Stems into two questions about PS1 games...?

Gwaelym

Greetings all,

A couple of questions about ps1 games inside retropie, mainly technical based that I have no clue about.. Just in case it's needed, I use a raspberry pi 4b 4gig model with no overclocking and no external cooling but housed in the standard Flirc passive cooling case.. If it helps.

When it comes to naming bin and cue files, do they need to match exactly?, or can I just rename the cue file and still have it work. Reasoning I assume retropie only sees the cue file so if I change it in retropie itself (edit the tags in the select menu) it'll still pick up the bin files associated with that cue file.
I dabbled in retropie before with ps1 games and had mixed results with some games lagging or freezing outright, Are there any settings that I need to change to reduce and/or make the experience smoother without sacrificing too much of the graphics? Two games that come to mind where lag was noticeable was Metal Gear Solid and Hercules.

Bonus question) It does tie into question 2... In some of the games I play (mainly Silent Hill springs to mind) there's a weird diamond grid over the game kinda like a thin chain-link fence over the game, Is there a was to reduce and/or remove this? If it does require some kind of graphics enhancement for the games affected then I won't bother changing anything and just play it as is.

Thank you!

Genos98

@gwaelym

I think so. Having a different cue and bin names might confuse the emulator and the game wont run.
Use lr-duckstation it's the best psx emulator on retropie right now and solves a lot of slowdowns and freezing.

Gwaelym

@genos98 said in Stems into two questions about PS1 games...?:

@gwaelym

I think so. Having a different cue and bin names might confuse the emulator and the game wont run.

Use lr-duckstation it's the best psx emulator on retropie right now and solves a lot of slowdowns and freezing.

I figured the files needed to be the same after thinking about it. thanks

So duckstation, ok got it!... give it a try later.

Cheers!

Genos98

@gwaelym

Also when using duckstation change your retroarch audio driver to "alsathread" and when playing a psx game go to duckstation option in retroarch then change the hardware renderer to "software" to get the best experience.

Lister of Smeg

@gwaelym Bonus reply
It really is worth converting your bin/cue files to CHD - the space savings are huge
quick howto
https://scunster.co.uk/?p=1732

dankcushions

@gwaelym said in Stems into two questions about PS1 games...?:

Greetings all,

A couple of questions about ps1 games inside retropie, mainly technical based that I have no clue about.. Just in case it's needed, I use a raspberry pi 4b 4gig model with no overclocking and no external cooling but housed in the standard Flirc passive cooling case.. If it helps.

When it comes to naming bin and cue files, do they need to match exactly?, or can I just rename the cue file and still have it work. Reasoning I assume retropie only sees the cue file so if I change it in retropie itself (edit the tags in the select menu) it'll still pick up the bin files associated with that cue file.

the filenames of both don't need to match, what is important is the filename that is referred to INSIDE the .cue file - it MUST match the name of the .bin file. .cue files are text files that point to .bin files. so if you rename the .bin, be sure to update the CONTENTS of the .cue with the same.

I dabbled in retropie before with ps1 games and had mixed results with some games lagging or freezing outright, Are there any settings that I need to change to reduce and/or make the experience smoother without sacrificing too much of the graphics? Two games that come to mind where lag was noticeable was Metal Gear Solid and Hercules.

try duckstation - it should be better in every scenario.

Bonus question) It does tie into question 2... In some of the games I play (mainly Silent Hill springs to mind) there's a weird diamond grid over the game kinda like a thin chain-link fence over the game, Is there a was to reduce and/or remove this? If it does require some kind of graphics enhancement for the games affected then I won't bother changing anything and just play it as is.

sounds like you're talking about the dithering. it's accurate emulation, but you may prefer to disable it on non-CRT displays. see this image for examples of it on and off (although they also appear to be raising the internal resolution in this example, so not entirely fair). lr-pcsx_rearmed has options to disable it: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Playstation-1/#video-disable-dithering

duckstation has similar core options.

mitu

@lister-of-smeg said in Stems into two questions about PS1 games...?:

quick howto
https://scunster.co.uk/?p=1732

This quick 'howto' seems like some spam site with information scraped from the real post - which may have originated in the Launchbox forums.
Local info - https://retropie.org.uk/docs/CHD-files/
reddit topic - https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/72kh6q/stepbystep_guide_how_to_convert_sega_cd_or_pc/