Hi there,

I've been a console gamer, since, well ever. I've tried playing some PC games back in the Windows 98/XP days, but I've always had bad luck with getting them to run on my hardware. It's always been the case of because you're using this video card with this motherboard with this OS, well it's not compatible -_-

I'm a game collector today, but I've stopped at the 7th home console gen because most of what the newer consoles offer today that are of interest to me are digital only. My main issue with digital only (besides not having a physical game in my library) is the DRM side of things. The 7th gen was really the first to offer digital games, so who knows what will happen to them in the future, the PS3's digital game library is not compatible with the PS4 last I've heard.

Of course, most of these games are available on PC via Steam, but again, DRM. Sure, Gabe once said that if Steam were to go under, that he would make sure that people could still play their games. Call me sceptical, but I find it hard to believe that if a big company like Valve goes under because of money issue, that they'll pay employees to make all of the games that their consumers bought to be DRM-Free, that sounds expensive.

This is where GOG comes in. Sure the games are digital, but at lease you freaking own them, so it's a good compromise. That being said, it would appear that my luck with PC games has not changed over the years. I bought a couple of games on GOG after creating my account and I'm having issues with all 2 of them: Shantae and Freedom Planet.

First Shantae. I use PS2 Dual Shock controllers on my media PC using a very common converter (it's the blue one in a triangle shape) that allows 2 controllers to be plugged on 1 USB port. Before collecting video games, I used emulators for my retro fix and I've never had issues using this converter with any of them. With Shantae, it doesn't see either controllers. I've had to resort to using another PS2 to USB converter that I use on my PS3. Anyone knows of a way to fix this so that I may avoid switching converters every time?

Second, Freedom Planet, the reason I've opened a GOG account. This is a speed issue cause by Vsync, it lags like crazy. If I turn off Vsync on my Nvida card for full screen or disable desktop composition for windowed mode on the exe file, then the game runs at full speed, but at the cost screen tearing. I don't need to tell any retro gamer that screen tearing in a 2D game is more than irritating.

Not that it should matter for a game that could basically run on a SEGA Saturn, but my media PC runs with a i3 CPU (2 cores/4 threads), 8GB of DDR4 and a GeForce GTX 750 Ti. So ya, any help would be appreciated.

Thank you for your time

EDIT: Forgot to mention that the DEMO version of Freedom Planet that you get from the official web site does not have the Vsync issue, so I'm guessing it's something that GOG did to the game.

I can only guess about the first issue, as I don't own the game but it's likely Shantae only supports Xinput controllers. This is sadly very common in PC games these days. It's likely that the one you use for your PS3 supports Xinput whereas the one that works fine for all the emulators only supports Directinput (the older, but much more versatile PC controller standard).

There are some ways around this; you could try x360ce which can apparently help map Directinput controllers to games that only support Xinput. I've never tried it though and I'm not sure if it works for all games.

Another option which you can fall back on is something like Xpadder or Joy2key. These allow you to map your controller to the keyboard keys the game uses.

No ideas about the second issue, the game runs pretty well on my laptop.

You might want to get a controller emulator like joy2key or http://pinnaclegameprofiler.com/ - first ones is free, second one isnt (though you get a months free trial).

I never had any success with the free ones, but pinnacle has worked for every single game except Omikron so far - though seems quite a few have had success with that too.

Hope thats of some use.

Edit: oh and welcome to GOG - please remember to wear your tinfoil hat at all times and avoid anybody telling you to "BUY SACRIFICE!" as they have the internet lurgey!

@SirPrimalform & Sachys

Thanks for the replies guys. I actually wanted to avoid any of of keyboard emulation (or gamepad emulation in the case of x360ce) because these tend to introduce input lag. But ya, if it is indeed an issue with Xinput, then there's not much that I can do besides using the other converter.

I also posted an update for Freedom Planet in my original post.

Or something that was introduced in updates after the demo released. Have you looked at this?

Your link wouldn't explain why it does that in windowed mode since it's up to Windows to take care of Vsync when it's not in full screen. Guess I'll e-mail the company behind this game.

Concerning Freedom Planet:
Take a look at the readme file. There's a section in there about graphics settings you can make. Initially my game lagged for me as well but after trying one of the other graphics modes it worked perfectly for me.

None of them seem to speed up the game if I keep desktop composition enable. I'll e-mail the company, it's their mess after all. Good thing there's a 30 days money back on the game, it look fun, but I don't see why I should choose between screen tearing or a slow game.

That is just weird. The only thing I can think of that might cause that is a 30hz monitor because I'm sure that freedom planet runs at 60.

Fair enough. The Xinput thing is speculation on my part, but it's an avenue to explore. Certainly if one adapter is directinput and the other is xinput it might be the reason.

As for the Freedom Planet thing, it's more likely that some change in an update to the game has caused the issues you're seeing. I doubt the demo was updated when the full version was. I doubt it's anything GOG has done, as they don't tend to do anything to new games. The version sold by GOG should be the same as any other DRM-free version of the game. Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but screen tearing is hardly a game breaking issue (even if it's unpleasant) so the money back thing doesn't apply here.

There is a 30 day money back guarantee but the policy only applies if the game doesn't work, you write to support and GOG can't get the game working. There's no money back guarantee just because you're not happy unfortunately. That's not to say it's not worth writing to GOG support about the issue, they may refund you but it'd be at their discretion.

Well yes, this is a media PC, so it's hooked via HDMI on an LED TV , not a computer monitor. That being said, Vsync on a graphic card's setting for full screen or desktop composition for windowed mode are suppose to take care of this issue, but in the case of this game, having this on slows the game down.

I'll make a video later to show you guys.

For Shantea try x360ce like suggested by several forummembers.

For Freedom Planet, if you have too much lag with v-sync and have an Nvidia card, open the driverpanel and make a custom profile for the .exe and enable triple buffering and set prerendered frames to 1.

I'd suggest using a monitor in the case. If it's a media PC you should be able to carry over TV functionality with a TV card.

I've probably had the most experience with PS2 controllers, but not PS3 for the PC.

First some games won't recognize a controller unless it's active before the game starts.

Second, the generic drivers might recognize the controller as a ? in the list. Make sure it's recognized under the devices (devices and printers)

Third, if you're using a PS2 controller (rather than the PS3) some models have a digital/analog mode. If it's digital it's going by PS1 standards and the analog sticks are disabled. If you enable that, the analog sticks work.

Fourth, button configuration goes probably between B1 and B12. Since Microsoft is happy to give bad labeling as their generic drivers, you won't know what the f*** each button is unless you memorize it. However 1-4 are the front pad buttons. Beyond that i don't remember. 1 is The triangle, and it goes around clockwise (Triangle, Circle, X, Square). The 360 starts at the bottom and works it's way up. (A, X, B, Y), which means the GUI setup for the Xbox controllers originally on the PS2 suck for games like Bard's Tale.

Fifth, Beyond what I've listed, a number of games are looking for Xinput devices. If it doesn't recognize it (with DirectX) it might be overlooked. might consider checking dxDiag.

EDIT: HANG ON! This is an old thread that I replied to ages ago! How did I end up necroing this? It seemed to show up as a new thread. For the first one it sounds like one of your adapters doesn't support xinput. I find it annoying when developers only support xinput and ignore directinput, but it's a poor design choice rather than a bug. Either petition the developer to change their mind or live with it I'm afraid.

For the second one, GOG doesn't do anything to new games, so the lack of bug in the demo probably means one of two things :

1. The bug was introduced in an update and the demo is based on older code.
2. The bug was fixed in an update which the developers updated the demo to but didn't update GOG's copy to.