Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[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.

 

[Duraframe300]

PCSX2 advertising AetherSX2 themselves and clarifying PCSX2's license

AetherSX2 brings PCSX2 to mobile

An exciting bit of news! As you have probably seen by now, there is a new Android emulator in town called AetherSX2, which shows to have very promising performance and compatibility. While the latter is due to it being based on an LGPL licensed emulator for PC (that's us!), the former is due to the clever work of the developer Tahlreth.

As you can expect, at first we were very skeptical about this, due to the whole situation with DamonPS2 that you may remember; a new Android emulator appearing needed to be approached with caution. But instead of being met with hostility, the developer was very forthcoming and friendly, and was more than willing to discuss the remaining barriers, and the path to overcome them.

Since there have also been several people concerned about the licensing behind PCSX2, we decided to try and explain the situation and how it pertains to the GPL and LGPL license.

PCSX2's core code is LGPLv3 licensed, which is compatible with the GPLv3 license, and all the plugin code which has been merged during the 1.7 dev cycle was relicensed to LGPL with authorisation from the authors, too. However, there's also 3 bits of GPL code used in the project that remain:

• Some debugger code from PPSSPP
• The FreeType library which is used for our OSD
• libmpeg2 which is used for video decoding

The existence of these 3rd party GPL parts means that PCSX2 as a combined works needs to comply to the GPLv3 license but our source code that we own remains LGPL. By distributing the code when requested we comply with the GPLv3 license. See the GNU FAQ here and here. If these mentioned libraries are removed, the entire project would become purely LGPL licensed.

These concerns of course extended out to this new emulator, and we had to reach out about it to Tahlreth. After a good discussion with him about these issues, we have been assured that it will no longer be a problem by the time the emulator releases. Right now the only piece of GPL code they need to contend with is libmpeg2, which can be replaced with FFmpeg, which is under the LGPL license; this is something we planned on doing in the future, since libmpeg2 is over a decade old. As for the aforementioned debugger and Freetype code, they no longer exist. Aether has its own OSD and no debugger, meaning the emulator will be entirely LGPL.

In addition, the developer very kindly let us see an early alpha of the emulator, and it runs better than most of us expected! We are really looking forward to recommending it to all those wanting PCSX2 on Android, as this is probably the best it's gonna get.

For final words, we'd like to warn the community about false information and fake software. So far, even we have caught numerous fake APKs, (ongoing) impersonation attempts, faked/stolen videos, brigading, and misinformation regarding AetherSX2. We want to emphasize that it is currently in closed beta, and is only available for select people. While there is currently no version available to the public, the emulator is going to be free once released, collect no data, and is not planned to be distributed outside of the Google Play Store.

For your own safety, be sure NOT to:

• Download or install any APKs that are shared through youtube links or other sources, as likely contain viruses or copies of different emulators
• Pay attention to people claiming to be a developer other than /u/Tahlreth on Reddit
• Believe anybody is affiliated with AetherSX2 unless confirmed by /u/Tahlreth
• Trust any social media outlet except the official subreddit /r/AetherSX2, unless trusted news sources report on it, Tahlreth (at time of posting) has no other social presence such as Discord

Please wait for follow-up announcements and information from Tahlreth directly on /r/AetherSX2.

 

[spekkio]

In before drama / epic meltdowns / usual fare.

 

[Don Peste]

I think these are some of your favourites

 

[Jack Of Owls]

How do you guys get Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots to boot in RPCS3? I see all these videos on YT where they're playing this under PS3 emulation and it looks glorious in 4K with a stable 60 FPS yet when I installed it in the latest build of RPCS3 (it took almost an hour to compile the shaders and modules, btw) it just crashes and closes as soon as I try to run it with not so much as a boot logo. Is there a special build for it or settings? I can't use the official RPCS3 forum or compatibility lists because it's listed as "InGame Only" and if I try to post on their forum, I get some monkey of a mod/administrator putting my question in a queue indefinitely. I'm pleased that other games like MotorStorm Pacific Rift play very nicely with RPCS3 under my rig (i9).