Hi, I'm having an issue with input delay in the Smash Bros. games. I tested with both the Anther's Ladder recommended revision (4.0-7840) and the latest dev build (4.0-9327). In both cases I had the following results:
Summary:
Melee: 1-2 frames of input delay on all button presses
Project M: 2-3 frames of input delay on all button presses
Methods:
All 4 combinations of both Dolphin revisions x both games were tested. Character used was Falco since his jump squat and back air both have very exaggerated 1st frame poses. I tested using pause + frame step with Show Input Display on to confirm the exact delay timing. General sequence follows:
With character standing in neutral pose, press Dolphin Pause hotkey.
Frame -1: While holding X on the controller, press Dolphin Frame Advance hotkey.
Frame 0: No animation change. Verify that the input was registered on that frame on the on-screen Input Display. Release the X button.
Frame 1: No animation change.
Frame 2: Character enters first frame of jump squat animation.
Similar testing was done with back air to make sure that it wasn't something specific to the jump. I also tried using a 2nd controller that was configured to keyboard only and pressing that jump key instead, with the same results.
To eliminate the possibility that it is a problem only with pause/frame advance mode, I recorded a movie of a test while emulating each game at full speed. Both the movie and the emulation remained at a solid 60fps during the tests. I then played back the saved movie in VLC Media Player and stepped through the frames of the movie to compare the frame where the input showed on the Input Display and the frame where the character entered jump squat. Results were the same.
Windows Aero is disabled. I am running in fullscreen mode. I even tried running in the painfully slow Interpreted emulation mode, just to make sure it wasn't some kind of threading issue! Results were the same.
Detailed results:
Melee was consistently 1-2 frames of delay (character would usually enter jump squat on the frame right after the one where the input was registered, but sometimes it took 2 frames). Project M was consistently 2-3 frames of delay. Vanilla Brawl has 0-2 frames of input delay built into the game (which were patched out in Project M), so it is worthless to use that game for this test.
It did seem like whether the delay was 1 or 2 frames was "streaky". For example, if I was getting all 1 frame delays, then unpausing and goofing around for a bit, then pausing again might get me a string of 2 frame delays instead. This inconsistency in delay makes doing frame perfect inputs that much harder in real gameplay.
Googling around a bit, I have heard complaints from a few other people of similar problems, but it's usually been brushed off as a configuration or controller problem. I've tried to eliminate most of the variables except for toggling every single Dolphin option...
Summary:
Melee: 1-2 frames of input delay on all button presses
Project M: 2-3 frames of input delay on all button presses
Methods:
All 4 combinations of both Dolphin revisions x both games were tested. Character used was Falco since his jump squat and back air both have very exaggerated 1st frame poses. I tested using pause + frame step with Show Input Display on to confirm the exact delay timing. General sequence follows:
With character standing in neutral pose, press Dolphin Pause hotkey.
Frame -1: While holding X on the controller, press Dolphin Frame Advance hotkey.
Frame 0: No animation change. Verify that the input was registered on that frame on the on-screen Input Display. Release the X button.
Frame 1: No animation change.
Frame 2: Character enters first frame of jump squat animation.
Similar testing was done with back air to make sure that it wasn't something specific to the jump. I also tried using a 2nd controller that was configured to keyboard only and pressing that jump key instead, with the same results.
To eliminate the possibility that it is a problem only with pause/frame advance mode, I recorded a movie of a test while emulating each game at full speed. Both the movie and the emulation remained at a solid 60fps during the tests. I then played back the saved movie in VLC Media Player and stepped through the frames of the movie to compare the frame where the input showed on the Input Display and the frame where the character entered jump squat. Results were the same.
Windows Aero is disabled. I am running in fullscreen mode. I even tried running in the painfully slow Interpreted emulation mode, just to make sure it wasn't some kind of threading issue! Results were the same.
Detailed results:
Melee was consistently 1-2 frames of delay (character would usually enter jump squat on the frame right after the one where the input was registered, but sometimes it took 2 frames). Project M was consistently 2-3 frames of delay. Vanilla Brawl has 0-2 frames of input delay built into the game (which were patched out in Project M), so it is worthless to use that game for this test.
It did seem like whether the delay was 1 or 2 frames was "streaky". For example, if I was getting all 1 frame delays, then unpausing and goofing around for a bit, then pausing again might get me a string of 2 frame delays instead. This inconsistency in delay makes doing frame perfect inputs that much harder in real gameplay.
Googling around a bit, I have heard complaints from a few other people of similar problems, but it's usually been brushed off as a configuration or controller problem. I've tried to eliminate most of the variables except for toggling every single Dolphin option...
