[GC] Star Fox Adventures

[nikeymikey]

Just tried this game out for the first time runs like a dream for me on my Strix GTX1080Ti OC using 5.0 - 5634

Fullscreen@1080p, 3xIR, 8xSSAA, 16xAF, Hybrid Ubershaders, Vulkan backend. Steady 60fps most of the time too

[Xharos]

I'm playing this and after around 1 hour of gameplay I got this error:

FIFO is overflown by GatherPipe, CPU thread is too fast!

Ignore and continue?

I clicked yes and the game continued as normal. Is this common? Using the PAL ISO and Dolphin 5.0-8155. Vulkan backend, asynchronous ubershaders

[Kolano]

Can anyone comment on the audio in the intro cinematic? We have a wiki test report that it's not working...
"The music, some sound effects, and voice of Krystal in the intro cinematic does not play"

[Stephen]

(11-08-2012, 03:06 AM)Starscream Wrote:

Wiki Page - Star Fox Adventures - [edit]

Previous discussion thread

I played the game in the latest unstable version of Dolphin on the GPD XD Plus.  Here are the results:


To get it to work I had to:

1.  Follow this tutorial:  https://technilinks.com/configure-dolphin-emulator-android-best-configuration/

2.  Check all options for hacks to get proper graphics and bring the frame rate to 20 FPS.

3.  Play around with the Overclock setting in the dolphin.ini file, found that 0.15 was close enough to bring the game to actual speed on the gamecube when comparing to a game walkthrough.


Issues found:

1.  2D videos in 3D space play too fast.

2.  There were pauses as 3D objects and actions were loaded into RAM, brief but noticeable.  Not too bad since they seem to stay in RAM until space is needed there (seemingly) so this does not happen constantly but it happens often.  Said loading times I remember were:  just as the first fireball is fired from the ship, just as the first fireball is fired from the front of the ship, grabbing the key, the first time the jellyfishlike thing attacks, the first time you kill it, just before a barrel blows a wall open, sometimes when running around larger areas of the temple, the cut scene after Krystal becomes trapped.

3.  In hallways lacking the complexity of other rooms the game speeds up until leaving them, there is no option to fix this that I am aware of.

4.  Shadows flicker.

5.  Just before being stuck in a crystal Krystal was green due to an effect in the area.  Also seemed like an effect was missing but I could be wrong.


Other than those issues the game looks decent and is highly playable.  I hope this data helps in improving the emulator.

[JosJuice]

Do not set EmulationSpeed to 9.0 like that link suggests. It should be set to 1.0, otherwise the game will run too fast just like you describe.

[Stephen]

(02-24-2019, 10:46 PM)JosJuice Wrote: Do not set EmulationSpeed to 9.0 like that link suggests. It should be set to 1.0, otherwise the game will run too fast just like you describe.

Good point. ok, I just tested this on the title screen.  I did not find much difference in the game speed at the 3d portion where you see fox mccleod.

Note that this is on an android device with a hezacore CPU, 4 with a max speed of 1.7 GHz and 2 with a max speed of 2.1 GHz, and the android build was started later than the pc builds, so i am not expecting miracles yet.

When running at normal speed the frame rate drops to 5 fps at the title although opening animation plays properly, after the video the 3d portion that follows seems to be normal speed at roughly close to 3 to 6 fps.
At 2 times speed the opening video is a bit faster but tolerable, frame rate is around 10 fps.  The 3d portion is about 6 to 8 fps.
At 3 times speed of the video is too fast and the frame rate fluctuates between 11 and 15 fps and the frame rate of the 3d portion mostly stays at 10 fps.
At 4 times speed animation is too fast with not much visible difference, frame rate is 15 to 17 fps.  the 3d portion fluctuates more but is mostly at 9 to 10 fps.
At 5 times speed, not much faster on the 2d animation than at 4 times speed, 15-17 fps.  On the 3d portion, roughly 10 to 14 fps.
At 6 times speed, opening animation is close to 5 times speed but a little faster, 15 to 17 fps.  On the 3d portion, roughly 10 to 14 fps.
At 7 times speed, opening animation is of course a little faster and reaches 15 to 17 fps.  On the 3d portion., 11 to 15 fps.
At 8 times speed, opening sequence is close to as fast as 7 times speed and reaches 15 to 17 fps.  On the 3d portion, 10 to 16 fps.
At 9 times speed, opening sequence is about as fast as 8 times speed and reaches roughly 16 to 18 fps.  The 3d portion is 10 to 16 fps.

Conclusion:  The emulation speed on 2D sequences has a drastic effect on the speed, at 3 times emulation speed and above it is way too fast.  The emulation speed on 3D sequences does have a noticeable effect but is far less pronounced.  However, the frame rate steadily increased while the 3d portion of the title screen remained close enough to the same speed as i adjusted the emulation speed.

Note that I am getting better frame rates in the actual gameplay and with show frame rate disabled the game seems smooth enough at times and sometimes has moments of choppiness. The reason for using the opening sequence as a testing point is purely because it shows a 2D animation showinjg a video of 3D scenes and immediately follows up with a 3D scene with a 2D window appearing on it which could be relevant.

Also, for reference, the GPD XD Plus is running Skelton's CleanRom 2.0 as the firmware which establishes workarounds to get past the "refresh bug" which seems to be caused by a faulty thermal sensor for the #4 CPU according to Skelton's blog.


I hope that is adequate data for those who are developing this emulator to improve upon it. In the meantime, is there a better setting to play around with in order to try to reach the point of a better frame rate so i can restore the emulation speed back down to or closer to 1?

[Matrix2525]

So, on a whim I decided to try playing a bit of the game. Are seemingly random hangs still a thing? I'm getting very frequent complete freezes on 5.0 - 10411, Windows 10, using the Vulkan backend. I used Dolphin's verify feature to see if there were any issues, but my game dump came up clean. Also, Dolphin itself still works when the game itself freezes, so I can successfully load a prior savestate, but then the game freezes again a short time later. All other settings are at their defaults except for running at 6x IR, and I have not edited the configuration file for the game. I just tried running the game one more time now, and it seemed to play fine for about twenty minutes until it froze. This time however, I was in fullscreen, and after the freeze, Dolphin completely closed on me a couple seconds later.

Edit: I played around with settings some more and tried switching the backend to DX12 for kicks. No freezes after an hour and the game seems to be running fine. If I switch back to Vulkan, the game starts freezing again. Not sure if there's an actual code issue between graphics backends or if it's something to do with my specific hardware, etc, but it might be worth looking into? I use Vulkan as my default graphics backend and this is the first serious issue I've encountered that switching to another backend fixed.

[Entergroot]

When getting to Krazoa palace as fox for the first time, the whole cutscene audio is missing except for the sound of the storm
Also whenever you interact with the warpstone, the subtitle for when you first met him always plays "Ah what a lovely sweetie"

Any ideas? tried HLE and LLE audio

[AbstractUmbra]

I have now tried this game twice, and each time on arriving at the Krazoa Palace as the first time as Fox, I can make it all the way to the top of the Palace as I am supposed to but the cutscene that is supposed to initiate with Krystal does not start, leaving me unable to progress in the game. Any ideas?

[Marscaleb]

This isn't an issue with the emulator, but I don't really have any place more valid I can post this.

I never noticed before today, but this game has a really nifty grass effect. No matter what angle you view the grass from, you see blades of grass perpendicular to the camera.
How do they pull off this effect? There's no way they could be layering meshes or planes; the Gamecube could never handle that much detail. It has to be some kind of shader trick, but even saying that, it seems WAY beyond the capacity of the GCN. And yet, it's there.

I also now wonder if this is what the fur effect is doing. I had always assumed that was a series of layers of textures, but now I wonder if it too is a fancy shader effect.

...Is there any way to trigger dolphin to render the scene in wireframe? Or a way I can view the textures/materials/models currently in memory?