Pso v1 on dreamshell

Hi guys,

   I just played an iso for pso v1 using dreamshell 4.0 rc-1and noticed that the game is very playable. Passing by Forest 1, 2 , Dragon Boss and cave 1 with only micro pauses every 7 seconds during the game ( no pauses in boss area though). Anyway playing this game saving my dreamcast gd unit is very nice.
  I didn´t find any information regarding playing pso using dreamshell so i was wondering if you can answer some questions:
  1-Is this game playable if you go online on dreamshell?Perhaps converting a Ives pso v1 cdi auto connect to use in sd card. Did  anyone test it? I know the speed would decrease a lot playing with others but even if you play online alone?
  2-Downsampling the music would prevent those micro-pauses in gameplay?
  3-Couldn´t find any pso v2 for dreamshell. Is it not compatible?

  Thanks in advance.

Well, considering that PSOv1 doesn't run without glitches entirely, I wouldn't expect PSOv2 to work without them either.

Also, considering how many nasty bugs show up in PSOv2 when run from a CD-R instead of a GD-ROM, I'd expect there to be just as many if not more of them from an SD Card. Also, PSOv2 is very picky about how it is booted, as the annoying bugs I've had to chase down in the PSO Patcher disc have proven...  

From what I've read, playing most commercial games from SD card is impractical, because the Dreamcast must use CPU cycles every time it wants to read the SD card. Commercial games like PSO which use streaming music in ADX format don't work when played from SD cards, because the Dreamcast wastes all of its CPU power on loading the music, which doesn't leave enough cycles for actually playing the game. That's why all SD games use sequenced DSF BGM that can be loaded into the system's RAM during loading screens, which eliminates the need to access the SD card during gameplay. Accessing the GD-ROM drive doesn't require those same CPU cycles, which is why commercial games designed for the disc drive can use streaming music.

The only hope for a good alternative method to play PSO is for someone to make a practical HDD addon to replace the GD-ROM drive. Once somebody does that, it would be possible to boot regular ISOs of Dreamcast games from the HDD, which would both eliminate the space constraints of CD-Rs and likely the instability associated with them.

 Hey Ives it is no joke, pso v1 really works on this latest dreamshell, check this video (it´s not mine)

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQxiiBJmcZw

  Only small lags and longer loadings...even the music works fine. You can check watching the vídeo and notice the micro lags...i would test v2 myself and convert to iso but i have a problem connecting my dreamcast online cause my phone line is digital and dont recognize dial up calls.

That's quite interesting. The Dreamcast is definitely having a little trouble playing the music, judging by all that stuttering, but the performance is far better than I would have expected. I wonder why he couldn't save the game, though. I've never seen that error before, and if it's related to running the game from an SD card, it doesn't bode well.

Aleron Ives wrote:That's quite interesting. The Dreamcast is definitely having a little trouble playing the music, judging by all that stuttering, but the performance is far better than I would have expected. I wonder why he couldn't save the game, though. I've never seen that error before, and if it's related to running the game from an SD card, it doesn't bode well.

  i can save...my character is on level 10 already and i reached the caves. Oddly there are no pauses on dragon boss or on guild card. I took the quests "magnitude of metal" and "battle training" and no fsod or bsod at all even when you talk to Ash. Bsod  happens in cd-r version and we need a trick to bypass it. Perhaps that´s because all pso gdi data is on sd card and nothing is ripped. However if you try to select "homepage" it send you back to dc bios.

The FSOD/BSOD problems only happen on PSOv2 CD-Rs. PSOv1 works perfectly and never crashes, at least in my experience.

Aleron Ives wrote:The FSOD/BSOD problems only happen on PSOv2 CD-Rs. PSOv1 works perfectly and never crashes, at least in my experience.

 Ops sorry my mistake. But i remember to fsod in quest "gran squall" a few times on v1 using cdr ...Do you think downsampling music would cease the pauses?I´ll keep on playing it on sd card till the end of game anyway because is very playable. In other hand my wife is relieved for not hearing that grinding noise from my psodisc for some days  .Oh other games like skies of arcadia and climax landers also works very well on sd card (the last one game works flawelessly).

I tried several times to make an sd iso for pso ver2 and had no sucess. The iso boots but then i get a BSOE (Black screen of eternety) lol...But i believe like everything related to dreamcast scene, i´m not making this sd iso right. Perhaps someone may help me?

I know almost nothing about the SD card functions. From what I've read in the last few days, you need to buy an adapter from a site like dc-sd.com, get a 1-8 GB SanDisk SD card, and burn DreamShell to a CD-R to load stuff from the card.

Is this the PSOv1 you're using?

http://www.theisozone.com/downloads/dreamcast/sd-isos/phantasy-star-online-sd-iso-du/

I don't know anything about how to prepare a game ISO to load from an SD card. It might need a special boot file as compared to making a game that is meant to launch from a disc.

More importantly, you should test whether going online works when playing the game this way. Since you're using PSOv1, you don't need to apply any patches; you can just set DNS 1 to Sylverant's IP address, assuming you have a BBA or a DC-PC bridge.

Yes Ives, that´s the iso..so far working fine. All dreamcast isos have 2 tracks? I used sdiso maker program and opened the pso ver pal fastload cdi with daimon tools then extracted these 2 tracks data to a folder to use sdiso maker to built an iso. But i´m quite sure something is wrong because the file merge the tracks in only one. it´s a shame because i assume ver2 would work better than psov1 due to downgraded graphics.
Unfortunately I cant go online with my dc due to the cable digital cable tv modem i have here...something in this modem blocks dial up calls.
Anyway i played lots of quests with npcs and the game didn´t slow down. Of course i have no doubt that this sd pso v1 would be unplayeable online with more than 2 players...if it is able to go online first.

I'd study the ISO, but I have no way to test anything, since I have no SD card or reader.

Ives maybe you can help to make this iso for me and i will gladly test it for us even online. I can take my dreamcast to my mother´s house and go online there testing this iso. I tried to some of isos for another games and i could do it right but not with any version of pso. It´s no surprise for me because i remember i triedo once to switch music in pso iso with no success...pso is always a challenge for me in making isos.

     I believe even if only sd pso v1 works online connecting to sylverant it´s a big step for
pso comunity as well as dreamshell version improves every update (unfortunately when it improves we gain new games compatible but also lose old ones). I believe its worth a try and our dreamcast gd-rom unit will last longer. Soon I will make a vídeo of myself playing this version clearly and the micro lags.
    If you decide to help this link may help ya:
    http://www.theisozone.com/downloads/dreamcast/other/sdiso-maker/

  Thanks in advance.

It looks like the conversion isn't too different from the way you selfboot games from CD-R, but I would need to test it myself, which means knowing which SD card adapter to purchase and which kind of card to get. The adapters don't seem very expensive compared to most Dreamcast hardware, but all of them seem to be home made, which means their quality is probably variable.

I tried to get this iso run, but it may be broken.
Plus the latest dreamshell (4.0.0 rc1) ignores my sd adapter...
The v4 beta4 works fine, but cannot open the file.
I ll dl it again and try to find out why this doesnt works.

u ll get the report. Not tonight.

roman

Shadow, which SD adapter do you use? Maybe DreamShell doesn't like DJ's custom one.

I sure hope that you could get this going for ver.2. Even w/o BGM, it would be neat. I wonder if this would fix my reset problem with one of my dc's. I already exhausted all other possibilities short of getting a new psu.

Ives I use this one:
http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-501275188-adaptador-de-carto-sd-sega-dreamcast-_JM

 Found the same on ebay:
 http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dreamcast-SD-Adapter-Reader-Dreamshell-CD-Latest-Version-NEW-USA-/180849455054?pt=US_Video_Game_Cables_Adapters&hash=item2a1b77afce

   Some people state that sd card class 6 or 10 are best for compatibility but using last version of dreamshell version 4 rc-1 i could play fine with class 4 sd card or even micro sd with adapter.
   I tested these comercial games below and they are compatible with this last version of dreamshell 4.0 vrc-1:
   Skies of Arcadia:Micro lags in cinematics and the begin of each battle. Music works fine.
   Soulreaver: Skip cg´s. Works fine.
   F1 Grand prix: Works fine with no music.
   Climax Landers: Us version plays amanzingly.
   Quake 3 Arena: without music, works fine even online.
   Sonic Adventure: Works only with beta 3 version...20 fps.
   Super Magnetic Niu-niu: Very playable with music.

    I´ll test more soon. Anyway  no success regarding pso v2 untill now. I get only black screen. Or it´s not compatible or I´m not building the iso correctly.

mahkbooks wrote:I sure hope that you could get this going for ver.2.  Even w/o BGM, it would be neat.  I wonder if this would fix my reset problem with one of my dc's.  I already exhausted all other possibilities short of getting a new psu.

   Using dreamshell the gd rom unit only reads dreamshell cd to boot dreamshell and i noticed the dreamcast don´t get too warm as it don´t use the gd-rom unit. There´s a way to put dreamshell bios directly to dreamcast bios but i´m not good in soldering things lol.

SHADOWROD wrote:Found the same on ebay

That's good, since it's the one I bought. It should be here today or tomorrow.

Is this the Q3A you tested that doesn't have BGM?

http://theisozone.com/downloads/dreamcast/sd-isos/quake-3-arena-sdiso-usa/

Aleron Ives wrote:

SHADOWROD wrote:Found the same on ebay

That's good, since it's the one I bought. :lol:It should be here today or tomorrow.

Is this the Q3A you tested that doesn't have BGM?

http://theisozone.com/downloads/dreamcast/sd-isos/quake-3-arena-sdiso-usa/

Yes that´s the one and works perfectly . I built another q3a iso with music but unlike pso v1, the lags in this kind of game are irritating .

I tested the PSOv1 SDISO, and online mode works just as well as offline mode. The game has little hiccups every few seconds from the BGM, but even with multiple players using Shifta and Deband facing a room full of enemies with Jellen and Zalure applied, the game didn't have any massive slowdown. The performance seems to be essentially uniform, regardless of what's happening on the screen. I also didn't encounter any freezing while loading player data online or in the offline quests.

As such, I may try building one ISO with mono BGM and another with "no" BGM to see how that influences performance. The game is perfectly playable even without degrading the BGM, but it would be nice to get rid of the stuttering. Once I see how BGM changes impact performance, I suppose I'll try booting PSOv2.

Wonderful news Ives, just for playing pso v1, soulreaver, q3arena and skies of arcadia I´d say the sd adapter is a nice piece of hardware to buy for dc. Together with planet ring we have 3 online games that works on dreamshell...however 4 x 4 evo, starlancer and maximun pool don´t seem to boot up in my trials.

I have good news, decent news, bad news, and worse news.

The good news is that making an auto-connect USv1 SDISO was easy.

The decent news is that removing the BGM makes Pioneer 2 work without stuttering and almost eliminates stuttering in Forest 1, but I might be able to improve the situation further.

The bad news is that even when the browser files are patched, the browser doesn't work, which probably means that PSOv2 won't boot, either. I'll still try it, but I'm not optimistic.

The worse news is that DreamShell doesn't boot cleanly, meaning that SDISO PSO shares all of the bugs that go along with playing PSO with Utopia, namely:

• You can walk inside the pillar in the Hunter's Guild.
  
• Rafoie doesn't work.
  
• Healing and Support Techniques won't work on teammates.
  
• You'll probably FSOD randomly while playing (although I haven't experienced that yet).
  

As such, even if PSOv2 does boot, there's no point in trying to play it this way, since it's hopelessly borked. The only caveat is that Swat might be able to fix DreamShell to avoid the Utopia problems, but he would have to spend time working on it to fix this specific game. I guess we'll still need to wait for that GD-ROM -> HDD mod. At least the game would work with full BGM that way.

I have noticed the healing glitch when i tried to heal a npc in offline quests. Regarding pso v2 so maybe l am building the iso the right way but it does not boot because of the browser thing... perhaps it is a stupid question but have you tried another boot options in dreamshell?I believe SWAT could include some other patch if asked for. I will contact him.