PSX Core Official Release

[AtomicShroom]

Yeah I’ve not been able save Driver. When you come back to it, the save is blank.

Make sure you either select the Save Memory Cards option manually, or turn on Autosave and then open the OSD after a save in game for it to actually write the save.

[dmckean]

Does anyone know: Is the speed of the core (frames per second) identical to the real PSX? I never owned one, but did it really not even run with 30FPS in many games, or at least had slowdowns? Thank you!

Yeah, the whole PCs are superior to console gaming actually started in this era due to the stark differences in game framerate, resolution, experience, etc.. The PSX hardware is very modest.

[throAU]

To be fair if you compare a PlayStation’s performance to what was available in the PC world in 1994 when it was new it’s pretty damn impressive.

Remember this was pre 3d accelerator cards for PCs.

But yes I own a PlayStation (since back in the day - also had a pc at the same time) and it feels pretty accurate to me.

[Jegriva]

Thank you so much! My favorite console of all time!

[Jegriva]

To be fair if you compare a PlayStation’s performance to what was available in the PC world in 1994 when it was new it’s pretty damn impressive.

Remember this was pre 3d accelerator cards for PCs.

But yes I own a PlayStation (since back in the day - also had a pc at the same time) and it feels pretty accurate to me.

I'd say that even with the first generation of graphic cards, PS1 held its own very well. The most apparent flaws were the lack of texture filteringand the infamous lack of Z-buffer.
Many PC ports for 1994-95-96 are very good (Descent, Tomb Raider I-II, etc...). When the Voodoo 2/Matrox G400 generation of cards came out (which in themselves costed MORE than an entire PS1), that's when the PC graphics took off with a lot of effects and insane resolutions and refresh rate.

[Jegriva]

Does anyone know: Is the speed of the core (frames per second) identical to the real PSX? I never owned one, but did it really not even run with 30FPS in many games, or at least had slowdowns? Thank you!

Boy, you should had seen the OTHER guy!

Jokes aside, while the Saturn had many 60fps games (thanks to its very narrowly but deeply optimised architecture), the N64 had a standard of 15-20fps in the majority of games. PS1 is kinda in the middle. 60 fps games do exist, bu they had to make some cuts (Motorhead goes from 8 adversaries to just 3, Gran Turismo uses only the Time Trial, in a specifically devoid track).

The extreme point of optimization was Namco when they released in 1999 Ridge Racer Turbo/Hi-Spec which runs at 512x480 at 60fps, opposed to the 320x240 30 fps of the original 1994 game.

[pgimeno]

I've finally found some time to come back to this core and update to the official version. I'm so pleased that most if not all of the issues that I noted, which were unfixed for a long time, are now fixed. The several issues in NFS Road Challenge (reflections on the car, freezing when trying to restart, and that strange blacking when you crossed the finish line backwards); the random freezes when playing certain games like Dino Crisis 2, Driver no longer hangs when restarting, and some other minor things.

My testing has not been thorough; but I found an issue with sound. It affects Dino Crisis 2: when you start shooting (press R1 + X) and keep the finger on the trigger to shoot continuously, you can only hear every second shot. I wonder if it is expected due to the lack a second SDRAM board, or if it's something that was fixed post-official release, as I haven't tested with a nightly build.

By the way, saving in Driver works fine for me.

[AtomicShroom]

My testing has not been thorough; but I found an issue with sound. It affects Dino Crisis 2: when you start shooting (press R1 + X) and keep the finger on the trigger to shoot continuously, you can only hear every second shot. I wonder if it is expected due to the lack a second SDRAM board, or if it's something that was fixed post-official release, as I haven't tested with a nightly build

This is a known issue: https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/PSX_MiSTer/issues/43

[Swainy]

IBy the way, saving in Driver works fine for me.

Maybe it’s something that I’m doing wrong but other games seem to be saving fine. What region of Driver did you test? The one I’ve tried is the USA release

[pedroTFP]

Kudos to FPGAzumSpass! This core is AWESOME!
And savestates are a MAJOR feature, which will help a lot in (re)discovering all the shmup\action library of the console! I really hope Robert will be able to implement savestates on SNES\GEN\TGX one day!

[pgimeno]

Maybe it’s something that I’m doing wrong but other games seem to be saving fine. What region of Driver did you test? The one I’ve tried is the USA release

The Spanish one, but I have just tried with the US one (the one from Redump that is NOT marked "Rev 1") and it worked all the same. I saved to memory card after the garage test, then saved the memory cards to SD, then reloaded the core and the game and selected "Load" and the saved game. I could continue with the bank robbery mission with no problems.

[bakayoyo]

Congratulations FPGAzumSpass and Sorgelig, another giant milestone in the MiSTer project. This core is a fantastic tribute to the early days of 3d gaming. This will be my most used core by quite a margin from now on.

[Lodovik]

Fantastic work! Many said it couldn't be done and here it is, working wonderfully. Many thanks to FPGAzumSpass for this exceptional work!

[rhester72]

The Spanish one, but I have just tried with the US one (the one from Redump that is NOT marked "Rev 1") and it worked all the same. I saved to memory card after the garage test, then saved the memory cards to SD, then reloaded the core and the game and selected "Load" and the saved game. I could continue with the bank robbery mission with no problems.

Unrelated, but wow, you're good enough to just breeze through the garage test that easily? *bows before you in respect* LOL

[Wave]

I mostly have my .chd files in regional folders - USA, JPN, etc. It seems PSX core automatically creates per-folder memory cards, so I have a USA.sav now. I'd much rather have one-per-game memory card files. Is there any way to make this happen, manually or automatically, right now? That is, without segregating every single ROM image into its own subfolder?

[LamerDeluxe]

I mostly have my .chd files in regional folders - USA, JPN, etc. It seems PSX core automatically creates per-folder memory cards, so I have a USA.sav now. I'd much rather have one-per-game memory card files. Is there any way to make this happen, manually or automatically, right now? That is, without segregating every single ROM image into its own subfolder?

Every game should have its own sub folder containing all its discs, otherwise changing discs will not work correctly and as you noticed, memory cards will be generated incorrectly. If there's only one disc, the game will load by only selecting its folder.

[neogeo81]

I mostly have my .chd files in regional folders - USA, JPN, etc. It seems PSX core automatically creates per-folder memory cards, so I have a USA.sav now. I'd much rather have one-per-game memory card files. Is there any way to make this happen, manually or automatically, right now? That is, without segregating every single ROM image into its own subfolder?

you have the solution in your question; you need a folder for each game, multidisc or not.

[throAU]

So I’m using a dual shock 4 via Bluetooth

Has anyone else had controller input stop briefly and re start after a couple of seconds? Maybe once every 20-30 minutes?

I’ve only noticed it during gran turismo 2 in analog mode. Castlevania in digital mode seems flawless.

I haven’t had this issue with any other cores so I suspect it’s not hardware related …

[grizzly]

Has anyone else had controller input stop briefly and re start after a couple of seconds? Maybe once every 20-30 minutes?

Yes!
On real PS4's and it has happened since the release of the ps4 and still does, three regular and one pro with many different DS4 gamepads (no fake ones).
Although it do happens often but after 2-4 hours and the gamepad is totally dead for 2-4 seconds then comes back to life and most times sends all button presses/analog movements for the next 2-4 seconds.
Just like it buffered everything and then ok now i will send it.

Battery level, distance to the ps4 does not seems to matter at all!

[pgimeno]

With apologies in advance for the off-topic...

Unrelated, but wow, you're good enough to just breeze through the garage test that easily? *bows before you in respect* LOL

It's not too difficult actually. The hardest part by far is the reverse 180°. The rest are routine. At start you press and keep circle and then brake to stop just before the wall; that solves three points at a time - you just have to get used to the braking point. For the regular 180° you take some velocity then take a hard turn and press and hold triangle for the hand brake (which also counts as hand brake test). I sometimes take a couple attempts for this one, but it's easy. For the 360° you take a little bit of speed with X then turn right for a split second; then left again and press circle at the same time (make sure you have room). You may need to release and press circle a couple times or so while you turn, to keep the wheels drifting. The slalom is easy too, it's all about the circuit; you start at one end of a row of columns, between the column and the wall, and start to zig zag. At the end of the row of columns you turn around the last one to do the *same* row of columns, and keep doing the zig zag. Don't stop until the test is marked as passed; you usually have to cross the line between the first column and the wall again for that to happen. I take that chance to do the full turn - just go parallel to the walls.

The reverse 180° is best if it's tried right after the first speedup and braking as described above; that way, if it doesn't go well after a few attempts, to avoid running out of time you can restart and try again without having invested a lot of time first in the other stuff. Once you get that one right you can move on to the rest. But practice the others first so that you get the hang of them before you try the reverse 180°.

I basically do it like this: once you're close to the wall and facing it, you reverse full speed; then you turn hard and tap the triangle - don't keep it pressed! I sometimes do a small zig zag first; that seems to help but it's hard to get right. With some luck you'll turn more than 90° at a time, which I believe is sufficient for it to count.

[Wave]

Every game should have its own sub folder containing all its discs, otherwise changing discs will not work correctly and as you noticed, memory cards will be generated incorrectly. If there's only one disc, the game will load by only selecting its folder.

you have the solution in your question; you need a folder for each game, multidisc or not.

Ah, too bad for my preferred org. No biggie though.

In case others need to mass-copy ROMs to discrete folders, here is a batch file I cribbed from the web that, when run, will move every file it encounters into a subfolder that shares the file's name (sans extension).

Code: Select all

@echo off
for %%a in (*.*) do (
    md "%%~na" 2>nul
    move "%%a" "%%~na"
)

After that, just go and manually move any disc 2/3/4s from multi-disc games into the first disc's folder.

[dyne]

I just used that yesterday for the first time (had it previously bookmarked) and it's amazing.

[pedroTFP]

...So the Dual Ram only benefits for the few rare games that utilize all 24 audio channels in the PSX; I think there maybe 5 games that does this.
Without the Dual Ram there like a millisecond delay in sound for those 5 games. Odds are unless you got spectacular hearing and knew those 5 games inside and out, you never notice.

Just for fun, is there a list of the games so I can compare MiSTer and real hardware on the fly?

[darksakul]

...So the Dual Ram only benefits for the few rare games that utilize all 24 audio channels in the PSX; I think there maybe 5 games that does this.
Without the Dual Ram there like a millisecond delay in sound for those 5 games. Odds are unless you got spectacular hearing and knew those 5 games inside and out, you never notice.

Just for fun, is there a list of the games so I can compare MiSTer and real hardware on the fly?

You have to ask FPGAzumSpass for what those were.

I based my statement from what FPGAzumSpass posted on twitter. https://www.reddit.com/r/fpgagaming/com ... spu_audio/

[PistolsAtDawn]

To be fair if you compare a PlayStation’s performance to what was available in the PC world in 1994 when it was new it’s pretty damn impressive.

Remember this was pre 3d accelerator cards for PCs.

But yes I own a PlayStation (since back in the day - also had a pc at the same time) and it feels pretty accurate to me.

Solid point. Another thing to consider is that in the days before 3d cards and Microsoft's graphics libraries - Direct X was first released September 30, 1995 - people's gaming was bound to their CPU and their OS quite a lot. This is pre-Windows 95, MS-DOS 6 / Windows 3.1 gaming territory. Probably not a got a great sound card in those days, if you had one at all. It still wasn't so terribly uncommon to not even have a CD-ROM drive in your PC then. You were definitely storing your files on floppy discs and a small internal hard drive. USB wasn't available yet (1996).

As you said, the PlayStation was pretty great at the time, even in comparison to the PC market in 1994. It offered a great gaming experience without expensive cartridges, expensive PC hardware (big, big price difference) or any pretense since it was Sony's first go at the console gaming market and they had nothing to lose (with respect to a legacy not-yet built).

[Chris23235]

To be fair if you compare a PlayStation’s performance to what was available in the PC world in 1994 when it was new it’s pretty damn impressive.

Remember this was pre 3d accelerator cards for PCs.

But yes I own a PlayStation (since back in the day - also had a pc at the same time) and it feels pretty accurate to me.

Solid point. Another thing to consider is that in the days before 3d cards and Microsoft's graphics libraries - Direct X was first released September 30, 1995 - people's gaming was bound to their CPU and their OS quite a lot. This is pre-Windows 95, MS-DOS 6 / Windows 3.1 gaming territory. Probably not a got a great sound card in those days, if you had one at all. It still wasn't so terribly uncommon to not even have a CD-ROM drive in your PC then. You were definitely storing your files on floppy discs and a small internal hard drive. USB wasn't available yet (1996).

As you said, the PlayStation was pretty great at the time, even in comparison to the PC market in 1994. It offered a great gaming experience without expensive cartridges, expensive PC hardware (big, big price difference) or any pretense since it was Sony's first go at the console gaming market and they had nothing to lose (with respect to a legacy not-yet built).

The hardware accelaration for 3D graphics was something that opened a whole new way for games back in the day. Before hardware accelation 3D graphics relied on the CPU alone. The x86 CPUs back in the day where much faster then anything console manufacturers came up with and because of this 3D graphics seemed to be a thing that required a fast PC.

I remember how astonishing it was to see the 3DO and the Jaguar and a little bit later the PSX and the Saturn come up with hardware accelarated graphics. These graphics (especially the Saturn and the PSX) blew most PCs out of the water and even Jaguar games like AvP looked better then many games that ran on high end PCs at the time.

When 3D cards became more common on PCs things changed again, because even the Voodoo from 3DFX and the Riva128 from Nvidia came with 4MB RAM and was fast enough for games in 640x480, but these cards where expensive and they were released in 1996 and 1997 at a time when the PSX was already on the market for a few years.

[Wave]

Great post.

I do recall a brief window, wanna say in early 1997 or so, when I felt N64 stuff like Turok Dinosaur Hunter was still giving PCs a run for their money. Or at least it felt so, in the absence of much 3D accel penetration on PC yet. More specifically, I didn't have it yet (lol).

[throAU]

When turok was out 3d accelerator cards were basically non existent unless you were rich enough to afford a voodoo 1.

The other pc 3d cards at the time were trash.

Never mind the screwing around making them actually work and having enough resources for windows.

[Chris23235]

When turok was out 3d accelerator cards were basically non existent unless you were rich enough to afford a voodoo 1.

The other pc 3d cards at the time were trash.

Never mind the screwing around making them actually work and having enough resources for windows.

To put things in perspective, here is the PC Mag buyers guide of 1997:

https://books.google.co.za/books?id=HOY ... ce&f=false

A computer matching the requirements for Turok cost about $1500 without the graphics card (but including a monitor), the launch price of the Voodoo 1 was $299 dollar (even if it dropped to $199 very fast). This means you could buy a N64 and Turok for the money you had to pay for the Voodoo alone. If you already had a beefy PC from the last 12 months buying a Voodoo made sense, but if you were still on some 486 or P90 an upgrade would cost you a lot of money.

When the Saturn and PSX launched it was even more extreme, because at that time nothing was on the market that could match the raw polygon shift power of these consoles.

[AtomicShroom]

I felt like it wasn't really until 1998 when the Voodoo2 hit the market that PCs started giving the PSX and N64 a run for their money. It felt almost like a generational leap ahead. But even then, it came at a hefty cost vs. the $149 of the N64 at that time.