Superman Returns FPS problem

[EvilLurker]

Are there any plans on fixing superman returns fps problems?
With speedhacks game barely runs on 70% fps on heavy crowded areas.
I tried using aggressive game hacks but the fps is still horrible.

Got an I7 with 1060GTX so its not really my specs
I really love this game, any chance for a fix for this?

I remember MKSM had the same problem and after a few pcsx2 versions it got fixed.

[jesalvein]

once the devs have this game and can look into,maybe.

[EvilLurker]

Anyone I can do to make things move around here?

[jesalvein]

Learn c++, become a dev, joint the team, and focus on this game ? Since you own it, it could be valuable

[pedrug19]

The game was fixed, still has some slowdowns and glitches with the emulation, but it is far more playable than ever.

This commit: https://github.com/PCSX2/pcsx2/commit/ee...592b8d4864

Fixed most of it.

I was just playing it in the latest dev build: https://buildbot.orphis.net/pcsx2/index.php

What you probably need to do is to go to the GSdx Config and activate some HW Hacks such as Preload Framedata and you should also put the CRC Hack Level to Aggressive, so you are not going to notice significant slowdowns anymore. The game sometimes slows to 60%, but it is quite playable. I even managed to upscale it to 1080p.

I have a GTX 1060 and an i7 7700HQ, so it should work fine on your end as well.

[refraction]

Putting EE Cycle Stealing speedhack (the right hand slider) up to 1 will dramatically improve the framerate.

[pedrug19]

I see the problem now, I have been testing the game all day long, and it is slow comparing to what you can do in the PS2.

This speedhack doesn't seem to do that much. I've been messing up with some settings to see what works and what doesn't. Here's what I found out:

The problem doesn't seem to be with the EE, but rather either with VU0 or VU1. To be able to play the game above 30% speed, I had to activate the MTVU hack, and it dramatically increases performance. Activating only the "Instant VU1" option didn't do anything to the game. But activating MTVU made the game playable. The only problem seems to be when you are on a mission, fighting robots/villains on the streets, which will drop the speed to 60-70%.

I tried everything:

- Building the latest dev version on Windows from source
- Changing settings on GSdx:
--- Enabling Preload Frame and CRC Hack to Aggressive seemed to be more effective than messing with any other settings. (Update: I've tried disabling those, and yes, without the MTVU hack, they do nothing on their own. The Preload helps with the start menu, but it doesn't seem to help with anything else.)
--- Enable/Disable Accurate DATE and GPU Palette Conversion (neither seemed to do anything to performance).
--- Blending accuracy (no impact on performance whatsoever).
--- Switching from D3D11 and OpenGL: both have the same performance margins, no change in performance.
--- Dithering and Mipmapping: no positive impact detected, same performance issues.
--- The game's performance is unaffected by the resolution. 480p and 1080p have the same speed even without antialiasing options.
- Enabling other game hacks or even the game's own pnach hacks (which are not even required anymore because I'm using the build that has the commits that fixed the graphical glitches, but hey, I had to try it).
--- Some hacks like the "Ignore changes to DMAC" will significantly slow down the game and possibly make it crash. The TLB hack for Goemon also crashes the game. The available VU hacks don't seem to improve it at all, but I noticed a little bit of improvement when I enabled the VU0 Kickstart hack, not much though.
- I've tried the VU and EE advanced recompiler options, but messing with that will crash the game (when you do that with the VU, I didn't notice major glitches or any improvements at all by changing those settings in the EE)
- I've tried disabling frame limits, but it only speeds up in certain situations when there's nothing happening in the game. You won't get improvements in missions and when walking around the city.

One of the things I've tried while playing was to flying up high and getting the buildings out of the camera vision. With that, the game runs fine with 95+% speed, the problem is definitely when you look at the buildings, it instantly drops to 60%.

From what I've tested so far, it does seem to be a VU issue. It slows down when there are too many polygons on the scene. I can't tell you more than that, but that's what it seems to be, since the only thing that really seems to improve performance is the MTVU hack.

I hope this can provide some info on the matter for devs that are interested in this. I'm happy to see that this game is working, though, it's been years that it has been unplayable, and getting to a playable stage is a huge leap.

[EvilLurker]

First of all thank you guys for your fast responses, I appreciate it.

I have been testing it also all day long yesterday and only when setting EE cyclerate to -1 and VU cycle stealing to 1 with all options enabled in speedhacks, i was able to get almost constant 100% speed , maybe dropping to 95% speed at a cluster of buildings. But that speed was at the cost of frame rate, feels like I was playing at 40 FPS regardless of speed.

If I set the VU cycle stealing to 0, I would get the frame rate I really wanted to (felt like it was real 60 fps in clear areas) but that was at the cost of 60% speed when looking down at buildings from above.

So yeah there is a slowdown problem and even though i have a pretty old cpu its not that weak since it can run MKSM with 60fps on 4k with no problems (I7-3770 OC to 4.3) and 1060GTX with 16GB ram)

I remember I had the exact same problem with MKSM but someone fixed it along the way with newer pcsx2 versions - with 1.6.0 you can run it without any speedhacks.

Other CRC hacks or what you mentioned didn't really do much after all my tests.

I would really love to see this game being focused by the devs to improve its speed.

Much appreciated!