Best Way of Storing/Loading Games?

[Dempsey_86]

2 minutes ago, Bowlsnapper said:

@arfows Yes, I remember saying that. It is a daunting task which will take time, however, I can load up a certain amount of games every day, really. Is this strictly for the Origins setup? Because I KNOW it doesn't have every game in it... Also, how far into the game are we trying to get? Just loading, or running it? Because beating the game obviously isn't practical. Are the errors just due to things that ACL patching cannot remedy, or other things? Do people know what they are?

How I do my testing if I need to test large amounts of games is: start the game and play the first 5 minutes. If the game works then, the chance is big there are no issues later ingame (of cource with hdd ready and the long file names you never are 100% sure, but you need to start somewhere)

We took the origins build to test because it was the origins build you had. But if you look at the list, all games can be found on that list. I could not verify what was on there and what not because I dont have an origins drive anymore.

[Bowlsnapper]

33 minutes ago, Dempsey_86 said:

How I do my testing if I need to test large amounts of games is: start the game and play the first 5 minutes. If the game works then, the chance is big there are no issues later ingame (of cource with hdd ready and the long file names you never are 100% sure, but you need to start somewhere)

We took the origins build to test because it was the origins build you had. But if you look at the list, all games can be found on that list. I could not verify what was on there and what not because I dont have an origins drive anymore.

I'll try to start going through the list this week and I'll start updating the document accordingly.

[nikeymikey]

On 7/1/2023 at 7:30 AM, Bowlsnapper said:

Most of the almost 1000 US titles work just fine in extracted folder/file form. It's what I've ALWAYS done. It just makes the most sense to me. I want access to my files so that I can modify them if I need or want to. There are some games that will not work because of filenames that are too long, or other various reasons, and if you would like to run these games, then you would need to run an ISO of it. 

THERE IS NO REASON TO HAVE YOUR ENTIRE GAME COLLECTION BE ISOS! This is a pointless pain in the ass and you can not modify the game files without a serious extraction and repack process. Fuck that shit. I don't know why people are doing this. I don't know why they think it's fashionable. I don't know if most people think that mad games out there have issues running from the HDD, or if it's faster or something. I don't know, but I think a lot of these people aren't doing thorough research. It's fuckin' pointless. It's not like this feature was added because it was SORELY needed or something and we were just DYING for somebody to save us from the buggy File Monster! It was simply a feature that was wanted by people so they could have a fully working game collection. It wasn't a dire need.

Go ahead and run your File structure, dude. It makes sense, I can confirm that. lol. If you wanna run a game that will not run in File mode, just download the ISO from like, Vimms Lair or something and launch it according to your bios specifications. It is a microscopic fraction of the Xbox's game collection. The only games that have caused problems are like... 20 out of 900.

BIG FUCKIN' DEAL!

Hey Bowl... 

My 2 cents on having a full ISO collection over HDD ready.... 

Wasted HDD space.

I know you read the thread about cluster size and small files etc, as you replied in it

I'm now running a 6TB drive with a full CCi set... with FatXplorer it takes a few mins to connect up the drive extract the file and mod a game, that way I ALWAYS have a backup of the original files and can have both the original and modded game on the drive. They show up under different folders on my XBMC. 

I also get that with huge drives now available to use the space issue is not such a problem but for those who aren't going down the HUGE HDD route this is important knowledge as it could be the difference bewteen getting everything they want on the drive or not. My old 2TB setup had extracted games for everything EXCEPT those that had issues AND those that had 100s/1000s of tiny files, These were ISO files and this combo enabled me to get a full USA set plus PAL/JAPAN exclusives on the 2TB drive. The only games I missed off were all but 1 of the Club Football variants as those were all the same game just branded differently. 

[MadMartigan]

I saw a Modzville video I believe, where he talked about just burning the .iso of incompatible games and then ripping them to the HDD. This way it eliminates the split iso and long file name issues. He also shows results of them working as intended. I guess this is the best if only workout currently for those incompatible games. 

[nikeymikey]

8 minutes ago, MadMartigan said:

I saw a Modzville video I believe, where he talked about just burning the .iso of incompatible games and then ripping them to the HDD. This way it eliminates the split iso and long file name issues. He also shows results of them working as intended. I guess this is the best if only workout currently for those incompatible games. 

??? Running them as ISO or CCi eliminates the need to actually burn a disc AND the need to rip to the hdd.  2 steps less so is a lot simpler. 

 

[MadMartigan]

For the HDD ready games that can’t be used with .cci? 

[nikeymikey]

38 minutes ago, MadMartigan said:

For the HDD ready games that can’t be used with .cci? 

Ah no i thought you were talking about the extracted HDD incompatible games. 

However the games that are not compatible with CCI are not necessarily the ones that have issues when running extracted.

Bowl posted a list of most of the HDD incompatible games earlier in this thread. I will add Furious Karting and Frankie Detorri Racing to his list.

If you look at the compat list below for CCI you will see that all those games run fine as CCI. The issues they have are related to being converted to CCi or with Cerbios, not a long filename error or similar. 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/e/2PACX-1vSewa5ynfmFC6Dg9FeF9nBF511dGgHc6VwtmR5AH3yyba-bqXO2OAvR-_xxPSLk84xCiM8LxntTYzHX/pubhtml?gid=0&single=true

[MadMartigan]

That list sill states that some games only work as HDD ready. I’m a little confused here 

 

The modzsille video showed the fix for the split iso and file names too long. That was simply ripping the iso to the HDD, which fixes these issues on the fly. 
 

Edit: IIRC, he just ripped the iso image and didn’t have to burn them to disc. 

Edited April 7 by MadMartigan

[nikeymikey]

1 hour ago, MadMartigan said:

That list sill states that some games only work as HDD ready. I’m a little confused here 

CCI ONLY works on Cerbios, the games on that compat list that have issues with running as CCI only have those issues on Cerbios because Cerbios is the ONLY bios that supports CCI. Completely independent issues to the old long filename issues of days gone by. The games that had those issues work fine as CCi on Cerbios. The list that I linked is PURELY for CCI and CERBIOS compatibility. 

 

The modzsille video showed the fix for the split iso and file names too long. That was simply ripping the iso to the HDD, which fixes these issues on the fly. 

Running the games that had longfile name issues (eg Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban) as an ISO fixed the issues WITHOUT patching so the files stayed original. XBMC4Gamers has allowed easy setup of ISO games for a long time now, before Cerbios arrived. Thats how I ran the "problem" games in the past. 
 

Edit: IIRC, he just ripped the iso image and didn’t have to burn them to disc. 

DVD2Xbox will patch out "some" of the issues such as long filenames but did not fix all the games that had issues running from HDD.   

 

You need to separate the two sets of games with issues in your head .  

 1. CCI & Cerbios - has a handful of games that will only run as extracted or ISO right now, this will likely be fixed as things get improved.

2. Old school HDD extracted rips - There were a bunch of games that had issues and did not work form HDD either at all or would crash at some point. DVD2Xbox had/has the ability to fix some of these but not all.  

The games in 2 work fine as CCI, other than graphical issues on loading screens on a couple of them (Tony Hawk P8 and Tony Hawk AW).

1 hour ago, MadMartigan said:

 

 

[MadMartigan]

Lol I did already understand that cci is for cerbios. That compatibility list makes it seem like those games do not work in cci format. That's what I was getting at. It specifically says these game will only work in hdd ready files. That is the reason I mentioned the method ModsvilleUSA used, in case others aren't running the almost complete cci library. Best I just not comment about this stuff to avoid confusion. 

Also, I believe Dempsey has said some of those other games will most likely NOT get fixed due it being a speed issue and not Cerbios related. Something along those lines. 

[Bowlsnapper]

8 hours ago, nikeymikey said:

Hey Bowl... 

My 2 cents on having a full ISO collection over HDD ready.... 

Wasted HDD space.

I know you read the thread about cluster size and small files etc, as you replied in it

I'm now running a 6TB drive with a full CCi set... with FatXplorer it takes a few mins to connect up the drive extract the file and mod a game, that way I ALWAYS have a backup of the original files and can have both the original and modded game on the drive. They show up under different folders on my XBMC. 

I also get that with huge drives now available to use the space issue is not such a problem but for those who aren't going down the HUGE HDD route this is important knowledge as it could be the difference bewteen getting everything they want on the drive or not. My old 2TB setup had extracted games for everything EXCEPT those that had issues AND those that had 100s/1000s of tiny files, These were ISO files and this combo enabled me to get a full USA set plus PAL/JAPAN exclusives on the 2TB drive. The only games I missed off were all but 1 of the Club Football variants as those were all the same game just branded differently. 

I laughed as I looked back on this post. I was such a tool even a few MONTHS ago.

So I still love "HDD Ready" structure, but I understand the practicality of ISOs in many instances. I do feel comfy though when I'm able to just go into a folder and browse contents, kinda like going into "Program Files" on my PC like I have over all these years. Just makes sense to me. I talked with @lopenator about this a while back and I think he said it equated to some gigs in difference between ISOs and files. Like, 1.4TB to 1.7 maybe? I could be wrong. My question is, what else is really going to take up several gigs of space on a 2TB HDD (the most relevant capacity in this instance)? All the roms and emulators are already there. Maybe DVDs or music? I can't think of anything else...