Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[mogwaimon]

That bug was there 2½ years ago when I played these games. Perhaps it'll get fixed by 2024.

Switch emulation and patreonbux were a mistake if only they would focus more on the 3DS, you know, the system that you can't actually play on a TV, instead of putting all their time into Yuzu. I checked Citra yesterday and while there's still nightly builds and the like the last posts on their site were from like early last year

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Talk about a shout out nod to old Ultimas.

 

[flyingjohn]

Switch emulation and patreonbux were a mistake

Hormone pills and dick chopping surgeries are not cheap you privileged white male.

 

[Zariusz]

I want to try Panzer Dragoon Saga, what emulator works best for this? Also is EU or US version better or that doesnt matter?

 

[Comte]

Whats a good ps2 emulator also anybody know a reliable place to get Romance of the three kingdoms 7?

 

[flyingjohn]

Whats a good ps2 emulator also anybody know a reliable place to get Romance of the three kingdoms 7?

Pcsx2 is the only good one.
Google for romance and cd.

 

[Puukko]

CDRomance of the Three Kingdoms 7? Hmm...

 

[Duraframe300]

Whats a good ps2 emulator also anybody know a reliable place to get Romance of the three kingdoms 7?

As mentioned PCSX2, get the latest build though instead of the stable as a bug related to the games font display was recently fixed:

https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/releases

 

[flyingjohn]

Another pcsx2 android ripoff appears:

Will Damon be able to rip this off quickly?
Will the pcsx2 team get flooded by android users bitching that their bootleg potato can't run this?
Will the duckstation dev that is currently working on pcsx2 have ptsd from his android user invasion and go ballistic?

 

[Duraframe300]

To be fair, at least they are open that they are using the PCSX2 code and they've put some work into it.

That's as huge an improvement as you can get over Daemon.

 

[Puukko]

Here's a quick, less-than-scientific test about PCSX2 performance. I knew 1.4.0 was supposed to be faster than newer versions, so I grabbed the latest 1.7.0 build as a comparison, booted up Nocturne with equivalent settings on my laptop and enabled turbo. In battle, it was 105 fps vs 75 fps in 1.4.0's favor. Seeing as this was at turbo clocks and before throttling, this would have made the newer build eventually slow down and give me less than 100% speed whereas the older build would have been fine. Obviously, this is a tradeoff between accuracy and speed, but if you're on a potato laptop, there's a very real case to be made for using an older version of the emulator. I haven't fiddled around with any speedhacks mind you, as I really don't like laptop gaming and would rather pick something that just werks rather than falling into the usual testing trap.

 

[flyingjohn]

Here's a quick, less-than-scientific test about PCSX2 performance. I knew 1.4.0 was supposed to be faster than newer versions, so I grabbed the latest 1.7.0 build as a comparison, booted up Nocturne with equivalent settings on my laptop and enabled turbo. In battle, it was 105 fps vs 75 fps in 1.4.0's favor. Seeing as this was at turbo clocks and before throttling, this would have made the newer build eventually slow down and give me less than 100% speed whereas the older build would have been fine. Obviously, this is a tradeoff between accuracy and speed, but if you're on a potato laptop, there's a very real case to be made for using an older version of the emulator. I haven't fiddled around with any speedhacks mind you, as I really don't like laptop gaming and would rather pick something that just werks rather than falling into the usual testing trap.

Plus older versions work on windows 7.

 

[Tweed]

Talk about a shout out nod to old Ultimas.

I felt like I was the only person on earth who saw that.

 

[Viata]

Talk about a shout out nod to old Ultimas.

Not saying you are wrong, but that has been in some SMT for years:

Maybe the first case was a nod to Ultima, but the rest was more like keeping something they already had before.

 

[Duraframe300]

Here's a quick, less-than-scientific test about PCSX2 performance. I knew 1.4.0 was supposed to be faster than newer versions, so I grabbed the latest 1.7.0 build as a comparison, booted up Nocturne with equivalent settings on my laptop and enabled turbo. In battle, it was 105 fps vs 75 fps in 1.4.0's favor. Seeing as this was at turbo clocks and before throttling, this would have made the newer build eventually slow down and give me less than 100% speed whereas the older build would have been fine. Obviously, this is a tradeoff between accuracy and speed, but if you're on a potato laptop, there's a very real case to be made for using an older version of the emulator. I haven't fiddled around with any speedhacks mind you, as I really don't like laptop gaming and would rather pick something that just werks rather than falling into the usual testing trap.

Yeah, that's a general (and understandable) rule for emulation. Modern versions of SNES9x are also (obviously) magnitudes slower for example.

That's one of the reasons Retroarch/Libretro keeps older versions of some emulators around as separate branches.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

Currently got my emulation on and I'm finally playing Demon's Souls through rpcs3. Though I own the original PS3 hardware, I'm swayed by the concept that 60 FPS and 4K resolution is better than 30 FPS and 720p so... there ya go. Also played around with a few other games on the PS3/rpcs3 to see if they're also enticing in these areas, like Tokyo Jungle. It bugs me though that my frame rates fluctuate between 30FPs and 60FPS on Tokyo Jungle using rpcs3 on a fucking 10-core i9 cpu while the YT videos using nearly the exact same cpu I saw show them playing with a constant 60 FPS and not even a baby burp. Why is the grass greener on the other geek's side? Is it my rpcs3 settings? Do I need to manually adjust rpcs3 settings for 8+ cores or some shit like that (I'm using pretty much default settings)? Though they do have 3080 GPUs in the YT videos to my 1070, it's my understanding it's the CPU that determines smooth emulation, not GPU. Dear God & the codex, please help me understand. Demon's Souls plays perfect in rpcs3 however; constant 60 FPS at 1080p..

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Is that the minimum reqs? Lordy.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

it's my understanding it's the CPU that determines smooth emulation, not GPU.

Not really, it's usually both and invididual games can have their own issues.

I do get the feeling that you're GPU-bound in this case. Does it run fine if you run it at a native resolution?

I'd also suggest fiddling with settings and checking the wiki to see if there are any recommendations for each particular game (or any common issues that are yet to be fixed).

 

[Jack Of Owls]

it's my understanding it's the CPU that determines smooth emulation, not GPU.

Not really, it's usually both and invididual games can have their own issues.

I do get the feeling that you're GPU-bound in this case. Does it run fine if you run it at a native resolution?

I'd also suggest fiddling with settings and checking the wiki to see if there are any recommendations for each particular game (or any common issues that are yet to be fixed).

Yeah, I'm beginning to think in this case I'm GPU-bound since the videos on YT all have significantly more powerful nvidia boards than me but similar cpus. No, unfortunately I still get the framerate drops at native resolution. Of course, I can prevent the choppiness if I just lock it at 30 FPS since it never dips below that but I think I'll just wait until I get a new GPU since I much prefer 60 FPS. What a great concept for a game tho. Tokyo Jungle makes me think of the future offered in the film version of 12 Monkeys.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Well, RPCS3 is strange and there's a lot of variability between versions, I suppose.

I have a Ryzen 7 3800x and an RTX 3070 and I can't run MGS3 HD at 60fps, for example. All YT videos I see of people with very inferior configs get 60FPS no sweat. Kinda mad about that. MGS3 is the only game that gives me trouble, too.

 

[Puukko]

It could be the memory configuration as well. Back in the DDR3 days, the advise was "just get whatever, it's basically the same" which doesn't hold true these days for either regular games nor emulation. A basic single rank kit won't hold a candle to a dual rank kit/4 sticks, even before speed is taken into consideration.

 

[Jack Of Owls]

I couldn't even get The Last of Us to boot past the "Epilepsy Warning" screen in rpcs3, even with all the patches, though others didn't have as much of an issue. Then while troubleshooting on the net, I read something like, "Just keep trying to launch it... it may take many times but eventuality those shaders will compile, and it will launch." Fuck that. I'll just play Demon's Souls, and Tokyo Jungle when I get the new GPU. I have TLoU on original disc so if I feel I MUST play it someday, I'll just get the old PS3 out of storage and have at it.

 

[flyingjohn]

One of the many problems with ps3 and switch emu is it's dependency on specific shit.If you don't have the correct os/driver/hardware you will get weird results.
A friend couldn't play ratchet and the issue was magically solved by os update a week later.

 

[Great Deceiver]

It could be the memory configuration as well. Back in the DDR3 days, the advise was "just get whatever, it's basically the same" which doesn't hold true these days for either regular games nor emulation. A basic single rank kit won't hold a candle to a dual rank kit/4 sticks, even before speed is taken into consideration.

I have decent DDR4 memory at 3200mhz/dual channel, modern games all run exceptionally well. It's just MGS 3 on RPCS3 giving me trouble. Oh well.

 

[Puukko]

It could be the memory configuration as well. Back in the DDR3 days, the advise was "just get whatever, it's basically the same" which doesn't hold true these days for either regular games nor emulation. A basic single rank kit won't hold a candle to a dual rank kit/4 sticks, even before speed is taken into consideration.

I have decent DDR4 memory at 3200mhz/dual channel, modern games all run exceptionally well. It's just MGS 3 on RPCS3 giving me trouble. Oh well.

Right, but note I said dual rank, not dual channel. That is a very important difference. Dual rank gives meaningful performance differences in modern games and that difference should only grow with modern emulators, but there is very little reliable research on this topic. I wish some big tech channel (read: Hardware Unboxed) would make a detailed analysis, but I understand why they're hesitant to touch emulators.