How to run ePSXe on a Mac without installing windows.

[mentaluproar]

update: new GPU and sound settings. ALL BETTER!

Once I'm done, I think I'm going to start creating multiple wrappers for ePSXe, each containing an ISO and the settings tailored specifically for that game.

It's so much more rewarding to tamper with something for a long time, learn from it, and have an end result you can really enjoy.

[mentaluproar]

I found out more about the black bar on the top! if you disable window decorations, the app will look like an old windows 2000 program, but in fullscreen mode, it draws on the screen correctly!

Is there some sort of conditional window decoration option? Like "decorate unless something is operating in fullscreen mode?"

[mentaluproar]

Final bug: sound glitches while fighting Deus. There are also slight slowdowns I some scenarios, but I thing dropping the resolution a bit would make it perfect.

I LOATHE SPU settings!

[okboy]

This runs way better than PCSXR on my 2012 Macbook Air. PCSXR ran OK, but the sound would constantly have ticks in it. It even runs great in full resolution using the Open GL plugin. Except after the intro, except when the gears attack the city the screen in just blank, except for the dialog. Is there a fix?

Anyway, thanks mentaluproar.

And boo to everyone saying to use a PS3. The PS3 does not enhance the games at all, from what I've read. Plus Sony has removed almost every feature that made the PS3 compelling: enhanced backwards-compatability, Linux support, Folding@Home. I'm almost glad Sony had that stuff leaked recently that should make the PS3 permanently hackable. What a bait-and-switch that console is.

EDIT: mentaluproar, it sounds like you found a solution to some of the problems, like black area above or below the graphics. Maybe you could add the solutions to the how-to?

[mentaluproar]

I could never get PCSXR to work properly. It's not even on speed of Mac anymore.

[mentaluproar]

I have posted the fix for the black bar issue, but discovered another annoying bug. Inside the package, I have an alias to a drive_d, which contains the ISO used in that package and is mapped in to show up as a drive D to ePSXe. The drive_d folder is placed in the same place drive_c is, but the alias to it keeps breaking. I don't know why yet. It still works just fine.

I plan on making this execute like a native mac app and resolve the alias glitch. Doh123 probably knows what causes that and the black bar glitch. I saw the alias glitch mentioned in the wineskin forums yesterday, but lost the link.

[mentaluproar]

Here's a quick little tip to create directly launchable games. After you tweak your wrapper exactly as you like (GPU settings, etc) and drop your ISO directly into the wrapper somewhere (Please rip games that you actually own, and use the terminal to do so) you can tell the emulator to skip right to the game.

Option+launch the wrapper. click advanced. under exe flags, put:
-nogui -loadbin "D:\Megaman Legends 2.iso"

Change the path and image name to whatever and wherever the ISO is within the wrapper.

This is a great way to keep each game tweaked to the best settings possible, since each has different needs.

[okboy]

Originally Posted by mentaluproar

Here's a quick little tip to create directly launchable games. After you tweak your wrapper exactly as you like (GPU settings, etc) and drop your ISO directly into the wrapper somewhere (Please rip games that you actually own, and use the terminal to do so) you can tell the emulator to skip right to the game.

This is a great way to keep each game tweaked to the best settings possible, since each has different needs.

This is a great tip, thanks.

[mentaluproar]

If I can find a way for it to prompt which disc to use before each launch, multi-disc games could take advantage of this too.

[mentaluproar]

Could any of you test this out with a macbook air? I'm very curious how those little things would handle this.

[mentalupsucks]

Originally Posted by mentaluproar

I am editing this thread because we have a tried and tested answer! Enjoy!

How to get ePSXe running on OSX natively(ish)
---------


1. install windows in bootcamp - This gives you better frame rates if your computer is having trouble and can work around a few osx glitches.
2. virtualize windows in OSX - Parallels and VMware fusion should do fine here. Virtualbox still has a problem with USB devices being passed to guests.
3. run ePSXe with a wrapper - Wineskin is the easiest FREE way to do this. It creates a fake windows environment for each windows app, allowing it to run within OSX without a copy of windows.

I will be covering the wineskin method.

First, we need to fetch wineskin winery.
http://wineskin.urgesoftware.com/tik...page=Downloads
Download this app and drag it into your application folder.

When you first launch the application, it will not have anything it needs to create a proper wrapper, but will instead allow you to fetch the latest stuff from within the app. How thoughtful.

Click the plus sign and download and install the WS9Wine1.5.8 engine. (1.5.9 is the latest as of this post, but appears to have problems recognizing available screen resolutions.)
EDIT: I overlooked something very important when I wrote this. Apple is really bad about writing drivers, in particular the drivers for the AMD/ATi GPUs. If you are blessed with one of these, running the latest wrapper is generally a bad idea. Everything will end up rendered in software rather than hardware, which is slow. There used to be a workaround back in the wine 1.4.x days, but it was holding developers back, so in 1.5.1, it was removed. Using a wine engine based on 1.4 should fix this. There is a patched engine, "WS9Wine1.5.12 AMDSpeedHack" which lets the latest version build use hardware acceleration, but this supposedly causes trouble with GLSL shaders."


Next, you will notice the "No Wrapper installed" text. Click Update to install the newest wrapper.
EDIT: avoid 2.5.5 if you are running mountain lion. wrapper 2.5.6 is stable, and fixed the nightmares that can occur when using mountain lion.

Click "create new blank wrapper" and name it whatever you want. This will be the name of the app, so it makes sense to call it "ePSXe."

If your firewall is active, Mac OSX will ask you if you would like to let the new wrapper connect to the internet. ePSXe doesn't need that, so deny it. Also, cancel the Mono and Gecko installers when it asks because ePSXe doesn't use those anyway.

You now have a nice new wrapper! Go ahead and exit out of wineskin winery. We are done with it.

Now, we need to put the emulator inside the wrapper. When you have an installer, this is very easy, but ePSXe doesn't use an installer, so we will have to do this manually.

First, fetch ePSXe. Use the latest version (1.7.0).
http://www.epsxe.com/download.php/

Unzip the file if OSX didn't already do it for you. You should see a folder called "epsxe170" and a bunch of little things inside. Download and place whatever plugins you want in the plugins folder (eternal 1.41 and 1.50 are GREAT sound plugins, and the peops OGL plugins are really nice too.)


Place your playstation 1 BIOS dump in the bios folder. (I will not help you find one, and technically, you need to own a playstation 1 to be legally permitted to even HAVE the file.)


ePSXe has an unspecified need for a file called zlib1.dll. Download it and place it in the epsxe170 folder.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/libp...l.zip/download

Now, we need to move the epsxe folder into the wrapper. Try to launch the ePSXe wrapper that was created with wineskin winery earlier. When asked, select "install software."

We have to manually do this because ePSXe has no installer, but wineskin makes this pretty easy too. Click on "move a folder inside." Choose the epsxe170 folder. It will automatically find and assume you want to use the ePSXe.exe file when you launch the program. This is correct. Click OK.

For funsies, let's give it a version number and pretty icon. This is optional, but so simple you might as well do it. Click the advanced button once the initial window comes back up. Change version to "1.7.0" and for the icon, browse to a nice new one, like the one in this link:
http://www.easyicon.cn/language.en/iconsearch/epsxe/
Remember, we want the ICNS file, not the PNG or ICO file. Click browse and select the pretty new icon, then close that window with the red circle in the upper left corner.

Now to crush an annoying bug. This WILL affect ATI GPU owners. I'm not sure if it will matter for intel or NVIDIA users. Please let me know if you have one of these cards and can test this. There is a black bar across the top (or bottom, depending on resolution settings) that obscures part of the image. To fix this, hold Option and try to launch your ePSXe wrapper. click "set screen options" and uncheck "decorate windows." This will fix the black borders, but it will make ePSXe look like a windows application again. Oh well, most of the time will be spent in fullscreen mode anyway.

Make sure you have your controller plugged into your mac BEFORE you launch ePSXe (so that it will see it) and do not disconnect it until after you exit ePSXe (or you will crash it.) You can use playstation-to-usb adaptors on the mac just fine, but haptic feedback (vibration) will not work. Sadly, MacOSX doesn't know what that is, so it can't pass that instruction along to the controller.

Setup is the same as for a PC at this point. Let me know if you have any questions.

In this example, I set this up to play Xenogears. Some games, like the Megaman X games, need further tweaks, but those are similar to the PC settings.

EDIT: Check the attached images section for revised GPU settings (NO MORE MISSING DIALOG BORDERS OR BOTCHED COMPASSES!) which are not only working great for xenogears, but by using 4xGLSLHqFilter shader program, megaman X games are not so terrible to look at!

-----original posts below, for funsies-----
I know, emulating Xenogears on a PC was difficult enough. The use of WINE just adds another layer of complexity. I'm hoping for some help that doesn't involve "use bootcamp" so bear with me.

I'm running ePSXe 1.7.0 in Mac OSX 10.7.3 via Wineskin. (By the way, how awesome is Wineskin? ) I suspect the last 4 issues are caused by OSX, but there should be a way to work around them with winetricks, right?

- White borders are missing. This starts happening in Lahan when Fei finishes his painting. Before then, everything is fine. (EDIT: using the 1.4.1 engine and revised GPU setting below fixed that)

- In fullscreen mode, the top is cut off, so I can't see of make adjustments because the FPS bar is offscreen.

- In fullscreen at 720p, there is a black bar on the bottom. It seems the drawing area is moved up, cutting off some of the top.

- In fullscreen at 1080p, the bottom is cut off. The absence of black bars tells me the Y resolution setting is being exceeded. (EDIT: 1080p now has the same problem as 720p. hmmmm)

Are you ****ing serious man?
You lil attention whore let us read your text for 2 years and at the
end you wanna tell us something about legally permitted to have this file?
Just go die in your ass.

[Renzatic]

Guy signs up just to insult poor ole Mental over something he could find himself after 2 minutes of Googling? That's classy.

[mentaluproar]

I think if we could choose our deaths, we would prefer for them to be an exotic location. That being said, I'm not sure if my ass is exotic enough.

[mentaluproar]

In seriousness, downloading a BIOS dump for a console you don't own is illegal. Will Sony care? I wouldn't dismiss the idea. We saw what they did to George Hotz. More importantly, it is illegal and a violation of the Macrumors forum rules.

Also, bite me.

[BoxOfSnoo]

After struggling to get PCSX working on my Mac, I tried this out, and it works perfectly! Thanks!

[mentaluproar]

Holding yourself back on versions is no longer important for AMD GPU owners. Apple fixed the problem in the latest osx update.

[kazenmazen]

Help anyone? I tried to follow mental's instructions to the letter (but differed in the versions of the apps). However, whenever I try to configure the GPU, the program freezes.

OS: OS X 10.6.8
Engine: WS9Wine1.5.29
Wrapper: Wineskin-2.5.9
Emulator: ePSXe 1.8.0

Appreciate your help guys.

EDIT: Got it to run using a later Wineskin engine 1.5.8