Emulator Issues #13949
closed
Meet The Robinson's Gamecube random slowdowns
0%
Description
Game Name?
Meet The Robinson's (Gamecube NA)
Game ID? (right click the game in the game list, Properties, Info tab)
GQTE4Q
MD5 Hash? (right click the game in the game list, Properties, Verify tab, Verify Integrity button)
9ffd77a1bd0f8dfa95e72ba39fff0ae0
What's the problem? Describe what went wrong.
Years ago on a previous machine with an i5-6500 and a GTX 960, this title ran fine. Now, on my new machine, specs below, there are random slowdowns, as slow as 50% or less and common enough to be impossible to ignore.
What steps will reproduce the problem?
The opening in Egypt is horribly laggy constantly, never hitting 100% speed. Even once reaching the Robinson house, rounding the corner approaching the Dining room (after getting the mission to find Grandpa Bud, not long into the game) causes consistent slowdowns even though it got better once getting through the opening in Egypt.
Is the issue present in the latest development version? For future reference, please also write down the version number of the latest development version.
Yes - 2512-79
Is the issue present in the latest release? For future reference, please also write down the version number of the latest release.
Yes - 2512
If the issue isn't present in the latest release, which is the first broken version? (You can find the first broken version by bisecting. Windows users can use the tool https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-green-notice-development-thread-unofficial-dolphin-bisection-tool-for-finding-broken-builds and anyone who is building Dolphin on their own can use git bisect.)
The tool seems to be unsupported now. While I'm aware of all your usual troubleshooting steps and have fiddled with gpu drivers and settings, I do not code.
However, the last I remember playing this title was mid-2024 without enough issues to bother me. I had my gtx 960 until March 2025 so I am used to some mild slowdowns. I randomly picked version 5.0-20347 and while it was not entirely full speed, it only dipped to about 80% when rounding that corner earlier referenced, but modern versions dip below 50%.
If your issue is a graphical issue, please attach screenshots and record a three frame fifolog of the issue if possible. Screenshots showing what it is supposed to look like from either console or older builds of Dolphin will help too. For more information on how to use the fifoplayer, please check here: https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=FifoPlayer
Issue is random slowdowns, not graphical.
What are your PC specifications? (CPU, GPU, Operating System, more)
Ryzen 7 9700X, Radeon RX 7900 XT, Windows 10 Pro 22H2, Dolphin is running off an m.2 SSD; previous machine had a hard drive.
Is there anything else that can help developers narrow down the issue? (e.g. logs, screenshots,
configuration files, savefiles, savestates)
I checked, and I have the latest GPU drivers, updated today 12/25/25. I tried every single backend, and none of them changed the issue. I attempted using my integrated GPU, and it also did not change the issue. I only made a savestate after needing to consistently re-open the game to test this issue with various settings. I do not know how to find a configuration file and a cursory search has not made it obvious to me how to. The game had a fresh save file as I did not bother saving the one from my previous machine.
I am curious if my old machine would still run it just fine, but that machine has since been repurposed and given away.
By the way I made this account specifically to report this issue, so if it just gets buried and only looked at months later, I may not remember to respond for a long time.
Updated by JMC4789 2 months ago
You'd have to find out what build affected performance by bisecting manually since the tool is broken. You essentially cut the range in half by checking a build halfway between your good build and bad build. So, find a build roughly between that 5.0-2xxxx build and the latest release. If the game's performance is good, then you check halfway between that new build and latest release. If it is bad perf, then you cut the range the other direction and do the same thing.
Even though there are thousands of builds, it usually only takes 12 - 13 steps.
Updated by Locrian 2 months ago
Hello, after testing a variety of older versions, including ones which did not work with .rvz files, as I had compressed my entire library when I got this computer and had since forgotten about doing that.
Apparently, regardless of version, this title really does not like being in a .rvz format. That was the problem. In 2512, a .iso format runs just fine.
I have never updated the wiki myself, but it is the first place I check when I run into issues. Would it be possible to get a note put on the wiki page for this game?
Updated by Locrian 2 months ago
JMC4789 wrote in #note-4:
Odds are the RVZ compression rate is too high. Do you know what kind of compression is set on the RVZ file?
When I decided to compress everything, I had a bunch of tabs open on what options I should pick. I converted everything in my library the same way, I deleted the compressed Meet The Robinsons file, but everything else in my library seems to be LZMA2 with a block size of 2 MiB.
I don't see a compression level obvious in the properties, but looking into why I would have picked those options, it seems I was going for maximum compression over everything else, and likely picked a compression level of 9. No wonder this affected performance.
https://www.minskio.co.uk/gcz-rvz-and-wia-size-comparison/ this was the second result when looking up comparisons of Dolphin compression options, for myself at least.
Updated by JosJuice 2 months ago
- Status changed from New to Invalid
The compression level doesn't affect decompression performance, but the compression method and block size do. bzip/LZMA/LZMA2 with 2 MiB block size can lead to performance problems, though if they're noticeable depends on your hardware and the behavior of the specific game.
Assuming it works fine if you compress using Zstandard, the performance issue you experienced is something Dolphin can't really do much about. (Other than preloading a decompressed version of the whole game into RAM, which we do have an option for now.)