Hi,
I'm experiencing a rather strange and annoying problem with Resident Evil 0. The game runs almost perfectly, but the moment I proceed to restore a savestate, the emulation speed suddenly drops to about 60%, and I basically have no choice but to reopen the program and then load an in-game save, or endure the situation. I tried fiddling with the emulator settings, but nothing seems to work. So, I'd like to know if anybody experienced this issue before and if there's any quick solution. I'm using version 3.0-758, and my laptop's operating system is Windows 7 (64-bit); I don't think listing my specs would be particularly relevant here, so I won't bother unless requested. Oh, and please refrain from posting derogatory comments like "don't use savestates lol". Thanks.
Well, the fact is pretty unavoidable that Dolphin's save states are buggy atm. You might have better luck with the official Dolphin 3.0 (that's 3.0 with no numbers after it), but the save states will be incompatible with 3.0-758; you'd have to import your in-game save then create new save states. I don't imagine there's anything you can particularly do about broken save states or save state loading though, aside from using different revisions.
Savestates generally work better on newer revisions rather than the 3.0 release. People should use the real memory card game saves to avoid any issues no matter which build you use. That's not to say that savestates will always cause issues, but to make absolutely sure nothing goes wrong and you don't lose your save progress, save with the real game saves.
Don't worry, I always create in-game saves and use multiple savestate slots so I can revert to an older save if problems should occur, like crashes and corrupted memory cards. I'm aware that the savestates are a bit buggy at the moment, but the symptoms I would expect and have actually experienced are typically game crashes, temporary slowdowns, memory corruption, etc. I just don't see how a buggy savestate system would create a permanent slowdown in one specific game, especially since nobody else, as far as I know, mentioned this issue before...
(08-28-2012, 08:28 AM)Jasan Wrote: [ -> ]Don't worry, I always create in-game saves and use multiple savestate slots so I can revert to an older save if problems should occur, like crashes and corrupted memory cards. I'm aware that the savestates are a bit buggy at the moment, but the symptoms I would expect and have actually experienced are typically game crashes, temporary slowdowns, memory corruption, etc. I just don't see how a buggy savestate system would create a permanent slowdown in one specific game, especially since nobody else, as far as I know, mentioned this issue before...
Well, simply because it was not mentioned doesn't necessarily mean it can't happen
Each game is different too (e.g. the game code Dolphin emulates), so it's not unexpected imo that certain games would have specific issues with save states.
All sorts errors can theoretically occur with save states. I'm talking generally, not anything specific to Dolphin. From what I know (a high-level understanding), save states are basically snapshots of the current state of an emulated system. All of the register values, memory pointers, everything needed to recreate that specific state gets stored away. Any inaccuracies between the save state and the actual state of the emulated system could lead to any number of incorrect outcomes upon state restoration, even if it's the difference of a single bit (seems extreme, but it probably could happen in some circumstances). That's not to say save states are wild and unpredictable (well, depends who coded them), but I wouldn't be surprised by anything that happens.