PS2 [Open PS2 Loader] Game Bug Reports

Actually bad news for him, because it voids his theories and (non-proven) claims (again)...

But good news for the scene, because that means that pretty much every kind of storage-device would be feasible and should work! :)
 
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Jokes aside, It could be interesting to see the GT4 (better the USA version) previews behavior on @Grahf configuration.

There is one thing which just came to my mind, which might help in that regard! It could be a foolish idea as well tho'... Lol


I believe the HDD delivers data so fast on a request, that the timing and interrupts made in-between could cause this issues... (oversimplified short explanation, a.k.a. 'tl;dr')

Yes, maybe is something related to the timing/cadence. However it does not depend on the HDD only, but from the way the pilot program communicates to it.
Indeed the game perfectly works with HDLoader.
So must be the program (OPL 0.9.3+) that's requesting data from the HDD in a way that, using the mdiyp board, somehow breaks the right pace of transfer.

Therefore the possible solutions are just 2:

- modify the transfer method of mdiyp board (hw or sw modification made by his makers)
- modify something on OPL (a simple[?] sw modification)

Waiting this, who's using a mdiyp board can play this game with HDLoader/OPL 0.9.2

Btw I think that adding a MODE to make OPL works in "the old way" would be a good move. Aside SoE there are other games too having problems with newer OPL versions, even with other devices (like the VMC problem with GT4 from SMB).

Probably most of those problems would be solved. We'll have the improvement of newer OPLs without renounce to the old compatibility. A new OPL with 100% compatibility. I think it's worth using one MODE for achiving this.

In the future, eventually finding another better way to improve compatibility, this MODE could be removed (as every other MODE…), but for now imho it would be a good solution.
 
Btw I think that adding a MODE to make OPL works in "the old way" would be a good move. Aside SoE there are other games too having problems with newer OPL versions, even with other devices (like the VMC problem with GT4 from SMB).

Probably most of those problems would be solved. We'll have the improvement of newer OPLs without renounce to the old compatibility. A new OPL with 100% compatibility. I think it's worth using one MODE for achiving this.

Definitely I think there's need of such MODE.

with OPL 0.9.3+ State of Emergency doesn't work from SMB, but it perfectly works with OPL 0.9.2 SMB (no need of MODEs).

From this result we can say that the mdiyp board is not causing problems, but most likely the other boards (original included) manage to prevent this problem to appear (maybe they slowdown data tranfer or so…).

It's like OPL 0.9.3+ try to start things too fast for this game needs. Indeed from SMB too, I can notice that after the blue screen appears, it take just a moment for OPL 0.9.3+ to show up the Language options. With OPL 0.9.2 it takes a while (loading bar instead, fills up at the same speed).

EDIT: Maybe the reason for wich the game works with SATA Gamestar NAs (with a quite precise combination of MODEs…) is because differently from the SONY NAs, they have the Main board too, created on purpose for new SATA HDDs. So it avoids the bottleneck.
I repeat MAYBE.
 
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@Grahf's theory = busted (again)...


Would someone with an original Sony PS2 HDD and a/the Sony-NWA mind testing one of the aforementioned games like' State of Emergency'?
 
Well I tested State of Emergency with a WD 5400rpm HDD and unmodified Sony NA.

Could not get the game to load whatsoever, no matter what settings I used.

Yes, I Always experienced that rpm don't matter so much. The formatting method insted, seems to can affect. I guess this 5400rpm HDD is above 127gb, right??
 
@Grahf's theory = busted (again)...

I see it's a boxing match to the death between you and Grahf :D

Would someone with an original Sony PS2 HDD and a/the Sony-NWA mind testing one of the aforementioned games like' State of Emergency'?

You meant the original 40GB one?? Do they really exist ?? lol
It would be interesting anyway if someone have it. I think that as long as any HDD is 28-bit formatted, compatibility should not differ at all from the original one. Just a theory to be confirmed or denied.
 
Yes, I Always experienced that rpm don't matter so much. The formatting method insted, seems to can affect. I guess this 5400rpm HDD is above 127gb, right??

Lol no, it's actually an 8Gb HDD I pulled out of an OG Xbox. It was formatted the same way as the 7200rpm HDD I used.
 
I see it's a boxing match to the death between you and Grahf :D
Lol... No.

You meant the original 40GB one?? Do they really exist ?? lol
Yes and yes!

It would be interesting anyway if someone have it. I think that as long as any HDD is 28-bit formatted, compatibility should not differ at all from the original one. Just a theory to be confirmed or denied.
I just mentioned it, because he insisted we should make it all compatible with original standard hardware... ;)
 
I just mentioned it, because he insisted we should make it all compatible with original standard hardware... ;)

I thought He meant with a standard to be made. Like any HDD that respects determined specifications, i.e. 5400rpm, not bigger than 500gb, 32mb cache max, end so on…

But actually it seems there's no need to something like that. There are just OPL sw problems to solve. Indeed there are much more problems using SMB than using iHDD, with newer OPL versions. Therefore is not much a matter of HW.
 
I tested the game State of Emergency (PAL version) with the internal HDD and works perfectly without any Modes in
the Beta r1220, installed with HDLDump Helper GUI.

I have the official Sony NA and a Maxtor IDE HDD of 80GB.

About loading the games through the internal HDD i remember in the old days that there are games
which they not works in some little HDD's less than a 40GB of capacity.

Best regards.
 
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I tested the game State of Emergency (PAL version) with the internal HDD and works perfectly without any Modes in
the Beta r1220, installed with HDLDump Helper GUI.

I have the official Sony NA and a Maxtor IDE HDD of 80GB.

How much rpm??

About loading the games through the internal HDD i remember in the old days that there are games
which they not works in some little HDD's less than a 40GB of capacity.

Best regards.

Really interesting.
 
Considering what you're saying then devs could stop working to compatibility since OPL 0.9.3
This is ridiculous. I have no idea where you're taking these things from. In the very post you're referring to, I said the devs need to work on compatibility first. Shadow Man 2 and the Phantasy Star remake still weren't fixed, even though we know how to make them work.
I tested the game State of Emergency (PAL version) with the internal HDD and works perfectly without any Modes in
the Beta r1220, installed with HDLDump Helper GUI.

I have the official Sony NA and a Maxtor IDE HDD of 80GB.
Then this must be connected to the HDD itself. It works for you without any modes. It works for me only with a specific combination of modes. It doesn't work at all for jolek. We all use internal HDDs and the official Sony NA. Unless this is actually down to using one of the two PAL versions of this game (which I highly doubt has anything to do with this).
 
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I decided to test State of Emergency again with a Sony NA modified with the maxdiypower board and a 5400rpm SATA HDD.

This time with old betas.

Using r1013 the game loads fine with MDMA2 and no Modes. I played it for half an hour with no problems.

With MDMA1 or UDMA0 it will not load.

The next beta I have is r1108 and the game doesn't load. Have to test the betas in between to see where it got broken.
 
This is ridiculous. I have no idea where you're taking these things from. In the very post you're referring to, I said the devs need to work on compatibility first. Shadow Man 2 and the Phantasy Star remake still weren't fixed, even though we know how to make them work.

It was a direct answer to this your "solution":

Why waste a whole mode just to revert to 0.9.2? If you want that for whatever reasons, you'll have to go back to it.
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Then this must be connected to the HDD itself. It works for you without any modes. It works for me only with a specific combination of modes. It doesn't work at all for jolek. We all use internal HDDs and the official Sony NA. Unless this is actually down to using one of the two PAL versions of this game (which I highly doubt has anything to do with this).

The game works for @jolek enabling the MODEs you suggested.
Probably it matters the HDD size. 80gb HDDs are the "natively" more compatibles in my experience too.
 
This game works fine in my setup with OPL 0.9.1 & 0.9.2 without any additional modes:
http://www.psx-place.com/threads/open-ps2-loader-game-bug-reports.19401/page-14#post-149786.
Mostly to get game working I'm using mode 3+6, 1+3+6... 1+2+3+6.
However previously I never tried to enable almost all modes (Mode 2 + Mode 3 + Mode 6 + Mode 8 + MDMA\UDMA).

In my setup with OPL 0.9.3 I need to enable UDMA0 + 2+3+6+8.
With OPL 1200, MDMA1 + 2+3+6+8:
http://www.psx-place.com/threads/open-ps2-loader-game-bug-reports.19401/page-15#post-149845.

With OPL 1220, I've problems.
Although I've at least get it working with UDMA1 + 2+3+6+8 (played for at least 30 min):
http://www.psx-place.com/threads/open-ps2-loader-game-bug-reports.19401/page-15#post-149850.
However I'm not able to at lest pass 1st loading screen repeatably.
I mean if I power off PS2, launch OPL, launch game not always I'm able to play it.

Currently this game might works differently on others setups.
So there is no magic compatibility solution for it for all users IMHO.


It worked for me from the start in the vanilla build of 0.9.3, but after booting the 1220 beta build, I had to remove all Game Settings and rewrite OPL's settings. I made sure the bonus features are turned off, too (cheats, GSM, parental control). After that, it worked with the beta as well.

The game settings for e.g. beta builds (e.g. 1200) are stored in different folders that for OPL 0.9.3, 0.9.2 etc.
For OPL 0.9.3 it is CFG folder.
For OPL 1200\1220 it is CFG-DEV.

The only thing that might be affected is conf_opl.cfg, but I doubt it can bring any compatibility issues.
Some settings might be displayed differently:
http://www.psx-place.com/threads/display-info-page-is-on-by-the-default.21716/.
 
It would be quite interesting, if someone would track down the build, when it (State of Emergency) started to need/use 'Mode 2' (or these other modes)!

I suppose that change could have caused the issues and 'need for modes' on games previously compatible with less modes.
 
It can be even different OPL revs for different setups, so almost finding needle in a haystack.
 
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