Easy Setup Guide for Playing Chrono Cross in HD

[legaiaflame]

This is an easy setup guide for Chrono Cross HD Texture pack along with Retroarch and Playstation Beetle HW:

To play Chrono Cross in HD you will need to download the HD Texture Pack Found here and the Retroarch emulator.

Installing Retroarch:

The Chrono Cross Texture Pack works with the Retroarch emulator along with the Playstation Beetle HW Core. Forst you will need to download and setup the Retroarch emulator.

Go to the main Retroarch site and choose which device you want to install the emulator for. Once you have Retroarch installed you will need to put the bios files in the system folder found in your Retroarch main installation folder. Although, you’ll have to find the Bios files yourself, if you do a google search there is a pack on http://archive.org/

Once you have the emulator installed go to main menu and select the "Online Updater". Update everything in here.  Then in Retroarch settings go to settings: Video/Scaling/Aspect Ratio/and set the aspect ratio to 16:9.

Next you will need to download your cores. A core is the emulator itself of which you install within the Retroarch user interface. Go to main menu and select download core. This is where you will download the Sony Playstation Beetle PSX HW core for PS1 games.

Setting up an M3U file for Multiple Discs

Once your core is downloaded you need to set up the game files. Retroarch will scan and play any .cue file of a specific game. Put your game files in a folder on your computer and move on to the next step. For a multi disc game you need to go through an additional step. You need to set up a .m3u text document containing all of your game files. So open up notebook or notebook++ and copy the name of your game files exactly for each disc. Example:

Visual Guide: https://docs.retroachievements.org/Multi-Disc-Games-Tutorial/

Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 1).cue

Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 2).cue

Then go to file and save as. You can save this file whatever you want so I saved mine as: Chrono Cross.m3u. But the ending extension is very important and it needs to be .m3u

NOTE: If you can't see the .txt extension at the end of your text document title you need to change your settings to show known file extensions. In Windows 10 it's very simple, you can find that on your folder under 'View' and a checkbox reading 'File name extensions'.

Once you create this file put it in the same directory as your game files. Then when in Retroarch use this file to load your game. Go to main menu/load content and select your game folder location and load that m3u file. Your game should boot up and you can select which core you want to use.

When you actually have to switch discs you will need to press F1 and go into the quick menu and perform these steps:

Play until the "Please insert disc 2" prompt.

Quick Menu > Disc Control > Eject Disc.

QUICK MENU > RESUME, just for a second.

Quick Menu > Disc Control > Current Disc Index, change for disc 2.

And finally: Insert Disc.

For all other single disc games you can just go to main menu/load content and just load the .cue game file as is.

Chrono Cross HD Texture Pack and Playstation Beetle HW Tracking Textures Option:

So, the Playstation Beetle HW core has an option to replace game textures with HD ones! There is currently one game that has a complete HD texture pack for use: and that's Chrono Cross! You can download the Chrono Cross texture pack here on the chrono compendium wiki (do a google search 6th link down) in the upscale section and download the texture pack. You can also find it on the main Chrono Compendium site under Encyclopedia/modification/ at the very bottom go to translations and just above that you will see "Chrono Cross Modifications and Translations". Click on that and go to the "Upscale Project". Download the Upscaled texture pack. Or find it here:

https://www.chronocompendium.com/Term/Chrono_Cross_Modifications_and_Translations.html

Next, chose a folder to put your Chrono Cross game or .cue files and HD texture pack into. You will have to make a custom folder for the HD textures called: Chrono Cross-texture-replacements

So your game folder should look like this:

Chrono Cross-texture-replacements (This folder contains the upscaled HD textures)

Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 1).bin

Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 1).cue

Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 2).bin

Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 2).cue

Chrono Cross.m3u



The files inside my Chrono Cross.m3u file reads as:

Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 1).cue

Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 2).cue

As you may have noticed above, you need to set up an m3u file so retroarch can switch to disc 2. Open up notepad and put the 2 game names as shown above like I did and save the file as Chrono Cross.m3u. Then you have to name your HD texture replacements folder the same thing: Chrono Cross-texture-replacements. When all this is set and done have retroarch load the Chrono Cross.m3u file to start the game.

Once you have your game folder set up like this go and run the game in Retroarch. Press F1 and go to options. First of all vulkan needs to be enabled, both in the Retroarch video settings and in the F1 options menu. Also, go to Core aspect ration and force 4:3. Next in the options menu turn on Track Textures and Replace Textures. Now restart the emulator and game. When you reload the game you should see the textures being replaced with HD ones! Note you don't need to turn on dump textures unless you want to actually dump the game's textures but for that you would need to make another separate folder called: Chrono Cross-texture-dump



Later on when the game prompts you to switch to disc 2 do the following:

Press F1 Quick Menu > Disc Control > Eject Disc.

QUICK MENU > RESUME, just for a second.

Quick Menu > Disc Control > Current Disc Index, change for disc 2.

And finally: Insert Disc.


Side Notes:

Just a minor thing to take note of when making the m3u file:

 Whatever you named your m3u file to, like for instance, if you named it:

Chrono Cross Game.m3u

You have to then put that exact name in the texture replacement folder like this:

Chrono Cross Game-texture-replacements

You can name your m3u file anything you want but the exact name of the m3u file has to be put in the first part of the texture replacement folder name.

 Also, not sure of this but the folder that has your game files specifically the .cue files, in this folder you might also have to have the .bin files, like I've shown above, of the game as well.

Extra: Making Custom Textures and using them in the game!

You can also edit any dumped textures from the game in any photoshop program and make custom ones as well! For example I put myself in the game!

http://pdsoasis.github.io/ccme1.png
http://pdsoasis.github.io/ccme2.png
http://pdsoasis.github.io/ccme3.png
http://pdsoasis.github.io/ccme4.png

Original Serge Textures:
http://pdsoasis.github.io/ccoriginal.png

My Custom Textures:
http://pdsoasis.github.io/ccmyface.png

Here is how I did it!:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTCYHBLVLLE&t=323s&ab_channel=IanDominicIslaIanDominicIsla

Extra: Retroarch Side by Side Shader (Play your games in 3D!)

Retroarch has a built in 3D Shader that lets you play games in 3D using a VR headset like Oculus, Vive or the Index. This shader apparently works with all cores/Playstation, N64, Saturn, Dreamcast, SNES, etc. When a game is running press F1 and scroll down to Shaders. Next go to Load and select shaders_slang/stereoscopic-3d/and select the side-by-side-simple shader. This shader will split the screen. Go back and then select Shader Parameters. In these options set each one to:

Eye Separation: -0.50 or -0.55 ( -0.52 preferred see manual change info below)

Vertical Placement: 0.42

Horizonal Placement: 0.99

Zoom: 0.70

If the Shader fails to load you might have to fix the file manually. Might be fixed and updated later but in case it isn't, here is how to fix it:

Go into Retroarch installation folder. Go into the shaders folder. Next, go into the shaders_slang folder. Go into stereoscopic-3d folder. right click side-by-side-simple and open it up in notepad++. Change this line:

shaders0 = shaders/side-by-side-simple.slang

To:

shader0 = shaders/side-by-side-simple.slang

Then go to file and save.



You can also manually increase the number count of the Eye Separation by editing that file as well. So you will get an even more precise 3D effect. Here is what you have to do:

Go to: [retroarch dir]\shaders\shaders_slang\stereoscopic-3d\shaders\side-by-side-simple.slang

Right click on side-by-side-simple.slang and open it up in notepad or notepad++. Edit this line near the top:

#pragma parameter eye_sep "Eye Separation" 0.30 -1.0 5.0 0.05

Change the 0.05 to 0.01

This will allow to eye separation to increase in increments of 1 instead of 5. Make sure to go to file and save your changes. With these new changes in place I suggest a starting number of -0.52 for the Eye Separation.



Next all you have to do is merge the screen with a free program like desktop+ or bigscreen. But I suggest the paid version of Virtual Desktop as it has more options as far as merging the screens. More information below.

Note: If you want to manually enter gameshark codes for the Beetle Playstation HW core here is how to do it. For a code that has more than on line you just put a + symbol before the second line. That's it. Example:

#Infinite Health Character 1

D10DB568 2C03+800DB130 03E7

[ZeaLitY]

Thanks a ton; located it at https://www.chronocompendium.com/wiki/index.php/Chrono_Cross_HD_Installation_Guide

[legaiaflame]

No problem! Glad I could help.

[legaiaflame]

Just a minor thing to take note of when making the m3u file:

 Whatever you named your m3u file to, like for instance, if you named it:

Chrono Cross Game.m3u

You have to then put that exact name in the texture replacement folder like this:

Chrono Cross Game-texture-replacements

You can name your m3u file anything you want but the exact name of the m3u file has to be put in the first part of the texture replacement folder name.


Also note: Not sure of this but the folder that has your game files specifically the .cue files, in this folder you might also have to have the .bin files of the game as well.

[Tirion]

There's a really small detail that got lost somewhere along the way: disabling the Software Framebuffer setting is key to not losing textures on entering/exiting menus (it technically didn't need to be this way, it was just more convenient in the moment, my bad)