Persona 3 And 4 - Certain enemies groups slow down game

[arcane12]

Well, now that I've got the graphics about as good as I could hope for, I'm now having another problem.

(copied from a bug report I submitted on the bug report page)

Whenever I am on the world map (and I start from Gekkoukan High, Pawlonia Mall or Port Island Station), then I try to go to Iwatodai Station, it starts to load the area, then it promptly crashes.

If I go to (or start from) the Naganaki Shrine or the Dorm, I can enter the area with no problem.

I thought it had something to with my SPU plugin settings, and I have gotten to Iwatodai Station without error on a few occasions, but most of the time it just crashes over and over again.

()

I was wondering if there is a solution to this. If so, that means my game experience will be pretty much near perfect. Also, I thought I knew what caused it and how to work around the problem, but now I'm not so sure.

[ecchiless]

Only downside of this emulator is that for almost every game u need to use other settings. Would be nice if u can make a profile for each game, that once u load the image or the disc that it recognizes it (Through the CRC or the Gamecode (F.e. my Persona 3 is SLES_550.18))

U can use an external app, in chatterbox or software forum exist a profile manager tool, can remember in wich one

[arcane12]

Well, I flushed my crash bug somehow, but I discovered something about my newfound ability to get almost perfect FPS without resorting to speedhacks.

When fighting a group of four Vehement Mothers, regardless of what the FPS counter says, the animation is still slightly slower from certain angles but runs at fairly acceptable speed until one of them dies.

Once there are only three, the numbers are still around 60 FPS, but the slowdown, if any, is barely noticeable, and in general the battle plays overall at more than tolerable to perfect speed regardless what is done on screen.

No speedhacks were on when I tested this, and neither the EE or GS were topping out (the EE hovered somewhere around 70-80 percent and the GS at highest around 50%), and since the speed is otherwise flawless for pretty much everything else (so far), I can't be sure, but this seems like the proof I was looking for about the emulator code still needing some polish, though how it needs refined I'm not sure.

That said, I'm current replaying the game so I can get to the Priestess Boss (the train track area, where even people with really nice computers report slowdown) and see if that area works better or worse, since of the other game area specific slowdown seems fixed now.

I did discover something odd, however. Even if the speed is around 60, setting the SPU to Async is still a big help, because even at 60 FPS (with speedhacks off), the music will encounter some minor slowdown if set to Timestretch when fighting the Vehement Mothers in groups of four, and Async seems to remedy this and run well in all other situations with no noticeable downsides (and the crashing bug I had on the game map that is now fixed seem unrelated).

[StriFe]

U always can use the Turbo function in places where there is a slowdown (Default button is Tab)

[arcane12]

Tried that, and nothing changes.

It's quite playable regardless of the mild animation slowdown, and occasionally tends to disappear at intervals, so my assumption is that the way the CPU processes that data at this point is really complex, and since it seems to be a problem with how the game data is emulated (possibly due to complex, hard to render on target code) and how Persona 3 and 4 really seems to hate letting the GPU do anything (seriously, these games seems to be picky about how the graphics driver is allowed to render in game data and stuff looks VERY jagged, especially character portraits and text edges in higher resolutions and generally looks better tweaked slightly above native resolution but not by much)

In essence, most of my gripes about battle slowdown seem mostly resolved aside from some mild slowdown that is far more tolerable than it was before, and game areas seems to render better, though I'm about to test that theory in the first Full Moon battle map on the train tracks.

I have yet to test out Persona 4, but since it uses a similar engine I wager it has seen similar improvement.

However, I did notice Persona 4 is slightly friendlier to higher resolutions being used and it had milder slowdowns that Persona 3 overall from prior experience, so my guess is that the code base for Persona 4 is an improved version of Persona 3, given they use the same engine.

I'll post the results about any improvement in the first Full Moon area when I get there.

[StriFe]

What was your Hardware again??

[arcane12]

Graphics: Radeon HD 5450 1GB
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 3.06 Ghz
Memory: 3 GB DDR3 800 Mhz

Update: At the first Full Moon mission, and WOW, the difference is stunning.

Before, the FPS would be 45-55 at the entrance of the monorail section, and it would normalize as you move closer to the train.

Now, its a constant sixty frames through the entire area, without speedhacks.

Considering this was one of the biggest areas of slowdown on computers vastly better than my own, I consider that progress.

I'm currently playing through the game in its entirety to gauge how to make PCSX2 0.9.8 play nice with Persona 3 FES (this may also apply to the original) and play mostly slowdown free, and if anyone has any other areas that give you trouble despite your hardware, please let me know and I'll test it out.

NOTE: I am playing this game on an ATI Radeon, so I cannot verify how useful this will be to Nvidia users, espeically because it seems installing the ATI Catalyst 11.8 driver did a lot to boost performance, nor can I verify how useful any of this might to AMD processor users.

[StriFe]

Told ya, that also drivers can make a huge difference with this emulator xD. Mainly it's the CPU that's important for PCSX, but your GPU counts aswell, and without a proper driver well Do i need to say more?!? xD

[arcane12]

Told ya, that also drivers can make a huge difference with this emulator xD. Mainly it's the CPU that's important for PCSX, but your GPU counts aswell, and without a proper driver well Do i need to say more?!? xD

Well, not that I can think of.

I'm still playing the game to see if anything else works better (or worse) than before, but in any case I appreciate how courteous and helpful you were.

[StriFe]

hehe no need to thank me I like helping others and since PC's are my biggest hobby I always try my best of what I know to help others. If u need more help just let me know. Ohh btw they gonna do a remake of P4 with the name Persona 4 The Golden for the Playstation Vita. Read here: http://megamitensei.wikia.com/wiki/Perso...The_Golden.

Also after playing Persona 3 (FES) I recommend u to watch the Anime Persona - Trinity Soul It plays 10 years later then in that game, and perhaps u'll recognize 2 Characters from the game