, but the files came as .ape.
adelikat
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Then fix the .cue.
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creaothceann
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Or decompress the .ape.
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I went through the .cue, changing all .wav references to .ape, but running it through BizHawk or DiscoHawk now gives a similar error each (No decoding service was avaliable (make sure ffmpeg.exe is avaliable)).
adelikat
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That's not a similar error at all! If found the files, you fixed something. Now you have a new problem, and needs ffmeg, which should be there if you downloaded and extracted bizhawk properly (./dll/ffmeg.exe). If you do not have this file, redownload and extract again. If you do, and it is discohawk complaining, try moving it to the same folder as discohawk. If that fixes it, please let me know as that needs to be fixed.
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Joined: 4/22/2014
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I fixed my problem! I went and downloaded the game from elsewhere, and it worked! The only problem now is that the Rewind feature's no longer working for some reason... but at least I still have save states.
adelikat
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Rewind is off by default for something like yabause. You will need to enable it in config -> rewind for "large savestates". There's going to be quite a performance penalty though (which is why it is off by default). I"m not sure the combination of yabause and rewind will allow for full fps but maybe. If you tinker with the settings. Threaded rewind, and small buffer, no delta compression, perhaps. If you find a setting that works reasonably well, please share :)
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Alright, for some reason, I cannot get the game running again. It won't let me copy the error message, but it says the PCE-CD card isn't recognised in the database. The thing is, it was working perfectly several days ago! What's going on?
adelikat
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Sounds like you are opening the .bin instead of the .cue.
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Well, this is strange. I was using the 1.7.0 beta, and when I overwrote my Bizhawk with 1.6.1, the current version, it started working again. But when I overwrote the files again with the 1.7.0 beta, it doesn't work anymore.
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some things to try: try screenshotting error messages you can't copy textwise onto the clipboard. don't overwrite one bizhawk (or any program, for that matter) with another version. dearchive them to independent directories and copy across config files as needed. Reply to my PM
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On the 1.7.0 beta, here are the error messages that come up when I try to run the game:
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OK, here's the scoop. Looks like you imported the disc image correctly, and manually specified a bios file. Looks like the bios file wasn't what we expect (so you should try harder to find the correct one). The first message is saying it isn't what we expected. This is just a warning, and I think we intended it as a warning. However, the code was then bombing after displaying the warning, (mistakenly?) thinking proceeding was impossible. The second message is actually an error, saying that the PCE-CD core bombed. But it was not very clear about that, appearing as a somewhat mysterious warning. So, I cleaned up the errors in r6529.