Game crashes - possible reasons and solutions?

[Diomedes]

Hello everyone!

I finally wanted to try out Arena (I downloaded the latest version) but before putting a lot of thought into creating teams I just wanted to test the game. Problem is: I can't get the matches to get started. Creating a memcard works fine, so does loading the savestate and I can select a battle map on the world map but after the "Now loading..." disappears, ePSXe crashes and has to be closed.

Is that a common problem if something has not been patched correctly or what else could cause it?
As for the patch, of course I used a clean file but I don't really know whether FFTorgASM has applied the hotfix to it. I start the program, check all the boxes and select the .img with "Patch ISO..." and nothing seems to happen. Then again, I'm not entirely sure how the program actually works or what the hotfix fixes. A video posted by Barren mentions WinHex but it seems that it is just necessary for older versions of Arena and the memcard generator.

Any helpful hint or advice is highly appreciated. I have not found a readme, so I hope that someone here can tell me what I did wrong and thereby what I have to do to make it work.

Obligatory side note as this is my first posting:
My deepest admiration for all the people and their work on this website and forum! This I cannot overstate.

[Barren]

That video I posted was a long while ago. You don't need winhex anymore. I think what you need to do is when you open the spreadsheet, go to the settings tab and make sure that under memory card where the text says "Generate memory card as" you set it to .gme

That way when you save your memory card, you open FFTastic, hit file, open, select the memory card you created, hit file again then hit save and you're done.

Also when you open your Play Station emulator go to memory card slot 1 or 2 and select the memory card you're using to load an Arena match. Let me know if you're having more problems

[Diomedes]

Nope, still doesn't work. Just like before, everything works fine until the game would go to the battle screen, then crashes. 

[Dokurider]

Perhaps it's your ePSXe version? Perhaps there's compatibility issues with FFT? Try using an unmodded FFT iso and see what it does.

You don't need the savestate. Just load directly from the memory card and it'll take you to the map selection.

[Diomedes]

Every other Version of FFT works fine. I also tried ePSXe 1.6 (I normally use 1.7) but that did not help either. What exactly do you mean by saying "load directly from the memory card"? I start the game, select Continue, and then select the match I want to play. Or is something wrong with that?
I also tried different video and sound plugins.

[Jumza]

Wait a minute... Did you say that you checked EVERY box in FFTOrgASM? If that's true I bet that's what is causing the crashing.

[Choto]

Wait a minute... Did you say that you checked EVERY box in FFTOrgASM? If that's true I bet that's what is causing the crashing.

More than likely.. Try applying few at a time or go through them systematically to find the conflicting hacks. Then you can post your battle.bin and you can move them to safe places or fix them.

[Dokurider]

Oh then you're doing it right then. It sounded like you were loading from the savestate from how you were talking about it.

[Diomedes]

Wait a minute... Did you say that you checked EVERY box in FFTOrgASM? If that's true I bet that's what is causing the crashing.

You were right. I made a new file without applying anything from FFTorgASM and it worked. I suppose everything should be ok as long as I stick to the hotfixes that were made specifically for Arena. Which exact combination causes the crash would require further testing but for now it is a huge relief to know the source of error.

Thank you a lot!

[Jumza]

Well, selecting every single box, and every ASM hack in the program causes the games code to become messier than the original game itself. Which was pretty messed up to begin with, so yes crashes are common when using many ASM hacks because some of them clash and overwrite each other etc...

Also all the ASM hacks needed for ARENA (except the hotfixes) are already in the file anyway!