Silver Night's Crusaders *NOT WORKING* w/ OpenBoR for PSP *PLEASE HELP*

[paperclipmouse]

I am trying to play Silver Night's Crusade on the OpenBoR app for my PSP, but it will not work. I have successfully installed and played dozens of other OpenBoR games on my PSP so I can confirm that the app is installed properly and that I know how to add .PAKs properly for the system. My PSP is running CFW 6.60 PRO-B9 and is the PSP-3000 model, and the versions I tried of OpenBoR for PSP are v3.0 Build 3073 and v3.0 Build 6391, for reference.

I downloaded the file from the official website and tried adding the .PAK to my PSP's proper folder, but it will not work properly. I can access the OpenBoR menu like normal and select the .PAK for Silver, but the game starts and immediately goes to a credits screen before closing the entire OpenBoR app, bringing me back to the PSP's home screen.

I then tried playing Silver on my PSP with a newly installed, fully up to date version of OpenBoR with no other games or files not pertinent to this particular game. That yielded a slightly different but equally unsuccessful outcome. This time, the game loaded right away (without the OpenBoR menu that usually opens when you have multiple .PAKs to choose from) and started me off on a loading screen with the game's title and a loading bar. The loading bar showed progress over a few seconds, but just as it neared the end, the game, once again, crashed and sent me back to the PSP's home screen (this time without the credits screen popping up).

I also tried adding the files from the "Saves" folder onto the OpenBoR for PSP's "Saves" folder to see if that one component was necessary to get the game working properly on the PSP, but that also did not get the game to work. I also added the "msvcr.dll" file to the OpenBoR for PSP's root folder, just to see if that helped, but it did not (I suspect the .dll is for the Windows .exe and has nothing to do with the PSP's OpenBoR app, but I tried anyway just to be safe).

Has anyone gotten the game to work on their PSP's OpenBoR app, or even another system's OpenBoR program? I can only find that it works for the PC and Android as of right now, with no other indication that it has been played successfully (or even attempted at all) on other platforms with working OpenBoR ports.

I play everything on my PSP and really want to try this game, too, on my PSP. If anyone knows what I can do to get it working, or if perhaps the developers can get a PSP-compatible version out if it is not asking too much, I would be eternally grateful. Please help! Thank you.

 

[msmalik681]

The problem is possibly the ram limitation as the PSP 1000 only has 25mb ram and any other model up will only have 50mb ram so games will need to be optimized to run on the PSP in some cases the game may need to be totally re-worked as the PSP also have a very weak CPU at 333mhz single core. For these reasons we are dropping support for that system.

 

[paperclipmouse]

Aw, that's disappointing. This game looks fantastic and was looking forward to playing it portably. I'll still try it on PC though.

Do you happen to know anything about Dreamcast compatibility? I once burned a .CDI of a Castlevania OpenBoR that I randomly found online and it played fine. Does the same problem apply to the Dreamcast, with the limited power being a reason why more OpenBoRs aren't ported to it? Or can any OpenBoR be converted into a Dreamcast .CDI?

 

[msmalik681]

Yes a dreamcast only has 16mb ram and i think a 200mhz cpu so very limited at what it can run. We dropped support for dreamcast already but someone has made dreambor and ported some games to work with it.

 

[DCurrent]

paperclipmouse,

Welcome to the forum!

So far as PSP and Dreamcast are concerned, CPU really isn't the issue. The problem is memory. Both consoles have severe RAM limits, the Dreamcast more so. If a module won't run on PSP, it's out of the question on Dreamcast.

As msmalik681 said, we are dropping PSP support in next release and already dropped it for the Dreamcast several years ago. It just isn't worth our time. There's a group outside of our community that continued work on the Dreamcast, but it's really just keeping up to date with latest compilers and such. There's nothing they can do about the RAM limitations.

Also note modules cannot be optimized for specific platforms. Any claim to the contrary is erroneous. Assuming a module isn't built optimally to begin with, you could optimize it in general, but not for a port.

When someone reworks a module for lesser powered ports what they're really doing is compressing - often at the cost of significant content removal, and sometimes without the original creator's consent. It's not always that way, but just be wary that when you play any recent module on DC or PSP, there's a good chance you aren't getting the real experience.

DC

 

[paperclipmouse]

Damon Caskey & msmalik681

Thank you both for the information. I'm not a technical person so I never knew how involved some of this programming could be. I naively thought porting was as simple as converting a file to play on another system, but clearly that's not the case.

I think I'll just move to playing on the PC primarily since you've both indicated that my two preferred consoles aren't supported for newer releases (what are the odds that the only two systems I like for these kinds of games are unsupported? lol).

Thanks again for taking the time to reply. Good luck with future projects, I'll look forward to them (just not on the PSP or Dreamcast this time)!