Poll: Should we add a new category above playable like excellent or perfect?
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Yes
80.00%
20 80.00%
No
20.00%
5 20.00%
Total 25 vote(s) 100%
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Discussing the possibilities of the "Perfect" rating
#21
(07-06-2014, 01:24 PM)Blyss Sarania Wrote: Then it that case, we need to have some level of reference hardware. Since we already have the PCSX2 benchmark, perhaps the 60fps line in that is the cutoff point - i.e. CPU above that point, if THOSE can't maintain full speed, then it's not perfect?

I think that would be a good idea Smile

(07-06-2014, 01:24 PM)Blyss Sarania Wrote: I meant that if it's a patch the user has to supply. If it's a built in patch in the gameindex or whatever, that is fine. Making patches of any kind seems to be a tripping point for most users. Even if provided the patch text, they still leave it as pnach.txt or something.

I see what you mean now, that makes more sense Smile
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#22
(07-06-2014, 12:22 PM)avih Wrote: Well, to open up the options a bit more, there are few factors which could affect a rating higher than "5 - playable".

1. Speed. Games which are too slow are not fun and cannot be called "perfect". So maybe we need a special note (or icon) to denote that this game needs a faster than average system (WTF is an average system??!?) in order to work reasonably fast.

2. There could be perfect (or close enough) with software rendering or with HW rendering. Ultimately, IMO perfect should only relate to whatever works best (and 99% or 100% software rendering is more correct than HW rendering). However, we can't disregard the big bonus which HW rendering could add - both in speed and in resolution. So maybe another icon which says that HW rendering is mostly glitch-less? (or the corollary icon - that it's only perfect with SW rendering?).

In general, if we go for "exception" icons (high system requirements, SW rendering required, etc), then we don't even have to add a 6th star. Just note (the exception icons) what's the difference between this game's performance and "perfect".

I guess there are other approaches as well. The "6th star - perfect" rating was just the first suggestion which came to my mind which would both cover the need for a better system while preserving existing compatibility info. But surely there are more.

I think there should be separate ratings for hardware and software modes and bugs should be listed for both of these modes. And maybe there should be one final rating which will depend how how both of these modes work. But I think this rating should depend more on quality of hardware mode which should be more important of the two.
#23
I can think of several games that are correct in software mode but still have massive slowdowns for me on a i5 3570K at 4ghz aka the Snowblind engine games. Even with extra rendering threads set to 3-4 I get slowdowns all the way down to 20fps and even the title screen of one sits at less then 20fps for me. I noted these in another thread would have to go check which one tho. SO would those be classified as perfect in software other then the speed issue? I had no other issues in software mode and I have played these before on several different consoles.
#24
If a game can't go more than 20fps even on a very high end system, then personally I won't call it perfect, if that's what you ask.

That being said, and as you can see on this thread and others, it's probably impossible to define "perfect" in such a way which everyone will agree on. Perfect is very subjective, even if it sounds absolute. It means "I enjoy playing this game on PCSX2 enough to not really care about whatever glitches it has". And this is highly subjective.

Which is why we should try to define tags or levels etc on the compatibility list in as objective as possible terms, such that it's not open to interpretations.

I don't think I've seen such suggestion yet.
#25
I thought "I enjoy playing this game on PCSX2 enough to not really care about whatever glitches it has" was already called playable

Perfect in my opinion should regard emulation compliance to PS2. I mean.. there are no additional bug or glitches

If that game used to lag even on original console.. then even though developers are awesome, I'm not expecting miracles

Then.. if it will ever be possible to fix hardware renderer bugs, then it would be something..
if instead mipmaps -for example- could never be implemented it would be different

And I'm not really into the matter, but what hardware do usually games require?
I mean.. are there some games which could actually even run on a 2ghz dual core laptop cpu? In this case we could even mention they are really light
And are there really so many games like shadow of the colossus? Or the majority is settled on the same hardware requirement?

Answering these question should help understanding what we should mean with heavy game and light game
#26
(07-07-2014, 12:28 AM)mirh Wrote: I thought "I enjoy playing this game on PCSX2 enough to not really care about whatever glitches it has" was already called playable

Not necessarily. The definition on the compatibility list is merely "you can get from a new game option to the ending" -- that doesn't mean it'll be an enjoyable ride or there aren't enough bugs for you to not care about them if you do so. Just that if you're absolutely determined to, you won't encounter anything that will stop you like a crash. How you mention it is how it ends up working out on a lot of games but probably not all. That's kind of why a perfect/enjoyable/whatever option is needed, to give people looking at the compatibility list more of an idea of where each game stands since compatibility is high enough now that most games are playable.

(07-07-2014, 12:28 AM)mirh Wrote: If that game used to lag even on original console.. then even though developers are awesome, I'm not expecting miracles

I think with games that lagged in specific places on the original console, even if it also seems to lag in the emulation, that will usually not be reflected in the FPS value at the top of GSDX. So it will say 60 FPS but there's still some lag you can perceive because that's how it ran on the original console. At least I've encountered this in a few instances. Someone correct me if I'm wrong here.

(07-07-2014, 12:28 AM)mirh Wrote: And I'm not really into the matter, but what hardware do usually games require?
I mean.. are there some games which could actually even run on a 2ghz dual core laptop cpu? In this case we could even mention they are really light
And are there really so many games like shadow of the colossus? Or the majority is settled on the same hardware requirement?

I haven't played enough games on PCSX2 to have a wide enough experience to answer this but I'd like to offer the idea that maybe the "good PC required" disclaimer should be something that is evaluated for every game separate from the playability rating and it is also included in the compatibility list with the playability status. That way even if a game is at playable, people will know if it's a hard game to run or not. This would also have the added implication (or it should) that if the game is rated perfect but also has the "good PC required" label that it probably won't be so perfect for someone with an older machine.

I don't know exactly how useful this would be though -- it depends on how many games generally fall into the camp of needing a good machine and how many don't.
#27
Yeah; if the game lags on console, that won't be reflected on the framerate at the top if PCSX2 is anything like Dolphin. I don't have as much experience with PCSX2, but a lot of late Wii games lagged on console and will lag on Dolphin. It still reports as running full speed in those scenarios.

I played a few games in PCSX2 just to get a general idea of playability. Some games run remarkably well. Some games run really slow. Without any hacks, I was getting about 15 fps in SotC, and 40 fps in Ratchet and Clank 1. I have no interest in using hacks for speed because I was testing. Again, I'm sure I could have made them run faster by cranking up hacks.

On the other hand, a lot of games were very fast, even on base settings. So, you never know. I wouldn't get into "performance" rating games as that'd be a whole new category, subject to debate and hacks going into it. Besides, 2 GHz dualcore computer is useless to say. 2 GHz Haswell will be ridiculously faster than a 2 GHz AMD.
#28
SotC is actually an interesting one, because technically how it runs now is a hack, the problem is there is no timing on the VU program length as far as the VIF unit is concern, so it's just constantly hammering the VU's with data, causing it to run slowly. If i put in the timing for the VU program (roughly) It goes full speed, the problem being many other games suffer. I guess the right way to do it would be to put the timing in and put a hack in to get rid of it for speed, but this was generally frowned upon i think due to it's impact the "right" way.

Oddly enough that also gets rid of the SPS in Shadowman 2 (having the timing).
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#29
Interesting. There are exceptions where I'll use hacks, like F-Zero GX (Skip EFB Access to CPU) where the hack does nothing but disable one, horribly, horribly slow effect to make the rest of the game full speed and 99% perfect. But that prevents it from getting 5 stars. The effect cannot be full speed on any computer, and there's really no solution to get around it. Even though the game can be fully emulated (Requires Single Core or Dualcore GPU Sync + EFB Access to CPU enabled) it's definitely one of those that crosses a line for 4 stars even in my mind. Something to keep in mind, I guess.

About Shadow of the Colossus? I don't know if there is a right way to handle it unfortunately, not until you know what's going wrong. It sounds like it could be a big project and cause a lot of regressions. At least I know it can run better than it did, which is always nice to know.
#30
(07-06-2014, 09:41 PM)Monochrome100 Wrote: I think there should be separate ratings for hardware and software modes and bugs should be listed for both of these modes. And maybe there should be one final rating which will depend how how both of these modes work. But I think this rating should depend more on quality of hardware mode which should be more important of the two.

Having completely separate rating for hardware and software modes is pretty unfeasible because of the sheer amount of work it requires. I think avih's idea of Perfect with the badges to denote software mode required makes more sense, as with that method it's a lot easier to incrementally update the list.

(07-06-2014, 09:42 PM)Topken Wrote: I can think of several games that are correct in software mode but still have massive slowdowns for me on a i5 3570K at 4ghz aka the Snowblind engine games. Even with extra rendering threads set to 3-4 I get slowdowns all the way down to 20fps and even the title screen of one sits at less then 20fps for me. I noted these in another thread would have to go check which one tho. SO would those be classified as perfect in software other then the speed issue? I had no other issues in software mode and I have played these before on several different consoles.

If we are going by what refraction and I were discussing(the 60 fps line in the PCSX2 benchmark being the cutoff point), then no, whatever games you are talking about would not be perfect because your CPU is definitely above the cutoff point and yet is having slowdown. I think the Snowblind games have some other issues even in software mode too, don't they?




So the big things I am hearing a lot of agreement on for the most part is that software mode is okay for the Perfect rating.

How about the other suggestions in my list on the previous page? It's the only definition we have that encompasses several points, most of those that have chimed in have just had one or two points to discuss. Only refrection has outright agreed with what I said, with the caveat that he thinks speed matters to a point. And I can agree with that. But what about the other points I mentioned in it, aside from speed and software mode? What do the rest of you feel about those other points?

And how about some discussion on one that HASN'T been brought up yet - Games that would APPEAR perfect, but we know are "hackish" under the hood. Are those Perfect?
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