Star Ocean: First Departure

[micxploed]

-In game.
-update 9.5
this game works fine until you get control of your character for the first time. Character models are missing.

[vsub_]

Enable from the Graphics screen settings "Disable stencil test"

[micxploed]

Excellent. I wonder if this will also work for Jeanne arch. About to try...

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Well, I disabled stencil test, solved the missing character models problem, but now when entering a battle, it freezes...first enemy.

[micxploed]

as of 9.5 character models are missing. Disabling stencil test fix this problem, but at the very first enemy encounter of the game as it tries to go to the battle screen, it freezes at a black screen.

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Still not working

[MasterBlade007]

(11-01-2013 05:51 PM)Boredcajun Wrote:  I tried playing but after any text box closes the screen goes black with just a little bar of screen visible. Couldn't get any build or setting to stop doing it and only seen 1 other guy mention the same problem but no answer. Star ocean 2 works fine for me but not this one for some reason.

Hello! I have this issue too. After some mucking about, I've come to the conclusion that any black screen issues involve a glitch with dialogue boxes. The initial black screen after the into video is avoidable by making a mad dash to the exit before it darkens. However, after that point any closed dialogue boxes, be it from item gets or npc chat, causes the screen to go black everywhere but where the dialogue box had closed (What you described as the "little bar of screen visible").

http://i.imgur.com/SQ838xQ.png
http://i.imgur.com/uddx8Xj.png

In these screenshots, I had talked to two different NPCs. When exiting a dialogue window, the window will first close vertically before shrinking off-screen. The size of the remaining square is identical to that of the vertical closing before the shrinking, and it is during the shrinking where the black screen appears.

Going into a house will restore the screen back, but as the black screens are caused by dialogue boxes of any kind, its a moot point trying to play further.

I'm currently mucking around trying to find a fix, got nothing so far. Any help would be appreciated.

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QUICK EDIT: After savestating past the initial cutscreen/blackscreen room, hitting escape and returning to game eliminates the black area, similarly to entering a building. This might also be a result of mucking with render settings, but I'm not sure. Makes the game slightly playable (with Disable Stencil Test to fix invisible characters).

As of now the issues I've encountered seem centered around how the emulator handles layers.

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AAAAAAAND crash at first encounter. :X

[Dark Complex]

Im using ppsspp from a android phone. I fixed the invisible characters problem by disabling stencil test. I fixed one problem only to encounter another. Soon as i confront the bandits in the beggining the game freezes on the black screen soon as the battle is about to begin. Has anyone found a solution to this problem?

[nekomaster]

I tried build 0.9.5-850 and 0.9.5-930 (both AMD64) and both still produce the same problem that's been plaguing Star Ocean.

If I leave things alone, characters are invisible

Disable stencil thingy and they appear though sprites appear over things that should hide them like walls and objects.

Changing the buffering mode doesnt do anything for me.

I'm currently running PPSSPP on a GTX 570

Is there a fix for this yet or is there one in the works?

I'd rather play this updated version of Star Ocean then go back to the SNES version

[Dark Complex]

Well i finally got it to work. In 0.9.5 you need to disable the stencil test on order to see the characters. Once loading a load state you will get the frozen black screen soon as a battle states. Actually save and load your game file from the star ocean menu, not by ppsspp states. Now for the very first battle in the game. If it freezes on you with 0.9.5 then install 0.9.1 and disable the render buffering to see the characters. With 0.9.1 i didn't get the frozen black screen. I soon updated to 0.9.5 to customise my control layout. Im actually four hours into the game now. At the beginning save the first chance you get, dont save on ppsspp states

Things that can help you out.
-For me, when i exit the game/ppsspp by hitting the home button on my phone and go back to it, the next battle will freeze. When ever coming back to this game do so by loading your data by the star ocean game, not ppsspp states. Once you exit out of the emulator you might need to load the game again so battles won't freeze.

-World map may be a little laggy, if it is then enable auto skip frame. Mine runs on auto skip perfectly. If by any chance your screen flickers black then adjust the skip frame manually to your liking.

Hopefully this helps you guys out because it worked for me and now im happily playing star ocean... haven't tried part 2 though...

Btw, I'm playing this game from my droid. Also, this game is way better then the original version

[Xionanx]

Version 0.9.5-1002 seems to have fixed SO:FD. (Windows 8 - 64 Bit version of PPSSPP). No invisible sprites (that I can see at least... lol). NO getting stuck at black screen during battle loads. First 15 minutes of game plays smooth as silk.

EDIT: However this is a "slight" delay with some text dialogue showing up, but its barely noticeable and very tolerable.

EDIT2: Spoke too soon, as soon as you go out to the overworld and the return into a town, the characters go invisible again. This is easily fixed however by switching to non-buffered rendering. So the game needs to be played non-buffered it seems

[Crimsonchaos01]

As of 0.9.5-933 (Windows 7 64 bit) a few issues with screenshots:

Sprites randomly glitch on the world map:

http://imgbox.com/abiC3tqj

Graphics glitches in a few spots on the world map:

http://imgbox.com/adw3sYfv

Text glitches appear randomly in menus, and dialogue boxes:

http://imgbox.com/adoVaRiR

Despite the few issues, the game is fully playable. The game never hung up on me a single time.

To put those issues into context:

The sprite glitch seems to be random, and possibly happened more often during elevation changes? Same as with the glitched text, the glitched sprites also update to the correct ones if you stand still for long enough. Sometimes happens when switching the camera angle as well.

The graphics glitches on the world map show up depending on the camera angle.

The text glitches appear totally random, and possibly appear more frequently after opening the menu after a random battle. I've also seen glitched text in random battles as well in the boxes that list exp, fol gained. The glitched text does update to the correct text eventually, but it takes 5-6 secs sometimes.

Other notes:

Possible the text and sprite glitch have the same culprit?

I had to disable stencil test to get sprites to show up in 0.9.5-933 as well.

I never ran into any problems people are talking about with random battles freezing in 0.9.5-933, and the game never froze up for me a single time.

[hotsuma]

I still have the flying character problem. I set buffer rendering, disable stencil test.

[[Unknown]]

And the version of PPSSPP you're using (shown in the title bar and the logo on startup)?

-[Unknown]

[shmyazoo]

I'm new here, just started using PPSSPP. I'm using the 0.9.6.2 version and the only problem I'm having with this particular game is the one related to the character sprites being rendered above all other objects that should cover them, like walls, pillar and stuff like that.

Here's a link of the graphical error:

http://i.imgbox.com/aci4V3yQ.jpg

Is there a fix to this yet? Tried messing with some options but nothing had any effect.

[vsub_]

As far as I know,there is no fix for it and it is known problem

[Henrik]

The game writes to the stencil buffer using the CPU. In OpenGL ES, it's not possible to directly upload a stencil buffer to the GPU so we can't emulate it directly. However, I'm in the process of adding a function hooking mechanism so that we can add game specific workarounds for things like this, and I think it will be possible to fake it well enough with some special code.

The alternative is to use the software renderer but it's just too slow for practical gameplay currently.