Final Fantasy VIII (8) Mega Compatibility Technique Thread Type X50388

[ScaryBugThing]

The thread name is probably just wishful thinking, but I know I'm not the only one playing FF8 on my PSP right now. And I also know I'm not the only one trying to find rhyme or reason as to why it freezes. If people can post their experiences here, it might make it easier for everyone.

Freezes
The game will freeze during boss battles much more often than anything else, in my case. I have sat drawing and casting GFs for 15 minutes with no problem against normal enemies, but bosses have frozen the game twice. I had one freeze against the T-Rexuar in Balamb Garden. I have tried a good deal of different spells and as far as I can tell, no one spell causes freezes.

Except for the one T-Rexaur freeze, I have NOT had a single freeze during normal, non-boss play during the 9 hours I've logged so far.

My consistent, pain-in-the-ass boss freezes were at the Dollet Communication Tower and against the Fake President Deling Zombie in the train car. They occurred NOT ONLY related to when I cast Draw, but related to when I cast Draw and when the game then did a certain quick camera maneuver.

I got past the freeze at both places by constantly casting GFs and avoiding Draw, and by changing my ISO as described below.

ISOs/versions I tried
I tried two different source ISOs (including a certain one with both PAL and NTSC on the same file, which many of you may recognize...), prepared as a CCD and a BIN file, compressed and uncompressed, in versions 3.02 OE-B and 3.03 OE-B.

Both compressed and uncompressed, BIN/CCD ISOs had freezing issues equally. 3.02 OE-B and 3.03 OE-B had freezing issues identically, as far as I could tell. However, I think the freezes seem to favor different spots in the game dependant on the ISO I was using, and I have gotten past the Deling boss freeze by switching to an uncompressed ISO from a compressed one.

How about the rest of you? Anyone having really great luck in getting it to work flawlessly??

[Omeey]

Yuppers, i'm running the US disc one here, it ran absolutely PERFECTLY for me until the communications tower, where i am getting almost consistent freezes just when i am about to beat the boss, and also when i try and use zell's limit break... ill post later if i can seem to get past this in any way :P'

Edit: im running firmware 3.03 OE-C and converted a bin file using simple popstation GUI

[Narcotize]

Same here. I had a freeze with Quistis' Blue Magic while fighting fish on the beach near Balamb.

On 3.03OC-C and popstation GUI.

On a side, I've found that the PSP really doesn't like it on FF9 when there are a good load of characters on screen. Madain Sari with all the moogles is a pain!

[HomerSp]

This is very much likely something in the emulator and we therefore can't do anything to fix it.

[Dark_Wolf89]

For me it often froze against Brothers... It was really tough not to make it freeze... It happened anytime they attacked Rinoa and Angelo counter attacked.

But right now I'm in big trouble... I'm in the end of the Disc 1, when Rinoa is attacked against Lizards... When I fight them, whenever they do a spell, it freeze...

The only solution I see would be to convert the savedata to *.mcr and beat that monster with epsxe... but I don't think it is possible now...

[Kichigai Mentat]

When I played it, the game locked up the entire PSP when I first left the Garden, got into my first random battle, and attempted to Draw-Cast Scan. The Draw animation didn't even complete before the thing crashed and burned.

[Kinneas]

Seems totally random really =/ - It crashes quite frequently for me, even in normal fights. It also crashed when quistis used her first limit break. No apparent ryme or reason to it, real shame though >.<

[Tetris999]

could we edit the iso to get it to work?

and we can edit emulator just that no one wants to..

[teh_twisted]

ey, first I'd like to say hi to everyone just I registered last night...

I've been experiencing some insane crashes in FFVIII, so I Google'd around and came across this thread.
Now this is my experience:

• Quistis Blue Magic on the Beach at Balamb crashed (once) (so far not reproducible)
  
• Boss Fight: Diablos crashes every time I open the Lamp and he casts a spell (I'm able to to a few things, I was able a while back to inflict some damage but not much)
  Now this one was the most annoying, since I kinda _need_ that GF :P
  
• And ofcourse some random interval crashes, seem to be no connection between them (has nothing to do with Casting Magic since I can do that anytime I want... However last night it did crash during a battle in Timber against 2 Galbadian Captains after doing Draw on them for a while (they had Firagas, Thundagas, Blizzaras and Curagas man!), but it wasn't reproducible.

What I've tried to "solve" it:

• Get a new PBP
• Put CPU speed back to Default (I have it on 333 normally...)
• Opening the Lamp in a different situation (with Laguna instead of Squall, same error)

None of this seemed to help, I'm also not sure which version I've got (PAL/NTSC) and also not sure howto check.

I'm running 3.03 OE-C on my PSP I've got for a week now (got it brand new with 2.87), upgraded to 3.03, through GTA:LCS down to 1.5, back to 3.03 OE-C.

I hope I didn't kick up the thread too much (it's quite old actually) but it seemed to make more sense then make a new one...

Thanks in advance, PSP kicks ass and the homebrew scene even more

teh_twisted

[Narcotize]

I'm running on default CPU speed so don't think thats a cause.

OT: Also, I tried bumping the CPU speed up to full to see if that helps with the FF9 lag. Sadly it doesn't. Don't think the emulator can handle the high level of detail that all the 3D models use in that game.