I'm really new to this emulation stuff. A lot of my experience thus far has been messing about with graphical settings and getting hit or miss luck with audio crackle, frame rate consistency, graphical glitches etc. I wanna know what the process of trial and error is that some of you guys get up to: basically how much time do you spend troubleshooting, where do you go to get advice on what settings to use (perhaps this forum) for a particular game etc.
I´ll try to answer with basic ideas: Dolphin builders, after creating a new revisión, they first test it with some games.
Depending on the results, the way it´s emulated and the speed, games can run either perfect, playable, OK or simply don´t work at all.
About the bugs, that is managed by the programmers and the people that handle the code: they check it a lot of times and make sure that it doesn´t ends up in a mess.
That´s what I can tell for now... The experts have all the rights to correct me if I´m wrong...
(09-03-2013, 07:03 AM)oliverfrancisco Wrote: [ -> ]I´ll try to answer with basic ideas: Dolphin builders, after creating a new revisión, they first test it with some games.
Depending on the results, the way it´s emulated and the speed, games can run either perfect, playable, OK or simply don´t work at all.
About the bugs, that is managed by the programmers and the people that handle the code: they check it a lot of times and make sure that it doesn´t ends up in a mess.
That´s what I can tell for now... The experts have all the rights to correct me if I´m wrong...
I guess what I'm really curious to know is, can a game run incredibly well once you've found the right settings. I end up quitting out of my games before making any real progress to go back to the drawing board and make some adjustments in hope of squeezing out better performance and less technical hiccups.
smoothrunes Wrote:I guess what I'm really curious to know is, can a game run incredibly well once you've found the right settings.
Sometimes. Occasionally, one little setting is all it takes to make a game perfect. For example, XBC would run like champ for me, except for the nagging issue of a slight FPS drop when attacking every once an a while. Turns out all I needed to do was set the Framelimit to Auto.
If you're getting significant speed issues, you're probably encountering a CPU or GPU bottleneck. Settings will only get you so far; hardware is where it counts. If you can lower your Internal Resolution (for HD gameplay) and AA your speed returns to normal, then you had your graphical settings too high and were suffering from a GPU bottleneck. If you lowered those graphical settings and you still get slowdowns, then you have yourself a CPU bottleneck, in which case you'll find that overclocking is the best (nigh only in some cases) way to deal with speed drops.
But I'm looking at your profile, and your hardware is very strong for Dolphin. I assume you're referring to more minor issues rather than speed drops? Of course you can always fiddle around with the settings yourself, but do check the Dolphin Wiki. We have entries for every game (at least we should) and most pages have some info. If a game needs special settings, you can find out there. Aside from that, each game has its own thread here on the forums (Game Discussion). You can use the search feature at the bottom of any page to look for threads, or use the Game Index threads (these are stickied). If you're getting an issue, post about it, and usually one of us can help you if we're familiar with the game.
They do run well if the correct settings are used; however, the results aren´t the same for everyone since nobody uses the same system anyone else uses.
I'm currently playing Twin Snakes and it runs great except the frame rate drops anywhere between 5-15 frames whenever I get spotted and the alert phase guards start rushing on screen, though it only really starts to kick in if I engage in combat. Apart from that and some of the snow drops appearing blue/purpleish, it seems to be going fine so far. I switched from Direct3D9 to OpenGL for this game in particular because on the former, there were green lines that would run up and down the screen vertically. I've still got to test the waters with my other GC games which are Metroid Prime, F-Zero GX and Timesplitters 2.
(09-03-2013, 07:45 AM)smoothrunes Wrote: [ -> ]I'm currently playing Twin Snakes and it runs great except the frame rate drops anywhere between 5-15 frames whenever I get spotted and the alert phase guards start rushing on screen, though it only really starts to kick in if I engage in combat. Apart from that and some of the snow drops appearing blue/purpleish, it seems to be going fine so far. I switched from Direct3D9 to OpenGL for this game in particular because on the former, there were green lines that would run up and down the screen vertically. I've still got to test the waters with my other GC games which are Metroid Prime, F-Zero GX and Timesplitters 2.
Before that, try with DX11. Also, which configs are you using? Which version do you have?
On version 3.5-2205. Got dual core and idle skipping active. Framelimit is set to auto. Emulator engine is on JIT Recompiler. Audio is HLE with backend set as XAudio2. Graphical display is 1920x1080 with ratio forced at 16:9, fullscreen on, Vsync is off. Got it rendered to main window. AA is off, AF is at 1x and the internal resolution is set to window size.
(09-03-2013, 07:56 AM)smoothrunes Wrote: [ -> ]On version 3.5-2205. Got dual core and idle skipping active. Framelimit is set to auto. Emulator engine is on JIT Recompiler. Audio is HLE with backend set as XAudio2. Graphical display is 1920x1080 with ratio forced at 16:9, fullscreen on, Vsync is off. Got it rendered to main window. AA is off, AF is at 1x and the internal resolution is set to window size.
Disable Full-screen and try setting I.A. to 1X.
Hmm, that might've fixed the fps drop issue, though I'll have to stress test in other situations before sticking to it. Thanks for the help.