Street Fighter Alpha Anthology

[Koji]

First thing I'd do is update PCS2... those plugins are both old which leads me to believe your entire installation is old (0.9.6 or earlier, which is 2-3 years old at this point)

The latest stable version is 0.9.8 which is where I suggest you start. When you first load it, it'll have you go through a bunch of configuration menus. When it asks you for a video plugin, set it to GSDX and click configure. In configure change it from DX9/10/11 hardware to software mode.

http://pcsx2.net/files/28278

That's the link to the latest version.

Hope that helps.

[LeSharK]

unfortunately the bug remains:

the problem seems definitely related with GSDX because the GS percentage indicator on
the window titlebar sits at 95%-100% in Software renderer. this doesn't happen with
any other 2D/3D game i play in PCSX2

here is Capcom VS SNK2 running fullspeed in both D3D Hardware and Software renderers:
http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/4271/...rdware.png
http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/9950/...ftware.png

here is SF Alpha Anthology:
http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/2540/sf...rdware.png - games selection menu
in D3D Hardware
http://img404.imageshack.us/img404/5459/...ftware.png - games selection menu
in D3D Software
http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/9564/...tware2.png - any game launched
bumps the GS to 95-100% instantly from the first screen, even if it's just text on a
static black background

[miseru99]

The GS% reaching 100% means your cpu is not enough, GS% being higher in software is also normal, but frameskip is a thing made exactly to cut GS load, often it's buggy or leaves choppy animations, but if it's being recommended by Shadow Lady she probably tested it in this game. Soo go to config->Emulation settings->GS and set constant frame skipping as suggested with 1 frames to draw and 1 to skip, generally the more frames you skip the lower GS% you'll get, but also animation smoothness can and probably will degrade alot.

[Shadow Lady]

Actually the smoothness is great with the 1/1 skip settings for this game, lower than no skipping of course but can get "full speed" with great playability and very smooth.

[Squall Leonhart]

these games should be run in Software with NO multithreaded GS

using multithreading in this title impacts performance badly.

[LeSharK]

SFZ:FG, SFA:A, and Vampirearkstalkers Collection is using emulation.
The emulation is that the music and some voice samples isn't being ran on the Q-Sound/Z80 Emulator but with ADX in AFS archives this was to cut back down on the use of the processor.

someone posted this on the issue i raised on the google code project. this explains why these particular games work a lot slower than others.

[LeSharK]

as the poster on the Google Code issue pointed (quoted above): http://code.google.com/p/pcsx2/issues/detail?id=576#c18
Vampire: Darkstalkers Collection has the exact same problem

in the game selection menus the framerate is stable 60 fps. once you launch any game/item, the framerate dips to ~40 fps.
i'm running Software GSDX with NO multithread.

this is clearly an emulation issue. can someone look into a fix/hack for these 2 titles? it would be greatly appreciated.

[refraction]

how is it "clearly" an emulation issue? Its more likely your computer isnt strong enough to emulate it. Selection menus are 2d, which is fast to emulate, 3d is quite intensive for emulation and requires a powerful machine to do it at full speed.

All that issue shows is it is more CPU bound than GPU bound.

[LeSharK]

these collections are entirely 2D with sprites. even in black screens with STATIC text the framerate is at ~40fps. why does the game selector run at constant 60 fps and when you launch a title it instantly drops at 40fps for no reason?

also i can run 3D games just fine (with software or hardware renderers and NO frameskipping used):

Capcom vs SNK2 (2D sprites with 3D backgrounds) - fullspeed
Marvel vs Capcom 2 (2D sprites with 3D backgrounds) - fullspeed
King Of Fighters 98 UM (2D sprites) - fullspeed
King Of Fighters 2002 UM (2D sprites) - fullspeed
Capcom Fighting Evolution (2D sprites) - fullspeed
etc.

all of the above games are a lot more complex in both the 2D and 3D parts.

the 2 collections at hand (Alpha Anthology and Darkstalkers) happen to share the same format and might have something extra that isn't accounted for in terms of optimization/emulation.

it's not a coincidence they're the only 2D titles that have a problem running fullspeed, since they're so similar in implementation (menu catalog that launches probably internally emulated games) and i wasn't the only one to have this problem reported: http://forums.pcsx2.net/Thread-Street-Fighter-Anthology

[LeSharK]

in addition, if you look at the screenshots posted here: #22

CVS2 - GS @ 37% ingame: http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/9950/...ftware.png
Street Fighter Alpha Anthology - GS @ 95% introduction screen (after launching a game from the catalog): http://img687.imageshack.us/img687/9564/...tware2.png

why does CVS2 use ~37% in-game while SFA Anthology uses 95% in a static screen with text on a black background? how is that not an emulation issue?

PS: i'm not dogging you guys for this, this emulator is overall amazing. i just want to be as clear as possible and have this issue looked at.