Genesis/megacd Picodrive/psx Help!

[Alucard7321]

Firstly hello! I'm new here.

Now i have to admit i'm not someone who is heavily into the full understandings of emulation code etc, but i have at least a basic understanding of how to get them up and running and the file type names....in other words sorry if i sound dead noobish about all this stuff, i just got my GP2X yesterday afterall! - Oh and secondly, many apologies if this is in the wrong part of the forum!

Ok now...i've searched and searched this up in Google and even forums, but i still have this problem:

I'm fully aware GP2X will find certain 3D games from the Saturn and PSX emulators difficult to handle however i have a full Silent Hill ISO(with data files etc...rougly near a 1GB in space) and a Shining Force III.bin (246mb) and .cue file it came with.

I want to know what SPECIFIC files are needed to make these games run on the latter mentioned emulators(Saturn Picodrive emu and PSX Emu for GP2X), and if i need other programs and tools to convert file sizes to something lower or to a different file format all together etc.

For example....i know Roms are dead easy....(sorry for following insult to intelligence!)for SNES its .smc and for sega mega drive its .smd. So i was just wondering what exact files are needed(especially for the PSX Emu).

If someone could be very detailed since like i said i dont have the best grasp of technical know-how! Doh!

Cheers and hey great site! - Martin

 

[naples39]

It's not entirely clear from your post, but if you're trying to play a Sega Saturn ISO, you are out of luck. There is no Saturn emulator of any kind, nor should anyone expect there to be one. Picodrive for GP2X does Sega Genesis/Sega CD (aka MegaDrive/Mega CD).

I never tried the PSX emu, but it is also limited in compatibility as I understand it.

 

[Alucard7321]

It's not entirely clear from your post, but if you're trying to play a Sega Saturn ISO, you are out of luck. There is no Saturn emulator of any kind, nor should anyone expect there to be one. Picodrive for GP2X does Sega Genesis/Sega CD (aka MegaDrive/Mega CD).

I never tried the PSX emu, but it is also limited in compatibility as I understand it.

Ah, i thought there was a major differance with the MegaCD and Saturn...see its like they call it Megadrive then Genesis...i thought i was just another name for it god i'm dumb!(i didn't play much Sega titles back in the day so my knowledge of their releases is not so great!).

Coolio well i'm just trying to see how well the GP2X will handle an PSX game(i've heard some people managed to get Silent Hill running) for a test really...also to gain some knowledge of course of how to boot these games up on portable consoles and files are required etc.

Thanks for the info thus far though! Much appreciated!

 

[PokeParadox]

You need the PSX games ripped as BIN files. I believe if you search for Isobuster... that can rip them into the correct format. But yeah it's been a while since I've bothered with PSX emulation.

 

[shinneri]

Hello, and welcome to the forums.

First, have you visited my site (Gamepark newbie)? It's a wealth of information for newbs. Read it thoroughly.

First, the PSX emulator is not very good on the GP2X; not very playable. Honestly, I wouldn't bother with it in its current state. Saturn is an immensely complex piece of hardware, and there's not a prayer of it running on the GP2X. Also, anything from N64 and up (PS2, Xbox, etc) will never run on GP2X.

Now, as far as emulators that DO run on GP2X (and there are many), you seem to have a misunderstand of how they work. There's no converting necessary. Find the emulator you want on my site, download it and read the included readme, copy it onto your SD card. Now you have to copy the ROMs over to your SD card whereever the readme told you to--oftentimes, it's roms/(whatever the readme says).

Load up the emulator, find the game, and it should load. Many emus allow you to zip the ROMs to save space. To do this, simply zip each game up individually and put them in the ROMs directory you created.

 

[moose]

i've played around with psx (PSX4GP2x Beta4) quite alot and have found that
you can load almost any image format (OK, maybe not that many)

.ISO
.BIN
.IMG

These have loaded up for me, although not really playable.

Would love to get GranTurismo & SoulBlade on my 2x.

btw, as for saturn emu, there aint one for 2x and probably wont ever be.

 

[Alucard7321]

i've played around with psx (PSX4GP2x Beta4) quite alot and have found that
you can load almost any image format (OK, maybe not that many)

.ISO
.BIN
.IMG

These have loaded up for me, although not really playable.

Would love to get GranTurismo & SoulBlade on my 2x.

btw, as for saturn emu, there aint one for 2x and probably wont ever be.

Ah thank you! Also hey, thanks Shinneri for the gamepark site! I never knew about this(shows how great my searching/research skills is eh? :/ ) Gonna tottaly read up about this, thank you!!

Just got my Quake I running on the GP2X, absolutely astounding stuff, absolutely no errors!! How come there isn't a proper Quake II Emu? Is it because of the game's size? I loved Quake II, i hope someone makes a really amazing Emu for it soon which runs at full speed like the Quake I.gpe!

Yet again thank you all! You've all been an amazing help!

p.s sorry for multipost and random bit of info, anyone else tried Shining Force CD? It works perfectly for me but i have no idea how i'll transfer "charachter/save" data to the 2nd and 3rd discs(ISOs). Will it just automatically read for a save file on my GP2X?

 

[reiboul]

As it have already been said, give up PSX and Saturn emulation on the GP2X the first isn't playable (unless you like th play your games at 1 or 2frames/s without sound) and the second will simply never exist

SegaCD/MegaCD (they're the same) are an update to Sega Megadrive/Genesis, than brings new hardware and a CD drive. Picodrive runs some MegaCD games but not those who make use of the extra chips of the MEgaCD

And as Quake runs good (but not fluid enough for my point of view), Quake 2 would not work, as both games relies on arithmetic operations that aren't supported by our ARM cpu. They where specifically developped for Intel x86 familly processor, so the GP2X have to do some operations with the software rather than the hardware, which is very slow!

Those operations are all calculation based on floating point numbers. Engines that use only integer numbers (like Doom, Duke Nukem and generally old motors) runs flawless!
In general, motors older than Quake's use floating point numbers, since processors started to include a hardware support for those, and they are more convenient for 3D games

 

[PokeParadox]

There is a QuakeII port, but it's very slow currently. It's not quite playable even if you overclock heavily.

 

[Alucard7321]

As it have already been said, give up PSX and Saturn emulation on the GP2X the first isn't playable (unless you like th play your games at 1 or 2frames/s without sound) and the second will simply never exist

SegaCD/MegaCD (they're the same) are an update to Sega Megadrive/Genesis, than brings new hardware and a CD drive. Picodrive runs some MegaCD games but not those who make use of the extra chips of the MEgaCD

And as Quake runs good (but not fluid enough for my point of view), Quake 2 would not work, as both games relies on arithmetic operations that aren't supported by our ARM cpu. They where specifically developped for Intel x86 familly processor, so the GP2X have to do some operations with the software rather than the hardware, which is very slow!

Those operations are all calculation based on floating point numbers. Engines that use only integer numbers (like Doom, Duke Nukem and generally old motors) runs flawless!
In general, motors older than Quake's use floating point numbers, since processors started to include a hardware support for those, and they are more convenient for 3D games

Ah cool, i'm beginning to understand now a bit, however if this is the case, what about games like System Shock? (not System Shock 2) - Will that ever be playable or is it far too complex for the GP2X?

 

[RockOut]

Why isn't PSX/PS1 emulation development still continuing?

 

[reiboul]

Ah cool, i'm beginning to understand now a bit, however if this is the case, what about games like System Shock? (not System Shock 2) - Will that ever be playable or is it far too complex for the GP2X?

Technically I think it's possible If I remember well it used a pseudo-3D renderer (like DUke3D or Doom's ones) with true 3D objects, like ShadowWarrior did with Duke's engine. But as usual, ports require source code! so unless we can run it through Dosbox (what I doubt would be ever doable), there's nothing we can do except some Doom mod...

Why isn't PSX/PS1 emulation development still continuing?

Simply because it requires a huge amount of work, and Zod don't have much time to give to PSX4ALL (he's working on the GBA emu, OpenTTD port and other personal projects) and nobody else seems to dare take the challenge

 

[shinneri]

Why isn't PSX/PS1 emulation development still continuing?

Simply because it requires a huge amount of work, and Zod don't have much time to give to PSX4ALL (he's working on the GBA emu, OpenTTD port and other personal projects) and nobody else seems to dare take the challenge

I thought unai and some other people were still developing a PSX emu for portable platforms (including GP2X). Not sure if that's still the case, though..

 

[reiboul]

Why isn't PSX/PS1 emulation development still continuing?

Simply because it requires a huge amount of work, and Zod don't have much time to give to PSX4ALL (he's working on the GBA emu, OpenTTD port and other personal projects) and nobody else seems to dare take the challenge

I thought unai and some other people were still developing a PSX emu for portable platforms (including GP2X). Not sure if that's still the case, though..

True, they were many poeple involved in the PSX4ALL project (PSX emus for many platform, which was declined to PSX4GP2X), but Zod was doing the main work for the GP2X version, and Unai did the graphic rendering part if I am right, so without Zod, PSX4GP2X was quite dead for a while. But in my opinion, even if he isn't talking, he is still thinking about it, especially after the release of rixed OpenGL port

 

[Yono]

Zodttd's got enough ideas spinning around in his head (PSX from scratch, GBA dynarec, Dosbox dynarec, etc) with a crappy dev computer, I think we'd better let him be.

Alucard, as far as System Shock, no source no port. This applies to every game. Doom, Quake, Duke3D are all ported because their engines were open sourced. There was a reverse engineering project for system shock on computer, but it is incomplete and stalled indefinitely.

Also, before you ask any questions here, remember to check the readme as it often includes crucial set-up instructions and controls for the game. If you post asking a question listed in the readme, we'll likely just tell you to RTFM (read the fucking manual). Best to warn you earlier than later.

Hope you enjoy your GP2X. The one suggestion I have for you is to check out Gmenu2x, it's a great alternative to the original interface!

 

[DaveC]

Ah cool, i'm beginning to understand now a bit, however if this is the case, what about games like System Shock? (not System Shock 2) - Will that ever be playable or is it far too complex for the GP2X?

As a rule of thumb the GP2X doesn't run 3D emulators or ports well. It has no FPU and is not really designed with 3D as a priority. 2D stuff generally runs very well, and so does the psuedo3d stuff like Doom, so that is what you will have better luck with.

 

[Blah]

Hope you enjoy your GP2X. The one suggestion I have for you is to check out Gmenu2x, it's a great alternative to the original interface!

Yeah, and the Carbon skin makes it all the better