Emulator Issues #7838
closed
Arc Rise Fantasia: FPS drop when magic is used
0%
Description
Game Name?
Arc Rise Fantasia
Game ID?
RPJE7U
What's the problem? Describe what went wrong in few words.
There is an unexplained framerate drop that occurs in battle when certain magical effects are rendered. When magic is used, the framerate will persistently drop by a few frames per second. It doesn't matter what internal resolution the game is being rendered in, or anything related to insufficient hardware.
What did you expect to happen instead?
I simply expected the game to render these effects smoothly.
What steps will reproduce the problem?
- Start the game, if it is a new game, skip through all the cutscenes and intro/tutorial battle (with the dragon). When you are able to walk around freely, try to initiate a battle. Note: your first battle is more of a tutorial and you may not be allowed to cast the spell.
- In another battle after the tutorial, select the "Heal" spell and use it.
- You will notice that when this spell is used, the framerate stutters briefly while it is being cast.
Which versions of Dolphin did you test on?
4.0-4091 (Please note that the issue is present on a few other development builds from the past week)
Does using an older version of Dolphin solve your issue? If yes, which
versions of Dolphin used to work?
Stable version 4.0.2 does not have this issue; everything will be rendered smoothly with no drop on this version.
What are your PC specifications? (including, but not limited to: Operating
System, CPU and GPU)
CPU: Intel Core i7-4770K @ 3.9GHz
GPU: nVidia GeForce GTX 780
System RAM: 8GB
OS: Windows 8.1 x64
Is there any other relevant information? (e.g. logs, screenshots,
configuration files)
There was a previous issue reported for this 2 years ago, however it was marked as fixed:
https://code.google.com/p/dolphin-emu/issues/detail?id=5384
As the issue is occurring once more in the recent builds, a change must have been made to break what was fixed in that issue.
Updated by JMC4789 over 9 years ago
If you want a performance issue looked into, the best thing to do is bisect it. If you can narrow down the range to when the issue reappeared, that'd be great. I'm pretty sure there's a build that re-enabled the instruction mentioned in the commit that originally fixed the slowdown, I'd start bisecting around that.
Updated by JMC4789 over 9 years ago
- Status changed from New to Questionable
If you want this issue to remain open, we require you to look into it.
Updated by BJSerpas over 9 years ago
I will look into it, but would you have any idea of which set of revisions I should be looking in? Even if you could narrow it down into a range of 1000, it would make it easier than downloading a ridiculous amount of Dolphin revisions.
Updated by JMC4789 over 9 years ago
If you bisect, even with 4000 revisions you'll do something like 20ish builds to narrow it down. 4.0.2 works perfectly, so that's your good build start. 4.0-4091 is broken, so that's your bad build. So, you start off by going to midway through, 4.0-2000ish. Then, if that one is fine, you go to 4.0-3000, if it fails, you go to 4.0-1000. Then you already have a 1000 build range.
Updated by BJSerpas over 9 years ago
Alright then. Go ahead and leave this one open, and I'll have more info on where the problem occurs for you in the next day or two.
Updated by JMC4789 over 9 years ago
- Status changed from Questionable to New
Okay. Thanks. Reverting this to new again.
Updated by BJSerpas over 9 years ago
Just a small update; I've been investigating the issue, but unfortunately the revisions are a bit more sporadic than I anticipated. Some dolphin revisions (specifically in the 2000's) have even more problems with graphical effects, so as a result, it's become less of finding which revisions this problem does not occur on, and more of finding which revisions these problems don't occur on AND that new problems don't arise. Since this is going to be less of a small series of tests and will require me to test many more revisions, I'll get back to it this weekend.
Updated by ZephyrSurfer over 9 years ago
Any update on this? If you haven't found the revision where this started can you tell us the range you've narrowed it down to.
Updated by rigation over 9 years ago
I have to say that in fact official 4.0.2 also has a light stuttering on casting the heal spell (fps drops from 30 to 28), while new revisions have the problem a bit more emphasised (from 30 to 24)...now I'm trying to see if I can find the revision that caused this little slowdown
Updated by rigation over 9 years ago
After further testing I came to the conclusion that the little slowdown or stuttering during heal spell is present in every revision (goes randomly from 2 to 6 fps), what has made it more visible (I would say hearable) is the fact that revision 4.0-879 has reduced audio latency so during the slowdown you'll also shortly hear a bit of audio crackling, but in fact emulation speed should be the same as before.
Try for yourself comparing (video & audio) 4.0-879 with 4.0-873
Updated by JMC4789 over 9 years ago
Is this still happening? There have been quite a few optimizations recnetly with EFB2RAM stuff. 4.0-87e had more lenient audio timings (more latency) so audio stuttering would be as bad, as you identified correctly.
I think this should be better though in latest builds, try with EFB2Texture enabled, etc.
Updated by rigation over 9 years ago
This game doesn't need copy to RAM, so I think those changes don't affect it, anyway for me the little FPS drop is still there (4.0-5283)
Updated by JMC4789 almost 9 years ago
Does the game itself lag, or is Dolphin lagging? Can you give me the framerate with both FPS and VPS?