Since of course playing the game on original hardware it's a bit complicated these days, and there are ways of reproducing the experience on PC thanks to emulators, I decided to make this guide to list everything there is to it at the moment. I tried covering everything into deteils, but feel free to correct me or add more if you want.
1. Download the emulator
First thing we need is an original Xbox emulator for PC. For now there are only two ones available; xemu and Cxbx-Reloaded. Cxbx-Reloaded has been around for more and while it does have a bit more features than xemu, is also a bit outdated. Xemu on the other hand is far newer but it still has a long way to go and lacks of many features that modern emulators have. I reccomand going with xemu since it's the most compatible with Rayman 3 at the moment but I will list all steps for both emulators regardless.
- For xemu, go to the xemu website and click on "Download for (your current platform)".
- For Cxbx-Reloaded, go to the Cxbx-Reloaded website and click on "Download Now", and then download the latest build.
2. Open the emulator
- For xemu, simply extract the folder and then click on the "xemu.exe" file.
- For Cxbx-Reloaded, simply extract the folder and then click on the "cxbx.exe" file. You'll then be prompted with a message that ask if you want to use the emulator in protable mode or personal mode. It only changes where the save files for the emulator are located. If it's in portable mode, they will be saved in the same folder of the emulator. If it's in personal mode, they will be saved in the C:\Users\(your user name)\AppData\Roaming\Cxbx-Reloaded.
3. Set up the emulator
- For xemu you mainly need three files to make the emulator work:
2. Flash ROM Image (BIOS)
3. Hard Disk Image
There are several methods of getting these files online. The following is a list of all the available sources:
MCPX, BIOS, HDD (Complete)
MCPX, BIOS, HDD (Essential)
MCPX, BIOS (Reccomended)
HDD (Reccomended)
HDD (Alternative)
Some important notes:
- The HDDs included in the xemu website and the xemufiles pack do not provide the original Xbox dashboard. This can comes provided in the HDDs obtainable by all the other links.
- Some of the files included may or may not work depending on various factors. The ones labled as "Reccomended" are garanteeded to work 100%, so if you're unsure or if the emulator still doesn't work properly after configuring the files, just go with the reccomended ones.
- Cxbx-Reloaded, on the other hand, doesn't require any file in order to work, as it only emulates the game processing, unlike xemu, which emulates the whole hardware. That said though, if you want to open the Xbox dashboard on it, you first need the extract files, or you can download these Xbox dashboard files that are already been extracted. Once downloaded, extract the file and put all the content inside the Xbox Dashboard Data\C folder in your user folder\AppData\Roaming\Cxbx-Reloaded\EmuDisk\Partition2. If the path doesn't exist yet, create the folders yourself. Once this is done, come back to Cxbx-Reloaded and click on "File>Open Dashboard...". Once the xbe of the dashboard has been loaded, click on "Emulaton>Start", and you'll be inside the dashboard.
After all that convoluted set up, it's not over yet, so get ready for yet another round of messing around with original Xbox stuff. The first step is to download the game, so go to Vimm's Lair and select the version you want, then click "Download" and wait for the download to finish.
Note: It doesn't really change anything between the eruopean (PAL) version and the american (NTSC) version in this case, except if you want to do very specific edits with either the eeprom settings or hex editing. If it's not the case, it doesn't really matter what version you choose to download, however, if you also want to apply some patches (as I will explain how to do later) I reccomand downloading the american (NTSC) version, since it's the most compatible with the current patches.
5. ISO convertion and extraction
- On xemu, the game needs to be in XISO format in order to be recognized. If you haven't got the game by the link above (which comes already in XISO format) and you happen to have the full ISO, then choose one of these methods to convert an ISO into XISO (and vice versa), otherwise, if you already have an XISO, you can skip directly to the next paragraph, if not, keep reading.
Batch file
Copy-paste the following command into a simple text file:
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@echo off
mkdir "./XISO"
mkdir "./REDUMP"
for %%a in (*.iso) do (extract-xiso -r "./%%a")
for %%a in (*.iso) do (move /-Y "%%a" "./XISO/%%a")
for %%a in (*.iso.old) do (move /-Y "%%a" "./REDUMP/%%~na")
pauseextract-xiso
First download extract-xiso, click on "Releases" and then download the extract-xiso-win32-release.zip file. Once downloaded, extract the file and put the executable right next to the ISO you want to convert into XISO. Once this is done, open PowerShell by clicking on "File>Open PowerShell" from the current directory with both the ISO and extract-xiso. Now paste in the following command:
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./extract-xiso -c "(Replace this by copy-pasting the name of the ISO inside the same folder (remember to include the ISO extension after the name))"extract-xiso-gui
First download extract-xiso-gui, click on "Releases" and then download the extract-xiso-gui.zip file. Once downloaded, extract the file and run extract-xiso-gui.exe. Now first select the ISO you want to convert, then select the mode you want to use, in this case select "Create". Next click "Go!" and then select your current folder and and destination folder of the XISO. Press "Go!" again and wait for the convertion process to finish.
Qwix
First download Qwix, click on "Download it here!" and after the download finishes extract the file and run Qwix.exe. Now go to the "Create ISO" tab and on the "Source" section select "Convert ISO". Now select the ISO you want to convert, then press "Create ISO" and select the destination folder of the XISO. Now wait for the convertion process to finish and you're done.
XISO Packer
This is by far the easiest method. All you need to do is go the XISO Packer website, then click "ISO image", then "Select ISO Image" and... well... select the ISO image you want to convert. So now choose a destination folder and click on "Save image". Now wait for the convertion process to finish and you're done.
Reference
Xemu has a page on it's website dedicated to this topic, which has been used as a reference for this section; you can find it here. Some methods like the batch file and extract-xiso-gui haven't been covered there, but at the same time I haven't covered the last method described there; "redump" ISOs, cause I have no experience with that, but feel free to try it out or check the whole page as an additional guide.
- On Cxbx-Reloaded, the game needs to be in xbe format in order to be recognized. To obtain the xbe from an original Xbox game, you need to extract the files from either an ISO or an XISO. Eeven in this case, there are several methods to so:
First download extract-xiso, click on "Releases" and then download the extract-xiso-win32-release.zip file. Once downloaded, extract the file and put the executable right next to the ISO you want to xtract the files from. Once this is done, open PowerShell by clicking on "File>Open PowerShell" from the current directory with both the ISO and extract-xiso. Now paste in the following command:
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./extract-xiso -x "(Replace this by copy-pasting the name of the ISO inside the same folder (remember to include the ISO extension after the name))"extract-xiso v2.2
First download extract-xiso v2.2. Now for some weird reason the download on the page with the dedicated name doesn't start (whch is here, by the way). Instead, the real download is under another page with the name of another existing tool, which is actually here. So now click where it says "Download: here", then click on all the various Download buttons and wait until it finally downloads the file. Once downloaded, extract it and run the setup. After the setup is finished, click on the desktop shortcut for the program. Now click on "Extarct XISO", select the XISO you want to extract the files from and click "Select", then select the destination folder and click "Select" again. Now wait for the extraction process to finish and you're done.
extract-xiso-gui
First download extract-xiso-gui, click on "Releases" and then download the extract-xiso-gui.zip file. Once downloaded, extract the file and run extract-xiso-gui.exe. Now first select the ISO you want to extract the files from, then select the mode you want to use, in this case select "Extract". Next click "Go!" and then select your current folder and and destination folder of the XISO. Press "Go!" again and wait for the extraction process to finish.
Legacy tools
You can find more (deprecated) extraction tools for original Xbox games here
.
Once you got the xbe, you're now finally able to proceed to the next step.
6. Play the game
Now FINALLY you can play the game, so here's how to do that:
- On xemu, click on "Machine>Load Disc..." and select the ISO of the game you just downloaded.
- On Cxbx-Reloaded, click on "File>Open Xbe..." and select the xbe extracted from the ISO of the game. Once the xbe is loaded, click on "Emulatation>Start".
7. Adjust the emulator settings
- On xemu, first and formost you'd want to connect and select your input device, so go to "Machine>Settings...>Input" and select your input device from the drop-down menu.
- If you are using xemu on a device that has an nvidia GPU, or if said GPU is set to be the main one you use, or again, the one set to use for xemu, you can increase the performance by disabling multi-threaded optimizations in the Nvidia Control Panel. To do this, open the Nvidia Control Panel, go to 3D Settings>Manage 3D Settings, then scroll down until you find "Threaded optimisation" and set it to "Off". This will apply globally, but if you want to disable it just for xemu, then first switch tab to "Program Settings" instead of "Global Settings". Then under "1. Select a program to customise" select xemu. If doesn't show up click on "Add" and search there. Once found click on it and then click on "Add Selected Program". If it still doesn't show up then click on "Add>Browse..." and go to the path where you have xemu on your PC. Once found click on "xemu.exe" and then on "Add Selected Program". Then repeat the process of scrolling down until you find "Threaded optimisation" and set it to "Off", and this time it will only apply to xemu and not any other program.
- On Cxbx-Reloaded, first and formost you'd want to connect and select your input device, so first go to "Settings>Config Input...", then near "Port 1" select first your desired controller profile, then click on "Configure". Now it's time to bind the keys to profile. You can go through each one of them one by one, or you can simply click on "Default Bindings" and edit from there to do quicker. Once all keys are binded, under "Profile" assign a name to your profile, then click "Save", and you're done.
8. Adjust the Xbox settings
You can change the Xbox settings (such as audio, video, region, language and so on) within the dashboard (if you're not using a dummy HDD, that is). If you can't access the original Xbox dashboard, an alternative way to change the Xbox settings is to use the eeprom file directly, which contains all the Xbox settings and game data. There are two ways of doing this:
- Download XboxEepromEditor, click on "Releases" and then download the XboxEepromEditor.1.0.0.1.zip file and extract it. Run the executable and then click on "File>Open" and select the eeprom you want to edit. Once you're done with the settings click on "File>Save As" and decide if you want to override the existing eeprom or create another one and leave the current one as a backup.
- Cxbx-Reloaded has a built-in eeprom editor, which you can access by clicking on "Settings>Config Eeprom...". Once you're satisfied with the settings click on "Accept" and you're done.
Fore the record, I'll describe how both xemu and Cxbx-Reloaded generate eeprom files, so you at least know where to grub them, as they are not easely available online.
- Xemu generates an eeprom file as soon as you run it. You can find it in your user folder\AppData\Roaming\xemu\xemu.
- Cxbx-Reloaded generates an eeprom file as soon as you enter the dashboard. You can find it in your user folder\AppData\Roaming\Cxbx-Reloaded.
It's finally time for the best part; make the game better then it already is.
- - First download the patches. All these can be found in two places; the post made by Steo on the Rayman Pirate Community forum, which can be found here, and the Xbox Graphical Patches repository on GitHub made by icup321, which can be found here.
- For the first patches, scroll down on the RPC post until you see "Rayman IPS patches.zip". Click on the link and wait for the download to finish. You can also download the "Rayman 3 Widescreen.zip" file from the link right under the previous one for the patch refined by RibShark. As for the other ones provided by icup321, simply click on the green button and then click on "Download ZIP".
- Now it's time to get equiped with the tools needed to actually apply the patches. So download Lunar IPS. Then download Floating IPS (which is an improved version of Lunar IPS). The last tool is already included in the repository privided by icup321, which is OgXHD. So if you downloaded the repository before it's already included in there.
10. Apply the patches
It's time to finally apply the patches.
- For the ones made by Steo, run Lunar IPS and click on "Apply IPS Patch" and select the desired patch to use, in this case, select "Rayman3.ips" from the "Rayman IPS patches" folder. Now select the file "default.xbe" that you want to apply the patch on, and the patch will be immidately applied. If you can't select the default.xbe file on the second step, click on the extention to choose in the file explorer window and select "All Files (*.*)". For the patch refinied by RibShark do the exact same, except you need to use Floating IPS this time around, as the patch is in BPS format (ignore the one in ETM format). The patch is in the "Rayman 3 Widescreen" folder. Now follow the same steps as before to apply the patch as well, though the patch most likely will throw an error saying that the patch is not intended for that ROM, so I reccomend not bothering with it, as it resoults to be the same patch provided by icup321, which leads us to the next step.
- The widescreen patch (which is located in the XboxGraphicalPatches-main\16-9 Widescreen Patches) has one major difference from the one made by Steo; the font is scaled properly instead of being stretched like the rest of the UI.
- The 720p patches should be avoided all together, as they just brake the game, but if you want to try them out just to see it for yourself, you first need to set the emulator to have 128MiB, otherwise the game straight up won't load. xemu is the only emulator that support such setting, and it can be toggled by going to "Machine>Settings...>System>System Configuration>System Memory" and then select "128MiB".
- Once you have loaded the game, you'll notice that the display and resolution scale will be screwed up. Like the widescreen patch, there is one major difference between the one made by Steo and the one provided by icup321; the one made by Steo throws a disc error onece you enter the first loading screen, while the one provided by icup321 will let you play indefinetely, but the resolution scale will be completely screwed. So as I said, avoid these patches if you care about having the best possible experience.
- As for the other patches provided in the "Miscellaneous Patches" folder, they're pretty self explainatory. Simply browse through the "gamedatabin" folder and choose the folder described in the name of each patch when you're about to apply the them.
- Lastly you can also apply the first types of patches (widescreen and 720p) through OgXHD. Every option basically gives the same resoult once selected the default.xbe you need to patch, so it basically only saves you time in case you only want to apply those two patches (specifically the ones provided by icup321) and not the miscellaneous ones or the ones made by Steo. In that case you'll still have to do apply the patches manually by downoading them and downloading and using both Lunar IPS and Floating IPS as well.
- There is still one more fix that can be applied to the game, which is not done by applying a patch, but only by extract the content of the ISO or XISO. You can replace the menu, the loading screen and splash screen textures (which are stored in the "Gamedata>Vignette" folder) with whatever other image you want, but at two condition; the image must be of the same format (BMP for the splash and loading screens and DDS for the menu) and the same resolution (640 x 480 for the splash and loading screens and 512 x 512 for the menu) of the original textures. If both these conditions aren't met, the game will crarh when trying to run it.
I'll go over how you can reassemble the ISO or XISO after you extract the files to patch them. This is only required to play the games on xemu, as Cxbx-Reloaded only need the xbe. Never the less, it's important to now how to do that too to get the full picture. So here are the following methods on how to do so:
extract-xiso
First download extract-xiso, click on "Releases" and then download the extract-xiso-win32-release.zip file. Once downloaded, extract the file and put the executable right next to the ISO you want to reconvert into XISO. Once this is done, open PowerShell by clicking on "File>Open PowerShell" from the current directory with both the ISO and extract-xiso. Now paste in the following command:
Code: Select all
./extract-xiso -c "(Replace this by copy-pasting the name of the ISO inside the same folder (remember to include the ISO extension after the name))extract-xiso v2.2
First download extract-xiso v2.2. Now for some weird reason the download on the page with the dedicated name doesn't start (whch is here, by the way). Instead, the real download is under another page with the name of another existing tool, which is actually here. So now click where it says "Download: here", then click on all the various Download buttons and wait until it finally downloads the file. Once downloaded, extract it and run the setup. After the setup is finished, click on the desktop shortcut for the program. Now click on "Create XISO", select the folder with the files you want to recreate the XISO from and click "Select", then select the destination folder and click "Select" again. Now wait for the recreation process to finish and you're done.
extract-xiso-gui
First download extract-xiso-gui, click on "Releases" and then download the extract-xiso-gui.zip file. Once downloaded, extract the file and run extract-xiso-gui.exe. Now select the folder with the files you want to recreate the XISO, then select the mode you want to use, in this case select "Create". Next click "Go!" and then select your current folder and and destination folder of the XISO. Press "Go!" again and wait for the recreation process to finish.
12. Known issues
As stated before in a few steps, there are some problems here with the whole emulation of Rayman 3 on either xemu or Cxbx-Reloaded, and not specifically related to the game, so I'll go over all known issues one by one.
Rayman 3 on xemu
- Some times FMVs statter a lot, making it hard to go through them.
- Some times the menu font texture gets totally screwed in the menu.
- Emulation of some audio channels appear to be much more compressed than it was in the original.
- Fade-to-black transitions gets cutted and don't get to be shown.
- Birds in the second section of The Land of the Livid Dead gets stretched beyond belivable.
- Céloche laser beam attack appears to be frame-dependent, rather then been setted at a fixed speed with delta time.
- Audio doesn't play, despite playing in the FMVs.
- Characters' models gets warped and flicker all over the screen rapidly all the time.
- RibShark's widescreen patch throws an error saying that the patch is not intended for that ROM when applied with Floating IPS.
- 720p patches should be avoided all together, as they just brake the game by screwing the display and resolution scale.
- The dashboard appears to be glitched and not rendered properly.
This was an extremely exausting and fully deteiled guide on everything you need to know to play Rayman 3 for Xbox on PC. It's still very convoluted and it certanly could be better in some ways, but what is here is already something, and I honeslty think it's totally worth the asshole, as it will give you an experience that is in some ways better than the PC version, also thanks to the patches available. I do hope that this guide will soon become obsolete, but as of now, this is how things are.
I would like to mention that I also made another Rayman 3 setup guide, this time for the PC version, which basically follows the same principles of this guide. You can check it out here if you're interested. As for the GameCube version, there isn't much material out there at the moment, and I'm not very familiar with the patching and setup of that version, but for now though, I'll provide you this guide, which basically covers all there is to it for that version. I'm not very familiar with any other versions of Rayman 3, so this is all I got about setup guides. Hope you will appreciate it.
