Strange behaviour of Soul Calibur...

Azuriel · #1 18-10-2002, 15:17

Hello everyone... this is mainly directed to all the owners of PAL Dreamcasts, but it's open to everybody as well.
I got my second-hand DC with Soul Calibur PAL version (ehr.. backup). I immediately tried it, and got disappointed by the introduction, which was heavily screwed up. So I decided to hunt for the NTSC version, and finally found it. I burned it, slapped the cd in, and tah-dah!! Intro worked flawlessly... however, the game was playing at 50hz!!! I got PAL Patcher (Thanks again Slipperchin!!), found 50hz code and a pal protection code 3. Patched just the 50hz code... burned it again... now, the game is at 60hz, BUT!!!! The intro skips. It plays fine until Kilik comes into scene: as soon as the camera passes by his head towards the sky, screen goes black and the program skips to the title screen. Which is the *same* thing my PAL copy did (however, the pal intro was buggy for other things as well). So now I have: 1) NTSC 50hz which has full intro and 2)NTSC 60hz with skipping intro. I would try to patch the protection code 3, but I decided to ask here in this great forum for advices... does anyone know why this games behaves this way? I know I could stick with the 50hz version, but I don't want to lose my speed... after all, if it was a hz problem, the TV wouldn't even start to display the game... Please, help!!!!

Thanks in advance.

Megalexxx · #2 19-10-2002, 02:43

I've already heard about this problem, but since I don't spend my time looking at intros, I didn't care more.

I didn't try to patch it with "protection 3", but I wouldn't do it if I were you : you can find this code in almost every game and only corrects 2 games...

roBx^ · #3 21-10-2002, 07:13

Yes that also happens with me. I got the selfboot pal version of soul calibur which is both the only ripped soul calibur (according to some sites i checked, if this isn't pls say wots the filename of the ntsc ver) and it doesn't need to be patched as it has a 60hz selector which runs fine with me. In the beginning (first 4 months i pld or so) the whole intro played (also the intro edits) but since some months it always stops at killik turning his head to the camera...

After a while SC also screws up and gets reading errors. I had to reburn it 1 time this year to make it proper again, while i didn't do anything unusual to the CD. So if u reburn chances are that ur intro runs fine again.. but for a short time.

So if i see the original for cheap i might pick that one up.. the game is worth it anyway.

Megalexxx · #4 21-10-2002, 08:18

roBx^ : could you please send me your 1st_read.bin ?
megalexxx********fr

roBx^ · #5 21-10-2002, 10:08

ehm yeah i can just copy paste it from the cd contents on hd i suppose?

Megalexxx · #6 21-10-2002, 13:43

I tried to sort the files :
1) from the smallests to the biggests
2) from the biggests to the smallests
and it doesn't change anything for the intro...

All I get is bad music & sounds in 1st case and bad intro graphics in the 2nd...

Megalexxx · #7 22-10-2002, 08:44

I found something strange : I've got a release with no problem, but half of p16 and p08 files are gone (size = 0). All references to these files have been replaced by other.

This is what I think : since those files always go by pair, and are named xxxL.p16 and xxxR.p16, and since p16 files are often sound files, they must be Right and Left sound files...
All R(ight) files have been replaced by empty files and all references to these files have been replaced by L(eft) files.
A dummy file has been added so that all files are stored near the border of the CD and are read faster.
This this surely why I don't have any problem with this release...

Azuriel · #8 22-10-2002, 09:39

HI there, sorry for my absence. First of all, my US release is something called simply Soul_Calibur.rar, an archive of 607 megs containing an image called Soul_Calibur.cdi of 806.674.280 bytes. It's NTSC because there's no 50hz/60hz selector at the start of the game. The strange behaviour with the intro is something showing up from a just burned image, so I don't believe it's something related with the wearing of the game... however, I'm searching too for an original copy of the game.
About the release you got, Megalexxx, I know about it. There's a patch to fix the skipping audio in the US release which consists in removing all the R (or L) music files and making the game point to the same music files to remove the skipping (basically, you monoize the audio!!), then adding a dummy file. It would be interesting to see if the game follows the iter described by roBx^: if not, then I could follow the patching procedure and see what comes out...

Megalexxx · #9 22-10-2002, 10:39

That's what I said...

Well, sometimes, I get full intro, sometimes I don't.
I first thought sorting files would help, but now I doubt it : the game spend its whole time reading the CD. It seems it doesn't load anything, even small music files !

roBx^ · #10 28-10-2002, 10:15

Yeah i swear when i first burned the game i did get the whole intro. I also remember i let the intro play and it suddenly showed the whole again fter 2 or 3 times resetting... very strange but i have this with another game:

giant gram 2 in nippon budokan also stops close to the end of the intro and the whole DC reboots then.. so even worse than SC.. Again the first few times I could see the whole intro. I guess its just luck how good the CD spins as this game are prolly not pre load but real time load as last blade, garou etc.. and we all know cd-r can't compare to a GD rom in terms of speed and power. Both games are close to 80 min so i guess they are dummied.

By the way u brought me on an idea to reburn this game, when i patch pal games the selector dissapears from the whole game! i did it with lemans.. ( i burned this 2 times, 1 unpatched 1 patched coz i got an overrload msg onscreen.. which turned out to be this game can't be booted with multiple memorycards inserted lol) so i don't have to choose 60 again while booting the game up.. lazy me

Maybe it helps speeding up the booting of the game, removing a whole screen? lol

Megalexxx · #11 28-10-2002, 11:22

The "common 60 Hz patch" is in fact a country check. This is in the NFO of PAL2NTSC.exe :

-----------------------------------------------

The reason the games play in 50hz on a PAL Dreamcast is down to short sightedness of the
programmers. They seemed to have added a country check (as in check if their game is
currently running on a Jap/US/Euro Machine) and set the screen accordingly. Dont ask me
why they would bother to do this on a game which "offically" cant be played on a euro
machine to begin with. The only thing i can think is it allows them to easily produce a
euro version by just re-mastering the disk to run on a PAL machine and hell to borders and
slow gameplay noone in PAL land will notice.

roBx^ · #12 28-10-2002, 13:02

Yeah they are lazy and it saves money for them.. but with the current wave of new consoles its all fixed as far as i know, i heard the x box auto detects if the TV supports 60hz if so the games run full speed full screen, (all games i played did w/o any 60hz option so its maybe true). And i heard the GC had a feature if u hold L and R that u get into 60hz mode. The ps2 however is the black sheep.. lots of great games destroyed: ever played code veronica, GT3 or even Final fantasy X and devil may cry pal?? thats absolutely lame imho count the 2 borders up in dmc and u lose about half of the screen and dante moves annoyingly slow so his speed jumps are not so speedy anymore... why then pay a full price for a half arsed EU conversion while u can down the ntsc version for free huh?

BTW i reburned SC patched and the option stays... BUT my intro's back once again, for how long will it last... to be continued