Other games have similar issues with stuttering.
Mario Kart Wii when starting a race there will be brief stuttering when the camera is moving around the track.
Metroid Prime has stuttering, not to mention dips/slowdowns.
These games shouldn't be having these issues so it's a bug somewhere, I can run more demanding games on Dolphin just fine so I really don't understand why these games have problems.
The shader cache does not help the stuttering or dips in these games.
Even in Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 I get framerate dips and slowdowns lol, the frame rate is not always consistent and at times it seems like frame skipping is enabled when it isn't.
I had the framerate dip down to 30 FPS - 40 FPS in Sonic Adventure DX, which is odd for a game that is technically very light compared to other games. On the title screen for Metroid Prime I get about 35 FPS on the title screen, with slowdowns during some movie sequences and ingame.
Sonic Adventure 2 crashes on the Metal Harbor level at the beginning now and has dips as well. I used to be able to run this game without an issue in the past.
Don't forget F-Zero while you're at it
Those stutters though, if I remember right what Skid said, are due to the slow shader caching process...
The disk cache for shaders should fix that though, it works fine for other games so I don't understand why these games have these issues. Sonic Adventure DX and Sonic Adventure 2 should not be having slowdowns or the FPS jumping all over the place, definitely not on my i7 system.
I never got to play a single race in F-Zero GX, it ALWAYS crashed on me.
(10-28-2010, 08:14 AM)Xtreme2damax Wrote: [ -> ]Sonic Adventure DX and Sonic Adventure 2 should not be having slowdowns or the FPS jumping all over the place, definitely not on my i7 system.
We can't make any conclusions from the above. The game might be running different (game) code at that point which require more resources from the emulator core.
The Metal Harbor report is more of a worry though. Have you tried dok's FIFO overflow fix at that point in the game? I do know that SA2B is a FIFO sensitive game.
Well it used to run just fine before all these issues crept up, I played through the entire game. I did have some minor slowdowns, however that was on my old system and it wasn't dipping down to 30 FPS - 45 FPS or jumping that wildly even though the framerate has really never been consistent with Dolphin. I meant I played Sonic Adventure 2 fine, Sonic Adventure DX had an odd slowdown issue, but I believe that was caused by a commit a while back because it didn't always happen as far as I remember.
If Mario Galaxy runs fine on my current system, I don't see why this shouldn't either considering Mario Galaxy is quite a heavy game in comparison. The games are capable of running full speed without a problem on my system, and when the fps isn't dipping or fluctuating/jumping about the games run at full speed.
Starfox Adventures is the worst when it comes to stutters and framerate dips.
It seems the audio/dialog when you give the warp stone the rock candy also plays when you put a cheat token into the well lol. So that and the issue with shadows definitely seem like a core issue.
Yeah I'm using dok.slades fifo patch, these issues happen with or without the patch I believe. Although the lack of idle skipping with the patch seems to make some games run slightly slower, although not much.
yeah, stutters in mario kart wii stage rotation happens to me too, even after doing the same stage multiple times. Yes, less stutters after the first, but it's still there.
(10-28-2010, 09:48 AM)Xtreme2damax Wrote: [ -> ]If Mario Galaxy runs fine on my current system
Yeh, that's what I mean. The comparison between SA2B and SMG is meaningless as they are two different games with their own code. It's like saying that Zelda: Ocarina of Time (a game that is old and has a low polygon count) runs at 36fps on my machine while Zelda: Wind Waker runs mostly at 60fps.
Definite core issues are like the ones that Starscream reported in Eternal Darkness where the game does not behave the same way compared to the real hardware. Another example is not being able to pass the first boss in Starfox Assault because it flies behind you.
Well yeah, I thought I would just throw mention in there of those because I didn't want to post a new thread right now.
And isn't OOT essentially being emulated? Running an emulator inside an emulator is bound to have slowdowns, well emulating anything else other than maybe 2D such as the NES, SNES, Genesis etc..
But these are most likely core issues:
Quote:Shadows are messed up in this game, they are really distorted sometimes depending where you walk and sometimes the wrong shadow is displayed (quantizers issue?)
Quote:When you go to the warp stone even after the first time when you give him the rock candy, the first cutscene and audio plays for subsequent visits to the warp stone. This seems to be a core issue rather than an issue with the audio plugin, even happens with the LLE plugin.
The stutters in Starfox Adventures might be due to the code itself, considering the game only started working about 400 - 500 revisions to go, I don't think the code has been optimized yet.
But as I mentioned Sonic Adventure DX and Sonic Adventure 2 used to run fine a while back. They still run fine except for the framerate dips that occur since a while, it's just that framerates are inconsistent and like to jump around. The game could be running fine one minute, drop to 30 FPS and go right back up even though there is nothing that changed in the game such as any additional geometry.
I remember someone saying that performance in Starfox rises when you go and look at a wall...I guess that means (at least) this issue is gfx related, huh?
So Skid, have you found any point where to speed up that slow shader caching?