Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

(08-26-2015, 12:47 PM)Genesis Wrote: [ -> ]Did more tests.

Find out that enabling Dual Core AND "deterministic dual core: fake completion" i completely get rid of the framerate drops during cutscenes. Gameplay is more smooth than ever. I actually noticed some drops during battles, but only twice and when i tried to replicate, i couldn't see a thing anymore. I still need "Skip EFB access from CPU" ON for Fina's flashbacks, though.

I hope to avoid the "Text Garbage In Item Menu" bug with dual core on. Maybe it only happens for certain CPUs and with deterministic dual core off. I am still in the beginning and i do not have enough items to test this bug yet. Really hope to avoid it despite setting dual core on!

BTW, with deterministic dual core off/not set the gameplay isn't very smooth with Direct3D. Enabling "fake completion" totally fix it.

How do you enable the Deterministic Dual Core thing?
I'm running the most recent version of Dolphin and I don't see the option anywhere.
Google-fu says "Right Click Game", but I didn't find the option in there either.

I'd think my problems are stemming from my Processor [I've got an Overclocked 8350, which is good enough for any standard PC game, but not so good for emulators, but I can run SSB and F-Zero GX just fine... try Skies of Arcadia or Tales of Symphonia and get hangups left and right]

(08-26-2015, 04:01 PM)AirshipCanon Wrote: [ -> ]How do you enable the Deterministic Dual Core thing?
I'm running the most recent version of Dolphin and I don't see the option anywhere.
Google-fu says "Right Click Game", but I didn't find the option in there either.

I'd think my problems are stemming from my Processor [I've got an Overclocked 8350, which is good enough for any standard PC game, but not so good for emulators, but I can run SSB and F-Zero GX just fine... try Skies of Arcadia or Tales of Symphonia and get hangups left and right]

Well, your CPU seems to be much faster than mine, unless dolphin, somehow, is not very well optimized to extract the best from your AMD FX CPU. In theory, a 3.6GHz - 4.2GHz would beat a 2.66Ghz at the same x64 level.

As for the configuration, go to the main window, select your game, right click it, properties, check enable dual core and then, just above "Stereoscopy" and below DSP HLE Emulation, you will see an option called "deterministic dual core" and a right menu where you have to click and then select between 4 options. "Not set" is default. I changed it to "fake-completion". The other options here are all checked by default.

Will it broke your game? Will you avoid the item menu bug? That i don't know yet.
Will it stop the framerate drop during problematic cutscenes? On MY PC it did. Remember to check "Skip EFB..." on graphics settings as well, as it may help with the Fina's flashback cutscenes. At least it worked for me. And no, i don't know yet if this will broke things as well. I hope don't.

I am using widescreen AR code, stretch to Window (because somehow the widescreen ar code don't fill my entire 16:9 screen), V-sync, IR 3x, AA 2X Level 4, no AF, Direct 3D.

All the other options are the default ones, except for the "skip EFB..." stuff.

At options / configure, i checked DSP HLE, XAudio 2, framelimit auto, enable dual core, idle skipping (all default options i think) and enable cheats (for the ar code).

(08-26-2015, 06:04 PM)Genesis Wrote: [ -> ]

(08-26-2015, 04:01 PM)AirshipCanon Wrote: [ -> ]How do you enable the Deterministic Dual Core thing?
I'm running the most recent version of Dolphin and I don't see the option anywhere.
Google-fu says "Right Click Game", but I didn't find the option in there either.

I'd think my problems are stemming from my Processor [I've got an Overclocked 8350, which is good enough for any standard PC game, but not so good for emulators, but I can run SSB and F-Zero GX just fine... try Skies of Arcadia or Tales of Symphonia and get hangups left and right]

Well, your CPU seems to be much faster than mine, unless dolphin, somehow, is not very well optimized to extract the best from your AMD FX CPU. In theory, a 3.6GHz - 4.2GHz would beat a 2.66Ghz at the same x64 level.

As for the configuration, go to the main window, select your game, right click it, properties, check enable dual core and then, just above "Stereoscopy" and below DSP HLE Emulation, you will see an option called "deterministic dual core" and a right menu where you have to click and then select between 4 options. "Not set" is default. I changed it to "fake-completion". The other options here are all checked by default.

Will it broke your game? Will you avoid the item menu bug? That i don't know yet.
Will it stop the framerate drop during problematic cutscenes? On MY PC it did. Remember to check "Skip EFB..." on graphics settings as well, as it may help with the Fina's flashback cutscenes. At least it worked for me. And no, i don't know yet if this will broke things as well. I hope don't.

I am using widescreen AR code, stretch to Window (because somehow the widescreen ar code don't fill my entire 16:9 screen), V-sync, IR 3x, AA 2X Level 4, no AF, Direct 3D.

All the other options are the default ones, except for the "skip EFB..." stuff.

At options / configure, i checked DSP HLE, XAudio 2, framelimit auto, enable dual core, idle skipping (all default options i think) and enable cheats (for the ar code).

IPC on AMD is very low. Even with the 8350-- which is one of AMD's best processors overclocked to 4.5GHz, anything too single-thread demanding will screw it up. 2.2 GHz on an Intel is probably right there at 4.5GHz for AMD.

That said, outside of Emulators, there's nothing that does, since actual PC Games are vastly better optimized.

Took me a bit-- because I looked exactly where you said on the current release version [4.0.2.xx], didn't realize 5.0 was up as a release canididate.
Had to grab it-- found it right away.

Sitting on a perfect 100% emulation now [which for me, is 24 FPS with no audio hang up (Monitor is a TV)], haven't seen the bug. Got the intro through 100%-- it'd always slowdown when it showed the Admirals before. No hang up there. Got past the scene with Alfonso firing on Fina without any hangs [that scene is why before finding this, . First Battle... good (Ofc, if I just bashed my way through the cutscene to the fight before, would get 100% emulation during the battle. Hell, I could sorta play the game before, but if I got to Baltor, game would sit on 1 FPS during the Ship Fights.

Into the Battleship, nothing wrong with the menus.


Why, Dolphin 5.0 might actually make this playable with Deterministic Dual Core: Fake-Completion.

And you, sir, are awesome.

Actually i am using one of the latest development builds.

I was willing to play this game since i bought my VGA in 2013. Had tested older builds including dolphin 4.0.2. I can say that the latest builds dramatically improved the emulation of this game. But for me at least this wasn`t enough, so i had to change those configurations. I hope to get 100% perfect emulation now. Let`s see. I am now concerned with the ship fights, i hope to get a solid 30fps with it.

(08-26-2015, 08:27 PM)Genesis Wrote: [ -> ]Actually i am using one of the latest development builds.

I was willing to play this game since i bought my VGA in 2013. Had tested older builds including dolphin 4.0.2. I can say that the latest builds dramatically improved the emulation of this game. But for me at least this wasn`t enough, so i had to change those configurations. I hope to get 100% perfect emulation now. Let`s see. I am now concerned with the ship fights, i hope to get a solid 30fps with it.

Well, looking at it from my PoV, the cutscene with Alfonso being a prick around firing on Fina was the absolute worst slowdown before checking the current-- far worse than vs. Baltor-- that just happened to be a gameplay segment and the extremely low FPS there meant it wasn't continuable.

So who knows how well it's handled.

I must say that i am intrigued with this "Deterministic Dual Core: Fake-Completion" stuff. I read at the dolphin project website that this was a feature to improve netplay, so how can i get this dramatically improvement for a offline game like SOA? I have just tested again and again and the best and only viable combination is dual core ON and fake-completion set. The intro on direct 3D with dual core ON and deterministic dual core "not set" has so many "hiccups" on the animation that it seems a strong regression comparable to older builds, while single core only with/without Fake-Completion has the usual annoying slowdown in those known problematic parts.

I really hope to not deal with the item menu bug listed on the wiki page for this game, because no way i will deactivate this dual core feature in this current state of the emulator. It seems to affect more those guys who use the tab key a lot to forward the game or those who use several times the load state during their games. I don't have any intention on doing this.

Tried to load a save state i found on gamefaqs but it says the file is corrupted, so i can not replicate this bug yet.

That bug isn't that annoying, not enough to disable dual core anyway.

Just a clarification: When/where/how does the bug occur?
[What's the Replication]

It's already mentioned in the wiki.

More testing. Just noticed that during the intro, before you start the game, the screen freezes just when Cupil appears. Music still plays and you can press start to quit intro and continue your game without having to restart the game or the emulator.

Uncheck "Speed up disk transfer rate" fix this problem on Dolphin build 4.0-7461 and Dolphin 5.0-rc-19.
Tested with Direct3D, HLE. Bug is present on both dual core ON/Off settings and this solution fix the issue in all cases on my PC.

I have been playing the game for 2h30m and until now, no bugs, freezes, hangs or anything unusual to report. Emulation is pretty good. I even tested with LLE sound and i almost got 100% smooth gameplay with it as well. If i had a 10%, 15% faster CPU i would probably use it. I don't know if there are any major difference between HLE/LLE. So far HLE sound is okay for me. No glitch at all. It's just isn't as impressive as i remember. However i played on Sega Dreamcast first and several years later i played the gamecube version on the real console and the latter didn't impressed me either.