Emulator

A) This is a problem?
B) Go into the game's properties, uncheck "Speed up Disc Transfer Rate".

Does not work.

Maybe disabling Speed up Disc Transfer Rate doesn't account for the disc drive's inconsistently slow access time. Oh well. This really doesn't matter unless a game actually relies on the inconsistently slow access times of an optical drive, which is preposterous and highly improbable. And one could certainly argue that this isn't a bug, it's a feature.

I have used a lot of emulators (fceu, vba, pscx, pscx2, snes9x, gens, finalburn alpha etc) in recent years and ALL of them emulate load times. Some do it almost perfectly, some do it too long etc. The point is, they try to emulate. In the case with Dolphin, it instantly loads next room/area. That is a new thing for me and most certainly for a lot of other people who are avid fan of Metroid Prime who can notice this. I assume the main goal with Dolphin is to be perfect as possible, that includes this "issue" aswell.

I strongly and respectfully disagree with your opinion that my issue is more of a feature than a bug report (I've reasoned why).

Also, this is a good read: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=11987&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Also from irc:

"it isn't a bug, it's a feature"
oh god how many times do I hear that from software developers
well in this case he's not totally wrong
he clearly doesn't understand the whole point of emulation
the software isn't doing what it's supposed to do
that's a bug
bug is not the same as unimplemented feature ;P
unless its supposed to do it already
just its not working
then yes it would be a bug
ok then this is either a bug or an unimplemented feature, depending on how you look at it
logically turning off speed-up disc transfer should cause a loading delay
so I would call this a bug
also I remember it working correctly in older revisions
is there code that is supposed to emulate those delays?
then yes
bug
or even worse
regression
;P
dolphin is 50% regressions 50% improvements
at any moment in time
which really frustrates me
delroth, what do you mean by that?
because it seems like everytime anybody tries to fix/improve something something else breaks
basically all emulators emulate at least some loading point
and correct me if i am wrong but doesnt dolphin emulate various other game's loading time?
I don't think it does
so if it doesnt emulate metroid prime's loading time, then something must be wrong.
dvd seek time is unpredictable anyway
even skid made a commit for a particular game to emulate its loading times.
delroth: no it isn't
but some ps2 games REQUIRE the drive to be slow to work
else they crash
if it's not exact then why emulate it in the first place --> better to emulate something than nothing.
gigaherz, mind if i copy some of your lines mate?
no?
i want to reply to that guy
<@shuffle2> yes they are copyrighted
yay, let's introduce loading delays which will piss off everyone with no goal else than "hey, gotta emulate it"
aren't you striving for emulating games perfect as possible?
<@shuffle2> the gc dvd timing is complex because the drive actually schedules audio requests differently from data
and why would people be pissed off because dolphin emulates loading times? i dont understand this at all.
AngerFist: because it makes the game slower!
so it takes longer to play!
so what's the point of playin in the emulator if it's as slow as the real one?
lol, by what, 2-3 seconds per loading time? gee i hope we didnt waste their time too much.
(or some stupid crap like that)
<@shuffle2> it won't make anyone pissed off because it's not going to be implemented unless it breaks something
<@shuffle2> ie /care
AngerFist: ever played xenoblade on a real wii?
it loads things from the dvd when you open the main menu
every time
shuffle, then lets hope some other developer cares.
2s of delay
<@shuffle2> that's 2 seconds of your life that you're not giving away
<@shuffle2> and you should be!
:P
I'm totally ok with features that introduce slowdowns when they actually fix something

The conversation above seems to see the load time emulation as an "always-on vs. always-off" feature, while clearly for some games/purposes people would want it on, and for some off. Making a menu item for it would definitely not introduce any inconvenience to anybody. Of course, that would require the feature to implemented first.

'Oy, Yashi. I'm not a developer, nor was I aware of its importance to TAS - I'm just a guy that plays the game in Dolphin and doesn't like having to wait in front of doors. Sorry for my idiocy.

If slower loading times fix something they're welcome, otherwise what do you need them for?

It fixes things in metroid prime.

If this is added it obviously needs to be an option that defaults to off.

What does it fix exactly?

If someone is interested to work on that and maintain it in the long run, patches are obviously welcome.

A glitch that lets you get out of bounds, before things are loaded. I'm not sure of the details. Normal gameplay isn't affected at all.

Also, Metroid Prime 2 is also dependent for a certain room to be "properly" loaded. I am quoting Miles (the world record holder of Metroid Prime 1 and 2).

As far as I know, everything that normally happens during the loading screen still happens, except the actual loading screen is not there? Meaning the emulation is loading the loading screen faster than expected and just never shows on-screen.

The lack of actual loading is what is exactly the problem. Everything is loaded properly, but not at the right time. So anything that can only be done while the game is still loading things are impossible on dolphin.

tommyhl2, if you're unfamiliar with the game, there's no actual loading "screen" - the loading occurs when you shoot a door to open it, and you can tell the next room is loading because the door often takes a few seconds to open.

I've also not had either of these crashes occur when I played through the game recently, on a rip of my original North American copy of the game. (I haven't tested too rigorously, though.)
http://www.metroid2002.com/other_crash_furnace.php
http://www.metroid2002.com/other_crash_chozo_elevator.php
They're both apparently caused by the code that loads rooms, which was changed in later versions of the game to fix those crashes. (They also made it slower, but I have no other versions of the game to test.)
http://www.metroid2002.com/version_differences_version_number.php

There are two adjustable settings in Dolphin that control the speed of the emulated drive. They are here:

http://code.google.com/p/dolphin-emu/source/browse/Source/Core/Core/Src/HW/DVDInterface.cpp#34

and

http://code.google.com/p/dolphin-emu/source/browse/Source/Core/Core/Src/HW/DVDInterface.cpp#38

The emulation of the drive speed is not exact (it does not consider where the data is stored on the disc for example) but if you could provide us with the two numbers that would more closely match the drive speed of the real GameCube, post them here and we can update the source.

That sounds like a solution skid. But how are we supposed to find those numbers?

Measure it.

has anyone ever confirmed this is actually related to disc accesses?
ie. some of the complainers should try a build after the aram-dma-fixes branch was merged and see if that fixes it.
it could be other things as well..

On current master, doors still open instantly for me. So, neither aram-dma-fixes nor the two Rogue Squadron 3 commits did anything, as far as I can tell.

(I'm running the game off a flash drive, and that's the slowest storage medium I have - my / is an SSD.)

The reason of this is Shader Cache folder, metroid game just made me notice this.
When you start the game with clear Shader Cache, you have the flicks (Issue 4336) you've got slow area changing after shooting the door
Now you've played this game for 10-15 hours, you have about 2-2,5Mb of PS and VS Cache, and like magic, there are no more flicks, and doors are opening instantly like they supposed to be
And than in some revision developers changing number in linearDiskCache.h file when it necessary, that purges all cache you gained in this game, and makes you think that emulator again catched some nasty bug or slowdown
Unfortunately, this fact is most noticeable in Metroid games
And NO, metroid has nothing to do with "Speed up Disc Transfer Rate"

Can't even say, but i don't think this issue is valid

Somehow, this is fixed in the DVD-seek-time pull request. I'm making this post just to remind me to close the issue when that is merged.