Been playing Disgaea 2: DHD for a bit, r2289, and some notes:
- Upon booting, regardless of settings, the intro movie doesn't like to play in r2289 and an error is registered. I was able to get it to play in r2263 provided I did not have 'Only GE Graphics' enabled but in r2289 it fails to play even with no default video options. In both situations it can be skipped by pressing X. Attached is a screenshot of the error.
- Geo Panels, movement range and target range are a solid color. Enabling Shaders (but NOT decoding of indexed textures using CLUT) fixes this, but then makes base panels, mystery gates, court gates and dimensional gates invisible as well as introducing a huge slowdown in town (although not in battle oddly). Color mask was not necessary; just enabling shaders brought on both effects for me. Enabling the decoding of indexed textures using CLUT reverts all the changes shaders brought on.
- Voice acting is missing even with SonicStage installed. However, I get the same exact error as I do in the intro video every time I enter a voiced story scene, sometimes multiple times in a long story scene. This error is not triggered on non-voiced story scenes such as the Dark Court. This gives me some hope that perhaps it's a decryption issue and not a SonicStage issue.
- The game has significant pauses during story scenes -- it'll freeze entirely, animations and all, for a second or longer every handful of lines. At first I thought this was due to the voice acting not being loadable, but then I noticed it occurred in every story scene, even the ones that aren't voiced such as the Dark Court appearances. No error is registered when this happens.
- Really big slowdowns in areas with lots of geo panels. If a map has six colors of geo panels it often gets very slow. This is both with and without shaders; I can't detect much of a difference with it enabled. Probably related to the emulator's poor implementation of ATI video cards, unfortunately. Having lots of characters on the map at once can also bring FPS down, but it seems much more sensitive to geo panels.
Those are my notes. Overall, it's slow, ugly and quiet but definitely playable. Shaders fixes the ugliness issue, but then it turns each map in the item world into a needle in the haystack problem. The slowness would probably be fixed if you have a Nvidia card and not an ATI card like I do.
Also, a question: one of the new classes added in DHD compared to the PS2 version of the game is the Lady Samurai. In order to unlock this class all you need to do is have a save file from Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness on your memory stick; that's all that every FAQ and wiki on the internet says you need to do to unlock it. I do have an AoD save file in my JPCSP folder but the game doesn't seem to be detecting it. I was wondering if anyone playing DHD on JPCSP was able to find a way to get it to do that. The Lady Samurai class looks really sweet and it would be quite nice to have it unlocked.
Edit: Disappearing base panels and gates seems to be caused by a combination of shaders and VAO, another option I've been running. Which is a shame because the game is unplayably slow without VAO enabled; almost every map hits 30 FPS. Looks better, sure, but it doesn't matter if it's so slow it is no longer fun to play.
- Upon booting, regardless of settings, the intro movie doesn't like to play in r2289 and an error is registered. I was able to get it to play in r2263 provided I did not have 'Only GE Graphics' enabled but in r2289 it fails to play even with no default video options. In both situations it can be skipped by pressing X. Attached is a screenshot of the error.
- Geo Panels, movement range and target range are a solid color. Enabling Shaders (but NOT decoding of indexed textures using CLUT) fixes this, but then makes base panels, mystery gates, court gates and dimensional gates invisible as well as introducing a huge slowdown in town (although not in battle oddly). Color mask was not necessary; just enabling shaders brought on both effects for me. Enabling the decoding of indexed textures using CLUT reverts all the changes shaders brought on.
- Voice acting is missing even with SonicStage installed. However, I get the same exact error as I do in the intro video every time I enter a voiced story scene, sometimes multiple times in a long story scene. This error is not triggered on non-voiced story scenes such as the Dark Court. This gives me some hope that perhaps it's a decryption issue and not a SonicStage issue.
- The game has significant pauses during story scenes -- it'll freeze entirely, animations and all, for a second or longer every handful of lines. At first I thought this was due to the voice acting not being loadable, but then I noticed it occurred in every story scene, even the ones that aren't voiced such as the Dark Court appearances. No error is registered when this happens.
- Really big slowdowns in areas with lots of geo panels. If a map has six colors of geo panels it often gets very slow. This is both with and without shaders; I can't detect much of a difference with it enabled. Probably related to the emulator's poor implementation of ATI video cards, unfortunately. Having lots of characters on the map at once can also bring FPS down, but it seems much more sensitive to geo panels.
Those are my notes. Overall, it's slow, ugly and quiet but definitely playable. Shaders fixes the ugliness issue, but then it turns each map in the item world into a needle in the haystack problem. The slowness would probably be fixed if you have a Nvidia card and not an ATI card like I do.
Also, a question: one of the new classes added in DHD compared to the PS2 version of the game is the Lady Samurai. In order to unlock this class all you need to do is have a save file from Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness on your memory stick; that's all that every FAQ and wiki on the internet says you need to do to unlock it. I do have an AoD save file in my JPCSP folder but the game doesn't seem to be detecting it. I was wondering if anyone playing DHD on JPCSP was able to find a way to get it to do that. The Lady Samurai class looks really sweet and it would be quite nice to have it unlocked.
Edit: Disappearing base panels and gates seems to be caused by a combination of shaders and VAO, another option I've been running. Which is a shame because the game is unplayably slow without VAO enabled; almost every map hits 30 FPS. Looks better, sure, but it doesn't matter if it's so slow it is no longer fun to play.