Hyrule Field Slowdown Observation

[Jack Frost]

Did anyone try r5790+ yet? Any changes in Hyrule Field that could be attributed to the vMem stuff?
(No doubt that pipeline flushes and the FIFO stuff are still a bottleneck here, but it might have bettered the situation a bit)

[Xtreme2damax]

@fircrestsk8, I tested your modifications but they offered no speedup in Hyrule Field.

[StripTheSoul]

this thread is strange...always it says someone posted something but it's not showing...the new page shows too late, if you know what I mean...maybe you won't even be able to read this post now when it get's posted *g*

[Jack Frost]

Maybe I should close it, and you simply start a new one that summarizes the things you found out?

[storm20200]

Ok what the hell, slightly off topic but I've been following this topic because it interests me, anyway the past few posts I've been unable to see the new posts, I see them in the section saying the last post is from jack frost and stripthesoul before that but everytime I check the last post is from fircrestsk8 with the screenshots. I've tried closing my browser, CTRL+F5 even rebooting and it won't update? o_O

EDIT: Lol making a post unlocked the 41st page, it never appeared untill I posted.....how very strange.

[Amberion]

The thing about these special scenes, like the escort, the chase that ends with the 'joust', and heck the final battle itself, is that they don't actually occur in the areas affected. They may superficially SEEM like they are but a lot of stuff isn't getting loaded when those areas come into play. So, it's not really a valid thing to say 'well I can do the escort at full speed' when really that escort doesn't need the entire hyrule map, just the visible area along the route. Try riding off to wherever. See how far you get.

[fircrestsk8]

Xtreme, are you using the PAL or NTSC version? Either way i guess that means texture addresses are not consistent across versions. I'll see if I can find a better way of identifying when to skip the flushes so that other people can use the Hack with textures restored to the Wii version

[Xtreme2damax]

I have the NTSC version of both the Gamecube and Wii games for ZTP, I only tested with the Gamecube version so far. At first I didn't see that you mentioned that it would only work on the Wii version until I already posted.

[fircrestsk8]

I implemented a method of identifying the target texture address, so now the hack should work independent of game version. It might even work with the gamecube version! It involves several additional lines being added to the BPStructs.cpp file, so I've attached a patch file with the necessary changes

The way it works is by identifying a pattern of BP writes that i noticed occur while in hyrule field (it may also be able to find the address while in other areas of the world too). Once this is located, the hack is "activated" by identifying the texture address currently stored at that point, and then disallowing flushes to occur when that texture is being loaded in the future.
If you are curious as to when the address is located (and the hack is activated), a message is printed to the console when this occurs, containing the identified address. Whatever this address is, it should always be the same every time you play a particular copy of ZTP.

Sorry about the constant changes, hopefully this will be the last one necessary.

[Xtreme2damax]

Awesome job, patch is working on both my Gamecube and Wii (NTSC-U) versions of Twilight Princess.

Texture and graphical glitches are gone from Super Mario Galaxy 1/2, effects are fixed in the Metroid Prime games, the warp map is fixed on the Wii version of Twilight Princess and it gives the same speedup as before.

We need members with copies of the GC/Wii versions from other regions to confirm if they are now getting a speedup without any graphical issues in other games. Once it's thoroughly tested and is confirmed working fine with all games, I think this patch should be committed to the svn. Although I do hop that the developers find a proper fix someday, but this is good enough for now.