Einhander PS1 ROM works on 1 PC, fails on another (logs provided)

RetroArch Windows devices
#1

Exact same Einhander (US) ROM running in Beetle, used by my friend and me and so far, it’s the only game giving him any grief on his Core i5 laptop, the core runs his other PS1 titles fine; the game hangs at the start of the countdown (270 on the readout) for him and just doesn’t move. You can still exit via the RA menu, it doesn’t crash the whole thing. He’s tried switching from GL to Vulkan and other video drivers.

I tried sending him my core dll to try (older version), as it works fine on this game on my Ryzen 3 laptop but still hangs / crashes for him. This is his original log, and this is his log using my older core dll; can’t see any ERROR lines in either, however I notice ‘4096 frames’ INFO line occurs on both around the same time that RA decides to ‘unload core’.

Any help appreciated.

#2

Try the SwanStation core. Usually when a game has issues with one core, you just try it in the other one.

#3

Cheers, I’ll suggest it to him but should point out he’s seeing exact same behaviour with PCSX ReARMed (he’s given me a log for this core error too; I’ve not used PCSX ReARMed on Windows, only Android a long time ago).

#4

SwanStation was a success, thanks! Still none the wiser as to why the other 2 cores weren’t playing nice with his PC but at least he got it working.

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#5

its been a while since played einhander but one thing I remember is the game dont like cd access speed greater than 4x or it will freeze on the firts load screen with the numbers countdown.

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#6

Hi all, I’m the guy who the OP mentioned was struggling with Einhander.

Pleased to say that Swanstation ran it fine (as reported!), and changing the CD Access speed back to 2x also sorted out Beetle :slight_smile:

Thanks for all the help and advice, and thanks to 3miliooo for getting me into RA and now onto the forums! I hope this thread will be of use to others in the future.

Einhander is such a standout game, and using RetroArch with the ‘Hyllian Lines’ filter just takes it to another level. Growing up here in the PAL region, we NEVER saw games looking that good.

I’ve seen people on YouTube using emulators to upscale Einhander and polish the textures, but I actually now think that is missing the point. Just set up the scanlines and enjoy the original graphics as they were intended!

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#7

aka <…shaders/shaders_slang/crt/crt-hyllian-multipass.slangp>

#8

Note that you can have your cake and eat it too by using a hardware renderer (setting Enhancement Settings->GPU renderer to OpenGL for example) raising the internal resolution to something like 6x and then set Display Settings->Downsampling to “Box”. You then get 240p supersampling. It looks great with CRT shaders!

#9

Hi- I have RA 1.10.3 with Beetle HW as the core, and have struggled to find the options you mentioned (particularly ‘Box’ output) in the standard RA menus.

Is there any way you could post them as menu locations eg [game]/Options/Video/(etc.)? Thanks

#10

These are SwanStation core options. Downsampling with PGXP produce really nice 240p output that looks great when using a CRT shader:

Downsampling/PGXP disabled:

Downsampling/PGXP enabled:

It produces some very good anti-aliasing on 3D objects (downsampling) and reduces polygon jitter a lot (PGXP).

Beetle PSX-HW has equivalent options, I believe, at least with the Vulkan renderer, but I don’t remember exactly how they’re activated. Shouldn’t be too difficult.

#11

Have been meaning to say, thanks for these recommendations within SwanStation. Have tried them and they certainly do make the game look very pretty AND retro at the same time. Highly recommended, especially for Einhander!

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