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Dolphin 2014 best new features article


keltoigael

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What does that shader code do?

Only gets rid of one of the most annoying things with dolphin: Shader Cache stuttering.

Like um....for example. F-Zero...with the master build even with the fastest CPU you are still going to get stuttering when playing new parts of the game because it needs to store the shader cache files which causes random drops in framerates.

With Ishiruka, this problem is completely solved. Another game that really runs into this problem is Mario Kart Wii and the Metroid Prime games, also Resident Evil Chronicles.

That's why I'm happy the master branch core has been optimized a lot to be much faster but the shader cache compilation frame drops remains:(.

Once you use Ishiruka, you probably will stop using the master branch for most of your games.

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Only gets rid of one of the most annoying things with dolphin: Shader Cache stuttering.

Like um....for example. F-Zero...with the master build even with the fastest CPU you are still going to get stuttering when playing new parts of the game because it needs to store the shader cache files which causes random drops in framerates.

With Ishiruka, this problem is completely solved. Another game that really runs into this problem is Mario Kart Wii and the Metroid Prime games, also Resident Evil Chronicles.

That's why I'm happy the master branch core has been optimized a lot to be much faster but the shader cache compilation frame drops remains:(.

Once you use Ishiruka, you probably will stop using the master branch for most of your games.

Wow, so no plans of them ever using it?

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Wow, so no plans of them ever using it?

When asked one of the devs popped in the Ishiruka thread and replied with a nice big "Nope...".

But the dev that works on Ishiruka, Tino, merges the Ishiruka build with the master svn sometimes twice a week so until the devs bite their pride, that's what I've been using and just use master for only a few games now.

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Whoa, I never heard of that cache code before. Thanks for the heads up, Trnz. I thought that was a problem with Dolphin we'd always have to deal with. I get that annoying stuttering too in games like Metroid Prime and F-Zero, even on my overclocked i5 4670k cpu and on a fast Samsung SSD. Reminds me of playing Morrowind back in the day, when the game would hitch and pause as areas load on-the-fly while you explore. Gothic 3 was notoriously bad with this issue too. It's pretty archaic to see Dolphin having the same kind of problem.

Here is the official thread for this, can't wait to try it out: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-ishiiruka-dolphin-custom-version

DIRECT LINK TO LATEST BUILD

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Whoa, I never heard of that cache code before. Thanks for the heads up, Trnz. I thought that was a problem with Dolphin we'd always have to deal with. I get that annoying stuttering too in games like Metroid Prime and F-Zero, even on my overclocked i5 4670k cpu and on a fast Samsung SSD. Reminds me of playing Morrowind back in the day, when the game would hitch and pause as areas load on-the-fly while you explore. Gothic 3 was notoriously bad with this issue too. It's pretty archaic to see Dolphin having the same kind of problem.

Here is the official thread for this, can't wait to try it out: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-ishiiruka-dolphin-custom-version

DIRECT LINK TO LATEST BUILD

Thanks for linking dude got busy here at work sorry guys!

But yeah you have the same processor as me and I was really bummed that the shader cache was still causing me lag, as I built this htpc purposely for Pcsx2 and Dolphin.

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Just tried it out and it really is a lot better. There is still some very small jittering but nothing like before and the audio doesn't skip or crackle whatsoever anymore. Make sure to use Direct3D9, with 11 I couldn't get Metroid Prime to load without freezing. Set your cache settings in the Hack tab under graphics. Either use Full Async or Wait, not sure the difference yet. I also enabled Predictive FIFO. Also be sure to set Time Stretch in DSP settings.

Important: disable dual core speed up under General settings. I kept getting errors and crashes with it enabled. This build is still a bit buggy, so be warned.

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Just tried it out and it really is a lot better. There is still some very small jittering but nothing like before and the audio doesn't skip or crackle whatsoever anymore. Make sure to use Direct3D9, with 11 I couldn't get Metroid Prime to load without freezing. Set your cache settings in the Hack tab under graphics. Either use Full Async or Wait, not sure the difference yet. I also enabled Predictive FIFO. Also be sure to set Time Stretch in DSP settings.

Important: disable dual core speed up under General settings. I kept getting errors and crashes with it enabled. This build is still a bit buggy, so be warned.

Your getting freezing on MP with 11? Not happening here. Read through the Ishiruka thread, you cannot use all the shader compilation options together, as it could cause the freezing issues and other various bugs. It's either one or the other.

Also, the only reason d3d 9 is in there is to help guys with slow computers, with your specs you should be using d3d 11 unless your video card is bottle necking you, I use a gtx 770.

Also do not forget to check "Fast EFB to Ram"...should take care of any additional little jumps you are experiencing. Any game that requires EFB to ram to get correct emulation use this option.

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Your getting freezing on MP with 11? Not happening here. Read through the Ishiruka thread, you cannot use all the shader compilation options together, as it could cause the freezing issues and other various bugs. It's either one or the other.

Weird, with D3D11, I can't get Metroid Prime to play. Dolphin freezes after the opening text, so it sits on a black screen. It plays fine under D3D9 though.

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This build is great, thanks for bringing it to everyone's attention. I've noticed something strange when I downloaded it; mine doesn't have the options for "Full Async" or "Wait", or the Predictive FIFO options. The boxes just aren't there. I do however have the option for Time Stretch in the DSP settings. Does anyone have any idea why this might be? Does the newer versions of Dolphin save your settings to the registry? Because I have noticed that when I change an option on the newer builds of Dolphin (4.0 and newer), the options carry over to other 4.0 builds I have on my machine to use as alternate emus. It pretty much forces me to use alternate versions of 3.5, because those settings don't appear to carry over from build to build. Any help is appreciated, because this has been stumping me for awhile.

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I first thought those options were missing too but that's because I always had Dolphin set on opengl which usually yielded the best performance. You have to use either Direct3D9 or Direct3D11 for the async hack options to appear.

Yes....OpenGL is not the preferred back end for Ishiruka. D3d outperforms OpenGL for the most part for this branch.

Also yea the options are kinda hard to see but they are there.

Anyone tried this custom build with Rogue Squadron titles?

I was just going to mention the Rogue Squadron games....unfortunately this branch is lacking zfreeze emulation as well. BUT....

According to reddit there is a new zfreeze hack being worked on that according to what I read should be available soon. However the hack is aimed to fix the skybox problems with the RS games ONLY...due to the demand that everyone is dying to emulate them.

The hack will probably not fix other zfreeze problems with other titles.

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OpenGL is slightly preferred over DX, but to this day there are little differences between both. What I'm more interested to know is the possible drawbacks Ishiruka has compared to master branch. To my eyes (I read over the thread 2 months ago and for some reason decided to keep it -on-hold-) it looks a bit "hacky" and probably dragging, the main reason I haven't switched right away.

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OpenGL is slightly preferred over DX, but to this day there are little differences between both. What I'm more interested to know is the possible drawbacks Ishiruka has compared to master branch. To my eyes (I read over the thread 2 months ago and for some reason decided to keep it -on-hold-) it looks a bit "hacky" and probably dragging, the main reason I haven't switched right away.

Then have fun with the master branch with Metroid Prime frame drops even if you have the processing power of Skynet. Even worse, try Mario Kart Wii and tell me how smooth the opening track cutscene is, let alone actual track racing.

I would not suggest converting over to it completely and dropping master branch, but for the titles that suffer from this long term problem, it is a viable secondary emulator.

If you think it's hacky, just keep in mind that the devs have no interest in fixing shader compilation drops so if you want smooth gameplay, it's either this emu or the Wii.

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what's with the defying tone? I'm only giving my point of view and asking for opinions, why some games are affected and why some aren't? I think that at the time I didn't switch due to some important feature from master still not merged to ishiruka that affected many games. I don't know if that's been dealt already. I own a Wii, this is only for emulation joy.

So far it seem these are the most affected titles?:

tatsunoko vs capcom

f-zero gx

metroid prime

mario kart-wii

paper mario?

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what's with the defying tone? I'm only giving my point of view and asking for opinions, why some games are affected and why some aren't? I think that at the time I didn't switch due to some important feature from master still not merged to ishiruka that affected many games. I don't know if that's been dealt already. I own a Wii, this is only for emulation joy.

So far it seem these are the most affected titles?:

tatsunoko vs capcom

f-zero gx

metroid prime

mario kart-wii

paper mario?

Nono I didn't mean to come across that way, sorry - I was plastered last night. More of a joking manner heh.

There are more titles that suffer from sudden drops like Donkey Kong Country, also Cruisin and All MP titles, not just the original.

TBH, any game can run into this problem. The thing is if you are playing though a title for the first time, especially any title at all that draws a lot of geometry all at once, is prone to this problem.

Check out the date of the last master branch tino merged with Ishiruka, you may find that the feature and or fix from master that's stopped you from trying it out might be implemented now :).

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I'm reading through the thread. I think it might have to do with the fact that Ishiruka is mostly DX11 exclusive and until very recently (2 weeks or so) there was no way to play many games either in DX or GL due to the HUD graphics missing. You could still apply the Projection Hack setting to fix that but only only in GL, so Ishiruka was out of the game. Now this is fixed in master for both backends and there's no need of the hack, I guess it's fixed too on Ishiruka? Games like Sonic Colors F-Zero, etc

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