Disabling PS1 hardware dithering (better looking 2D)

[davidwhangchoi]

i just picked this up,



hopefully i can use it to mod ps1 games

[nmalinoski]

i just picked this up,

Spoiler

hopefully i can use it to mod ps1 games

Later on, if you want something a little quieter and a little faster to initialize, get one of these boards, install it in your network adapter, and then use a 3.5" SATA disk (Or a 2.5" disk in a 3.5" adapter).

[davidwhangchoi]

i just picked this up,

Spoiler

hopefully i can use it to mod ps1 games

Later on, if you want something a little quieter and a little faster to initialize, get one of these boards, install it in your network adapter, and then use a 3.5" SATA disk (Or a 2.5" disk in a 3.5" adapter).

thanks for the link!

[cr4zymanz0r]

You can do that? But I read that emulators got rid of the dithering without any patching?

I used no$psx and saw the dithering on/off differences in it.

[Lawfer]

You can do that? But I read that emulators got rid of the dithering without any patching?

I used no$psx and saw the dithering on/off differences in it.

I see, thank you very much!

[nmalinoski]

A potential alternative to blanketly disabling dithering could be HD Retrovision's HDMizer. They recently showed off an algorithm that can mimic what happens to dithering when encoded to composite, while maintaining those crisp pixels.

Obviously it's nowhere near ready, but ostensibly something similar could be implemented in other video processors or in something like an internal HDMI[+RGB] mod.

[Lawfer]

I tried using the "sed" program by dragging Suikoden II on the "sed.exe" file, but it doesn't seem like it does anything?

Also, I plan on only using the un-dithering patch with pure 2D games (so I won't use it with games such as Grandia or Arc the Lad III which uses characters sprites but 3D backgrounds), however some 2D games have sprite characters with pre-rendered backgrounds, how would the pre-rendered backgrounds be affected by the removal of the dithering?

[nmalinoski]

I tried using the "sed" program by dragging Suikoden II on the "sed.exe" file, but it doesn't seem like it does anything?

sed is a commandline utility, ubiquitous in Unix/Linux OSes, and often used for text manipulation. It doesn't do anything when you drag a file onto it, because all that does is provide the program with a file path; you need to give it other parameters/commands in order to use it.

[Lawfer]

I tried using the "sed" program by dragging Suikoden II on the "sed.exe" file, but it doesn't seem like it does anything?

sed is a commandline utility, ubiquitous in Unix/Linux OSes, and often used for text manipulation. It doesn't do anything when you drag a file onto it, because all that does is provide the program with a file path; you need to give it other parameters/commands in order to use it.

The black window shuts down as soon as I open it.

[nmalinoski]

I tried using the "sed" program by dragging Suikoden II on the "sed.exe" file, but it doesn't seem like it does anything?

sed is a commandline utility, ubiquitous in Unix/Linux OSes, and often used for text manipulation. It doesn't do anything when you drag a file onto it, because all that does is provide the program with a file path; you need to give it other parameters/commands in order to use it.

The black window shuts down as soon as I open it.

Like I said, it's a commandline utility; you need to open a terminal, like cmd or powershell, to use it. Or write a script that executes it.

In Windows, if you try to run any commandline utility like that from the GUI, what happens is Windows necessarily and temporarily opens a terminal (that black window), which will only stay open as long as the program is running. Since you're not passing any parameters to sed (or just one or more file paths by dragging files onto the .exe), it's probably just spitting out its help text and exiting, so the terminal would only be open briefly.

Some programs, like nslookup, have interactive prompts. When these are launched from the GUI, the terminal will stay open because the program is still running, and it will close when the program exits. sed is not one of these applications.

[cr4zymanz0r]

There's README.txt in the zip file that clearly states to drag the ISO file to "Patch_PS1_dither.bat"

[Lawfer]

There's README.txt in the zip file that clearly states to drag the ISO file to "Patch_PS1_dither.bat"

Which I did and it did patch it by converting all instances of "02" to "00", however I was under the assumption that "Patch_PS1_dither.bat" and the "sed.exe" were seperate? One is for standard convertion and the other one is for brute force conversion for the games with a more stubborn dithering?

[cr4zymanz0r]

I think you're over-complicating things. All you do is drag the ISO file to the Patch_PS1_dither.bat batch file and it generates the patched ISO. SED is the program used for patching but it does nothing on its own. The batch file tells SED the appropriate way to patch the ISO. That's the only way to patch with the utility I put together. There's no varying levels of aggression on the patching with the utility.

The only way it's more complicated is if you decide to manually patch things yourself with a hex editor, which then isn't using my patcher regardless, or using Chris Covell's original guide for figuring out your own action replay codes.

[Lawfer]

I see, have you tested to see how the removal of the dithering affects games like Tales of Destiny II or Saga Fontier 2 who uses (still) pre-drawn (pre-rendered?) backgrounds?

Here's a comparison I made of Suikogaiden Vol. 1: Swordsman of Harmonia, dithered on the left and un-dithered on the right:



Onthe other hand, Suikoden II removal of the dithering doesn't do much as the background art seems to be pre-dithered, so the removal of the dithering only removes dithering in the characters portraits and some of the dithering during combat scenes in areas where the background is in 3D, dithered on the left and un-dithered on the right:



And I also tried with Ace Combat 3: Electrosphere, un-dithered on the left and dithered on the right:



I akso tried with Langrisser IV, The Legend of Dragoon and Tales of Phantasia, but it doesn't seem like it does anything for these games.

[Stremon]

Oh that's awesome! Thanks cr4zymanz0r for this patch, truly makes the games look better on HD display.
But I have one little issue I hope someone can help me with. The patch works perfectly with emulators, but somehow doesn't work on psp through the official pops emulator. It seems to be forcing the dithering on games that use it, not matter if patched or not...
Do you know if they might be using a different way of detecting the dithering that your patch won't fix?
Could there be a way to patch it manually with the pops cheat engine?
I tried it on xenogears mainly, and the patched .pbp file has dithering only on psp.
Interestingly, when increasing the gamma in the pops options, you can see that the dithering is on the whole screen, including the black bars, which makes me think it's forced dithering.

[Restart_Point]

I patched Parodius Deluxe Pack with cr4zymanz0r's program and it said it worked but when I play the resulting CDr on my chipped PSOne it has no effect , which is a shame as for some reason there's loads of awful looking dithering in the game which is completely unnecessary, I find it very distracting and it detracts quite a bit from the over-all look of all the pixel / sprite art in my opinion, yuk! Interestingly Gradius Deluxe Pack which was made a couple years later doesn't have anywhere near as much (if any?) dithering in-game thank god, maybe Konami realised. The ports in Parodius Deluxe pack (especially the second one) are not that great anyway, some choppy scrolling, screen tearing, probably because it was a very early release PS1 game

[cr4zymanz0r]

I've released a new version: https://github.com/cr4zymanz0r/PS1_De-D ... tag/v1.1.0

I installed my XStation and found that my de-dithering patched games were still dithered. I was told XStation (and MODE) will pass the data through the PS1's CD-ROM controller which will use the ECC data on the disc image to 'correct' these back to unpatched.

I've now included neodev/Terra-Onion's ECCScan tool (https://github.com/Terraonion-dev/ECCScan) to correct all ECC errors on the disc image after the de-dithering patch is applied. This will make them now work on XStation, MODE, and any similar future ODEs. It could potentially fix issues for people who were having issues when burning discs as well, but I haven't tested that (please verify your patched image in the no$psx emulator first since dithering that's "baked into" the game assets can't be disabled with a simple patch).

The patching instructions are still the same and do not require any additional steps on your part.

Potential issues: It will correct _all_ ECC errors on the patched disc image. From my understanding some games have some ECC errors by default. I don't think correcting them will causes issues, but there could be some potentially oddball case (copy protection?) that relies on them and breaks if they're not there. I don't know of any cases of this, but just speculating in case someone runs into an issue with patched game not working at all or crashing.

[Gunstar]

Does XStation not patch games on the fly? I thought the de-dither option was meant to be a togglable option in the menu.

[darcagn]

Does XStation not patch games on the fly? I thought the de-dither option was meant to be a togglable option in the menu.

That feature is coming in a future firmware update.

[Gunstar]

Does XStation not patch games on the fly? I thought the de-dither option was meant to be a togglable option in the menu.

That feature is coming in a future firmware update.

Good to know, thanks!

[Edagener]

So I have been watching this topic with great interest and used cr4zymanz0r utility to disable dither on some games (BTW, thanks!).

However, I would like to hear an opinion regarding the psx version of Riven.
No matter what I do I can't get rid of that awful dotted pattern that plagues the screens (usually more visible on the darker areas, rocks, shadows, etc)

Is that dithering or something else?
If it is, could it be disabled somehow or maybe it's just impossible?

[Guspaz]

Speculating, but since Riven is all made up of FMV and full-screen images, it's probably built-in to the images, part of the compression. But is there a reason to play the PS1 version instead of the PC original? I'd imagine it look better on the PC version, which was 480p. It's on Steam for like five bucks.

[Edagener]

I started playing Riven on the Saturn and actually liked it. In spite of the low resolution, the true motion/adx delivered a consistent visual experience and I felt it looked nice on TV.

On the other hand, I never played the PC version and eventually I will try it out, which I suppose it will sport the better resolution and colors.

In between, I guess there is the playstation version and I was hoping it would fare better than the Saturn version. The resolution and colors seems have increased but that dithering pattern really spoils almost everything to me. I thought I could get rid of it, and by making the port look nicer it would renew my interest in pursuing it because I enjoy console ports of PC games played on TV.

[bahamutfan64]

240p really doesn’t do the beautiful art of Myst or Riven any justice, imho. Plus, using a mouse is so much nicer than a controller.

[Edagener]

I suppose you are right, since the games started out on PC and were made with the specs of the platform in mind.
However, not all is bad when it comes to home console ports. Both the Saturn and PSX can use the mouse.
On the other hand, playing on a TV with a variable sharpening filter is a way of boosting the details of the picture and sitting at a distance (on the sofa) tricks the eye and feels like it's better quality.

Incidentally, I have already tried the PC version of Riven and was really surprised to find out the "dithering" is also present there.
It's lighter than the PSX version but it's there all right. The lower resolution and the PSX native dithering probably amplifies the effect to beyond worse.
I guess that makes the Saturn port the only "dither-free" version.

[TooBeaucoup]

I've released a new version: https://github.com/cr4zymanz0r/PS1_De-D ... tag/v1.1.0

I installed my XStation and found that my de-dithering patched games were still dithered. I was told XStation (and MODE) will pass the data through the PS1's CD-ROM controller which will use the ECC data on the disc image to 'correct' these back to unpatched.

I've now included neodev/Terra-Onion's ECCScan tool (https://github.com/Terraonion-dev/ECCScan) to correct all ECC errors on the disc image after the de-dithering patch is applied. This will make them now work on XStation, MODE, and any similar future ODEs. It could potentially fix issues for people who were having issues when burning discs as well, but I haven't tested that (please verify your patched image in the no$psx emulator first since dithering that's "baked into" the game assets can't be disabled with a simple patch).

The patching instructions are still the same and do not require any additional steps on your part.

Potential issues: It will correct _all_ ECC errors on the patched disc image. From my understanding some games have some ECC errors by default. I don't think correcting them will causes issues, but there could be some potentially oddball case (copy protection?) that relies on them and breaks if they're not there. I don't know of any cases of this, but just speculating in case someone runs into an issue with patched game not working at all or crashing.

Thanks for this. I messed around for a couple hours on your earlier versions, not realizing it was an issue with the way the X-Station works. Everything looks great now. Hot damn, Castlevania Chronicles looks gorgeous with no dithering garbage!

EDIT: Also, a question, when patching a game with like, 30 bin files, do you just patch the first bin (Track 1) and put that back in with the bunch or do you need to highlight all 30 bin files and drag them all to the bat icon? I just did the (Track 1) bin for Ridge Racer and that seemed to get rid of the dither, but I wanted to make sure I am doing it correctly.

[cr4zymanz0r]

I've always just ripped my PS1 games to bin/cue which just has one bin file. If you've got multiple bin files then it should just the one that's the data track, which is (nearly?) always track 1

[nmalinoski]

I've always just ripped my PS1 games to bin/cue which just has one bin file. If you've got multiple bin files then it should just the one that's the data track, which is (nearly?) always track 1

A number of PS1 games have CDDA tracks in addition to the data track. Depending on how it's ripped, you might get a single bin file, or you might get a bin file for the data track and individual WAV files for the audio tracks.

[TooBeaucoup]

If you go to the official ROM dumps on Internet Archive, a majority of games are ripped like this. That's why I asked. But, like I mentioned, patching the first bin file seemed to remove the dithering on Ridge Racer for me.

[nmalinoski]

I believe, for those, only the first track/bin file is the game data, while the rest are CDDA tracks; so, yes, you should only need to patch the first bin file.