Dreamcast-Talk.com

https://alex-free.github.io/pecf

Parasite Eve Credits Disc Read Fail Glitch Fix

The Glitch

At the end of the game Parasite Eve, the credits scroll and a 164.3 MB .XA audio file plays. Once the audio and video complete, you can save the game to create a 'EX' game save which not only allows you to keep one of your existing weapons and armour, but includes an entire new level and alternative ending/boss/credits.

I own a SCPH 1001 American Playstation manufactured in October of 1995. So old, the audio menu disc swap/single disk swap methods all work. Plays legit game discs perfectly 25 years later. However, to read my Verbatim CD-R's I have to angle it like this slash: \

Once angled (\) burned games play well. Occasionally the disc may stop and start spinning again when reading various CD-Rs, really not the end of the world.

To my surprise, after beating Parasite Eve once again but for the first time on this exact console, the disc drive sped up while trying to load the credit screen audio and then JUST GAVE UP. No retry like what happens every other time. Audio glitched out, the credits scrolled by until a black screen appeared. And then nothing. No 'EX' game save prompt. From what I can tell, if the audio does not play and finish Parasite Eve just crashes, which is what happens when the drive just gives up and goes home, never trying to read again.

I was determined to get the 'EX' save prompt and play through 'EX' on this console. Nothing was going to stop me. I came up with the theory stated previously, that for whatever reason the huge .XA file is too much for the 25 year old laser and it gives up, and since the credits don't allow the drive to retry a read it just crashes at the end.

So how could I have fixed this? My idea was to create my own CREDITS.XA file that contained 4 seconds of silence, and replace the existing one. My CREDITS.XA file is 175.2 KB, compared to the original 164.3 MB file. Surely this would be read entirely to completion since it was not massive, and satisfy the audio file ending successfully for the 'EX' save prompt to appear. Of course at first this was all a guess...

So I burn my modified Parasite Eve Disc 2 with the 4 seconds of silence credits .XA audio, and beat the ulitimite being, crazy how that used to be hard to do. Credits start rolling, a second or two of the credits audio is played, then cut off by silence, then the disk keeps spinning. To my horror, the disc stops spinning. I let the credits finish, and to my ultimate surprise I can save an 'EX' game! WTH, this was the last thing I was gonna try before giving up.

The Fix

Download my fix ( https://alex-free.github.io/pecf/parasi ... ts-fix.zip ) and PSX-Mode2-EN ( https://alex-free.github.io/pecf/psx-mode2-en.zip ), then unzip both files. Use PSX-Mode2-EN (works with wine on Linux as well) to replace CREDITS.XA with audio.xa, like in the example command below to patch your Parasite Eve Disc 2 .bin file:

psx-mode2-en.exe image_name '/home/alex/Desktop/Parasite Eve (USA) (Disc 2).bin' /XASTREAM/CREDITS.XA '/home/alex/Desktop/mod/audio.xa'

alexfree wrote:https://alex-free.github.io/pecf

Parasite Eve Credits Disc Read Fail Glitch Fix

The Glitch

At the end of the game Parasite Eve, the credits scroll and a 164.3 MB .XA audio file plays. Once the audio and video complete, you can save the game to create a 'EX' game save which not only allows you to keep one of your existing weapons and armour, but includes an entire new level and alternative ending/boss/credits.

[...]

Nothing was going to stop me. I came up with the theory stated previously, that for whatever reason the huge .XA file is too much for the 25 year old laser and it gives up, and since the credits don't allow the drive to retry a read it just crashes at the end.

So how could I have fixed this? My idea was to create my own CREDITS.XA file that contained 4 seconds of silence, and replace the existing one. My CREDITS.XA file is 175.2 KB, compared to the original 164.3 MB file. Surely this would be read entirely to completion since it was not massive, and satisfy the audio file ending successfully for the 'EX' save prompt to appear. Of course at first this was all a guess...

So I burn my modified Parasite Eve Disc 2 with the 4 seconds of silence credits .XA audio, and beat the ulitimite being, crazy how that used to be hard to do. Credits start rolling, a second or two of the credits audio is played, then cut off by silence, then the disk keeps spinning. To my horror, the disc stops spinning. I let the credits finish, and to my ultimate surprise I can save an 'EX' game! WTH, this was the last thing I was gonna try before giving up.

The Fix

Download my fix ( https://alex-free.github.io/pecf/parasi ... ts-fix.zip ) and PSX-Mode2-EN ( https://alex-free.github.io/pecf/psx-mode2-en.zip ), then unzip both files. Use PSX-Mode2-EN (works with wine on Linux as well) to replace CREDITS.XA with audio.xa, like in the example command below to patch your Parasite Eve Disc 2 .bin file:

psx-mode2-en.exe image_name '/home/alex/Desktop/Parasite Eve (USA) (Disc 2).bin' /XASTREAM/CREDITS.XA '/home/alex/Desktop/mod/audio.xa'

Thanks for your actual example!

By that, I mean, I have this idea/theory pop into my head for PS1 games as a theory lately, but I haven't went too far with it yet. I appreciate hearing your example work.

For bonus points to anybody who reads this, can you lower the sample rate of the .xa files and maintain compatibility with a physical PlayStation console? I was always curious about a middleway between (a) big XA file that can't be read, (b) what alexfree did, reduce file size to low level, and (c) one of my absurd theories, which is speeding up the audio to reduce run time/file size, and lowering the sample rate. Can you lower the sample rate of the XA music files?

Back to the topic at hand, thanks, alexfree. Your idea is particularly interesting in light of the recently-discovered Tony Hax exploit/the newly-availabke freepsxboot memory card-only exploit. I have a modded PAL PS1, but I can finally play burned discs on my NTSCunits, too. I think I'll save your file to my hard drive for future use...

ChristinaDreamcustDC wrote:
Thanks for your actual example!

By that, I mean, I have this idea/theory pop into my head for PS1 games as a theory lately, but I haven't went too far with it yet. I appreciate hearing your example work.

For bonus points to anybody who reads this, can you lower the sample rate of the .xa files and maintain compatibility with a physical PlayStation console? I was always curious about a middleway between (a) big XA file that can't be read, (b) what alexfree did, reduce file size to low level, and (c) one of my absurd theories, which is speeding up the audio to reduce run time/file size, and lowering the sample rate. Can you lower the sample rate of the XA music files?

Back to the topic at hand, thanks, alexfree. Your idea is particularly interesting in light of the recently-discovered Tony Hax exploit/the newly-availabke freepsxboot memory card-only exploit. I have a modded PAL PS1, but I can finally play burned discs on my NTSCunits, too. I think I'll save your file to my hard drive for future use...

My 4 seconds of silence .XA file is 38.7 KHz stereo, encoded by the Sony Movie Creator from the PSX SDK. I know the Sony Movie Creator also allows 18.9 KHz stereo or mono. So you could in theory extract an existing .XA file from a .bin file, re-encode it through Sony Movie Creator, and then put that file in the .bin file.