Hi, I recently downloaded PCXS-Reloaded for my intel mac, and everything seems to be working OK so far. I've only downloaded one game, and it works although it doesn't look quite up to the visual quality I remember from real PS1's. And that's my issue. When I've looked at tutorial videos or screenshots of other people using PCSX-Reloaded, although maybe they're on PC or Linux I'm not sure, they have options of multiple graphics plugins, of adjusting their screen resolution.
All these configuration options. They even have a 'configuration' drop menu at the top.
![Emulator Emulator](https://cdn.instructables.com/F30/HE2X/GCX4UGI5/F30HE2XGCX4UGI5.LARGE.jpg)
PCSX Reloaded is a Playstation One emulator for Windows that lets you enjoy the huge catalogue of one of the most beloved video game consoles in history.
All my PCSX-R has is 'preferences' and then there are 'configure' tabs, but they don't really let you adjust anything other than checking boxes that help for bugs in specific games. But no option to adjust my screen resolution. No option to use like 'P.E.O.P.S OpenGL graphics thing, or any other of the better 'drivers' I see other people using.
How can I fix this? I even downloaded every plugin I could find, like LilyPad, Gsdx, Twinpad, GPUPeopsOpenGl. None of them have anything in them that actually say plugins. There are folders with lots of text files and one '.dll' file. None of them work when I put them into my PCSX-Reloaded plugins folder, either individually, or putting the whole folder into my plugins folder, or changing the extension on files to the same extension as my working plugins. So how can I add these plugins to PCSX-Reloaded on mac?
How can I get all the options everyone else has like making sure the right screen resolution is being used and being able to change that manually if it isn't, and all of that stuff? For example, here is a youtube video of someone using PCSX-Reloaded, and he has multiple plugins or drivers for the graphics that make it work better already installed when he downloaded it, that came with it, and tons of options.
The only thing I even have with a bios option is in the 'File' drop down menu at the top of my screen (not shown in the screenshot), where it has options 'Run CD,' 'Run ISO.' , and 'Run BIOS'. And when I click 'Run BIOS', it opens up the windowed screen the same as when I run a game, except instead of loading a game, it loads a sony screen that says 'main menu' in the top right corner, and 'Memory Card' or something in the middle lower left, and 'CD Player.' So I mean, it seems from that at least that the BIOS is working.
I think everything is working. There just doesn't seem to be the better graphics drivers or screen resolution or any of those options for my mac leopord (10.5.8) version of PCSX as there is for linux or windows versions. I don't know. That's what I'm trying to find out. It's just so weird that I don't even have screen resolution options. I can adjust the screen resolution of my actual computer, but that messes with everything on screen, not just the game, and zooms in everything so then the little playstation window that normally only takes up a fraction of my screen starts taking up almost the whole screen, and my system preferences window that I have to go to to adjust the screen resolution in the first place actually blocks the whole PS window out, and I have to move it so I can click the PS window and bring it to the front, and it just seems to mess everything up and I don't think it's helping anything.
Not even sure what resolution I should use for PS except that I don't think it matters when you do it that way, or that it works when you do it that way. I think the point is to adjust it in the actual PCSX so it changes how it computes the graphics of the game in that regard, instead of PCSX still doing everything the same and then my computer having to change the resolution afterwards. Don't think it's the same.
And that's why it's so weird there's not even a screen resolution option in my PCSX preferences. Maybe try extracting just the plugins from those newer builds and putting them in your older one?
Anyway, unless you MUST have higher internal resolution, software-based plugins are fine IMO. The supposedly 'better' plugins like Pete's OpenGL and such can be pretty problematic on a lot of games, and sometimes require you to have specific settings and such for them, whereas software-based plugins are much more compatible and accurate. If you say the current plugin isn't up to par with how real PS1 hardware looked, you should remember that, assuming you played PS1 way back in the day, CRT TVs displayed low resolution games much better than modern LCD screens do due to not having to scale the image. Software plugins are very close to the real PS1 output, so if anything is making the image look bad, it's your display having to scale. OpenGL plugins can render at a higher resolution, which helps in that one regard, but as a tradeoff you get much more prominent polygon wobbling, as well as graphical anomalies depending on the game, some of which even special game fixes do not address. Personally, I would just switch to Mednafen, preferably through RetroArch. No plugins, more accurate, just works.
You just don't get super hi-res visuals, is all, but RetroArch's amazing shader support can help a lot. It doesn't have the 'other options' or even the resolution option! Just a bunch of meaningless check boxes for fixes for specific games that I don't even have, and pretty much nothing else. No option to adjust screen resolution. No option to change GPU drivers.
No options to do ANYTHING. Everyone else's version of PCSX-R has them, how come I don't? Also I understand the point the other poster made about the other versions being more complicated, which is definitely a bad thing.
Unfortunately, what I'm using now just isn't cutting it. Having not played PS1 in ages, when I saw Final Fantasy VII (7) playing on the emulator (an IOS I downloaded from coolrom or something), I could only suspect that it looked oddly blurry and pixelated, and way below even PS1 standards, and that the lines shooting horizontally across my screen during the opening CGI sequence weren't normal, but I couldn't be sure if that's just how it looked. Maybe it was normal that I couldn't see any of the character's eyes ever and that they were always popping in and out and blinking and always moving, their heads never still (not eyelids blinking but literally appearing and disappearing), and that there were all these little squares popping up on everyone's clothes, and pixels and blurriness everywhere even in the cutscenes. But now I've confirmed it. I went on youtube and watched a 720p user video of the PS1 version of Final Fantasy VII being played, and even 720p videos always look worse on my computer than the real thing on an actual TV, or something I'm playing on my actual computer. What I'm saying is putting the video on youtube always makes it look worse than it really is, even at 720p. And yet, the youtube video of FF7 looked significantly better than the version the emulator I'm using is pumping out on my computer.
I paused at the exact same point and it was obvious. In fact let me just screenshot that for everyone. PS1 footage from youtube of Barret and Cloud after coming off the train. Well regarding your first idea, I thought you were a genius for a second there. I downloaded the latest PCSX-R version, right-clicked on the application, selected 'show package contents,' then eventually got to the plugins folder, opened it, and moved it into the plugins folder of my 10.5.8 OSX version of PCSX-R that actually works.
Then I opened my version of PCSX-R and went to preferences to see if the new plugins were there to try, but they weren't. So I was dismayed. Then I decided, what if I just try opening each individual plugin itself, by clicking on it? And sure enough, when I did that, it asked me 'do you want to install this plugin on PCSX-R?' Then I selected yes. Then a window came up saying it was successfully installed and to restart PCSX-R. YAY!And then a new window saying it could not open the plugin.
I hoped maybe that was separate, like maybe it meant they weren't the kind of files they are made to be opened by themselves individually, but that they would still be installed in PCSX-R where they would work within that application once I restarted. But nope, I tried it with all the plugins, and none of them show up as options to select in my PCSX-R.
Maybe the plugins themselves are also made for a newer operating system? Any way around this?
Also what is mednafen, and what do you mean via retroarch? Could you please post a link to what I need to download specifically? I'm also having all sorts of problems with PCSX2 for PS2 emulation to the point it won't even work, so if you have a better option for me there as well that would be great. EDIT: I just downloaded Retroarch-Phoenix-0.9.9 from this webpage, the top line that says 'RetroArch 0.9.9-final w/ RetroArch-Phoenix,' and it 'unexpectedly quits' whenever I try to open the RetroArch-Phoenix application. Yeah, IIRC RetroArch may also require a newer version of OSX. And about the graphics, trust me, that is almost exactly how the real hardware looks.
The only difference is that the blur from CRT TVs and the lower quality cables used on PS1 hides those details substantially. What you're doing is taking that accurate image that real hardware outputs, and throwing it onto a super sharp display that reveals all the once-hidden blemishes and blows them up several times over due to scaling. You can, of course, make the image crisper and hide those ugly pixels away through the use of hardware-accelerated plugins like Pete's. But I personally dislike doing so for a game like FFVII that uses pre-rendered backgrounds, since the end result is sharp polygons walking around low-res static backgrounds. It's a very apparent clash, and it takes me out of the game. FFVII really isn't cut out for that kind of enhancement if you ask me. I would leave it as is for the sake of consistency.
But that's just me. Appreciate the continued help. Just to clarify, by delete, do you mean put in trash and empty trash delete, or just move it somewhere else out of my plugins folder? Because if I delete it and the new one doesnt work, I'll have to redownload the first PCSX. Which I guess isnt a big problem. And by 'copy,' do you mean duplicate the newer plugin file and move the copied version to my old plugins folder, or do you mean just move it from the new archive to my old plugins folder? Sorry to be a stickler on the details but apparently my computer is itself a stickler on the details and everything has to be done just so.
Honestly I was enjoying FF7 for as long as I could lie to myself that the version I was playing was as good as it looks on a normal PS1. But that's just because I'm blown away at the story and how they merged gameplay and story (mostly just because there isn't really much gameplay besides the battle system which is kind of separate. The rest is just moving your character to the right location to get to the next dialogue bar. But, I mean this game is so old, I always heard people saying years ago that they played it when they were a teenager or whatever and that it was great, or this classic iconic game, like everyone always mentions FF7, and I wondered if maybe it was overhyped.
And in the sense that the graphics are horrible and there's no voice acting and the combat is kind of lame so far, I mean all Im doing is picking the attacks with the most damage and intertwining healing potions or cure spells when I need them, so where's the strategy in that?, so in that sense it is overhyped, but story and character wise, I keep getting this feeling I've never had playing a game which just screams out at me 'I am playing the Star Wars of video games.' And I always suspected, as someone who only got to really start playing games at home when Xbox came out and then Xbox 360 and PS3, and only got a taste of older systems or PC games in their prime at friends houses, so I couldn't be sure, but I always suspected there was something in those games I played at friends houses and just the older games that the newer ones were lacking. And boy if FF7 is any indication, I was dead right. After the first hour it seems FF7 basically plays the same music the whole game, at least through where I am, and yet 10 hours in the same scores are still better than any music I can think of in modern games, even when I heard it for the first time.
FF7's music after 10 hours is better than modern game's music the first time you hear it, is what I mean. Dialogue, story/gameplay integration. Modern games, and this is probably an unintended consequence of cutscenes and voice acting, tell you story in a cutscene, and then there's two hours of playing a level that's just gameplay, and none of the characters talk the whole two hours, and there's no story, because the engine isn't set up to have facial animations and dialogue during gameplay, during real time rendering, only during a cutscene.
So basically you're supposedly playing a story game like Mass Effect or whatever that routinely makes you go hours without getting any story. It's just told in bursts and that doesn't work. FF7, because it's just text windows of dialogue, can pop those windows up any time they want. You rarely go five minutes in the game without some character building dialogue or something that makes you laugh or something propelling the story. It's just a huge difference.
And the body movement animations of the characters, because the graphics weren't good enough to do real facial animations, are actually extremely emotive happening behind the text dialogue windows, and it works very well. They did amazing job with what they had. They had to be creative. They're not so much today. And then there's the quality of dialogue.
People think of stuff like Mass Effect today as being a great written game, but it's really not. People just think that because it tells a huge sweeping story, connected through multiple games, with player choice and branching story options, in a huge universe. And in that sense, it is well written, just because it's ambitious and a huge undertaking.
But in terms of dialogue, the game with its conversation wheel is horrible. Where's FF7's dialogue is always so personal, so involved with what the characters are feeling and who they are and the story, like good writing should be, Mass Effect's is all about exposition. They let you go back through the conversation wheel to make sure you ask every question they give you the option to, which of course having that option creates this OCD like need for the player to always use it because you don't want to miss any important information, and yet 90% of the information isn't important.
And worse, that's the point, it's always information, never DIALOGUE, never feelings, motivations, characters. The dialogue is always like 'what's a spectre?' And then you have to listen for a minute for a long drawn out explanation.
'What's waiting for me at the end of my mission?' 'What tactics should I be aware of?'
'I'm supposed to meet this character at my mission, what can you tell me about them?' And like three more options about that to sit through. It's just constantly baiting you to ask questions about your mission and where you're going that you don't even really need to know, and you could just go through the game and experience the story much better and faster if they didn't even put those options in there to begin with. And the character dialogue that is in Mass Effect is just nowhere near as good.
I've only just got to the part where Sephiroph is really introduced and given back story, but no villain in Mass Effect is anywhere near as iconic, none of your companions are as interesting as Cloud's party. Anyway, getting to the point, I disagree that this is how the game normally looks.
I got the video of how it really looks from youtube, video of the PS1 version I'm pretty sure, and watching it on my same computer screen as I play the emulator on. So the screenshot I took was viewing both on the same computer, with the same display, and yet one, even on youtube, looked way better than the one I have natively on my computer. So I don't understand what you mean that my version looks just as good as the youtube screenshot I took, its just that my display resolution is messing it up.
I took the screenshot of both on the same display. The Youtube screenshot is using one of the fancy schmancy OpenGL plugins, which render 3D at a higher resolution. Trust me, as someone who has an actual PS1 copy of the game and played it on original hardware, that is NOT how the real game on a real PS1 looks like, not at all. And Youtube is not a good barometer of quality in any case, as it blurs the image somewhat. On real gameplay, unless you turn on filtering of some kind, the backgrounds would look a lot more pixelated, making them clash with the hi-res 3D models.
Appreciate the continued help. Just to clarify, by delete, do you mean put in trash and empty trash delete, or just move it somewhere else out of my plugins folder? Because if I delete it and the new one doesnt work, I'll have to redownload the first PCSX. Which I guess isnt a big problem. And by 'copy,' do you mean duplicate the newer plugin file and move the copied version to my old plugins folder, or do you mean just move it from the new archive to my old plugins folder? Sorry to be a stickler on the details but apparently my computer is itself a stickler on the details and everything has to be done just so. Lastly, the much-touted hi-res visuals attained with an OpenGL plugin.
3D models are much sharper, and details such as Barret's eyes are more visible, but the rest of the image remains just as low-res and pixellated as before. Also not pictured is the much more obvious polygon jitter you get when raising internal resolution, especially visible during battles. It can be quite distracting if you ask me. In any case, on a real console, the picture would look much closer to either pictures 2 and 3 (maybe more like picture 2 but blurrier depending on the scaling) than picture 4, which is purely an emulation phenomenon, and not at all accurate to the real console. Thanks for clarifying!
Obviously I haven't seen it in real time with the distractions you talked about, but just based on those screenshots, the last one looks so much better than the others. I think the characters not looking all dotty and pixelated and flashing where you can't even see their eyes is a big deal. But bottom line, what can I do here? Duplicating the newer plugins didn't work.
The PS2 emulator won't work period for me. Haven't tried the wii one yet but there's a chance it won't work either. So what are my options here? I just want to be able to have a PS1, PS2, Wii, and potentially original xbox emulators working on my computer running at the highest quality that is available right now with the best plugins that are available. So which option should I be looking at? Installing a newer version of OSX, if so which one specifically?
Using bootcamp and installing windows? Which version of windows? Linux (if that even works on mac)? At this point I'm so fed up with trying it with mac osx 10.5.8, I'm willing to spend what's necessary to get the best operating system for these emulators and just use that. But I need to know what that one is. Additionally, if I install a newer version of Mac OSX, will I lose any of my files that are on this operating system?
Will some applications stop working? Or that's okay to do without any problems? Thanks for the response. I assumed the newer versions of OSX would have a better version of PCSX-R, but what I really wanted to know is whether the newer versions of OSX have a better version even than the Winows version? And so should I just go for windows with bootcamp, or the newest version of OSX? Additionally, sometimes the absolute newest version of an OS still has bugs, or applications like PCSX-R aren't completely ironed out for the newest version. So would it make more sense to upgrade to the 2nd newest version instead?
PCSX-R for the 2nd newest version would still have the graphics plugins I want, but maybe less bugs? And what about PCSX2 for PS2 emulation, and what about Dolphin for WII emulation? Are you sure those work best on the newest OSX operating system, or am I better off trying windows on bootcamp?
EDIT: And apparently I have to buy Snow Leopard, which is 10.6, first, in order to buy and install 10.7, in order to buy and install Mountain Lion which is 10.8. But as PCSX-R and all these other things even been released for 10.8 yet?
Maybe Im basically going to be stuck buying Snow Leopard, and then seeing if everything works on that. And then if it doesn't, buying and trying the next one, and seeing if everything works on that. It sucks but I doubt there is anyone out there who has tried the major emulators on all these operating systems and on bootcamp with windows who can tell me ahead of time which one is best.
It also includes several standard plugins, which means it will work right away. It has been ported from the similarly named Linux/Windows version. Features: - Excellent compatibility (check the list) - Simple Native Mac OS X Interface - Dynamic Recompiling CPU core - Software Rendered Graphics using P.E.Op.S GPU plugin - Full Sound support using P.E.Op.S SPU plugin - HID Controller Input support for up to 2 players - Support for Memory Card saves and usage of CVGS savegames - Freeze / defrost support - Partial support for operation without a PSX BIOS image - Native CD-ROM support - Open-Source, licensed under the GPL license Requirements: - Emulating a PSX is processor intensive and will need a 800MHz CPU or better for many games. However it's not unlikely that some games will play very nicely on slower hardware. You mileage may vary.