Dirge of Cerberus

[dcostalis]

I've done my research on this. I'll post my stats first.

Quad core e9400 @ 2.66 ghz
ATI Radeon 4670 with a gig of ram
4 gigs of 800mhz ddr2 ram
windows 7 (but also tried it when i had vista)

The game runs pretty much in slow motion.

I've tried 0.9.6, and also the latest (1888) beta just released last week.
I've tried dx9 hardware and software, and dx10 hardware and software.
I tried before and after updating to the latest ( 9.27.1734 Date Published: 9/16/2009) directX version.
I've read at least 3 discussions about this game, most of them with "your computer is too slow" being the verdict, or "you don't know what you're talking about" being the gist. My computer is not too slow, and I do know what I'm talking about :-) (well, technically it IS too slow...)

That being said, even with frame skipping on (in both normal and agressive mode), i can't seem to get above 30-45 FPS. I can get 40-50 in first person mode. I'm not so worried about the frame rate. I can play it if it's a bit jumpy, thats fine. However, the game speed seems to run at the same speed as the framerate. This is the same thing that caused slowdowns back in the NES era when too many sprites would hit the screen. For some reason, square decided to use the frame rate as a timing mechanism for the game. They assumed that the game would always be running at 60 fps (50 for the PAL version), and timed everything accordingly (I think). So, my computer can only render 30-50 frame per second, and therefore the game will only run at 50-83% speed.

Unless someone has found a REAL fix for this. In which case, I will be happy to send an e-beer in the form of paypal to the first response that works for me! Besides the five bucks, you'll be helping the community out, and maybe even the developers will have a look at this and develop another frameskip method that will work for games that time this way!

Thanks in advance :-D

edit: (Just a note: I've tried windowed/full screen/full res/lowest res/no sound also, and other games such as final fantasy XII run great. I could get 100+ FPS on that game)

[Koji]

This is a game that really pushes hardware... No matter how much you don't want to hear it (and it seems like no one does) your computer is just too slow for this game.

PS2 games don't have a way to frame skip internally... (rare exceptions like SotC) It's not like a PC game where you can run it at 30FPS and it still be full speed...

Just like in PS1, N64, Saturn, etc emulation... 60/50 fps (depending on region) isn't so much how many frames are displayed (well it is... but follow all the way with me) but how fast the game is going comparatively to it on real hardware. Getting 50 out of 60fps? You're running at 83% speed.

[Saiki]

there's not much chance of full speed, but I'll post my EXACT settings from my 2.2 with an 8600 in the morning as I'm heading off to bed don't expect more than 10fps boost.

[dcostalis]

I'm aware that my PC is "too slow" to run the game.

However, there is a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with my PC. It has to do with how the game is engineered, and how the particular instruction sets that the game uses are emulated. The ps2 uses a 300mhz processor and a 147 mhz graphics unit. I don't care how optimized that is, but my computer is a lot faster. basically, it seems that square tapped into some uncommonly used commands to get the best performance out of that machine (as they always seem to do), and those simple haven't been fully optimized on the emulator end.

So, back to my original thought... The computer is PLENTY fast enough to run the game. I mean really, it is. If it were compiled natively, I could probably get 200+ FPS at my FS 1650x1280 resolution. Also, in many games, the frame-skipping hacks allow the game to run at the right speed. They don't work in this one.

So basically, all I'm trying to say is "hey. anyone have something that gets frame-skipping working as intended in this beast?"

Thanks Saiki, I'd really appreciate it. I've tried changing pretty much everything, but nothing seems to have an effect. 10 FPS boost would let me run this game at 80% speed at least, which makes it playable at least.

Also, looking at your specs, Koji, (they seem to be a notch above mine) have you played this game? If so, how's your speed?

[ChickenLiver]

It's not just a matter of optimizing instructions - in some cases it's basically impossible to duplicate the PS2's behavior. Perfectly emulating the non-standard behavior of the PS2's floating point unit, for example, while theoretically possible, would probably be so slow to do in software as to make pretty much every game that does much floating point math unplayably slow. And some games depend on various funky aspects of that FPU in unclear ways.

Erm...that having been said, you can often eek out a few extra FPS by setting rounding modes to none, though this, obviously, can break a number of games.

[rama]

Here we go again (I love these threads ).

If it were compiled natively, I could probably get 200+ FPS at my FS 1650x1280 resolution.

More like 6000fps at least. But it is not compiled natively. That's the point here.

..it seems that square tapped into some uncommonly used commands to get the best performance out of that machine (as they always seem to do), and those simple haven't been fully optimized on the emulator end.

We optimized at least 80% of the ps2 instructions (the last 20% simply don't matter).
These optimizations aren't of the simple kind either. Some important ones have been revised several times over the years.

So basically, all I'm trying to say is "hey. anyone have something that gets frame-skipping working as intended in this beast?"

No, but get the latest beta and try some speedhacks (especially VU cycle stealing).

[dcostalis]

Here we go again (I love these threads ).

I'm just glad I didn't get totally flamed.

We optimized at least 80% of the ps2 instructions (the last 20% simply don't matter).

Please don't think I'm saying you guys haven't done an AMAZING job! The fact that I can play tons of other games flawlessly is nothing short of incredible! Thank you for making this!

No, but get the latest beta and try some speedhacks (especially VU cycle stealing).

Yeah, i squeaked a couple FPS out of it that way. Looks like I'll probably just have to wait til I get my i7 and new graphics card in a few months and see how things go from there!

Thanks for the helpful replies from everyone.

[dcostalis]

As a followup, in case it may be helpful:

The VU cycle stealing did make a small change, but I couldn't edge it very high without weird glitches.

HOWEVER, the EEx2 hack has this running at pretty much full speed on the 1888 beta. the x2 hack didn't make much change on .9.6 release.