Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

[sullynathan]

Black is the best NG game by far.

I've heard otherwise

 

[aweigh]

btw, if anyone here with outdated hardware (like myself) wants the latest, fastest build of an "unofficial" CITRA branch, i really vouch for this one:

- Citra-QT-Mingw-18-04-2017 is a modified branch of the "official" build except with Visual runtime files needed (it'll prompt you for them when you execute it): http://www87.zippyshare.com/v/n0oHquVg/file.html

- link to the gbatemp forum post containing the link in case you don't trust me or whatever: https://gbatemp.net/threads/citra-unofficial-chinese-builds-discussion.431974/page-254

i have tried every single citra build out there and with the latest Bleeding Edge (181 as of this post) this Mingw branch is leaps and bounds way, waaaay faster/better than any other build out there right now.

With Bleeding Edge: Elminage: Gothic (decrypted, jp .3DS rom) runs on my comp at 60% "speed" in graphically intensive dungeons like the ice or wind caves (those who've played it know), and Etrian Odyssey: IV's b1f runs at approx. 75% "speed"...

With Mingw-18-04-2017 build Gothic runs at 100% speed, any dungeon, any situation, and EO IV runs at 85-100% depending on what's going on (battles in any version are obviously 100%).

EDIT: also, just tried Draon Quest 7 3ds remake on Bleeding Edge 181 and it runs (i.e. the game's intro with the camera swooping around the island) at approx. 60% "speed", while the Mingw build bumps that up to almost 90% "speed" (haven't had the patience to test battles).

BTW, this Mingw build allows usage of frame_skip, which while technically "glitchy" will indeed allow some games/scenes/situations to play out, like the FMV cutscenes in SMT: Soul Hackers (which without frame_skip, on any build, are a complete clusterfluck/slideshow on my comp).

 

[aweigh]

btw, my specs:

- cpu: amd a8-3870 "apu" (stock) 3.0ghz, OC'd to 3.4ghz (above statistics of the citra builds provided with OC enabled)
- gpu: amd radeon HD 6670 (stock, as OC'ing it yields no benefits as it is so ancient)
- ram: 4gb of the cheapest possible DDR3 RAM OC'd to 1333mhz

sound plays better in Mingw build, obviously, though I attribute that simply to the better speed. Honestly, it sounds like one of those youtube links "OMG FASTEST CITRA BUILD PLAY IN 4k !!!" etc, but this Mingw build blew me away.

Also, for those who want the numbers for a Horizontal Layout of the 3ds screens in Aspect Ratio-correct dimensions here are the ones I've calculated (and use myself) after manually testing out dozens and dozens of layout dimensions:

 

[Socur Toxanarosa]

Ninja Gaiden Sigma is nowhere close to Black. Black is the best NG game by far.

Nah, the core is the same, there are differences but nothing night and day. And Rachel missions were interesting, they should've been optional but i prefer how it is than not playing them at all.

 

[Great Deceiver]

That's your opinion.

To me, having to play as Rachel was not interesting, it was quite simply worse than playing as Ryu and a significant chore. Sigma is also considerably easier with extra shops, save points and enemies taking more damage.

If you can't play Ninja Gaiden Black, Sigma is an acceptable game. If you can, why would you play a watered down, easier version of the game with forced shitty Rachel levels?

 

[Socur Toxanarosa]

That's your opinion.

To me, having to play as Rachel was not interesting, it was quite simply worse than playing as Ryu and a significant chore. Sigma is also considerably easier with extra shops, save points and enemies taking more damage.

If you can't play Ninja Gaiden Black, Sigma is an acceptable game. If you can, why would you play a watered down, easier version of the game with forced shitty Rachel levels?

No problem liking Black better(i do too), what bugs me is the hyperbole, Sigma even has some advantages like the graphics. If you beat Black on Master Ninja you'd think Sigma is easier, it probably is, but by no means it's an easy game, it's harder than Souls games for me.

About Rachel, i think the problem is that most people try to play with her the way they play with Ryu, you need to adapt to her style, it's not brilliant but it's cool and offers a different perspective on the story; the missions are very short also. But as i said, i think they should've be optional like Resident Evil 4.

Of course i would like if there was a way of playing Black through emulator or a modern port tho.

 

[aweigh]

just started up a new game of BRAVELY DEFAULT cos i've been waiting for a "magic build" that would run the game at full speed... and it's here. yay...! i think.

anyway, this is the first game to not want to launch and after much googling i needed a font file that you're supposed to shove into Citra from your "real 3DS" (LOOOOL); same shit as the PS bios and stuff.

so here's the link (chinese, via 4chan thread, ofc) where i just now downloaded the font file(s) necessary (it's two folders) and game works flawlessly:

- https://archive.nyafuu.org/vp/thread/29172793/?download

 

[aweigh]

 

[felipepepe]

GLORIOUS!

 

[Siveon]

It looks p bad when you blow it up like that, and man, the text. 3DS emulation working though? Awesome.

Spoiler

You could do so much better than Boring Default. C'mon let's get some SMT or Etrian here.

 

[felipepepe]

You could do so much better than Boring Default. C'mon let's get some SMT or Etrian here.

All running perfectly. And I don't even have a graphic card - this is all on a i5's Intel Graphics.

 

[spekkio]

Also, this build Julio Sotomayor aweigh linked to, has gamepad support (working analog pad too).

 

[Vorark]

Wow, looks damn good. Couple more years and will be able to play MH with decent image quality & control scheme.

 

[Siveon]

I'm perfectly content with my CFW 3DS, but I'm glad people can play some nu-incline.

Spoiler

I hate Awakening but it's cool bb.

That said, I do yearn for some regular console/PC release of Monster Hunter.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Although I think PCSX2 is an amazing piece of software, two problems have been bothering me tremendously, for years, and I'd like to share my experience in attenuating them:

1. Frame pacing (stuttering) issues at locked 60fps: Vsync doesn't work in GSdx OpenGL. The option simply does nothing and forcing Vsync through the control panel also doesn't work (I have an Nvidia card). This issue has been bothering me for ages and it manifests itself as a kind of random stuttering even though the emulator is running at a locked 60fps without breaking a sweat (almost as if it were frameskipping, but it's not). It's a frame timing issue. The solution to this is to switch to the (much less visually accurate) DirectX9/11 version of GSdx.

This issue is very hard to track down because I suspect that people are either not very sensitive to frame timing (I am, unfortunately) or most run the DirectX version of the plugin anyway. It is unfortunate because the OpenGL version is much more accurate. I hope this gets fixed in the future. I've posted this at the PCSX2 official forums: http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-GSDX-OpenGL-Vsync-DWM-Aero-issues?pid=559426#pid559426, but there has been no official response yet.

2. Input lag. I've had horrid input lag on PCSX2 forever and I thought that it was simply the way the emulator was. I had tried every input plugin under the sun and had given up on finding an improvement. However, recently I came across the Pokopom plugin. It's a Xinput plugin (meaning you need to have a Xbox 360/Xbox one pad or be running some kind of input emulation software like X360CE) that has an option called "above normal process priority". This has ameliorated the issue of input lag significantly for me. I play a lot of shmups and they were absolutely unplayable for me before in PCSX2. This improves things dramatically.

Here's a link to the plugin thread at the PCSX2 forums: http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-Pokopom-KrossX-s-Pad-Plugin . The latest version is I believe http://forums.pcsx2.net/attachment.php?aid=60937. Just unzip it into your PCSX2 plugins folder and select it from the Plugin/BIOS selector dialog in the emulator. Make sure to check the "above normal process priority" box.

Hope this helps other people. I've played a lot of Dodonpachi Daioujou and Maximo over the past couple of days and can say that the experience is significantly better.

 

[Hirato]

I'm pretty sure DX11 doesn't do vsync in windowed/fake-fullscreen modes, period.
I'm happy to not use vsync at all (and use a soft frame-limiter) and have the desktop compositor take care of presenting the frames.
so my advice is: turn off vsync, leave DWM alone.

And I personally have no issue with the built in input plugins, except for that fact that I have to use a user space driver instead to normalise axis input to (1, 1) in the diagonals instead of (0.7, 0.7), otherwise I get this really awkward run->walk->run->walk transition in a lot of games.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I'm aware that PCSX2 has no exclusive fullscreen functionality (and suffers greatly for it) and that there's no possibility of turning DWM off in Windows 10 (which is what I use). However, the vsync option does make a difference for frame pacing even if it's technically a windowed fullscreen implementation. There's an easy way to test this, just boot up any third person action game with a controllable camera and pan the camera around your character with an even velocity. You'll see what I mean.

As far as input lag goes, it was unbearable for me. Now it's only pretty annoying. I don't have a scientific way to test the exact amount of frames it takes for the emulator to process an input (there's no pause/frame forward functionality in PCSX2 - I can test this easily in Retroarch and most good cores yield between 2 and 3 frames of lag before an input goes through, which is not ideal but acceptable), but going from Lilypad to Pokopom exclusive mode seems to have made a significant difference for me. Play a shmup, input lag is really evident in those types of games.

 

[Hirato]

I don't normally use Windows, but I have a fancy laptop here I tried to play some games via PCSX2 on; with OpenGL it stuttered every few seconds (could just be because I tried to play some Tekken with friends, Tekken 5 behaves weirdly), but I didn't notice any input lag in particular.

But that aside, I don't think you quite understand what I meant.
DX10/11 doesn't support vsync outside of exclusive fullscreen.
Period.
It will never activate outside of that, it will never ever limit the framerate if you're not in exclusive fullscreen, it will never prevent screen tearing outside of exclusive fullscreen.

However with DX9, and OpenGL, vsync does work outside of exclusive fullscreen, but because PCSX2 implements a soft frame-limiter, vsync literally provides nothing of value to you outside of this exclusive fullscreen mode which PCSX2 doesn't utilise in any way, shape, or form.
So just turn off the vsync, especially if you use tripple buffering, because that will make it seems much laggier than it actually is.


I just played 1 level of that dondonpachi thing and the response seems pretty instant to me, though YMMV, I did use the OnePad plugin, since I'm a linux fag.
If you want to play with a few settings to try and measure this 'input lag' more accurately, your best bet is probably to use the slow-mo mode, and make it something ridiculous, like 5% speed, instead of 50%,
If you think there's something wrong with the lilypad plugin, it might be worth looking into it, I imagine it just polls what the hardware reports and sets a a dozen or so special registers periodically.

 

[flyingjohn]

For anybody interested in the disgaea ps3 games here is a patch for rpcs3 which increases performance(this is a beta patch may not work on all games):
https://gist.github.com/Nekotekina/14c6cc34b5c127950f982ffab87a43ec
Just put it into the same folder as the emulator exe.
Disgaea d2 is finishable.
Also for anybody interested here is the monthly progress blog:
https://rpcs3.net/blog/2017/04/29/progress-report-april-2017/

 

[aweigh]

Siveon

even with the april-18th-2017 "MINGW" build i posted above SMT IV runs at approx. 70% speed for me. it is by far the most graphically demanding 3DS game i've tested out yet.

With Bleeding Edge (as of today ver. 184, unless 185 already slipped out) SMT IV run at 50-55% speed.

As with Boring Default I am simply waiting until the magic builds get updated further, and/or I eventually buy an Intel CPU. BTW, so far no build of CITRA utilizes GPUs for anything whatsoever so in theory it's the perfect emulator for people with integrated graphics but snappy Intel CPUs.

EDIT: Oh, and yeah 3DS Etrian Odyssey games (including IV) run perfectly fine, hell, even using the normal Bleeding Edge build. I'm currently playing a new game of the 3DS ver. of EO II in Classic/Expert mode. I haven't posted about it because it goes without saying that i'm playing these.

As for SMT: DS II: Soul Hackers... run slightly better inside dungeons than SMT IV, and with MINGW build + frame_skip = 1; the game is absolutely playable; BUT as with SMT IV, I choose to wait until MINGW (or whichever new magic build comes along) gets further updated.

I'll probably end up buying a new Intel CPU / intel mobo when the eng. language ver. of DQ XI drops in a few months for the 3DS.

QUESTIONS FOR PEEPS:

1. Which 3DS Fire Emblem game should I play first? I have never played any FE games. Ever.

2. Aside from the FE games, the EO series games, the DQ/DQM:J games, the SMT series/spinoff games and the Boring Default series games: what other 3DS rpg's should I be playing right?

I'll give any RPG an honest try, even If I don't end up liking it.

 

[Siveon]

Well, it's getting there, that's all that matters.

Which 3DS Fire Emblem game should I play first? I have never played any FE games. Ever.

Ha, trick question. You don't play a 3DS FE game first, you play FE7 for the gba or FE3 for the SNES. You then play all the other games and skip Awakening, because Awakening is meh.

Spoiler

Awakening if you're a super noob at non-Tactics-like SRPGs (Super Robot Wars, Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, etc). If it HAS to be 3DS, but Fire Emblem for the GBA worked fine for me when I was six. So, yeah.

2. Aside from the FE games, the EO series games, the DQ/DQM:J games, the SMT series/spinoff games and the Boring Default series games: what other 3DS rpg's should I be playing right?

Rune Factory 4, Stella Glow, Monster Hunter (Action RPG is still RPG), Beyond the Labyrinth (fan translated), and Crimson Shroud. Don't think you can emulate Crimson Shroud but I never checked.

 

[aweigh]

thankx

 

[OracleX]

aweigh do you have any experience with running Dragon Quest vii and viii on Citra? if so what speeds do you get?
I must say the build you posted sure improved the speed of some games. Never though I would be able to play some on my M14x (6yo now)

 

[aweigh]

our hardware is pretty similar apparently.

with my specs (posted above) i get (on DQ 7) 45-55% "speed" (can't remember exact FPS) counting from the beginning cinematic of the sweeping camera.

this is with mingw build 18-04-2017.

however, using a build that supports frame_skip (discounting unofficial builds, the last Bleeding Edge to support frame_skip is Bleeding Edge 67); with BE 67 and frame_skip at 4 (only setting that works well enough without screwing up game graphics and still skips frames) i get:

...approximately 40-60% speed in reality, but due to the frame skip it moves up to "barely playable, although not relaly, but yeah really if you're that desperate".

i can happily report however that if you get a newer cpu (i plan on getting one for when dq11 drops on 3ds) using mingw build the games (7 and 8) run at 100% speed. (for those people with intel i7's or whatever, i mean).

 

[OracleX]

Thanks! Getting 50% aswell. Not to desperate really, perhaps future releases will improve even more.