Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[Puukko]

I figured I might as well note down my experiences emulating Xenoblade 2 since I'm further in now. My gametime says 100 hours, but the game promotes idling. I've been using Yuzu + Vulkan for the vast majority of normal gameplay with Ryujinx on the side for occasional testing, which is also how I played SMTV so that'll make for a good comparison. For reference, this is arguably the most demanding Switch game, running at 720p on a good day on native hardware with frequent dips below that and it only became somewhat playable on emulators half a year ago and has made huge strides since.

The TL;DR:

If you want good performance with minimal issues: Ryujinx at 1x. I can't vouch for the stability, but this should enable people with slightly older CPUs (9th-10th gen/3000 series) to be able to play it.

If you want the best looking game and are fine with some issues that come with using cutting edge tech: Yuzu + Vulkan at 2x with Reshade.

Yuzu has the superior resolution scaler and Vulkan handles both higher resolutions and Reshade like a champ, where OpenGL buckles. 3x made zero difference in visuals to my eye and just introduced box patterns that were definitely distracting. OpenGL is there as a fallback but it gave me 10-15% worse performance at these settings which was enough to make me drop below 30 fps at times and thus the game slowed down. This game greatly benefits from Reshade in my opinion and that's the main reason I am using Yuzu.

Notably, the game has not crashed once during those 100 hours and suffers from far fewer graphical issues than SMTV did, though they're definitely still there. Many of these are Vulkan specific, it being an early access feature and all. SMTV meanwhile had a whole variety of these issues on top of crashing every few hours - compared to that, Xenoblade 2 is a much smoother experience. I only just came across an issue that was noticeable enough and seemingly permanent for the area in question that I opted to switch to OpenGL which renders correctly. Characters had bigtime rainbow lighting applied to them which while not the absolute worst, was definitely unsightly. Other than that, facial animations work very inconsistently (makes for a rather macabre scene when the gang is attending a funeral and the deceased in question is staring into nothingness with a literal dead eye stare), a thin dotted line across the screen (seemingly fixed in the very latest builds, or I got lucky), fullbright/super dark lighting in one indoors area and very rare texture explosion/corruption. I've had one instance where the graphics got so majorly fucked up that I was forced to restart, so that's the closest thing to a crash I suppose. Generally speaking, these issues don't seem to affect regular overworld traversal, so you won't be pestered by them during combat and exploration.

Now, as for the quality of the game itself, I'll save that for the JRPG thread once I've actually beat the game. Lots to talk about for sure.

Yuzu w/ Vulkan makes has corrupted colors/light for me. Has had it for a long time now.

Yeah it still needs plenty of work. I doubt it'll leave EA for months to come, but I don't mind trying out experimental stuff even if it means a bumpy ride.

 

[aweigh]

I played thru XBC1 on Ryujinx but I suffered through constant frame-drops, and while I loved the game and am glad I played it, I don't have it in me to go through a similar experience for the sequel. I want to wait until XBC2 runs at a perfect 30fps with no frame-drops (or almost none), and neither Ryujinx or Yuzu are there yet for me. I'll probably also need to upgrade my CPU anyway, since I'm on an i5 8400.

 

[Puukko]

On a related note, I tried out XBC X a couple times recently and could not get the 60 fps patch to work no matter what. I know some Cemu update earlier this year broke it, so I did my best to track down a couple earlier versions, yet no luck. This is extra maddening because it is reminding me of my experiences with Drakengard 3 which absolutely will not work with the fps unlocking patch on RPCS3 no matter what I try. Tried it back when you had to manually edit the patches, tried it with the more recent automatic patch manager, nothing. My copies for these two games must be cursed.

 

[Puukko]

Damn, 17 fps. This is making RDR look easy to run. May fiddle with speedup options later, but it's not looking good. Maybe I should take this opportunity to play MadWorld instead.

The player model probably has half of the total detail in this whole scene.

 

[aweigh]

On a related note, I tried out XBC X a couple times recently and could not get the 60 fps patch to work no matter what. I know some Cemu update earlier this year broke it, so I did my best to track down a couple earlier versions, yet no luck. This is extra maddening because it is reminding me of my experiences with Drakengard 3 which absolutely will not work with the fps unlocking patch on RPCS3 no matter what I try. Tried it back when you had to manually edit the patches, tried it with the more recent automatic patch manager, nothing. My copies for these two games must be cursed.

Have you by any chance tried Lost Odyssey recently on Xenia? I deleted the downloaded ISOs I had and can't be bothered to re-download them just to check performance. From what I remember, last time I tried it on Xenia it kept crashing during cutscenes and the audio would glitch out.

 

[Morpheus Kitami]

Don't know if anyone noticed this before, or if I just missed a regular DOS feature; In DOSbox, if you press tab, you can cycle through exe and bat files. It just shows each one in turn in the command line. Not really sure if it has any benefit, but it seems neat.

 

[aweigh]

Lost Odyssey runs perfectly on my rig (10400F+1660S) with lots of room for fast-forwarding.

Which Xenia are you using? Canary?

 

[Don Peste]

 

[Duraframe300]

Vulkan renderer is coming to PCSX2 by Stenzek (As part of the new qt gui project)

https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/pull/5224

 

[Endemic]

Star Fox with the new FastROM patch:

 

[Hirato]

Vulkan renderer is coming to PCSX2 by Stenzek (As part of the new qt gui project)

https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/pull/5224

That's interesting, I thought this was going to be impossible without vendors actually implementing the EXT_fragment_shader_interlocked extension.
https://www.khronos.org/registry/vu...an/html/VK_EXT_fragment_shader_interlock.html

 

[Jack Of Owls]

tbh I don't notice hardly any difference between he slowrom and the fastrom above. Speaking of Star Fox, I checked out Star Fox Adventures for the Gamecube using Dolphin. It's a bit of a curio since it uses the Zelda Twilight Princess engine (I think) and is not a space shooter but a third person adventure game/platformer. I once found an actual gamecube console at a goodwill store for $5. Not a bad find if I do say so misself.

 

[spekkio]

BROs, after some gentle persuasion from Lord Rincewind and Lord Unreal:

I've realized the obvious errors of my aspect-related ways, described in this post.

Sadly, they turned out to be influenced by the backward republican views and thus totally wrong. After all, seeing the right way shouldn't be that hard (check circular elements):

So, as of now I'm totally abandoning my old, rebellious "aspect correction off" ways, and fully embracing new & righteous Imperial "aspect correction on" regime.

In my defence I can only say that I was getting horrible scaling artifacts when using my scaler (Normal2x) with AC on, while without it, everything from DOS, through NC and game itself looked as crisp as princess Leia's buttcheeks. Sadly, that didn't mean I was using proper AR, which is all that matters.

For more info check this video (X-wing starts around 11:11):



All hail the Emperor!

 

[Rincewind]

I've realized the obvious errors of my aspect-related ways, described in this post.

Glad you found the way, bro! Now you can enjoy those games as their creators originally intended

After all, seeing the right way shouldn't be that hard (check circular elements)

Indeed, that's the most foolproof way to find some circular graphical elements. I should've probably started with that in my explanation and provide the medal examples.

In my defence I can only say that I was getting horrible scaling artifacts when using my scaler (Normal2x) with AC on, while without it, everything from DOS, through NC and game itself looked crisp as princess Leia's buttcheeks.

I recommend using Dosbox Staging, the default "sharp" shader in "opengl" output mode can do the aspect-ratio correction with minimal artifacts (the linear interpolation "band" is only 1px wide at the edges of the pixels at most).

Alternatively, if you're really allergic to any kind of interpolation, you can use the "openglpp" (pixel-perfect) output mode, which will pick the closest integer scaling ratio that fits into your native resolution. E.g. at 1920x1080 native resolution it will use 4x5 integer scaling, resulting in an 1280x1000 image. The pixel aspect ratio will be a little bit off (4:5=0.8 instead of the ideal 5:6=0.8333(3)), but it's close enough. And if you happen to have a 1600x1200 native res screen, then it will simply use perfect 5x6 integer scaling and the image will 100% fill your monitor.

Personally, I'm very happy with the "sharp" shader; my eyesight isn't that good anymore to notice those very minimal artifacts...

And, as a sidenote, all Amiga games made in the USA must be similarly aspect-ratio corrected too. Amiga lowres is 320x200 in NTSC, so we have the exact same situation as with the the DOS games. There are only a few European made PAL games that use 320x256 with square pixels. To complicate matters further, some European made Amiga games only use a 320x200 area of the 320x256 PAL screen (because they knew they wanted to sell the game in the USA as well), and they look completely fine on PAL (with letterboxing), while they look stretched on NTSC. This kinda makes sense because the European graphics artist was working in PAL mode with square pixels, he just didn't use the whole screen. Elvira I and II and Waxworks are such games, for example. NTSC users were kinda fucked, they just had to put up with streched gfx...

 

[Nifft Batuff]

And, as a sidenote, all Amiga games made in the USA must be similarly aspect-ratio corrected too. Amiga lowres is 320x200 in NTSC, so we have the exact same situation as with the the DOS games. There are only a few European made PAL games that use 320x256 with square pixels. To complicate matters further, some European made Amiga games only use a 320x200 area of the 320x256 PAL screen (because they knew they wanted to sell the game in the USA as well), and they look completely fine on PAL (with letterboxing), while they look stretched on NTSC. This kinda makes sense because the European graphics artist was working in PAL mode with square pixels, he just didn't use the whole screen. Elvira I and II and Waxworks are such games, for example. NTSC users were kinda fucked, they just had to put up with streched gfx...

As an old european Amiga user I can confirm that the aspect ratio was a messy thing in those old days. To further complicate the situation, usually with the PAL monitors (as the 1084) you were able to fine tune the vertical stretch of the CRT image at your leisure.

 

[spekkio]

Thanks, BROs.

Also: some mod should probably move recent Unreal's rants about AR in the "Screenshot" thread to this thread, before the guy gets tagged / warned.

After all, I don't think we should disturb the flow of New Vegan and indie crap #26573 screenshots with things like debating proper AR of old PC games from the golden era.

 

[spekkio]

BROs, configured DOSBox-X, which allowed me to remove vJoy, since this build supports deadzone "out of the box", so I can use my old DualShock2 without problems (craft steering off).

With following settings:

fullresolution = desktop
output = default (uses Direct3D in Windows)
aspect = true
scaler = normal2x (default in this build)

It looks fantastic: no scaling glitches + not as pixelated as with some other builds / outputs / scalers:

So far there are only 2 irritating things:

a) Inability to enable logging console:

via .conf setting. AFAIK you have to create a shortcut with a:

-console

command line switch to do this. And the console is crucial when looking for quicksave slots, etc:

b) Authors are very proud of this:

For screenshot and MIDI/OPL recording, DOSBox-X will now display a message box showing the saved file name when the recording has been completed, in case the user wants to know where the recording has been saved. The full file paths will also be recorded in the DOSBox-X logging file.

Which is IMO retared, since DOSBox will go from full-screen to window to display this:

every time you make a screenshot.

I hope there's a way of disabling this, since it's p. stupid when making many screenshots.

 

[Morenatsu.]

Thanks, BROs.

Also: some mod should probably move recent Unreal's rants about AR in the "Screenshot" thread to this thread, before the guy gets tagged / warned.

After all, I don't think we should disturb the flow of New Vegan and indie crap #26573 screenshots with things like debating proper AR of old PC games from the golden era.

Do you want me to disrupt your thread with a rant about people who hate their retarded threads getting disrupted by my rants? jk no homo

 

[spekkio]

I think stuff you wrote has bigger chance of being PRESERVED ITT than in the ever-groving (currently over 1400 pages) "screenshot" thread. On the other hand, some people don't degrade themselves to checking / posting in weeaboo + "screenshot" thread is much more popular.

tl;dr

Most 'dexers only care about GD anyway...

 

[Morenatsu.]

moving random posts into other (un)related threads would make for an epic forum-wide prank bro

 

[spekkio]

Isn't that what 'Dex mods do like all the time?

 

[Riumedis]

MAME has removed support for Akai Katana and Dodonpachi Saidaioujou after receiving C&D from Exa Arcadia (publisher of Cave games). You might be wondering why MAME doesn't ignore such a BS request from Exa Arcadia, while it's because of ''respect". The MAME devs will just roll-over and take a nonsensical request any party will make.

 

[Duraframe300]

MAME has removed support for Akai Katana and Dodonpachi Saidaioujou after receiving C&D from Exa Arcadia (publisher of Cave games). You might be wondering why MAME doesn't ignore such a BS request from Exa Arcadia, while it's because of ''respect". The MAME devs will just roll-over and take a nonsensical request any party will make.

Love that they are getting some backlash for it, even on reddit. It's an insane argument anyway, as it completely goes against the principles of preservation. Doubt the entire MAME team was behind this decision.

I imagine that sooner or later that code get activated again anyway and/or other Arcade emus add support for it.

 

[Hirato]

I'm not even sure what to make of it.
It looks like MAME hardcodes a game database of sorts that verifies some data being correct or not?
Surely you could still run the rom though?

I don't see how the copyright holder has any legal right for what they asked for.
The code basically says: I recognise this rom with checksum 613fd380, this is Akai Katana!
And then applies some hacks (of which there aren't any for these 2 games) to make it run faster.

Or am I missing something?

Trademark is probably the best angle, but even that is a massive stretch and extremely legally dubious.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

I'm not even sure what to make of it.
It looks like MAME hardcodes a game database of sorts that verifies some data being correct or not?
Surely you could still run the rom though?

I don't see how the copyright holder has any legal right for what they asked for.
The code basically says: I recognise this rom with checksum 613fd380, this is Akai Katana!
And then applies some hacks (of which there aren't any for these 2 games) to make it run faster.

Or am I missing something?

Trademark is probably the best angle, but even that is a massive stretch and extremely legally dubious.

Yes, I cannot understand how this request could be legal.