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Emulation central - recommendations in 1st post

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aweigh

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oasis789

found out something very good: go back in the build history of RPCS3 and one of the builds made by Naketoma during the .35XX numbered versions.

why? because those versions have an option called "DISABLE VERTEX CACHE" which will give you instant boost in game performance.

i know why they removed it tho: breaks a lot of games, and/or causes their graphics to go kinky.

however, in case of persona 5 / catherine... definitely use a build with disable vertex cache option, enable it (so that the vertex cache is thus turned off), and then keep/use your same-settings-you-otherwise-use; just now w/ this additional option.

very very good find, marked improvement on persona 5 performance (for me, and many others apparently)
 
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aweigh

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Nostaljaded

they share a lot of similarities though, enough so that capture programs utilize the same hook for both catherine and persona 5 AND the same PPUID. i'm not saying they share the same engine now, as you are correct in that Catherine uses Gamebryo, but I still maintain that the optimizations done for Persona 5 are the only reason Catherine runs so well.

and any future Atlus games using the same Catherine/P5 tech will probably run very well on the RPCS3 emulator.

either way P5 is still a ways off from being playable on a core i3 or a core i5, IMO. I have a high tolerance for low frame rates but the 10-12 fps when running around the City was enough to make me drop persona 5 until a bigger development happens.

the stuttering cut-scenes also don't help either. besides p5 the only ps3 game i would've emulated would've been Ni No Kuni 2 but since that one will be ported to STEAM It seems I'll only be using rpcs3 to emulate wizardry labyrinth of lost souls.

i can't really think of any other ps3 games worth emulating right now that aren't already available on PC.

oh, flyingjohn

i wanted to ask if the ps2 fan-translation of final fantasy 12: the job system edition is mostly the same as the upcoming ps4 port? from what i've read the ps4 port only adds:

- fast-foward button (which the ps2 emulator has as well)
- a new "Trials" mode which seems like something I would have no interest in
- the obviously upgraded art assets (which ps2 emulator would feature as well with its increased resolution and anti-aliasing)

i was just thinking of starting a playthrough of the fan-translated ff12 ps2 .iso but wanted to make absolutely sure first that the upcoming ps4 port was just a double-dip.
 
Joined
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Fan translated FF12 International Zodiac Job System is fine - mainly it's just the US translation of the vanilla game.

The main difference as I understand it is that it only allows for one job board per character, whereas the PS4 version allows for a second board to be selected pretty early on in the game.

Stuff like text and the general interface is redone in much higher resolutions, of course, but that's pretty minor. Oh, and the PS4 edition has already been released. :)
 

Hyperion

Arcane
Joined
Jul 2, 2016
Messages
2,120
Nostaljaded
i wanted to ask if the ps2 fan-translation of final fantasy 12: the job system edition is mostly the same as the upcoming ps4 port? from what i've read the ps4 port only adds:

- fast-foward button (which the ps2 emulator has as well)
- a new "Trials" mode which seems like something I would have no interest in
- the obviously upgraded art assets (which ps2 emulator would feature as well with its increased resolution and anti-aliasing)

i was just thinking of starting a playthrough of the fan-translated ff12 ps2 .iso but wanted to make absolutely sure first that the upcoming ps4 port was just a double-dip.

It's technically not a fan translation, the game uses the English voices as they are among the best you'll ever hear in a game, so you just run a patch that rips the dialogue from an English ROM to the IZJS for its translation. There are like 2 or 3 instances where you'll see Japanese characters early in the game, but they're completely irrelevant to solving anything, as the directions are in English text.

One of the main complaints of the PS2 version was highly compressed audio files that caused some butthurt regarding sound quality, which the ps4 has addressed, and sounds much crisper. The soundtrack is also completely redone in Orchestrated form and sounds absolutely wonderful. In terms of actual gameplay, as Great Deceiver mentioned, the PS4 edition allows for each character to choose a 2nd job, which increases class variation by quite a bit. Having 2 classes also makes Esper allocation more interesting, as they will appear on both boards of the character you chose to give it to. This can be bypassed if you download the FF12 trainer for the IZJS iso, but it feels kinda cheap doing it this way. There is also map overlay that you can use while walking around, instead of having to hit Start and pause the game to bring up the map, which saves loads of time. There are some minor rebalances. In the original release Cure / Fire / Blizzard / Thunder were single target, and changed to AoE for IZJS. They have been reverted to single target for Zodiac Age, which makes the early game a bit more challenging.

Trial Mode was present in IZJS, but the big game changer is that loot you find in trial mode can be transferred to your main save in the Zodiac Age. This can be exploited for cash and gear early on, but is no biggie as you can just skip it 'till later. I recommend not skipping it as it's a pretty hefty challenge in the late stages after you complete everything else. Stage 100 is absolute Hell.

The Zodiac Age auto-saves at every screen change, which you can use to your advantage for farming enemies that are difficult to respawn. Some quests / sidequests have been made easier. The shitty 'chop' sidequest now only requires like 3 Pinewood Chops to access the cab in Archades, completing the Sun Stone now automatically takes you back to the Giza Plains Village, and a couple of other instances similar to the latter, saving some pointless travel time.

RNG exploitation is still around, so Cerobi Steppe chest farming is as easy as ever.

I misassigned a late game Esper which really fucked over my Penelo. I went into an Autistic Rage and started over, so I'm still not even done with the game yet. :D
 
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aweigh

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i only played through the original release (on original release date) of vanilla FF12 but i remember it being my favorite FF game-playing experience since FF6 so I've been wanting to replay FF12 now for years.

before I couldn't because my ancient rig wasn't good enough to emulate even FF12 at default low-spec settings, but now I can so I wanted to make sure I wouldn't "waste" the probably only replay I'll make of FF12 on an inferior version; but you guys have helped me decide to simply replay the emulated PS2 version of IZJS.

right now i'm playing 3 emulated RPGs:

- wizardry: labyrinth of lost souls (ps3)
- smt IV (3ds)
- and going to begin this FF12 replay next.

none of these are emul

I like to have one play-thru of an RPG for every emulator going at once, heh. Thinking of stopping SMT IV though and skipping ahead to SMT IV: Apocalypse, though, as the grind is boring for SMT IV and the story line is complete balls.
 

Shackleton

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Dec 29, 2011
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Knackers Yard
Codex 2016 - The Age of Grimoire Make the Codex Great Again! Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture
oasis789

found out something very good: go back in the build history of RPCS3 and one of the builds made by Naketoma during the .35XX numbered versions.

why? because those versions have an option called "DISABLE VERTEX CACHE" which will give you instant boost in game performance.

i know why they removed it tho: breaks a lot of games, and/or causes their graphics to go kinky.

however, in case of persona 5 / catherine... definitely use a build with disable vertex cache option, enable it (so that the vertex cache is thus turned off), and then keep/use your same-settings-you-otherwise-use; just now w/ this additional option.

very very good find, marked improvement on persona 5 performance (for me, and many others apparently)

I'm experimenting with P5 and RPCS3 myself after reading this thread. Thought I'd be good to go with an I7-6820 but it's still very much 10-15 FPS in the towns. Cutscenes and movies play just fine and it *is* playable, but not really comfortably so. Using Vulkan renderer and locking to two SPU threads seems to be the accepted best way to go.

Unless I'm being totally dense, and I don't think I am, the option to disable vertex cache is still there in the very latest version. It's a bit hidden away in 'config.yml', but if you open that file with Wordpad it's a simple matter to change it to 'true'.

Not seen a massive increase in FPS mind, but I've not played much since disabling.
 

pakoito

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jun 7, 2012
Messages
3,086
There is a fairly new arcade emulator for Sega RingEdge: https://teknogods.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=83&t=38678&sid=70be706c999d1af83ed10a21ed359c55

Thing is, it's geared mostly towards playing InitialD, Mario Kart Arcade, and Virtua Tennis. Now, the system algo contains some of my favorite games never to come to the west: Sengoku Taisen! Problem is none of these games are dumped. I'm trying to buy a Sega RingEnd board with them installed for preservation purposes, but without knowing Japanese it's proving quite difficult.

Does anyone here know any backchannels where to buy these boards?
 

Nostaljaded

Savant
Joined
Jun 4, 2015
Messages
359
they share a lot of similarities though, enough so that capture programs utilize the same hook for both catherine and persona 5 AND the same PPUID.
I'm not sure what level of similarities you are referring to.
On the stringent end: (purely hypothetical & unlikely)
Persona 5 engine is an evolution of Gamebryo engine where Atlus has no game engine talent to build from scratch and paid the rights to modify the Gamebryo sourcecode

On the opposite end for similarity:
All software run on code

Armchair analysis mode: OFF
What I'm fairly certain:
It is the general improvements & bugfixes to RPCS3 that resulted in the increased performance & playability across many games.

RPCS3 blog said:
Feb 2017 progress report:
... Persona 5, [Bunch of PhyreEngine games (Atelier & a few other)], Tekken 6, and Project Diva F 2nd are amongst the many, many, titles who were improved by said bugfix [on some very nasty and deeply rooted PPU bugs].

Mar 2017 progress report:
... For example Catherine, Persona 5, and Demon’s Souls saw large performance improvements from this [Reservations rewritten (#2404)].

Do all the games mentioned above share a lot of similarities as well? (as per your definition)
Would be good to check whether more PS3 games use the same hook/PPUID or not.

--------------------------------------
aweigh said:
...I still maintain that the optimizations done for Persona 5 are the only reason Catherine runs so well.

I disagree, with the above and following RPCS3 quote.

RPCS3 blog said:
Mar 2017 progress report:
... the cult classic Catherine received significant performance improvements and now runs with practically perfect graphics and performance.

May 2017 progress report:
#2781 – This PR fixed a parenthesis error in a shader. But never mind that, the story behind this one is really funny. Shameful is the guy who first beat the entire 100+ hours long game Persona 5 in RPCS3. As if playing at low frame rate and with sometimes very broken bloom making everything very blue wasn’t bad enough the game would suddenly and consistently crash every single time he approached the last area before the last boss...

Jul 2017 Persona 5 Is Now Playable in RPCS3

RPCS3 blog can be found here.
 
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aweigh

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Aug 23, 2005
Messages
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dxtory hooks persona 5 as the same game that Catherine is. this is the same thing that happens with FNV/FO3.

google what a PPUID is.
 

Nostaljaded

Savant
Joined
Jun 4, 2015
Messages
359
dxtory hooks persona 5 as the same game that Catherine is. this is the same thing that happens with FNV/FO3.

google what a PPUID is.
I'm still not sure what PPUID you are referring to, Google doesn't provide any relevant info.

If you are talking about PID/ProcessID (Process identifier), a different PID will be allocated on each software restart
JFEE4aH.png
but stays the same on whatever you do in the same instance.
NvPnFiv.png

A screenshot will be helpful to know what PPUID/Dxtory hook you are referring to, which you concluded that Catherine and Persona 5 sharing a lot of similarities.
I know PPID is Parent Process ID if that helps.
 
Joined
Aug 10, 2012
Messages
5,871
Playing through Haunting Ground, a pretty cool horror game released by Capcom for the PS2 in 2005.

hground3hyucw.jpg

hground2pruk8.jpg

hgroundbbu91.jpg


This didn't use to work properly in older versions of PCSX2 (at least as far as I remember), now it has a more accurate OpenGL renderer and it seems to be working perfectly.
 

A user named cat

Guest
I'm not sure if it's been mentioned or recommended yet, but I think it's safe to say there's an indisputed king of NES emulators now called Mesen

It has all the bells and whistles you'd want. Plus it's incredibly accurate. I like it much better than Nestopia, Punes and even Retroarch. Only quirk seems to be that you can't bind the F keys to save/load states but I'm sure that'll come with an update.
 

A user named cat

Guest
Playing some VP on mednafen

ValkyrieProfileIntro.gif
I actually played through it a couple months ago on Mednafen as well. Stating the obvious but you'll run into no emulation issues, so enjoy. Some of the dialogue and voice acting is extremely cringe but it's still a pretty cool game.
 

A user named cat

Guest
I'm not sure if it's been mentioned or recommended yet, but I think it's safe to say there's an indisputed king of NES emulators now called Mesen

It has all the bells and whistles you'd want. Plus it's incredibly accurate. I like it much better than Nestopia, Punes and even Retroarch. Only quirk seems to be that you can't bind the F keys to save/load states but I'm sure that'll come with an update.
Mesen has been updated already, that was quick. You can now bind every shortcut so it's pretty much perfect.
 

Walden

Savant
Joined
Mar 23, 2016
Messages
289
Can someone send me on pm a good site with decrypted 3ds games please?:shittydog:


EDIT: got it:oops:
 
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Falksi

Arcane
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Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
So I've been playing a few old games tonight, and I still don't think that I've ever played as satisfying, exciting & intense a brain-off game as Smash TV.

It's still to this very day utterly fucking awesome. The amount of near misses you have always has you on the edge of your seat, the control system still works superbly and provides something still fairly original & fresh, and it's just blindingly addictive.

I know a lot of retro games get a lot of deserved credit such as Super Mario World, Zelda, Chrono Trigger, Street Fighter 2 etc. but I rarely see much praise for Smash TV and I can't believe how after over 25 years it's still so easy to pick up and play, and yet hard to put down.
 

Falksi

Arcane
Joined
Feb 14, 2017
Messages
10,538
Location
Nottingham
The original designer of Smash TV also designed 2017's best game: Nex Machina. It's glorious.



Holy shit I've just spunked. :bounce:

That looks fucking mint. the Smash TV sequel I've been waiting over 25 years for. Oh and that wonderful new-synth music too+M:dance:+M

Massive ty for posting. Games like this get buried beaneath all the AAA shit advertized, and they don't get the exposure they deserve.

Gonna try & get it on PS4 first, then if not will download when I've bought a new PC in a month or so.
 

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