Hello All,
An excellent emulator, I must say. Lets me keep my GC junked in the closet so I can use those beautiful save states.
Three issues of varying severity I'm facing with ZTP.
The first is (was) that the "Howling Wind Stone" bug is not, as some have suggested, an urban legend. Dolphin locks up in a "half hang", where the application remains responsive (in terms of close, minimize, etc.) and may be shut down without problem, but the display and audio are locked and accept no input.
I inadvertently "fixed" this on my machine by setting my SLI bus to "maximize 3D performance" over my dual GPUs (one of the stock settings in the nVidia control panel). It boosted my speed from a 75% average speed to roughly 88% average speed for the area. I tweaked the setting on a lark since I happened to notice it was "off" while troubleshooting. I have no idea why it would "fix" the problem but I do know that
i) it was the only setting changed between pre- and posttest,
ii) I had run at least 10 configurations up to that point--all of them locked, and
iii) I reloaded and ran the Howling Stone 3 times successfully immediately after changing the setting. Could be a coincidence, but I suspect not.
The second problem is that Dolphin locks up (with moderate probability) while loading SaveStates if they're loaded in a different session than they're saved in. That is: [save state -then- load state] works 100% of the time, while [save state -then- shut down emulation -then- reopen emulation -then- load state] hangs the emulator much of the time. Whether a SaveState (SS) will load is a property of the SS itself: "good" SS's will always load, while "bad" SS's never load. Upon loading a bad SS, the audio is frozen looping over the first ~125 ms of the track and the video goes black. However, the emulator remains responsive in the sense that other good SS's can be loaded by hitting the hotkeys.
I haven't categorically determined what makes a "good" SS or a "bad" SS, but I have observed the following:
- bad SS's are more likely when the processor is chugging (e.g. running at 75% rather than 99%)
- SS's apparently "go bad" because the emulator "goes bad"--if I save states in the order 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, for instance, and find that state 5 is the first bad SS, it means that SS's 6 and 7 will also be bad with 100% probability. To me, this would seem to indicate that the emulator goes wonky at some random point and all subsequent SS's are bad.
- "bad" SS's can be loaded without any problems whatsoever in the session they're saved in
This wouldn't be a major issue except for the fact that Dolphin (for me, at least) has always had a glitch where it randomly declares that there's "No Memory Card in Slot A". I'm not sure if the point at which Dolphin stops "detecting" the memory card is the same point at which SS's go bad, but in my experience as soon as I get the "No Memory Card in Slot A" message (usually after 30 to 90 minutes of gameplay), my subsequent SS's are all bad, meaning that I have no way of saving the game either using SS's or using the in-game facilities.
This is probably Murphy's law, but worth mentioning. I should also mention that the "No Memory Card in Slot A" bug manifested itself in my Paper Mario game too. The other issues being reported here are unique to ZTP.
The third and final issue (which is why I'm writing, so thanks for bearing with me) is that the "ZTP Hanging After Lock Drops Off Door" bug previously mentioned in this thread but aborted due to certain... *ahem*...issues with the reportee
...is also affecting me. To restate it: in the Death Mountain Dungeon, at the boss door (where the big key is used), the lock unlocks, drops off, and then... nothing. The game doesn't proceed, even after three minutes of waiting. I can include a screenshot if this will assist.
Some observations include: the audio, video, and input are fully responsive during the "hang". The heat in the air wiggles, the lava soundtrack bubbles, and SS's can be loaded at will. The game just doesn't... do anything.
I can't go back to my GC! :o I can't play games without SaveStates and luck manipulation anymore! I simply can't.
I'd greatly appreciate it if somebody could add this to their "look into it" list.
I'm willing to collect any debug data you may need. Just let me know. I've included my system specs in my sig block as a starting point.
Best Regards, and Thanks for the Great Emulator,
Virgil
