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+--- Thread: Cleaned up my Notebook, now Xenoblade is behaving strange and I'm at my wits' end. (/Thread-cleaned-up-my-notebook-now-xenoblade-is-behaving-strange-and-i-m-at-my-wits-end)
Cleaned up my Notebook, now Xenoblade is behaving strange and I'm at my wits' end. - Einhaender - 01-11-2016
So I started to play Xenoblade about two months ago. The current version of Dolphin was 4.0-8010 back then. I ran the game on 4x internal resolution, with v-sync on and the HD texture pack installed, and it never had any FPS issues. It stayed stable on 30-31FPS during every moment of the 60hrs I put in it. I even made a testing report on the wiki, and added the texture flickering issue I encountered to the list.
Last week I decided that it's time to clean up my PC. I formatted my drives, reinstalled Windows, made all the updates, and wanted to continue with Xenoblade Chronicles.
The issue that's appearing now, is that randomly the FPS drop down to 25-28. With randomly I mean, that there's no sense to it. It can happen anytime, and they do not recover. Meaning that they remain unstable after the first drop. No matter what I do, or what happens in the game, they stay at the reduced rate, when it ran fine at max speed just moments ago.
For example: If it happens during a fight, they don't go up to max again after the fight, they stay at the unstable rate.
Eight of ten times this happens during battles, but it also happens just running around, and at least one time, while looking at the map.
This issue is resolved upon restarting the emulator(or just the game.) So I can save while the issue is there, restart Dolphin and voilà - it's gone. But now it's only a matter of time before it happens again. Sometimes after 2 minutes, sometimes after 45 minutes. But there are areas/fights where it is more likely to happen in my opinion.
Some pointers/things I tried to do:
- Doesn't matter if I'm running on 4x or native resolution. Doesn't matter if:
- V-sync on or off
- HD pack on or off
- Prefetch custom textures turned on or off
- Frame limit on auto or set to 60 doesn't make a difference(I can even increase it and the game runs stable in "fast forward" mode, until the problem occurs of course.)
- Tried both, the latest dev build of Dolphin and the version I used before(4.0-8010)
- Running Dolphin as administrator and giving the process higher priority.
- Tried older Catalyst drivers(most likely the one used before.)
- Monitored Dolphin's and Windows' GPU/CPU usage. There are no changes when the issue occurs.
- Checked task manager for new processes demanding power.
And here I am at my wits' end. I have no idea what's causing this, and I'm running the same version of Dolphin I used to, with the same settings(even though I tried all kinds of combinations to get rid of the problem.) And it's driving me crazy. I'm sorry that my first post is whining about problems, rather than contributing. I just hope that one of you wizards came across this issue before, and knows what's causing this. Current settings below.
[attachment=14246]
RE: Cleaned up my Notebook, now Xenoblade is behaving strange and I'm at my wits' end. - Link_to_the_past - 01-11-2016
Use the latest dev version and your framelimit should be set to auto (100% using latest dev) not 60 anyway since the game is not a 60 fps game. Also check all your battery/power options and disable possible power saving features.
RE: Cleaned up my Notebook, now Xenoblade is behaving strange and I'm at my wits' end. - Einhaender - 01-11-2016
(01-11-2016, 10:29 PM)Link_to_the_past Wrote: Use the latest dev version and your framelimit should be set to auto (100% using latest dev) not 60 anyway since the game is not a 60 fps game. Also check all your battery/power options and disable possible power saving features.
I already used the latest dev version(with frame limit set to 100%), power settings are checked, and the FPS are set at 60, because the game needs that setting for proper emulation. On set 30, it runs with 15 FPS.
RE: Cleaned up my Notebook, now Xenoblade is behaving strange and I'm at my wits' end. - Platinum Lucario - 01-11-2016
(01-11-2016, 10:44 PM)Einhaender Wrote: I already used the latest dev version(with frame limit set to 100%), power settings are checked, and the FPS are set at 60, because the game needs that setting for proper emulation. On set 30, it runs with 15 FPS.
Sounds like you've encountered a bug in Xenoblade Chronicles, in which seems to be an audio issue. I'm pretty sure the latest news article on the main Dolphin website actually said to be on the lookout for any audio bugs in other games, and to report them immediately. Since they have been changing the audio code and whenever they fix the audio in one game, it breaks some other game.
Anyways, post about your issue in this thread.
RE: Cleaned up my Notebook, now Xenoblade is behaving strange and I'm at my wits' end. - Einhaender - 01-12-2016
(01-11-2016, 11:54 PM)Platinum Lucario Wrote: Sounds like you've encountered a bug in Xenoblade Chronicles, in which seems to be an audio issue. I'm pretty sure the latest news article on the main Dolphin website actually said to be on the lookout for any audio bugs in other games, and to report them immediately. Since they have been changing the audio code and whenever they fix the audio in one game, it breaks some other game.
Anyways, post about your issue in this thread.
Hm, what makes you think this could be an audio related issue? The version I'm using(8010 - which had no issues before I wiped my stuff) should also be excluded from the recent changes to the audio engines. And even without audio output, the problem is still there.
RE: Cleaned up my Notebook, now Xenoblade is behaving strange and I'm at my wits' end - JosJuice - 01-12-2016
(01-11-2016, 11:54 PM)Platinum Lucario Wrote: Sounds like you've encountered a bug in Xenoblade Chronicles, in which seems to be an audio issue. I'm pretty sure the latest news article on the main Dolphin website actually said to be on the lookout for any audio bugs in other games, and to report them immediately. Since they have been changing the audio code and whenever they fix the audio in one game, it breaks some other game.
Anyways, post about your issue in this thread.
To quote, "The issue that's appearing now, is that randomly the FPS drop down to 25-28." I can't see any mention of an audio issue.
(01-11-2016, 11:54 PM)Platinum Lucario Wrote: Since they have been changing the audio code and whenever they fix the audio in one game, it breaks some other game.
That's not really how it works. Changes just have the potential to break things, they don't automatically break things.