How to run ePSXe on a Mac without installing windows.

[mentaluproar]

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

How to get ePSXe running on OSX natively(ish)
---------
There are 3 ways to run this windows-only emulator ePSXe on an apple computer.

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)

 

[mentaluproar]

500+ views and no responses? really?

 

[0098386]

Works just fine on my PS1, you can get those on eBay.

 

[mrbrown]

500+ views and no responses? really?

Well, I mean, you are talking about a game that's 10+ years old and can be played with full compatibility on two "modern" gaming consoles - the PS2 and PS3. And then like the other poster said, you can pick up a used PSX on eBay for like $10...

 

[doh123]

I don't know about those specific games and specific problems.. but vsync will likely not work no matter what you do... Wine has to run through an X11 layer that is running on top of normal OSX Quartz.

Some of your resolutions may be off if your trying to run a resolution that your machine cannot run specifically. You can try some of the "override" options in Wineskin.app though, they often work when "automatic" will not.

 

[mentaluproar]

Well, I mean, you are talking about a game that's 10+ years old and can be played with full compatibility on two "modern" gaming consoles - the PS2 and PS3. And then like the other poster said, you can pick up a used PSX on eBay for like $10...

There are benefits to playing in an emulator. First, the playstation 2 has a known issue where the first fight with deus can crash the game, due to the unusual way the game accesses the graphics hardware (although, that happens in emulators too, but save states work around that.) Second, there is a problem with audio in xenogears on the PS2. Random sounds will occur everywhere, typically cymbol crashes. Finally, resolution, resolution, resolution. Despite the sprites looking terrible, as well as 90% of the textures, gear battles look awesome. Also, by creating a duplicate of the original discs on my mac, I can run the ISOs, which speeds things up and prevents the discs from getting scratched. My PS2 loves to destroy discs (poor megaman legends), hence my softmodding it and ripping my games to the hard drive.

As for the PS3, after the George Hotz debacle, I will never buy another Sony product.

 

[mentaluproar]

I think I have got it!

After some playing around today, and updating to 10.7.4 since the last post, I have made some progress!

What I did:
- Updated the engine in the wineskin to the latest available (WS9Wine1.5.6) and the wrapper (2.5.5).
- Updated OSX to 10.7.4 (I suspect that really helped with slowness in Lahan and the dock problem).
- Installed XQuartz 2.7.2 and forced wineskin to use that instead of the one built in. (Dramatically sped up launch time of ePSXe).
- Changed ePSXe GPU setting "hi-res textures" to "1. 2xSaI (much vram needed)" from "stretched". (fixes black squares around compass and possibly the borders not drawing due to stretching the dialog shadows too much. Also, the text looks smoother.)

While there is probably more room for improvement and testing, I don't think it will matter much, as I suspect each mac will have its own problems with ePSXe and that the fixes will not be universal beyond this point. Feel free to prove me wrong/suggest new settings in this thread.

Known issues:
- There is still the issue of a black bar on the top or bottom of the screen cutting out content. fn+f7, then fn+f7 again (ignore the error) will shift the screen up, over the black bar on top, but showing another black bar on the bottom. Unhiding the dock seems not to have any effect anymore.

- When entering the Ethos gear shop in Dazil, the screen is almost entirely blacked out for a bit. Just keep pressing X to get through the conversation and everything will return to normal soon.

- There are borders around continents on the mini-map and cartoonish clouds during battles. This is caused by texture filtering, and I'd rather just live with it than turn that off.

- The screen and music will slow down in some scenes, particularly those where the screen becomes wavy, like when gears take flight and the "exhaust" causes that haze effect. This might not effect all macs, but it sure does bother my mini. I suspect more powerful systems won't experience this issue.

If it is allowed, I can upload the wrapper somewhere, with all the needed files and settings contained in it, but I won't bother unless anyone asks for it. Of course, the Playstation BIOS dump and game ISOs will be excluded. (legal reasons)

Now, back to my quest to make destroy god with a schizophrenic pilot in a war machine!

 

[Renzatic]

So are you! A man! Of the sea! yet?

Yes. I am a dork.

 

[mentaluproar]

Not yet. I'm still a man of the sand.

Wait a minute...

 

[mentaluproar]

I'm still going to refine this a bit. I'm not convinced Xquartz was beneficial yet, and I may have a way to fix the haze problem.

It seems that all these things only made the missing dialogs occur LESS often. There are still missing borders and compass glitches, however. Interesting note: there are NO missing borders, segmented sprites, texture tiling on maps, text cropping (top), or compass problems with the the regular OGL plugin (not the 2, but ogl 1 I guess.) All that remains to fix there are menu transparency and missing pause text problems.

 

[mentaluproar]

a graphical plan B

Here is a fallback and some decent SPU settings. I have fewer small errors but only a few big ones. By the way, the the texwin pixel shader option is what caused the cartoon clouds.

I'm getting muted during some gear attacks, but I can't figure out if it is the SPU or my receiver dying. It's been making some ugly sounds lately.

EDIT: It was the SPU. Eternal 1.50 doesn't like xenogears. Using 1.41 works fine.

 

[Renzatic]

Well, I mean, you are talking about a game that's 10+ years old and can be played with full compatibility on two "modern" gaming consoles - the PS2 and PS3. And then like the other poster said, you can pick up a used PSX on eBay for like $10...

What if you don't want to lug around a console with you to play your games on a laptop? What if you don't want to hook up a PS1 to your TV? Or what if you want to modernize your old PS1 games a tiny bit with high resolution output and various texture filtering? There's plenty of reasons to use an emulator over the actual thing.

I'm getting muted during some gear attacks, but I can't figure out if it is the SPU or my receiver dying. It's been making some ugly sounds lately.

You know, ePSXe is nice and all, but it's damn complicated to set up. If you want something a little easier, I recommend trying pSX Emu. It's pretty basic, you can't go all out with all the neat features and all, but it's easy as hell to set up. Just lead it to the bios file, tweak a couple of settings, and you're ready to go.

At the very least, it might work as a good test platform if something doesn't seem right in ePSXe.

 

[mentaluproar]

pSX has really crappy graphics though. Have they improved on that? What about a OSX port?

PCSX-R looked promising, but it has it's own unique set of problems. I really do hope for more native options for us OSX users, but until they mature, wrappers will have to do.

 

[NMF]

It works fine on my PS3.

Why anyone would waste these countless hours porting a 10+ year-old game that can already be easily played on modern platforms is beyond me.

Carry on though...

 

[mentaluproar]

It works fine on my PS3.

Why anyone would waste these countless hours porting a 10+ year-old game that can already be easily played on modern platforms is beyond me.

Carry on though...

If only I had explained that earlier...

 

[Marble]

This is a noble cause... best of luck. What I find astonishing is that I could emulate this perfectly on my PowerMac G4 450mhz using Connectix Virtual Game Station in Mac OS 9 almost 15 years ago. Crazy.

 

[mentaluproar]

I tried that on my g4 700 MHz iMac back when that was new and it barfed on me. Very disappointing.

I'm just going to have to accept that emulation can't be perfect for the playstation. I did get better performance on the non ogl2 plugins....wait, what if I force everything into software by using a directdraw plugin in the wrapper?

 

[Ungibbed]

It works fine on my PS3.

Why anyone would waste these countless hours porting a 10+ year-old game that can already be easily played on modern platforms is beyond me.

Carry on though...

Mine too, it's so much easier!

Go to icon, press X button and enjoy!

 

[mentaluproar]

You are right. I should go out and buy a playstation 3, then pay for the game I already own.

much better.

 

[mentaluproar]

So are you! A man! Of the sea! yet?

I am now. Look at the beefy, pixelated forearms! Proof...of the men...of the sea!

EDIT: I have no idea why the captain of the Thames reminds me of Mythbusters' Jamie Hyneman.

 

[Renzatic]

RAHHH!

Geez. Now I wanna play it. I don't think I've fired up Xenogears since the day I first beat it way back when. Might be a good time to give it a go again.

 

[mentaluproar]

I wish there was a pronunciation guide for this game. I tend to read out loud and some of the words have me stumped. How the screw am I supposed to say "Yggdrasil?"

 

[Ap0ks]

How the screw am I supposed to say "Yggdrasil?"

I'm sure a quick search on google will get you an aural anwser, but ig-dray-zil normally works for me

 

[softypolimer]

Good job man! Can I have the wrapper (PLEASE)? I used to use epsxe lot too but I switched to mac for 7 years now I don'nt know how to use wine and I hates bootcamp (restart just to play game is too much pain)

I'm also a big fan of game console emulation mainly because I travel a lot and carry my laptop with me all the time. Also the up scale the native resolution to HD is darn awesome. Still, there's a lot of things that Emulator cannot do or cannot offer like the real thing.

 

[mentaluproar]

I'll put together a how to later today. Bear in mind, you will have to experiment with the GPU settings.

Discovery: the latest eternal SPU plugin has more accurate reverb, but is prone to glitches muting it for a second after certain attacks, particularly during heimdal's combos and the seal attack. Most people just use the older eternal spu and it works fine.