Topic: How to map with ePSXe?

[TerraEsperZ]

This is just a big 'what if' for the moment, but assuming I ever got it into my head to map, say, "Castlevania: Symphony Of the Night" by emulating it with ePSXe, how would I go about doing that? Right now, the emulator in question doesn't seem to feature any screenshot command, making capturing rather long and hard.



I also remember that before the board went under, someone said he was using a program that could dump/log any texture loaded with DirectX, allowing him access to them to help mapping. Does anyone remember who did that, or what he was talking about? I'd appreciate any help you guys/gals could give me



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[JonLeung]

Was it wileee, perhaps?  I seem to remember you two discussing CV:SotN back in the day.



wileee does his own thing now, and all his maps and stuff are on his own site: http://www.screenshotmaps.com.

[TerraEsperZ]

Probably, or it could be Edsword. Zeric used to do some PSX mapping too, so hopefully one of them can  satisfy my curiosity.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[JonLeung]

Ah, yes, Zeric did do some of that.



I would've liked to have seen him finish Mega Man 8 (to finish off the classic Mega Man series) and he had a number of other projects (Sigma Star Saga for the GBA was one he was doing back while I was playing the game, and his incomplete maps helped me at the time).



But, like J.J. Maxx and osrevad, he seems to be taking a break from all this...

[TerraEsperZ]

We seem to have lost a lot of regular and semi-regular members in the last few months...



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[TerraEsperZ]

Zeric managed to point me to GLIntercept at http://glintercept.nutty.org/download.html. It's a little utility that, when properly configured, can allow you, among other functions, to save to file all the tiles and textures used by the OpenGL API. That means, in ePSXe, using an OpenGL graphic plugin and having an OpenGL-compatible graphics card.



Unfortunately, the result of such captures is really screwed up and unless you know exactly which tiles and textures you need, it won't be of much help.



Here are example of files it created:















---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[TerraEsperZ]

See https://www.vgmaps.com/forums/index.php?topic=231 for further comments on GLIntercept.



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[TerraEsperZ]

About TerraEsperZ's question: I use espxe 1.60 to play PS games. Simply press F8 may capture a screenshot to your "snap" directory.



But I have a bigger doubt about mapping with epsxe. The question is "How could we ensure that epsxe displays the exactly original color?" We all know that epsxe is a plugin-relied emulator. It will display different effects through different video plugins and different configurations. Here are some examples:



[img=http://img142.imageshack.us/img142/7543/peopssoft001wv5.th.png]



[img=http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/8358/psd3d001od0.th.png]



[img=http://img529.imageshack.us/img529/4563/psd3d002ue4.th.png]



[img=http://img403.imageshack.us/img403/2528/psogl001ee5.th.png]



[img=http://img527.imageshack.us/img527/6401/psogl002zh5.th.png]



These five pictures are captured from a same scene, but with different video plugins. The first is "P.E.Op.S. Soft GPU". The second is Pete's D3D, best  textures(R8G8B8A8). The third is Pete's D3D, normal textures(R4G4B4A4). The forth and the fifth are Pete's OpenGL, with two different textures.



You may find out that the first picture contains not only the visible screen but many other things, and the play screen is in its original size(320x240). Other four pictures only show the play screens, and their resolutions depend on your configuration. But this isn't the emphasis. I'd like to draw your attention to the color difference between them.



If your browse them quickly with a pic-viewer software, you may notice many obviously differences between pic2,3 and pic4,5. I think the plugin "P.E.Op.S. Soft GPU" and "Pete's D3D" could export more correct 2D pictures than "Pete's OpenGL".



But even the first three pictures are not the same. They look very similar, but actually, they are different with each other. For example, the RGB color of the garnet frames in the 5 pictures are #601100, #661200, #601300, #5a1000, #551100. I don't know which one is the original color, or none of them is the original color? How could we trust these plugins?

[TerraEsperZ]

Thanks for the reply Sprays. We did actually start to map Symphony Of The Night, and for a short while a number of us were working on it. As you can read here, we simply agreed to all use the same emulator (ePSXe) and plugin (Pete's OpenGL) and because of the difficult nature in getting the same exact result for everyone, to each map full rooms and to just ignore unnoticeable difference in color values.



It seemed the only way not to go crazy over it. It is sad that the project has grinded to a halt but not surprising (we tend to pretty much map whatever game we feel like, and in my case, it's hard to concentrate on a single game for very long).



---

"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." [...] The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. - Captain Jean-Luc Picard



B*tch, meet reality. Reality, meet b*tch. - Me

[JonLeung]

I think Revned was unofficially "leading" the project.  With his disappearance or hiatus or whatever, it's stopped, but if he's not dead, I'm sure it'll pick up again.