Shadow of the Colossus

[_DTG_]

but as long as you use speedhacks, it gives you a wrong number. (edit : especially VU cycle stealing, BTW)

Oh really? That explains me why I never noticed an fps gain with speedhacks enabled. lol

[Hatman]

SotC is a very demanding game btw. I got a pretty good system and still need VU cycle stealing to get past 60FPS. I haven't tried ICO lately but other games should run alot better.

[tuanming]

Why do you guys keep typing or naming Shadow of the Colossus to SotC instead of SoC? Sotc looks weird... You dont' see people use Zote, it's Zoe (Zone of the Enders). The "the" is not important!

[Rezard]

It's probably because it's the most common abreviation for the game. Try to Google both "SoC" and "SotC", and see which finds Shadow of the Colossus first. It's kinda like why I started refering to Zone of the Enders because you called it "ZOE". It's just one of those things that's okay to do just because others are doing it. Actually, it's a good idea.

OT: I would always use VU Stealing with this game, mainly because I cannot keep 60fps without it (even @4.9Ghz & native). The FPS may not be accurate (as reported by PCSX2 and FRAPS), but I can guarantee you it isn't completely fake when it goes from 50fps to 100fps. I'm surprised by dyd666's 15fps a bit, though. My laptop could pull a lot more FPS with the aid of VU Stealing, but it's only clocked @ 400Mhz more (our GPU's are alike).

[Shadow Lady]

Why do you guys keep typing or naming Shadow of the Colossus to SotC instead of SoC? Sotc looks weird... You dont' see people use Zote, it's Zoe (Zone of the Enders). The "the" is not important!

Why do people keep abbreviating game names?
It gets confusing sometimes when you don't know the game or people is thinking of another game with same abbreviation and I mean like "Zone of the Enders" is it really that long to type?

[tuanming]

Why do people keep abbreviating game names?
It gets confusing sometimes when you don't know the game or people is thinking of another game with same abbreviation and I mean like "Zone of the Enders" is it really that long to type?

I'm just trying to make a point here. I believe my statement is the "proper" way to abbreviate for Shadow of the Colossus. You don't see people say or use NAASA, it's NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Go ask an English teacher in the USA and you'll see what he or she say.

@Rezard

So you're saying if someone jump off the bridge and other people are doing it too, are you gonna do the same as them? =]

[nosisab Ken Keleh]

There is yet confusion about FPS and the pace things happens at the screen.

Let's take the extreme case to illustrate the issue: a still picture will look the same does not matter if presented at 24 FPS or 200 FPS. FPS says only the number of times the frame is refreshed per second, but if the movement is dependent on real time instead by FPS, there is not much difference in smoothness if that movement is not too fast and the FPS is as quick as 24, like the celluloid movies. That's the reason PC games looks smooth does not matter the FPS, provided it is quick enough to avoid lag or the slide show effect (actually there are advantages in higher FPS in some shooting games because the movement is more accurate but nothing the eye can perceive).

But in console games, tied with TV standards, normally things are synched by the FPS (supposed to be constant on TV), so alterations in that FPS is bad news.

To try and avoid the raw FPS loss the speedhacks exist in PCSX2, and the 2 most significant in this case are the EE cyclerate and VU Cycle stealing. Both actually enhances the FPS... but...

EE cyclerate actuates reducing the (emulated) PS2 CPU clock and so, although the FPS is indeed increased the pace things actually changes on screen is a tad reduced, the two factors tend to mutually cancel and the lag is not so perceptible, if not abused. Because of it, the sound is the one which are more prone to go wrong.

Now, we have the VU cycle stealing... it's not the same as frame skip but works in similar way. The emulator ignores a few VU cycles to try and get a lesser load on the emulating machine. The problem is this mean less things are actually happening on the screen too, and the lagging effect is not so lessened by the actual FPS increase, resulting in perceptible lag on some games.

Games which are not so dependent on FPS and rely on real time to synchronize certain events are less susceptible and accept the hack reasonably well, other game may break badly with the same configuration.

So, the lag is not because the FPS is wrongly reported, but because things are happening slower even if sampled more frequently.

The question becomes then: What is the advantage then? the answer...

Many games run fine with the speed hacks with small or imperceptible loss. Another may present the lag at some points but still it might be preferable to raw low FPS, because in the first case other events which depends on the FPS get better synched while would fail lamentably other way.

Until the hardware is powerful enough to run the emulation full speed with maximal accuracy, the speedhacks will be useful.

Final word: May be useful to understand the emulator's FPS as the TV refresh rate, even because it actually is that TV refresh rate. What the emulator struggles to accomplish is exactly this, keep the "base" by what things are synched in console games.

There are 3 main concepts to understand the digital image.

First is the Refresh rate. It MUST be constant and steady else the image is distorted, and turn out diagonal strips (horizontal desynch) or move vertically and can even stop with the bottom side of the image above the top. Notice even the PC monitor has a refresh rate which must be respected.
PCSX2 is very lenient and keep the image steady even if slow at, let's say, 40 FPS... was it in the actual console plugged in the actual TV, the image would be a total mess.
The refresh rate can be seen as the canvas for the picture.

The Frame rate. It tells only about the amount of times the image is sampled per second but it is not concerned by changes in the image.
The
The FPS can be seen as how many times a picture is drawn in that canvas per time period.

The third is exactly the pace the image changes by a time period.
This one represents how things changed at each frame in that FPS.

These three are layered in order of which actual information is passed to the spectator. The refresh rate pass no information at all, just provides the base for steady image. The FPS provides the smoothness the changing picture is shown but theoretically it should not affect the pace the picture changes, unless that picture is synched with it, of course. Finally we have things actually changing, and this is what provide actual information.
Notice how in the cellulose movie the three concepts mix and are indelibly fixed.

[Rezard]

@ Shadow Lady:
Hey, leave English alone! It didn't choose to be lazy, it was made that way. LOL

@ tuanming:
No, tuanming. I said it's one of those things that's okay to do just because others are doing it. Another example is being polite. Yours is an opposing example.

I don't need to go to the USA, and I have no need to return to grade school to review this. If we wanna get technical, the proper way to abreviate in the English language is to remove all unnecessary words, such as "the", "of", "and", etc... That makes "SC' the abreviation. Yet that's not how the English language is actually used. As with any language, the intention is communicating by means of a mutual understanding of terms. This would be another case where doing what everyone else does is a good idea. Don't go acting like lemmings, though.

@ nosisab Ken Keleh:
I'll go ahead and believe you... for now...

No, really, you seem to have the facts nailed down there. Nice.

[hallmark]

SoC alone = S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl
so SotC is the better abbreviation