Xenosaga III unplayably choppy. Any advice?

[Shadow Lady]

Try ticking the "Allow 8-bit textures" option in GSdx for this game, may help a bit but as said before your graphics card is the problem.

[Ravich]

Uh... so I'm now able to run the game on hardware mode at x2 native resolution without any unplayable problems. Perhaps my computer just needed a reboot or something? Interesting....

I still get some slowdown in certain areas with a lot of NPCs (havent tried any dungeons or battles yet), but maybe I can try a 1.5ish native resolution and see if that helps.

I'm wondering though.... I have my PS2 set to 16:9 resolution like my monitor, and my PCSX2 emulator settings at 4:3 (otherwise it stretches), so should my custom resolution be at a 4:3 ratio or 16:9? Would perhaps changing aspect ratio settings in the emulator settings or PS2 settings result in a lesser load on my GPU?

Thanks!

[Shadow Lady]

The game only runs in 4:3 aspect ratio as far as I remember so it wouldn't make a difference, for other games that support that setting then maybe but you'd have to try and find out.

[Ravich]

Now I have a troubleshooting question :\

I was running around on the miltia world map getting Jr's swimsuit when all of a sudden everything went black. At first I thought it was just my monitor doing a mysterious black screen for a couple of seconds, but then I douple clicked out of full screen and also realized I could still hear myself walking, and I can still access the menu. If I switch party leaders, then when I exit out of the menu it will briefly show the red location arrows on a black background before they disappear. Unfortunately I'm in a maze of pathways near the treasure chest and cant figure out how to get back so I can try entering an area or something.

I already tried saving the state and loading it up again using different graphics plugin settings but no luck. Anything I can do to force the game to reload graphics or something like that?

[miseru99]

Savestate is memory dump with pretty much everything included, this means bugs too. To start from a bug-free point, you would need to restart the game and load a "normal" save, reloading a savestate will not really help. Unless you don't have normal saves then load last good savestate and start using in-game save system.
I was only testing XSIII how it works, had no time/will to replay it all, so dunno if it's not just a broken location or two. I remember similar problems in XSI through it wasn't a black screen, but a texture rendered above everything else making whole location blind. That could be fixed by different clamping or rounding modes, maybe it's worth trying changing them a bit. Or even pressing F9 for software mode to check if the problem also exists there, sometimes just switching between hardware->software and then returning to hardware can clear the glitches.