Homebrew RetroArch PCSX ReARMed Multi Disc: What to do for FF7 ?

Andorin · Jul 15, 2020

Hi everybody !

First of all, so nice to meet all of your community, learnt and discovered so much things in the past few days on your forum. So nice ! :bow:

I have not found any answer to my question on the internet, and I've even never found my question (as if it was evident for everybody and not me... :rofl2:

)

I just installed the last LibRetro emulator from the last RetroArch version to play FF7 on my N3DS.
As the game is playing wonderfully and I want to keep playing through the three discs, I'm affraid that I did probably wrong when I put the game on my SD Card and I fear the moment I will have to change disc. Will it be possible with the way I proceeded ?

I created a multi-disc .PBP file (with the 3 .bin images) with PSX2PSP then put it on my SD. Then, in my 3DS, launched the PSX emulator (from RetroArch) and the games launches perfectly.

Will I be able to change disc when the game will ask me to ?
Or maybe should I have to paste the three .bin files of the game on my SD and name them in a specific way ?

(+) I'm aware of the .chd files, is it rly better to play with that kind of files instead of .bins ?

Hope I've been clear, thanks to all of you.

justinweiss · Jul 21, 2020

You shouldn't have a problem -- you can change discs through the menu. As long as you're also saving to the "memory card," the worst case would be that you would have to rename some files. But it should be fine.

CHD / PBP are both much faster than .bin/.cue on 3DS, the 3DS is so slow loading from SD card that shrinking data as much as possible is very helpful.

Rahkeesh · Jul 21, 2020

Quick menu has disc management, that will let you swap between discs within a multi-disc PBP. You can call up the menu at any time while playing a game to do so.

TurdPooCharger · Jul 21, 2020

Here's an example in how to setup RetroArch (PCSX ReARMed core).

How to (re-)install RetroArch from scratch, convert a PSX/PS1 game [Ex: Castlevania: SotN], and play this on PCSX ReARMed core.

To run multidisc games in .CHD format, place the converted files in the same directory.

sdmc:/roms/psx/
- Final Fantasy VII (Disc 1) [SCUS-94163].chd
- Final Fantasy VII (Disc 2) [SCUS-94164].chd
- Final Fantasy VII (Disc 3) [SCUS-94165].chd
- Final Fantasy VII.m3u

For the .M3U file, create this with a text editor like Notepad or Programmer's Notepad. If the *.chd files are named with special characters, save that *.m3u in Encoding: unicode.

Have this written in the Final Fantasy VII.m3u file.

Code:

Final Fantasy VII (U) (Disc 1) [SCUS-94163].chd
Final Fantasy VII (U) (Disc 2) [SCUS-94164].chd
Final Fantasy VII (U) (Disc 3) [SCUS-94165].chd

Launch the *.m3u instead of the individual *.chd roms. When the game asks you eject and switch to the next disc,

MAIN MENU → Quick Menu → Disc Control → Eject Disc → Current Disc Index (1 → 2) → Insert Disc

udance4ever · Jan 26, 2021

hmm - not having much luck with CHD with the PCX ReARMed core on RetroArch iOS.

I’m using chdman (SDL MAME 0.226 on macOS 10.15.6) on don’t have any issues with single disc CHD with Yabause (Saturn), Flycast (Dreamcast), Beetle SGX (PC Engine)

So I thought I’d try a single disc PSX game to help troubleshoot and sure enough, it fails with “Failed to Load Content” even on a single disc. So the issue seems specific to the ReARMed core.

My ultimate goal is to get FF7 working with a multi-disc m3u with multiple chd files as outlined above.

I figure if I can’t get a single disc PCX game to work, it’s not going to work with the 3 disc FF7.

Again, I can confirm that the chd files I create (createcd) from bin/cue files work just fine with 3 other cores (Yabause, Flycast, and Beetle SGX).

Any pointers how to isolate the cause of “Failed to Load Content” - is there a RetroArch log file with my details somewhere? I can’t seem to find it.

udance4ever · Jan 27, 2021

case solved. I copied the CHDs over to my Pixel 3a and it works in RetroArch Plus (64-bit).

Therefore it is an issue/bug specific to “pcsx_rearmed_libretro_ios.dylib” (EDIT: github: libretro/pcsx_rearmed/issues/493)

The .m3u as outlined above works great. I even discovered I could mix .chd and .bin in the same .m3u. This way I have a compressed disc 1 and disc 2 and disc 3 are zero length until I actually get this far in the game

Code:

Final Fantasy VII (Disc 1).chd
Final Fantasy VII (Disc 2).cue
Final Fantasy VII (Disc 3).cue

EmmaQF · Apr 7, 2021

sdmc:/roms/psx/
- Final Fantasy VII (Disc 1) [SCUS-94163].chd
- Final Fantasy VII (Disc 2) [SCUS-94164].chd
- Final Fantasy VII (Disc 3) [SCUS-94165].chd
- Final Fantasy VII.m3u

For the .M3U file, create this with a text editor like Notepad or Programmers Notepad. If the *.chd files are named with special characters, save that *.m3u in Encoding: unicode.

Have this written in the Final Fantasy VII.m3u file.

Code:

Final Fantasy VII (U) (Disc 1) [SCUS-94163].chd
Final Fantasy VII (U) (Disc 2) [SCUS-94164].chd
Final Fantasy VII (U) (Disc 3) [SCUS-94165].chd

Launch the *.m3u instead of the individual *.chd roms. When the game asks you eject and switch to the next disc,

MAIN MENU → Quick Menu → Disc Control → Eject Disc → Current Disc Index (1 → 2) → Insert Disc

[/QUOTE]
Hi I just tried this with Resident Evil 2 and when I Insert Disc the FPS drops to 0 and the game doesnt change discs and the one currently playing stops I am using a chd too and did 1-1 what you said here

Homebrew RetroArch PCSX ReARMed Multi Disc: What to do for FF7 ?

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