Duckstation - PS1 emulator

[Tanooki]

Ugh...I downloaded it the other day and never got to pulling out a disc.  That's just disappointing.  I was hoping I could maybe use that with my gravis pad pro usb controller which is a 100% copycat of the non-dual shock ps1 pad.

[+SpiceWare]

Haven't played anything in Duckstation in a while. Installed the current build and it's fixed both of these issues:

 

On 1/4/2021 at 11:25 AM, SpiceWare said:

With the default settings there's still the strange grid pattern:

 

1x (240p)

 

 

 

On 1/4/2021 at 11:25 AM, SpiceWare said:

I also tried Einhänder which looked great, but for some reason it stopped spawning enemy ships partway into a level.

 

[CapitanClassic]

On 4/23/2021 at 6:16 PM, SpiceWare said:

Haven't played anything in Duckstation in a while. Installed the current build and it's fixed both of these issues:

 

I was under the impression that Spyro was one of the many Sony releases that had quite a few security checks in it to prevented it from being burned or played in emulators. Have all the security checks been found and the executable modified so you can play in an emulator without weird bugs occurring (loss of progress, missing impossible to collect eggs, etc.)

 

 

Edited April 27, 2021 by CapitanClassic

[+SpiceWare]

10 hours ago, CapitanClassic said:

Have all the security checks been found and the executable modified

 

I played Spyro using rips I made myself of the Spyro disks I bought in the 90s. As detailed here I used Apple's Disk Utility on my Mac to create CDR images of them, which are basically Apple's version of an ISO image.  I did not modify my rips in any way, so things like the mod chip check mentioned in that video must be handled correctly by emulation.

 

There are a number of programming bugs in Year of the Dragon:

• Speedway Bug
• Spooky Swamp Lost Gem Bug
• Fireworks Factory Gem Bug

 

though they have nothing to do with emulation as I encountered them back in the day on my real PS1.  I'd forgotten about the Speedway bug and accidentally triggered it during my replay:

 

On 1/30/2021 at 11:28 AM, SpiceWare said:

Drat! Forgot about the speedway bug in the original release of Year of the Dragon; I won the race, but didn't receive the dragon's egg.

 

Was able to track down the Greatest Hits version, which fixes this and other bugs, and was able to earn the egg using it. 

 

[+SpiceWare]

On 1/4/2021 at 6:06 PM, JFD62780 said:

The ONLY thing I see wrong with it is the lack of physical disc support.

 

From Latest News:

 

Quote

2021/07/25: Ability to boot games directly from CD-ROM added. You may want to reduce the readahead size to reduce hitches on seek/loading.

 

I'd love to try it, but:

Quote

MacOS builds are no longer provided, as I cannot support a platform which I do not own hardware for, and I'm not spending $1000+ out of my own pocket for a machine which I have no other use for.

 

Understandable, but disappointing nonetheless. Source is available, and there's instructions on building it, so I may look into that later on when I have some free time (which is in very short supply of late).

[+TwentySixHundred]

Iv finally made the switch from Mednafen to Duckstation now that the emulator is much more matured. It is indeed a really nice emulator however im still using Mednafen on the side. Mainly because im noticing a frame drops on Duckstation with certain games. It's not my PC it's something to do with Duckstation. So those games (esp racing) i tend to stick with Mednafen.

[Tanooki]

Ooooh really...duckstation added using real games now, not warez?  I'm tempted to download it again.

[JFD62780]

On 8/17/2021 at 3:38 PM, SpiceWare said:

 

From Latest News:

 

 

I'd love to try it, but:

 

Understandable, but disappointing nonetheless. Source is available, and there's instructions on building it, so I may look into that later on when I have some free time (which is in very short supply of late).

Okay, I tried it with physical media, and I'm glad they started implementing the concept.  But sadly, my drive is okay at reading, but sucks at streaming.  In Final Fantasy VII, the opening movie stutters at a way low framerate, even with the highest read-ahead.

My drive is the laptop-based BU50N.  Is there ANY way to unlock something resembling performance mode, so my drive don't act like a narcoleptic? ?

Edited August 31, 2021 by JFD62780
Dangit, WHERE'S THE RAW CODE EDIT BUTTON? The quotes didn't even make the reply! x.x

[Tanooki]

I still need to try that build out, been lazy despite downloading and setting it up since I keep a copy a bios on my drive here matching the psone I have.

[+SpiceWare]

On 8/17/2021 at 2:38 PM, SpiceWare said:

Quote

MacOS builds are no longer provided, as I cannot support a platform which I do not own hardware for, and I'm not spending $1000+ out of my own pocket for a machine which I have no other use for.

Understandable, but disappointing nonetheless. Source is available, and there's instructions on building it, so I may look into that later on when I have some free time (which is in very short supply of late).

I'd made an attempt at building Duckstation back in September, but failed to get it to compile. It was complaining about missing files and directories.

 

Over the past weekend I made another attempt. Turns out the build instructions for Mac are a little off, specifically had these 2 issues to resolve after carefully following the steps:

this from Step 2 was in the wrong location:
    ./dep/mac
needed to be in
    ./duckstation/dep/mac

the build-release directory created in step 3 was in
    ./build-release
but it needed to be in
    ./duckstation/build-release

 

Once I got that sorted out I was able to successfully build Duckstation.

 

Sadly, double-clicking the executable results in a silent failure. 

 

Trying to launch it from command line does provide some clues, I just need to decipher what they mean and how to fix them.

 

Darrells-Mac-Pro:MacOS darrellspice$ ./DuckStation 
objc[8985]: Class QMacAutoReleasePoolTracker is implemented in both /Users/darrellspice/Projects/Duckstation/20211212/duckstation/build-release/bin/DuckStation.app/Contents/Frameworks/QtCore.framework/Versions/5/QtCore (0x10b9dc9e8) and /usr/local/Cellar/qt@5/5.15.2_1/lib/QtCore.framework/Versions/5/QtCore (0x1154279e8). One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
objc[8985]: Class QT_ROOT_LEVEL_POOL__THESE_OBJECTS_WILL_BE_RELEASED_WHEN_QAPP_GOES_OUT_OF_SCOPE is implemented in both /Users/darrellspice/Projects/Duckstation/20211212/duckstation/build-release/bin/DuckStation.app/Contents/Frameworks/QtCore.framework/Versions/5/QtCore (0x10b9dca60) and /usr/local/Cellar/qt@5/5.15.2_1/lib/QtCore.framework/Versions/5/QtCore (0x115427a60). One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
objc[8985]: Class KeyValueObserver is implemented in both /Users/darrellspice/Projects/Duckstation/20211212/duckstation/build-release/bin/DuckStation.app/Contents/Frameworks/QtCore.framework/Versions/5/QtCore (0x10b9dca88) and /usr/local/Cellar/qt@5/5.15.2_1/lib/QtCore.framework/Versions/5/QtCore (0x115427a88). One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
objc[8985]: Class RunLoopModeTracker is implemented in both /Users/darrellspice/Projects/Duckstation/20211212/duckstation/build-release/bin/DuckStation.app/Contents/Frameworks/QtCore.framework/Versions/5/QtCore (0x10b9dcad8) and /usr/local/Cellar/qt@5/5.15.2_1/lib/QtCore.framework/Versions/5/QtCore (0x115427ad8). One of the two will be used. Which one is undefined.
QObject::moveToThread: Current thread (0x7faaa5c04e50) is not the object's thread (0x7faaa5c19730).
Cannot move to target thread (0x7faaa5c04e50)

You might be loading two sets of Qt binaries into the same process. Check that all plugins are compiled against the right Qt binaries. Export DYLD_PRINT_LIBRARIES=1 and check that only one set of binaries are being loaded.
qt.qpa.plugin: Could not load the Qt platform plugin "cocoa" in "" even though it was found.
This application failed to start because no Qt platform plugin could be initialized. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.

Available platform plugins are: cocoa.

Abort trap: 6
Darrells-Mac-Pro:MacOS darrellspice$ 

 

 

[+SpiceWare]

I gave up trying to build Duckstation from scratch.  Last night I ran across this:

 

 

 

 

Note: The video says "M1 Mac", but the instructions actually show how to download the Intel build.

 

I followed the instructions this morning and was able to download a current build of DuckStation from GitHub.

 

Sadly no luck on the CD support, it doesn't recognize either of my optical drives.

 

 

 

 

[+SpiceWare]

On 8/17/2021 at 2:38 PM, SpiceWare said:

I'd love to try it, but:

Quote

MacOS builds are no longer provided, as I cannot support a platform which I do not own hardware for, and I'm not spending $1000+ out of my own pocket for a machine which I have no other use for.

 

Been a while since I last played Spyro the Dragon trilogy so decided to check out Duckstation's GitHub page.  It's been updated with this:

 

Quote

macOS

 

Universal MacOS builds are provided for both x64 and ARM64 (Apple Silicon). However, due to lack of hardware, investigating issues is difficult, so we can't guarantee everything functions as intended.

 

To download:

• Go to https://github.com/stenzek/duckstation/releases/tag/preview, and download duckstation-mac-release.zip.
• ...

 

So the "no longer provided" is no longer true.

 

Downloaded the latest build. Looks like they've optimized^* it a bit as I was able to use x9 scaling for the initial world. Previously I had to use 8x for the earlier worlds, but had to lower it to x7 by the end; so it's possible I'll have to decrease it to x8.

 

^* Other possibility is my Mac mini has more CPU time available as it no longer runs my DVR software as a background task. I have a new Synology NAS which now handles that.