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10-14-2011, 08:14 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-14-2011, 08:15 PM by Handelo.)
Hey all!
I just started using this awesome emulator, I'd almost given up hope a year ago when still no emulator could run commercial games.
Anyway, I have a couple of issues to ask about - neither are critical, but I would like to know if I can solve them.
First off, the "Enable saving GE screen to textures instead of memory" option in the Video tab in the configuration window. This option makes EVERYTHING look much better, apparently by upping the resolution to the desktop's and the like. Unfortunately, using this option causes freezes for me on all games at random times. Well, not random - the games would always freeze on certain events/scenes, and sometimes on others. Anyone else encountered this?
Second, I was just wondering what the Resolution option under the Display tab was supposed to do (besides the obvious). Whenever I change it from Native and restart the emulator, it enters a black screen in fullscreen, even when the fullscreen option isn't ticked, and I have to Alt+F4 it to quit.
Currently I'm using it at the native resolution of a PSP, but on a computer monitor it just looks fugly. Either of these options would really help me but neither works! So does someone know of a way to bypass these issues? I'm currently using build v0.6 r2344. Thanks!
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On your first issue: random hiccups like that still make games playable and this is not something devs will look into for now as speed and compability are more of a concern.
On your second issue: Use the resize option. At least you won't have to squeeze your eyes like I have on my screen using native without resizing and frankly, I think most JPCSP games look fine as they are. High res might again be of a concern later in the development but is not for now. I understand one of the reasons to play PSP games on the computer is to get a larger screen resolution and better graphics, but JPCSP is still so early in the development that you will simply have to wait until the devs feel it is time to move on to make JPCSP as pretty as it is functional.
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10-14-2011, 09:12 PM
(This post was last modified: 10-14-2011, 11:40 PM by Handelo.)
Thanks for the reply, LeaT.
I know both of these issues are minor, hence why I stated that neither are critical. Of course I wasn't suggesting (or much less demanding) the devs to make a fix for them, I was only asking if anyone's encountered them and has any sort of workaround or solution.
I'd be far from devastated if I couldn't solve these problems, because the emulator runs great aside for those 
Edit: Well, after searching around for a while I found that the screen resolution option is bugged and has been since it's implementation for pretty much everyone, So I'm not expecting much out of that. Still, any thoughts about the GE to Texture causing freezes?
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Ge to Texture makes 3d graphic look better. In order to make 2d graphic look better,you have to enable anisotropic filtering under video/filters.
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About GE textures, either you use them or you don't. Sound can also cause hiccups if you use 64x as sound is not fully supported yet (I would suggest to turn it off unless you play a game where it's crucial). There is little to no performance increase with GE textures on or off in my experience but it makes games look "the way they are meant to look" if they are in 3D. You could also try to save the game to your harddrive when it asks to upon a new account creation, but I have personally not tried this so I am not sure how it would affect load times (I suspect it is mostly load times between screens that cause hiccups like it is for me).
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Well, I know sounds don't work right in 64-bit, so I'm using the 32-bit version. It runs slower, but still playable. And for games like Crisis Core sound is pretty crucial. The problem seems to occur when loading specific sound files (such as changing the BGM), but ONLY when GE textures is on. I have no idea how they interact with each other or why they would affect each other in any way.
It seems to happen less and less as I progress through the game, though. I've been playing for 2 hours straight now without a single freeze. It might be the same with other games as well, I'll give it a try. I'd still like to hear thoughts about this, though. Just in case it starts acting up again. For now whenever it happens, I load my last save game, replay the part of the game that crashed without GE textures, reach the next save point and reload with the option on. The game looks just terrible without it.
By the way, saving the game to the hard drive was the first thing I did before running the emulator, I hadn't even thought of not doing it (otherwise what's the point of the emulator besides fullscreen?), but true, it should only affect load times.
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The difference between saving your game to your harddrive and not saving the game to your harddrive is quite minimal in most cases (also, some games don't fully support this feature), because in theory the game is already saved to your harddrive as a CMO/ISO file. The reason why you want to save the game to a memory stick when using PSP is to improve load time as it takes more time for the UMD drive to read directly from the stick rather than the PSP's CPU loading the crucial files from a memory stick. It's like installing a game on your harddrive using a digital download copy versus a physical hard copy, whereas the installation process of the former is dependant on your CPU and harddrive speed and the former primarily on your DVD speed, and the former will always be slower (unless you got a very old harddrive).
Also, to clarify, are you experiencing freezes or simply hiccups? I assumed you meant hiccups as in a temporary freeze.
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Thanks for the insight about saving to the hard drive, I had a general idea of how it worked but didn't know the details
As for my problem, I do experience hiccups, but I'm disregarding those - the problem is I'm also experiencing actual freezes that require me to terminate the jpcsp process and restart it. No amount of waiting gets it unstuck (waited for 15 minutes once, just to make sure...).
If it were only the hiccups I wouldn't have bothered to bring it up at all. I'm not THAT picky, ya know 
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Sorry, I want to clarify. I noticed I typed it wrongly in my previous post: reading from a physical drive is ALWAYS slower than reading from a digital drive. That's what I meant to say, because in 99% of all cases your CPU and hard drive will be faster than your hardware reading from the physical install (UMD, DVD, etc).
I tried to play some CC yesterday just to see how it turned out seeing that the graphics error caused by older revs is fixed. I didn't experience any freezes or hiccups but my FPS was very low in combat, hovering between 7-15 depending a bit on the amount of monsters present on the screen. Unplayable to me, nonetheless. I also noticed that Crisis Core had a remarkably low GPU load (at most 10%) despite that combat should be graphics heavy. I didn't fiddle anything with the settings though but went with Hyakki's recommended settings.
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