7 replies to this topic

[HyperShadow]

The post below was originally meant for an emulation forum, but since that site is practically dead, I thought I'd repost it here, so that us NiGHTS fans may get together and move closer towards perfect NiGHTS emulation!


Hi everyone!

I have one goal, and that is to optimize NiGHTS for perfect emulation. I've come pretty damn close so far, but i'm still having problems. I'm hoping this thread will help me solve these problems, as well as help other NiGHTS fans out there.

First of all, my specs:

Dell Inspiron MXC061
Intel® Core™2 CPU
T7200 @ 2.00GHz
2.00GHz, 0.99GB of RAM

OS: Windows XP Professional

Emulator: Cassini v4.0

I'm running NiGHTS using Daemon tools. It's an nrg image of the japanese version. I used to use a european image but somehow it got corrupted. Apparently, this has happened to other people, so BEWARE.

I use CD emulation rather than image since when running NiGHTS directly from an image, the game freezes before the first boss. This has also happened to other people, and I can pretty much confirm that CD emulation bypasses this problem.

Yes, NiGHTS will always show a black screen when there is meant to be an FMV. At this point, one should "mash" the start button to skip this - a few key presses (even just one, well-timed press) are usually enough.

Finally, I have been experimenting with the games.dat entry and so far, I have achieved perfect gameplay speed (60fps) with near-to-no graphic glitches. The problem, however, lies with the sound. The sound always plays WAY too fast - about 200% I would say. No matter what I try and edit, it always remains the same. This applies to in-game music, not menu music (The menu track is a CD track and plays at normal speed). Any help towards fixing this would be greatly appreciated.
Meanwhile, here is my NiGHTS games.dat entry:

;NiGHTS into Dreams (J)
[GS-9046]
PriorityMode =1
EdsrShift =1
VSync =50
MaxTexCnt =1800
BankChk=1
CharPtnChck =0

It's safe to say that those of you using a non-japanese version of NiGHTS can use the exact same settings (switching [GS-9046] to [MK-81020] obviously).
Also, Christmas NiGHTS (E), [610-6483], works great under these same settings.
Messing around with other settings like CDWait, Framewait, etc has got me nowhere with my problem. Any edits you could suggest would help me out loads.

The biggest problem for me lies here: Whilst playing, somewhat randomly, my pc would suddenly reboot. This could happen after 10 mins of playing, 20 mins, or even 2 mins. After weeks of frustration, I finally realized that this ONLY happens when my laptop is plugged into AC power. On battery power, it never reboots! I'm officially baffled, but at least I can now play NiGHTS reboot-free, until the battery runs out that is.

The final minor snag is that Cassini does not display dream data very well (or at all), so it's hard to keep track of my scores. If anyone can help me tweak the settings to fix this, it'd be great.

Cheers guys - hope we get somewhere from here!

[gsk]

Thats an interesting project. I prefer SSF to Cassini, more faithful and less buggy. And then theres the unoffical status of Cassini in respects to GiriGiri anyway, but so what I say. Plus the latest SSF supports analogue control.

SSF runs NiGHTS perfectly (as far as I'm aware of) on a 3ghz PC, and if you want i can test your settings - I've got access to a 1.9 ghz laptop, 2.0 PC, 2.5 PC and a 3.2. After RAM (at least 512), its the processor that makes the difference (in fact the offical SSF site lists 3+ghz as the recommend speed)

[HyperShadow]

I've tried SSF and while it appears to display all sprites, including dream data, it wasn't fast or smooth enough .... however, we all know how important it is to tweak an emulator into running a game well, and I didn't tweak it at all as my brain was too tired from tweaking Cassini.
Any tips for SSF?

[HyperShadow]

Thats an interesting project. I prefer SSF to Cassini, more faithful and less buggy. And then theres the unoffical status of Cassini in respects to GiriGiri anyway, but so what I say. Plus the latest SSF supports analogue control.

SSF runs NiGHTS perfectly (as far as I'm aware of) on a 3ghz PC, and if you want i can test your settings - I've got access to a 1.9 ghz laptop, 2.0 PC, 2.5 PC and a 3.2. After RAM (at least 512), its the processor that makes the difference (in fact the offical SSF site lists 3+ghz as the recommend speed)

Well I've just given SSF another try - R9 seems to be the best for playing NiGHTS according to most ppl.
It seems like with SSF, everything up to the game itself (i.e. Saturn logo, fmvs, menus) run in slow motion. But the actual gameplay is perfect!
Do you know why this could be?
The sound emulation of SSF is excellent - music plays great and sound effects are 100% identical to the original. But fullscreen graphics are disappointing. Cassini shows fullscreen graphics perfectly, but with SSF, everything is too pixellated and does not use the full dimensions of the screen - I think I could fix this with a bit of graphic option tinkering though.

I'd love to get the menus to run faster to avoid all the waiting around to start the game - although now that i've seen how great SSF emulates NiGHTS music, SSF is quickly winning my heart

[HyperShadow]

well it seems that if i switch to fullscreen with vsynch on,everything runs at good speed.
The main problem of pixellation remains - could it be related to my laptop's intel gma 950 graphic chip? It's generally not recommended for 3d emulation. Cassini doesn't have a problem with it, but I guess SSF easily could have. Now i'm torn between playing NiGHTS with great music (SSF) or great graphics (Cassini).

[gsk]

HyperShadow, have you played the original game on a Saturn? Cassini actually smoothes out the graphics quite a bit, where as SSF runs it more like the Saturn version. So what you see as pixalated graphics may be just the originals graphics anyway. NiGHTS was quite glitchy in that department, with a terrible draw in line and flicky 3D. You might just be used to Cassini's improvements

[andypenguin]

I have yet to try Cassini, but I currently use SSF for NiGHTS. If you're having speed troubles, setting the fastest, low compatibility mode under the EZ Options tab in the options menu might help.

[HyperShadow]

HyperShadow, have you played the original game on a Saturn? Cassini actually smoothes out the graphics quite a bit, where as SSF runs it more like the Saturn version. So what you see as pixalated graphics may be just the originals graphics anyway. NiGHTS was quite glitchy in that department, with a terrible draw in line and flicky 3D. You might just be used to Cassini's improvements

You may have a point there ... although I've played the original on the saturn for about a decade now (not continuously of course)

Regarding my speed problems, everything seems very dependent upon my video card and its drivers. Running the emulator on Windows Vista is MUCH better, since I suspect the vista drivers for my video card (intel gma 950) are better suited. I can now play at perfect speed both in windowed mode and fullscreen. Windowed mode provides slightly better graphics in my opinion, but that's mostly due to the fact that my monitor is widescreen, and so the graphics stretch quite a bit. "Keep aspect ratio" doesn't seem to make a difference.

I'd like to thank you guys for all your help, especially in urging me to give SSF another try. The only problem that remains is the problem of my PC rebooting whilst playing NiGHTS on AC power, but i suspect that might be purely hardware related, and may happen if i played other 3D games too (which at the moment, I don;t).