Slight Performance boost?

[Danishblunt]

So I am using this emulator on my android phone and WOW. I am absolutely stunned about it's performance. Most games run really well but there is 1 game that actually does suffer from quite the performance problems.

I was wondering if people could tell me how I could possibly improve on the performance of Need For Speed Underground. It's the only game that does have quite severe drops in framerates.

[JMC47]

In order to do this, someone would have to find out where the bottleneck is (probably can figure that out on desktop builds) and then figure out if it's possible to optimize it. If the game does demanding things then it may not be possible without compromising emulation.

[degasus]

NFS Undergrund is a variable FPS game. So the game tries to render as many frames as possible. This yields a huge load for the emulator. Just keep an eye on the FPS counter and you'll notice 100+ fps while running at 30% speed. To get a more playable performance, you might either try to run the GPU fully unsynchronized with SyncOnSkipIdle = False, but this is quite risky to crash. The other way is to slow down the GPU emulation with SyncGPU = True and SyncGpuOverclock = 0.1. Just play a bit with the overclocking factor, but I'd expect a fine range in 0.01 to 0.1. All of those settings are in /sdcard/dolphin-emu/Config/Dolphin.ini

[Danishblunt]

So I tried to play with the overclock settings, which didn't do much.

Much like Super mario sunshine there is probably something the emulator emulates that is a performance hog for no reason. Now my question is the following:
How do I make a config file for each game? Is there any documentation on what settings exist which could be played around with? The game itself runs pretty well except for very specific places on each map, once you get to those, it starts dipping into 15fps.

I tried using the gamecode as the config name "GNDP" but that didn't seem to work.

[JosJuice]

(12-23-2018, 09:38 PM)Danishblunt Wrote: Much like Super mario sunshine there is probably something the emulator emulates that is a performance hog for no reason.

Unlike games like Super Mario Sunshine and Zelda: Wind Waker, Dolphin doesn't force any accuracy settings for Need for Speed Underground.

(12-23-2018, 09:38 PM)Danishblunt Wrote: I tried using the gamecode as the config name "GNDP" but that didn't seem to work.

You have to include the publisher code at the end, so GNDP69.ini. Or you can use just the first three characters, GND.ini.

[Danishblunt]

(12-23-2018, 10:03 PM)JosJuice Wrote: Unlike games like Super Mario Sunshine and Zelda: Wind Waker, Dolphin doesn't force any accuracy settings for Need for Speed Underground.


You have to include the publisher code at the end, so GNDP69.ini. Or you can use just the first three characters, GND.ini.

Yeah I found that out
Also found a wiki page with all sorts of informations about settings and stuff, so far game runs really smooth (around 30fps) except for those specific places where it now dumps down to 21ish FPS.

Could you guys maybe look into what is causing these lags?
I could provide screenshots and a small guide how to get to the places fast and where they are. Maybe you can find out what is causing the performance hog.

[Guilherme]

NFS games are actually CPU-intensive, so change GPU settings won't exactly improve performance. If you have a powerful enough PC you will notice that if you set higher clocks to the virtual CPU (150% or more), you'll have constant 60 FPS, default clock will give you around 30-60 FPS. If you set lower clocks you might have better results on your phone, but a lower FPS range (20-40 FPS depending on how much you reduce the clock).

[JMC47]

Can confirm, the game just pushes a ton of polygons. There isn't much to optimize.

[Danishblunt]

(12-25-2018, 06:00 PM)JMC47 Wrote: Can confirm, the game just pushes a ton of polygons. There isn't much to optimize.

I get that, the FPS are really low compared to oher games such as DBZ Budokai or Soul Calibur, but the performance issues are caused by some kind of glitch. Because I can be on the same road and just move a couple cm while seing my FPS go down by 10 or more. If we would talk about a place where models etc. are less present vs tons of polygons, I would understand, but basicially rendering the same scene having 10fps less by moving very slight foward and getting 10 fps back by driving slightly back while rendering the same scene is letting me believing that this is some sort of glitch.

[JosJuice]

That doesn't have to be a glitch. The game might very well be loading in a new part of the scene with more polygons when you move those couple centimeters.