PCSX2, Freezing and the Raki glitch
As I’ve been playing through the game with the PCSX2 emulator, I noticed something — all the times the game froze on my PS2 (usually in battle) still happen in PCSX2, but after about 8 seconds, everything always eventually chugs back to life. I didn’t really think too much about it until I reached the infamous Raki fight in Phase V.
In case you don’t know about this, there is a well-known glitch in the game where Raki uses a skill named ‘Fractal Change’ which completely freezes the game. This has happened to almost everyone, and NISA’s explanation is that it has to do with the allocation of memory in the game.
Much like the other random glitches, when you use PCSX2, the Raki glitch disappears. She powers up, and where the game would normally choke, it comes back after a couple seconds, as shown below.
The Raki glitch
It’s interesting that the text to the skill is completely missing - even though the emulator can recover from the hang, there’s still no actual text to display for the Fractal Change skill.
In this way, emulators are great. While the PS2 has no means of recovery when a game stomps all over its own memory, an emulator can essentially wait for it to clear itself out, and save you hours of frustration. Of course, PCSX2 saves you from those lock-ups, but brings its own lock-ups to the table; mainly, whenever you use savestates too much as opposed to saving on a memory card. But at least you don’t have to power level to get through that.
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Really? This must be great! I’m playing AT2 using PCSX2 0.9.6 and I once feared that glitch would happen but no more. Do I have to change the config, use patch or something to solve the Raki’s Glitch?
And there is also a problem with the game: The screen is split when you talk to the girls in their cosmosphere? Is there a solution for this problem, too? (my friend in PCSX2.net once told me that if i used the gistfix patch, it would be fine but the patch now doesn’t work for PCSX2 svn428 and later…
NISA probably just pulled an excuse out of their ass, or asked their technical department and they pulled one out.
Hey Ba Hao!
Nope, you don’t have to do anything to solve Raki’s glitch if you are playing on PCSX2 — just rip your game CD and play off it, and Raki will be just fine. I do warn you though, PCSX2 does have major drawbacks in terms of playing At2 for the first time. Like you said, the backgrounds are split, and the GUST fix doesn’t work anymore. There are other little bugs too, but nothing game-breaking, just things that take away from the experience a bit.
Either way, I hope you enjoy the game! Sorry the guide isn’t ready for your playthrough, but maybe it will be for your second one :)
Thank you, Saru, for replying to me :D. I think I can endure those problem ’cause I am a die-hard fan of JRPG. AT2 really has amazing story even though it is a little (just a little) boring when I find and rescue Luca (I was really uspet after what she said to Croix in the jail X< ). I nearly cried when I saw Reisha’s death :(. Anyway, the game is still great and NISA, the publisher is the one to be blamed for their painfully bad localization. (I really looked forward to the game when I heard the ENG ver would be released).
Finally, happy April’s Fool Day, everyone! :D
Hey Ba Hoa! :D
I feel the same…it was because of how much I loved At2 that I wanted to do this guide; the world they built behind the scenes really makes the game breathe, and I want to expand on that as much as possible. :) I hope you get to finish soon!
Also, if you haven’t seen it already, another group of fans is working on a retranslation at http://at2.metalbat.com/
Hey,
One way or another i ended up stumbling upon this site and started using pcsx2 to play AT2 so that i wouldn’t have to worry about the raki glitch i heard about. But since the split backround issue kept bothering me i did a quick google search to findout more about the gustfix and found this precompiled pcsx2 exe that seems to run the background images just fine. and here’s where i found the exe, http://www.mediafire.com/?wvhzhk1thoc
so far i’ve had a chance to play for a few minutes and everything seems to work fine w/ only a slight drop in fps(usually atleast 55fps on dual core intel @2.2Ghz and 8600gs in my lapptop), but i could probably change the config and speed that up later. Hope this helps.
*edit … hrm, href didn’t work right. anyways, here are the two img links i tried to paste …http://bayimg.com/GAoccAaBL http://bayimg.com/GAoccAaBL
Hi rei!
That is awesome! I didn’t think anyone did a precompiled exe for the gustfix…thank you so much! I’ll download and test it out myself tonight, and make a new post about it, so everyone can know about it. This’ll make screenshots way easier for me too, instead of doing it through my PS2.
Thank you again, rei! I really appreciate your info :)
Huh. So this is a precompiled version of PCSX2 that can use gustfix patch? Tonight I will give it a try and I hope that will work. If there is good result, I will report to all of u soon. (huh, please, work, please!)
yeah. Now that i’ve had a chance to try it out for more than a few minutes i’ll fill in some of the details about the stuff i’ve noticed so far(*i’m only ~4 hours into the game, ~1 w/ the gustfix ver).
i’m using that exe w/ the latest pcsx2 0.9.6 install and GSdx 890 plugin(SSSE3 ver), all other stuff is stock. The only major problems i’ve encountered so far are a drop in fps(~5) durring conversations(battles run at ~59 fps all the time) and the keyboard input occasionally lags alot when some of the speed hacks are enabled(particularly ‘enable iop x2 cycle rate’ and ‘waitcycles sync hack’ but so far the EE sync hacks seem to work fine. All in all, the big things i’ve noticed are that the background images appear correctly and treasure chest pitfalls are gone, but sometimes the black lines still appear next to the sprites.
Yeah, I agree with u, Rei. But it seems that the pitfall isn’t gone (or at least with my computer).The major problem is r-474 is so old that it gives me bad fps (drop for 7-8 fps–> My poor E2200 can’t afford more than 52 fps if I use this version. Therefore I only use this version to play when I “dive” and aftert that, switch back to the newest 0.9.6 (r872)(by using memory card).
So, I was playing the game on my PS2, and it kicks a lota butt. But yeah I ran into the glitch too…. I’m still a bit upset about it too.
Is there any way to over come the glitch on the PS2?
Other than just playing the Comp version of Ar Tonelico2
AT2 doesn’t have the PC Version, RPGirl, we play it by using PCSX2, you can download it at PCSX2.net. The recently released version of PCSX2 has solved the splitting glitch of the game, so you can play it nearly perfectly. If you play At2 on your PS2, maybe you need a patch 9search google, bro) to fix this glitch.
@Ba Hoa
The latest beta version of PCSX2 has fixed the tiling issues with the background concerning Tri-Ace and GUST games.
Find it at the official PCSX2 forums.
All I can say is this is the 3rd game by them that has done this at the end of a game. I will never buy another game from them again. I want my money back. They should have tested this completely on actual consoles before releasing a faulty product. lame lame lame!!!