Emulating Final Fantasy X

[GeneralGoodvibe]

Hello all,

I am new to these forums but thought I would drop by to convey my positive experience of emulating Final Fantasy X.

I bought it quite recently, 2nd hand, and having got 10 hours in was extremely disheartened when my PS2 packed in and I couldn't get past a certain bit!

PCSX2 to the rescue!

Albeit I spent a good 2-3 hours getting the settings correct (see tips below) but things are now running incredibly well. I am really pleased with the speed and as can be seen from my screens, below, I am amazed that emulating PCSX2 on my PC has actually improved the graphics compared to the PS2 original!!

Apologies for the poor quality, I used my camera phone, but the differences are instantly identifiable!

(Original version on the Playstation 2, using standard SCART lead and a high definition television)


Close up of Tidus




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PCSX2 version, on an intel quad core 2.3ghz computer with an ATI radeon 4850 graphics card, 2gb RAM. (Nothing snazzy, but amazed with the improvement in graphics my setup has delivered).


Close up of Tidus





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Whilst you may think it best to just use your retail DVD in the DVD-Drive, this is not the way forward. Use ImgBurn to create an image of the game, then launch this result (an ISO file) directly from within PCSX2 itself. My game was pretty much unplayable until I switched from reading the DVD directly, to creating an ISO and reading that from the hard drive.

Make sure you have the latest, newly released version of PCSX2, too, as this is extremely easy to use and is easily configurable.

Big thanks to the development team, amazing.

[Shadow Lady]

The recommended app to use for ISO making is ImgBurn, and it's better to launch the ISOs directly with the internal PCSX2 ISO Selector, adding another layer of emulation by mounting it in daemon tools is not a good idea (may have worked for you but it may not work so well for other games or other people).

[Squall Leonhart]

a) I read a tip about right clicking the PCSX2 icon and clicking "Compatability mode -> Run this program in compatability with Windows XP Service Pack 3" - I am not a computer expert but I tried this piece of advice and it for some reason drastically helped with frame rates and picture quality.

Doesn't make a slight of difference.

[GeneralGoodvibe]

Thank you shadowlady, I will give this a try and see how I get on!

Equally Leonheart, it may not have helped you, but I can say without a doubt that being a Windows 7 user, making the compatibility change certainly helped me a great deal. The game was unplayable before then.

[Squall Leonhart]

I can 100% without a doubt, say the setting makes absolutely no difference. (except in the case that the game database is not being read)

The XP compatibility changes as stated by the toolkit do not change anything that pcsx2 directly relies on except the registry targets and application permissions, the rest is for ancient apps that try to use functions no longer supported (which pcsx2 being built on recent development tools wouldn't be using)

particularly, XP compatibility enforces running elevated which resolves virtualstore redirects in the registry which may affect the location in which the game database is read from, particularly in a bad upgrade from 0.9.7 to 0.9.8.

Infact, apart from 3 or 4 permission/elevated related compatibility keys, there is only 1 difference between the Win 7 compatibility and Win XP compatibility modes, which happens to be that the WinXP compatibility uses a DirectX version Lie which forces a max Dx of Dx9 to be supported (by typical directx detection methods)

ElevateCreateProcess
EmulateSorting
FailObsoleteShellAPIs
FaultTolerantHeap
GlobalMemoryStatus2GB
HandleBadPtr
NoGhost
RedirectBDE
RedirectMP3Codec
SyncSystemAndSystem32
VirtualRegistry
WinXPSP3VersionLie / Win7RTMVersionLie
WRPDllRegister
WRPMitigation

XP compatibility additionals
AdditiveRunAsHighest
DirectXVersionLie
EnableLegacyExceptionHandlinginOLE
HardwareAudioMixer
LoadLibraryCWD

[Shadow Lady]

HardwareAudioMixer <-- I could see that acting wacky

[Squall Leonhart]

unless you install Alchemy, it fails anyway xD

[GeneralGoodvibe]

I will turn off compatibility mode and test performance without it, then post my results.

[edit] Made some changes to my emulation settings, removing Daemon from the equation hasn't produced any immediately notifiable results, though I'm sure performance will be more notable as I play on throughout the game. Having disabled compatability mode I've not noticed any difference either, so I am led to believe that the biggest factor in ensuring smooth performance is to make sure you run the game as an ISO through PCSX, not via your DVD-ROM drive, as the game was fairly poor using the latter method.