PCSX ReARMed - Disc image format CCD / CUE / IMG / SUB - Troubleshooting

[porg]

This is a thread for a dedicate discussion of the "SUB file handling issue".


After a lot of trial'n'error, I made a discovery:


Some of my PSX disc images are in the format of a file combination of CCD / CUE / IMG / SUB. (aka CloneCD)


After deactivating .SUB files, by deleting them or renaming their suffix i.e. to ".SUB.OFF", a lot of previously troubled ROMs worked just fine:

• The background music in Ridge Racer Revolutions now plays fine.
  
• The voice dialogues in Dino Crisis & Resident Evil do not have audio stuttering/skipping anymore.
  
• In Driver, menu clicks do not crash PCSX anymore.
  
• Many other ROMs may benefit from this…
  

Help for users in the short run:


Quit PCSX. Rename your *.sub ROM to *.sub.off. Then start PCSX, and load the ROM again. Your game then may work just fine!


For the long run:


As I don't want to spread wrong information, and could only speculate about the true reasons for this issue, I kindly ask the experts to investigate. After further inspection of the talented developers, maybe this turns out to be indeed a bug of the SUB file handling. And maybe it will be even fixed one day. Thanks what you have achieved so far! This emulator is great!

 

[Lafazar]

This is because these .SUB files contain so-called subchannel data present on the original game discs that is not preserved in the normal .BIN/.CUE format. Some games use that subchannel information for copy protection purposes and refuse to run/do strange things if they cannot find what they expect to find. Good emulators like PCSX emulate how the CD drive handles that subchannel data so this kind of copy protection can be circumvented.


If you make it impossible for the emulator to find the subchannel data, the emulator will not emulate this drive behaviour, which of course results in a speed increase. However, some games that actually use the subchannel data for copy protection will not work properly.

 

[porg]

Thanks for the detailed explanation. Confirms what I supposed.


Conclusion for users: If your disc image behaves strange, check wether your rom file set contains a .sub file, and then try to load it with the deactivated .sub file.

If this is indeed official knowledge, I would like to add this hint to the PCSX documentation & hints, as it potentially could help many users.

 

[slaeshjag]

I'd think notaz would rather have the issue fixed than telling people to work around it as a permanent solution

 

[porg]

Ambitious approach ;-)

 

[porg]

Was this issue dealt with in code change to r16?

 

[ShleeDragon]

Bug report: Drive - You are the wheelman.


Crashes regardness of options. upscale or not.


Start the first stage. Fail and hit restart level.. *Crash*

 

[notaz]

Was this issue dealt with in code change to r16?

I don't know, can you test?


This requires a game with cdda audio and I don't have any of those to make a proper CD image.


As for some files found on the internet, I've noticed some .sub files to contain corrupted data, they were probably dumped from scratched CDs or something (subchannels don't have error correction I guess). I did tweak the code to be more resilient, but I don't know if that's the problem you have.

Bug report: Drive - You are the wheelman.


Crashes regardness of options. upscale or not.


Start the first stage. Fail and hit restart level.. *Crash*

This one is longstanding PCSX core bug, not easy to fix.

 

[dsleaf67]

As for sub channel stuff I have some that have that sub channel and they all worked fine in r15 (with disabling).


Those games are Tomb Raider GH, Pro pinball Big Race and Timeshock, Quake II.


Bug report number 2:


Pro Pinball - Big Race USA and Timeshock - neither will load (black screen only) an both have sub channel data (tried disabling no luck).


Tomb Raider GH - would load to menu etc. then seem to start a sound loop bug. When I start the game it freezes (disabling sub fixes this one)..


Finally,


FYI, I don't need it, but I had Wartris PD EXE and tried starting that one and it frozen to the point where pandora reset was required.

 

[porg]

Was this issue dealt with in code change to r16?

I don't know, can you test?

I am confused. Are there also code changes, which you are not aware of?


I thought you are the sole developer of PCSX-ReARMed.


I don't want to test, before we don't know wether there were CCD related code changes.


Otherwise this would be blind testing, wasted energy.


I.e. testing r16, r17, r18 makes no sense, if the relevant change gets only made in r19.

 

[dsleaf67]

Sorry just realized my initial comment about subs stuff came across wrong. all those games I had with sub channel data worked fine on r15. Only tomb raider required me to disable sub to make it work. Quake II still worked but both pro pinballs don't work anymore on r16.

 

[notaz]

Pro Pinball - Big Race USA and Timeshock - neither will load (black screen only) an both have sub channel data (tried disabling no luck).

.ccd/.img format?

Tomb Raider GH

GH? Is that some hack?

I don't know, can you test?

I am confused. Are there also code changes, which you are not aware of?


I thought you are the sole developer of PCSX-ReARMed.

What I mean is that I changed cdrom code, but I don't know if it affects your case as I don't have anything to test in that format.

 

[Wally]

Pro TIP: Those games that have been dumped with multiple .bin files can be merged using cat.

cat *.bin > filename.bin

Makes the directory look nicer

 

[notaz]

Pro TIP: Those games that have been dumped with multiple .bin files can be merged using cat.

cat *.bin > filename.bin

Makes the directory look nicer

But will break cdda audio, unless you generate proper .cue which is not trivial to do.

 

[dsleaf67]

Sorry notaz,


Yes they time shock is ccd but big race is not.


Also, GH is for greatest Hits version.

 

[Wally]

Pro TIP: Those games that have been dumped with multiple .bin files can be merged using cat.

cat *.bin > filename.bin

Makes the directory look nicer

But will break cdda audio, unless you generate proper .cue which is not trivial to do.

ohh Never thought of it that way

 

[sabrecheeky]

Sorry to resurrect this old thread. I'm having issues with this! I've been using PCSX rearmed with my own dumps of my own PAL discs, in bin/toc formats (using cdrdao in Linux). Some important games in my collection are copy protected, namely:

Final Fantasy IX

Final Fantasy VIII

Vagrant Story

Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver.

I've never been able to rip these at home as I know of no Linux (Debian/Ubuntu) cd ripper that also gets the sub-channel code. In celebration of getting my Pandora upgraded to a 1GHz model (Thanks, EvilDrangon!) I sneakily installed CloneCD on my windows computer in work. Then I ripped the games using that, getting .ccd .img. .sub and .cue files.

Unfortunately it has made no difference at all! The games still don't run, and behave exactly the same way as the old bin/toc files. Have I missed something stupid? Do I need to tell PCSX reARMed in some way to read the subchannel data? I'm using rc19.

Thanks for any help!

 

[porg]

As stated in my opening post, deactivating the sub-channel-parts by changing the .SUB file extension to something else got my games playing,

but if the .SUB part contains the copy protection part, I assume that the game's lock mechanism will kick and the game will not start either.

 

[_jr_]

If you want to dump PSX discs including subchannel data look at http://pandorawiki.org/Creating_images_of_PSX_games_using_Linux

 

[sabrecheeky]

Thanks for the info - didn't know cdrdao could get the subchannel (I used a GUI wrapper for it; Gnomebaker iirc). I'll try it out and see if it helps - although I was pretty convinced CloneCD would do the job properly.

Thanks again.