Metroid Prime Trilogy

[drhycodan]

Is this game the most demanding game to emulate on Dolphin? If not, what game is the most demanding to emulate?

[NaturalViolence]

Not even close. SMG, SMG2, the last story, and a bunch of others run a lot slower. And that's just off the top of my head. There are a few titles that require interpreter mode to run and literally won't get higher than a few fps on any system.

[MayImilae]

Eh... I'm going to have to disagree with you NV. The Prime games are up there. Prime 3 specifically is extremely hard on the GPU thread. So while I wouldn't say it's the hardest to emulate, I'd put Prime 3 in the top 10. Of course you could blame it's sorry state of emulation, and you might be right, but it's really hard to run.

[Shonumi]

Don't parts of Metroid Prime (the first one) slowdown for everyone no matter what? Like the intro movie and when the doors open to where the Parasite Queen is? (I drop down to ~30, regardless of overclocking...) Pokemon Battle Revolution is right up there. That game has probably never run fullspeed constantly on anyone's rig. Not even heavily OCed Ivy Bridge CPUs could play that at fullspeed (I'm curious to see how well Haswell fares).

I've only dumped MP1, but yeah, I agree with MaJoR, it's a heavy hitter on the GPU sometimes. Just look up at the rain (with OpenGL). I remember it slowing down at 1x even.

[NaturalViolence]

So while I wouldn't say it's the hardest to emulate, I'd put Prime 3 in the top 10.

So in other words you do actually agree with me.

The OP asked if it was the hardest game to emulate and I said no.

[MayImilae]

Heh, true. Then consider my post a clarification.

[Nerrel]

Eh... I'm going to have to disagree with you NV. The Prime games are up there. Prime 3 specifically is extremely hard on the GPU thread.

I think Echoes is harder. Corruption was actually the best performing Prime game on my system, by a good margin. It may help that I was using the PAL at 50fps while Prime 1 and 2 were from the trilogy disc, but even aside from that, Corruption doesn't require the use of EFB to RAM very often.

Prime 1 only needs EFB to RAM for the X-ray visor; the scan visor works fine with EFB to texture and the thermal mostly does too. Echoes requires EFB to RAM for everything, and the game has an obscene amount of scanning in order to open doors or activate switches. Even if you hotkey switch from texture to RAM only when you need to scan, you'll still end up playing at least 1/3 of the game with EFB to RAM. It was a nightmare to run.

Corruption runs like a dream in comparison. I've heard a lot of people complain about how hard it is to get working, but I was able to run it at a higher res than the first two and had only a few problems with hanging here and there.

[MayImilae]

I think Echoes is harder. Corruption was actually the best performing Prime game on my system, by a good margin.

Let me correct you here. You aren't saying Corruption runs the best. You are saying Corruption has easier brute force setting switching. Jumping back and forth between EFB to Ram and EFB to Texture is not good for the game, and doesn't reflect proper emulation. I'm talking the demands of real emulation here. That means EFB to Ram constant, never turning it off. Where you can actually just play the game and forget that there's emulation involved? Your hackish way of brute forcing performance does not reflect real emulation.

The difficulties Trilogy adds to Prime 2 are because it uses Prime 3 technology. Plus, Prime 3 has mountains of bugs that have no solution, which make it run like crap on even the most powerful systems. There is no system on the planet that can run Prime 3 with real settings at 60fps without derps or stutters or occasional slowdown. Prime 2 with Trilogy is fairly similar, but all in all not as bad as Prime 3.

It may help that I was using the PAL at 50fps while Prime 1 and 2 were from the trilogy disc, but even aside from that, Corruption doesn't require the use of EFB to RAM very often.

Ran Prime 3 in PAL and Trilogy in NTSC? That's more important than you realize. PAL has a quirk that somehow fixes the stuttering bug, giving it the appearance of higher performance (it isn't really, just runs smoother which gives that implication). Combined with your brute forcing, I can understand where you got the idea that Prime 2 Tri is more demanding. Still wrong though.