Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

[color=#000000]I need to record P.N.03 for my youtube gaming channel and it gets annoying, the game runs very nice and smooth but it randomly freezres up for a second or two making things unpleasent for video recording.[/color]

[color=#000000]I not only have to replay the damn game now and farm points to unlock suits again since I play it on GameCube but also have to deal with this weird issue and I'm dying to review it because i love it so damn much[/color]

[color=#000000]This happens in many Dolphin games for me even tho they run at smooh framerates, I must have enabled something I don't understand since it didn't used to do this.[/color]

[color=#000000]Gotcha Force for example works flawlessy but Skies of Arcadia, P.N.03 and some other games do this[/color]


[color=#000000]Here's all the my tech info/specs[/color]
[color=#000000]Dolphin 4.0-9146[/color]
[color=#000000]Windows 8.1[/color]
[color=#000000]16GB RAM[/color]
[color=#000000]GTX680 2GB[/color]
[color=#000000]i7 3820[/color]
[color=#000000]I play games in Dolphin on double their native resolution, I don't go all out in full HD for the rendering resolution, my screen resolution is 1080p but that's just dolphin upscaling to that res it renders at double the default one and games do run smoothly[/color]


[color=#000000]Dolphin didn't used to do this so I don't know what's up, all my other games and emulators are fine[/color]

Is it actually a second or two? Because what it sounds like is you're hitting shader compilation, which is unavoidable. You have to wait until shaders get cached as you play.

I'm really not sure how long it lasts but it is noticeable, maybe it's more than two seconds, is there a way to reduce or avoid this?
IIRC I watched a video of P.N.03 on Dolphin once and it didn't have this

Yeah, but for your use case this isn't a desirable solution either.

You can use the Ishiiruka build, a build in the development forum, it's a custom build that we provide zero support for. What it can do is compile shaders without hitching gameplay. But, it does this by outright breaking the effect until it's compiled, resulting in some pretty weird looking stuff. It's also less accurate, and much less stable. If you use that build, you can only get help in that thread.

When you saw it on youtube that person likely already cached the shaders needed by playing the game.

My recommendation is to play the game for awhile to cache the shaders, then go back and record.

Thanks, this really cleared things up for me
Would a feature to cache shaders beforehand be possible in future builds? Like before you boot the room up you right click on it in the list and select a "cache shaders" option and it takes some time but it goes over the ISO and caches all the shaders for future use?
That would be a great feature if at all possible to program

(04-09-2016, 04:01 AM)ShinigamiKiba Wrote: [ -> ]Would a feature to cache shaders beforehand be possible in future builds? Like before you boot the room up you right click on it in the list and select a "cache shaders" option and it takes some time but it goes over the ISO and caches all the shaders for future use?
That would be a great feature if at all possible to program

No, that's not possible. You can only find out what shaders are needed when the game tries to use them, not in advance.

So I was recording earlier and played for abut an hour with no hicups whatsoever other than a slight split second stutter here and there maybe once or twice.
If the problem was shader caching on the fly I would've had it happen now as well, right? My videos turned out mighty fine tho there's massive screen tearing that was also recorded in the videos but I'd rather have that gameplaywise than enable vsync assuming there is such an option and lower performance.

Strange that it worked fine now and I haven't touched anything, haven't changed settings or done anything with my OS

(04-09-2016, 07:46 AM)ShinigamiKiba Wrote: [ -> ]If the problem was shader caching on the fly I would've had it happen now as well, right?

No. Shader compilation stuttering decreases over time as more shaders get cached.

If your system can consistently maintain full speed in game, you can enable vsync.

And this cache is there for days even after you quit the emulator? If so that makes sense.

Edit: enabling v-sync really made the game look much better and seem like it's running even smoother, so good