Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[aweigh]

out of boredom decided to try out how most recent official RPCS3 build plays Persona 5 and results were positive:

intel core i3 7100 (cheapest possible i3 which is entry level already)
ram 8gb ddr3 (cheapest and slowest possible that fits into motherboard slot)
nvidia geforce gt 1050 (cheapest possible entry level 1000 series gpu)

- few months ago when i tried out december builds of RPCS3 I was getting 8-12 FPS in city area
- using march 22nd official build i am getting 14-16 FPS in same city area

Still unplayable for me at least using official build. There is a persona 5 unofficial build called Farseer but I am too lazy to bother with it Ill just wait till they keep improving official build. Note that on beefier hardware (core i5 at least and geforce 1080 at least) the game will probably run in the 20s in terms of FPS and with an i7 it will probably be 100% at 30fps.

Tested Catherine and:

- Catherine runs at 100% 30fps! Quite amazig. (on this rig!)

Tested Wizardry - Labyrinth of Lost Souls and:

- Still not graphics accuracte in terms of broken shadows and textures and stuff like that (treasure chests appear wonky sometimes an Fx wont display properly) but...
- other than a random broken treasure chest texture or a shadow the game is 100% playable!
- Ive already put in around 25 hours into this Wizardry and its not as good as an Elminage game or a Starfish Wiz Empire game (or one of the Gaiden games) but it defintiely scratches dat blobber itch. (some of you more fanatical about accuracy might want to wait for future builds though).

--------------------

As for Citra wow has the official build improved!

- 100% 30fps on every game I threw at the latest canary build I didnt even bother fiddling with any config whatsoever.

Cant wait to torrent Dragon Quest 11 and play it at 2x Resolution on CITRA!

 

[aweigh]

 

[Great Deceiver]

It's been awhile since I've played the PSX version. I remember aweigh didn't like this version too much, right?

 

[HoboForEternity]

out of boredom decided to try out how most recent official RPCS3 build plays Persona 5 and results were positive:

intel core i3 7100 (cheapest possible i3 which is entry level already)
ram 8gb ddr3 (cheapest and slowest possible that fits into motherboard slot)
nvidia geforce gt 1050 (cheapest possible entry level 1000 series gpu)

- few months ago when i tried out december builds of RPCS3 I was getting 8-12 FPS in city area
- using march 22nd official build i am getting 14-16 FPS in same city area

Still unplayable for me at least using official build. There is a persona 5 unofficial build called Farseer but I am too lazy to bother with it Ill just wait till they keep improving official build. Note that on beefier hardware (core i5 at least and geforce 1080 at least) the game will probably run in the 20s in terms of FPS and with an i7 it will probably be 100% at 30fps.

Tested Catherine and:

- Catherine runs at 100% 30fps! Quite amazig. (on this rig!)

Tested Wizardry - Labyrinth of Lost Souls and:

- Still not graphics accuracte in terms of broken shadows and textures and stuff like that (treasure chests appear wonky sometimes an Fx wont display properly) but...
- other than a random broken treasure chest texture or a shadow the game is 100% playable!
- Ive already put in around 25 hours into this Wizardry and its not as good as an Elminage game or a Starfish Wiz Empire game (or one of the Gaiden games) but it defintiely scratches dat blobber itch. (some of you more fanatical about accuracy might want to wait for future builds though).

--------------------

As for Citra wow has the official build improved!

- 100% 30fps on every game I threw at the latest canary build I didnt even bother fiddling with any config whatsoever.

Cant wait to torrent Dragon Quest 11 and play it at 2x Resolution on CITRA!

can you test yakuza games pls

 

[aweigh]

Great Deceiver

The graphics eventually won me over.

HoboForEternity

Sure

 

[Jinn]

The graphics eventually won me over.

REALLY? I never thought I'd see you say this. But you'd definitely say the PSX version is THE version to play, right?

 

[aweigh]

absolutely. The difficulty downgrade in the 3ds version is quite severe and trivializes the games combat.

 

[lightbane]

It's been awhile since I've played the PSX version. I remember aweigh didn't like this version too much, right?

Name of the game please?

 

[HoboForEternity]

It's been awhile since I've played the PSX version. I remember aweigh didn't like this version too much, right?

Name of the game please?

dragon quest vii fragments of forgotten past.

i am in final dungeon actually atm.I notice it really is easier than other DQ games.

 

[Abu Antar]

Is The Alliance Alibe available to play on emulator yet? I've never played any emulated 3DS games, but I'm interested in this one.

 

[HoboForEternity]

absolutely. The difficulty downgrade in the 3ds version is quite severe and trivializes the games combat.

holy shit you are right.

The final boss is a joke.

So i decided to continue, even without my optimum build plan, which involve alot of grind (which made me stop playimg at the first place) it is easy af.

I remember even the nds version of dragon quest games it is still pretty challenging.

The final boss rarely use high damage AoE, and buff cleanser (which happen ALOT in older version or previously released DQs)

i remember every tough boss is a battle of patience and proper planning. Wave of buffs, debuffs, neutralizer, attack, healing and alot of difficult decision making in battle. It feels like you are hanging on thin ropes and one wrong step will plunge you into the abyss.

The final boss in 3ds version is just . . What?

He dont even bother to clear my crazy buffs and i am doig 200 to 300 dmg /character / turn.

Since his HP is 4000 to 5000 ish, he just fell down in 4 to 5 turns.

His attacks are like peashooter, with the biggest one are jusy around 90- 110 across party which can easily be healed with multiheal.

 

[aweigh]

thats the problem with the NDS and 3DS remakes of DQ games

- 4-6 remakes on NDS feature massive difficulty downgrades
- 7 remakes features massive difficulty downgrade AND a change to the classes system which disallows retaining mastered skills from mastered classes (!!!)

AFAIK Dq8 3ds remake retained the same difficulty from the ps2 game since its actually more of a port than a remake.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I remember struggling with some of the bosses in nds game, it might be because i was young then. Dq 4 and 5 on nds must have been 10 years ago, i was around 14 or 15 and i havent played much hard rpg back then.

I guess gaming experience do add up

 

[spekkio]

Is The Alliance Alive available to play on emulator yet? I've never played any emulated 3DS games, but I'm interested in this one.

Tested it last week on newshitest Citra. Game worked fine, albeit a bit slow, even on OpenGL renderer. My rig is shit, though.

 

[Great Deceiver]

thats the problem with the NDS and 3DS remakes of DQ games

- 4-6 remakes on NDS feature massive difficulty downgrades
- 7 remakes features massive difficulty downgrade AND a change to the classes system which disallows retaining mastered skills from mastered classes (!!!)

AFAIK Dq8 3ds remake retained the same difficulty from the ps2 game since its actually more of a port than a remake.

How about the PS2 remake of DQ 5? Did it ge ta downgrade in difficulty compared to the original? I've only played the remake...

 

[aweigh]

ps2 remake of dq5 is the best version actually

difficulty is the same and it is a straight up port + remake of the snes version.

PLUS DAT ORCHESTRAL SOUNDTRACK!!!!!

 

[aweigh]

Is there a way to use something like Cheat Engine to increase enemy HP values (or some other parameter) for NDS games? anyone know anything about this? Cheat codes maybe?

Desmume and Citra accept cheat codes and shit. DQ5 has the PS2 version and for me that is the definitive version BUT dq4 and dq6 remakes feature that lowered difficulty... if one could only tweak enemy parameters it would make the NDS versions the go-to ones.

 

[spekkio]

@ Cheat Engine and emus

Bear in mind that using CE in emus can be tricky sometimes, AFAIK mostly due to recompiling and shit. Addresses can be all over the memory, in different areas with each run of the emu / game.

 

[Walden]

mGBA 0.6.2

Apr 3, 2018 – written by endrift

A new release of mGBA, version 0.6.2, is available. This version is a bugfix release, which contains many stability and accuracy fixes. An extensive list of changes follows after the cut.

Bugfixes:

• Core: Fix ROM patches not being unloaded when disabled (fixes mgba.io/i/962)
• 3DS: Fix opening files in directory names with trailing slashes
• LR35902: Fix watchpoints not reporting new value
• GB MBC: Fix MBC2 saves (fixes mgba.io/i/954)
• GB Memory: HDMAs should not start when LCD is off (fixes mgba.io/i/310)
• GB Memory: Fix OAM DMA blocking regions (fixes mgba.io/i/1013)
• GB Video: Only trigger STAT write IRQs when screen is on (fixes mgba.io/i/912)
• GBA: Fix some GBA ROM misdetection (fixes mgba.io/i/978)
• GBA: Fix SharkPort saves for EEPROM games
• GBA Audio: Increase PSG volume (fixes mgba.io/i/932)
• GBA BIOS: Fix incorrect exit condition in LZ77
• GBA Cheats: Fix PARv3 slide codes (fixes mgba.io/i/919)
• GBA Cheats: Fix slide codes not initializing properly
• GBA DMA: ROM reads are forced to increment
• GBA Hardware: RTC accuracy improvements
• GBA I/O: Fix writing to DISPCNT CGB flag (fixes mgba.io/i/902)
• GBA Memory: Fix copy-on-write memory leak
• GBA Memory: Partially revert prefetch changes (fixes mgba.io/i/840)
• GBA Savedata: Fix crash when resizing flash
• GBA Video: Force align 256-color tiles
• GBA Video: OBJWIN can change blend params after OBJ is drawn (fixes mgba.io/i/921)
• PSP2: Fix issues causing poor audio
• Python: Fix package directory
• Qt: Fix locale being set to English on settings save (fixes mgba.io/i/906)
• Qt: Fix opening in fullscreen (fixes mgba.io/i/993)
• Wii: Fix screen tear when unpausing
• Wii: Fix various setup and teardown drawing issues (fixes mgba.io/i/988)

Misc:

• 3DS: Scale font based on glyph heights (fixes mgba.io/i/961)
• GB MBC: Remove erroneous bank 0 wrapping
• GBA: Improve multiboot image detection
• PSP2: Use system enter key by default

https://mgba.io/2018/04/03/mgba-0.6.2/

 

[Great Deceiver]

Just talking about the DQ5 PS2 remake made me feel like replaying it. Played all the way to the faerie dream village - headed to the ice fortress. As charming as ever and the soundtrack is killer. It's just a bummer that PCSX2 has such fucking awful input lag, it bothers me to no end, even when playing a turn-based game like this.

 

[SCO]

Retroarch has a new way of removing input latency (different than hard gpu sync) that can even work on lowering games 'inherent' input latency, giving (possibly, along with hard gpu sync/ good controller / monitor / driver) better than console input.

It's also a horrible hack.

As far as i can tell it works by making a savestate every frame (thus it will only work well on cores with fast and small savestates) and when the user presses something, RA turns off the display and sound (keeps current emulator image), rollsback to the N'th=inherent_game_frame_lag savestate, feeds the user input *then* fastforwards N frams and finally presents the calculated image.

So it's sort of time-travelling so inputs appear on the past and fast forwarding back to where you were so the effect can be seen. It depends on information that the average user is too much of a idiot to find by himself though, so it better get into the database...

Tried it on the ps1 but since my computer is worse than trash didn't try for long. If there is ever a ps2 core for RA might be something to try.

 

[Walden]

https://zoltx23.github.io/ryujinx-emu/


Ryujinx, new Switch emulator, already runs some games:

 

[Great Deceiver]

Retroarch has a new way of removing input latency (different than hard gpu sync) that can even work on lowering games 'inherent' input latency, giving (possibly, along with hard gpu sync/ good controller / monitor / driver) better than console input.

It's also a horrible hack.

As far as i can tell it works by making a savestate every frame (thus it will only work well on cores with fast and small savestates) and when the user presses something, RA turns off the display and sound (keeps current emulator image), rollsback to the N'th=inherent_game_frame_lag savestate, feeds the user input *then* fastforwards N frams and finally presents the calculated image.

So it's sort of time-travelling so inputs appear on the past and fast forwarding back to where you were so the effect can be seen. It depends on information that the average user is too much of a idiot to find by himself though, so it better get into the database...

Tried it on the ps1 but since my computer is worse than trash didn't try for long. If there is ever a ps2 core for RA might be something to try.

I've read about the new runahead method and it seems pretty hacky, so I'm not interested.

I think the default timing/sync method in Retroarch is close to perfect, I have absolutely no issue with it. I'm very spoiled by the experience, so much so that it's very difficult for me to go back to standalone emulators. Through my own empirical testing, most cores in RA respond to inputs in 2-3 frames (depending on core, Higan is 2f for example). Of course there is the added display latency, but I have a reasonably fast display.

Input lag in PCSX2 is really terrible, on the order of 150ms or more. That's close to 10 frames and completely unacceptable. I don't know how people cope with it - I suspect many don't even notice. Those are the people that don't notice a difference between 30 and 60fps. As I've written before on this forum, I've tried every possible solution under the sun, raw keyboard input, different input plugins, higher process priority, disabling vsync, nothing matters. I don't think it's a polling issue, I think the emulator itself is so full of hacks that there must be some funny business with how cycles are interpreted. I've pretty much given up on it and only use the emulator for RPGs, which is a shame as there are many cool PS2 action games that require fast inputs to be playable (Shinobi for instance).

Maybe better sync isn't possible because PCSX2 runs through DWM and there's no exclusive fullscreen so everything is buffered. But the latency is excessive even considering that scenario.

I remember the Retroarch people saying a PCSX2 core is very unlikely due to how that emulator is cobbled together. Would be really cool if it ever happened, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[SCO]

All things considered, i believe the savestate strategy to be one of the best ways they could have found because it can lower a game native input latency. It's bad that it will only work for very simple cores (which likely already have minimal input latency in most games) and it requires a configuration number that is different for all games (thus the need for a database that doesn't exist), but it's also good in that it's generic enough to be implemented for nearly all cores with savestates.

 

[mck]

I currently have several different DQ games going at once. Mostly I'm playing the DQ 7 remake, but I did play a few hours of the V PS2 remake a week or so ago. All of the DQ games upscaled look awesome to me.