Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

As a newbie to this forum I'd like to start off by saying that I have the utmost respect for the Dolphin dev team and my experience with the emulator so far has been nearly flawless. I'm starting this thread not only because it's something I'd like to see fixed or improved, but also because you guys seem to take pride in tackling these lingering edge cases. Here's one that seems to have flown under the radar for at least a year now.

I've tried various builds from 4.0.2 onward with the same results.

Broken shadows consisting of black flickery lines and a white border at anything but native resolution but most importantly...

... extremely hitchy and overall low performance in outdoor areas. Possibly associated with the way the game loads data. This is especially noticeable after leaving the building with the door 'puzzle' right at the beginning, where you walk past the gas station toward the diner or bar. It seems to get worse when you start moving, and stabilizes somewhat when you're still. It's VERY noticeable at the beginning of the second chapter when you're in Cybil's cruiser and data is likely streaming in like crazy.

Performance also seems to tank at random moments, like the part where Michael Kaufmann pours himself a drink in the intro cutscene.

I have a hard time believing this is due to my hardware. This just has all the hallmarks of a game hitting the emulator in all the wrong places as even the most demanding of games just get eaten alive by this CPU/GPU combo, as one would expect with Haswell/Maxwell.

Windows 8.1
i5 4670k
8gb
GTX 970 (only recently acquired this card, had a GTX 660 prior with identical performance in this game)
480gb OCZ SSD
2TB Toshiba 7200 RPM

I've tried the game on both drives.

No combination of EFB and API settings alleviates this problem on modern Dolphin builds AFAIK.

Not sure how relevant it is since it was a few years and surely several hacks ago but there was at least -a- time where the game didn't run terribly on much, much weaker hardware.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VK4Rv2SAV44

I was just wondering if everyone was aware that this game ran so poorly or if it was just me being crazy, or maybe no one has looked in awhile.

I had posted this a while ago but noone believed me and insisted it was my settings.

(06-14-2015, 12:44 PM)drhycodan Wrote: [ -> ]I had posted this a while ago but noone believed me and insisted it was my settings.

I'd love to see a video of it running decently on 4.0.2 or a modern build!

From the looks of it, it'd take a 5ghz Haswell/Broadwell or more.

When it really starts to bog down I don't think a system with twice the computational power would make a difference.

Dolphin simply doesn't like what's going on in scenes where it's streaming data in and anyone can boot it up and see that without getting too far into the game. Async shader compilation also doesn't help in builds that support it.

I wouldn't mind hearing a dev say that Shattered Memories is just a rough edge case game and that's that, but some acknowledgement would be nice regardless of future plans. The wiki doesn't really paint an accurate picture of how the game runs currently.

My haswell struggles to even play the cutscene of this dude drinking champagn, this is before you even take control.
I think you've misunderstood me, I meant I already posted what you typed a while ago, not the video running full speed.

(06-14-2015, 02:49 PM)drhycodan Wrote: [ -> ]My haswell struggles to even play the cutscene of this dude drinking champagn, this is before you even take control.
I think you've misunderstood me, I meant I already posted what you typed a while ago, not the video running full speed.

I was agreeing with you. I was saying that if people are denying that it's poorly emulated nowadays I'd love to see proof otherwise. The part where you're in Cybil's cruiser is absurdly slow. Might be the slowest thing I've seen in Dolphin, wavering between 20-30%.

I've read very little about the game being a poor experience in Dolphin, and would like to at least get some attention on it as it may simply be a game the devs overlook.

Or it uses a feature that can't be easily emulated and all the moaning can be more annoying than anything. If you profile it yourself and find something interesting, then it can definitely be looked at though.

Honestly, 30% seems ridiculous, so if I had the game I'd profile it myself.

(06-14-2015, 07:07 PM)JMC47 Wrote: [ -> ]Or it uses a feature that can't be easily emulated and all the moaning can be more annoying than anything.  If you profile it yourself and find something interesting, then it can definitely be looked at though.

Honestly, 30% seems ridiculous, so if I had the game I'd profile it myself.

That you don't have the game, and the talk that it 'may' be a feature that's hard to emulate shows that it is indeed a rarely tested edge case. Is that not what this this forum is for, to raise awareness of such things?

I don't have any hard expectations of it being fixed nor am I demanding it. I just wanted to make sure it's known so someone Googling this after running into it can get some confirmation... and heck, if the devs decide to give it a look all the better.

In all seriousness though, what would you have me do to profile it to your specifications?

Video, screenshots? Internet is temporarily down, only on data, but I'll try to get something recorded and uploaded ASAP.

I highly doubt it has anything to do with "streaming data in"; if it used to work better in the past, it sounds like it could be EFB peeks/pokes. Either way, it needs profiling.

(06-15-2015, 03:32 AM)Fiora Wrote: [ -> ]I highly doubt it has anything to do with "streaming data in"; if it used to work better in the past, it sounds like it could be EFB peeks/pokes. Either way, it needs profiling.

I'm about to record some vids of it with settings beforehand. Anything I should do in particular to make sure it's a profile to standard?

Uploading vid and will have link shortly...

(06-15-2015, 03:32 AM)Fiora Wrote: [ -> ]I highly doubt it has anything to do with "streaming data in"; if it used to work better in the past, it sounds like it could be EFB peeks/pokes. Either way, it needs profiling.

It works ok with framelimit disabled with some occasional framedrops which is weird. With auto framelimit performance is lower than it should even with vsync disabled.