It's been a couple of months since anybody has updated anything on this - and I've put it through the paces in Jpcsp 0.6.3040:3090, so I though I would provide an update.
As others have reported, this appears to be fully playable. The only (minor) gripe that I still have with the game is that it still hangs after the opening cinematic if you allow it to play through the whole thing. I've had erratic success pressing 'Start' or 'X' and getting the game to continue on to the startup menu screen after letting the cinematic play all the way through, but 80%+ of the time the game locks up and Jpcsp must be restarted. I am not able to 'Reset' the emulator and simply 'Run' it again. A full exit and restart is required.
The easy workaround is to not allow the cinematic to fully play and interrupt it with the Start button. I've actually tried to interrupt it with the 'X' button and still had it hang, though the 'Start' button appears to work 100% of the time.
I've tested settings with 2 different computers. My desktop is a rather high-end rig, so it's difficult to get any kind of measurable effect because it pegs the game at 60fps pretty easily. My laptop is a different story, so I was able to get some decent findings by doing some simple testing with that machine.
Video Settings:
Off: Disable VBO
- Enabling this had no visible effect on game performance
On: Only GE graphics
- Enabling this had the single-largest increase in fps performance for the game (10-15fps)
On: Vertex Cache
- No change in performance either way. I set it on.
On: Use Shaders
- No change in performance either way. I set it to on.
Off: Use a Geometry Shader for 2D rendering
- Enabling this caused the borders to disappear in the in game menus
Off: Disable UBO
- No discernible effect whether On or Off. User preference.
Off: Enable VAO
- Enabling caused significant artifacting and NPC 'blinking.' Menu backgrounds changed to black background.
On: Enable GE screen to Textures instead of Memory
- No discernible effect whether On or Off. User preference.
Off: Enable decoding of indexed textures (using CLUT) in shader
- No discernible effect whether On or Off. User preference.
On: Enable dynamic shader generation
- No discernible effect whether On or Off. User preference.
Off: Enable the shader implementation for the "Stencil Test"
- Enabling cause the screen to 'go black' and become unplayable
On: Enable the shader implementation for the "Color Mask"
- Enabling causes a slightly better presentation, more noticeable on the menu screens. Subject to user tastes as to whether this is an improvement or not.
Off: Disable optimized VertexInfo reading
- No discernible effect whether On or Off. User preference.
Off: Software Rendering
- Very buggy if enabled.
Other Settings:
Dislay-> Anti-Aliasing
- No noticeable effect no matter the value I tried here.
Media-> Use Media Engine
Media-> Use SonicStage
- Both of these options are required to play background music (combined with SonicStage installation)
The laptop I used to test these settings is equipped with an i5 processor, 4GB RAM, and has integrated Intel graphics. Overworld and menus topped out at around 42 fps for the most part. In towns, however, there is significant fps drop (on the order of 50%) down into the 20-25fps range. The change in emulation speed can be a bit jarring. Using the 'Frame Skip' menu item mitigated this to some degree, but it wasn't perfect.
Hope this helps folks who are looking for potential settings to play this game. If anyone has an answer to the hanging of the game after the opening cinematic, please let me know!
As others have reported, this appears to be fully playable. The only (minor) gripe that I still have with the game is that it still hangs after the opening cinematic if you allow it to play through the whole thing. I've had erratic success pressing 'Start' or 'X' and getting the game to continue on to the startup menu screen after letting the cinematic play all the way through, but 80%+ of the time the game locks up and Jpcsp must be restarted. I am not able to 'Reset' the emulator and simply 'Run' it again. A full exit and restart is required.
The easy workaround is to not allow the cinematic to fully play and interrupt it with the Start button. I've actually tried to interrupt it with the 'X' button and still had it hang, though the 'Start' button appears to work 100% of the time.
I've tested settings with 2 different computers. My desktop is a rather high-end rig, so it's difficult to get any kind of measurable effect because it pegs the game at 60fps pretty easily. My laptop is a different story, so I was able to get some decent findings by doing some simple testing with that machine.
Video Settings:
Off: Disable VBO
- Enabling this had no visible effect on game performance
On: Only GE graphics
- Enabling this had the single-largest increase in fps performance for the game (10-15fps)
On: Vertex Cache
- No change in performance either way. I set it on.
On: Use Shaders
- No change in performance either way. I set it to on.
Off: Use a Geometry Shader for 2D rendering
- Enabling this caused the borders to disappear in the in game menus
Off: Disable UBO
- No discernible effect whether On or Off. User preference.
Off: Enable VAO
- Enabling caused significant artifacting and NPC 'blinking.' Menu backgrounds changed to black background.
On: Enable GE screen to Textures instead of Memory
- No discernible effect whether On or Off. User preference.
Off: Enable decoding of indexed textures (using CLUT) in shader
- No discernible effect whether On or Off. User preference.
On: Enable dynamic shader generation
- No discernible effect whether On or Off. User preference.
Off: Enable the shader implementation for the "Stencil Test"
- Enabling cause the screen to 'go black' and become unplayable
On: Enable the shader implementation for the "Color Mask"
- Enabling causes a slightly better presentation, more noticeable on the menu screens. Subject to user tastes as to whether this is an improvement or not.
Off: Disable optimized VertexInfo reading
- No discernible effect whether On or Off. User preference.
Off: Software Rendering
- Very buggy if enabled.
Other Settings:
Dislay-> Anti-Aliasing
- No noticeable effect no matter the value I tried here.
Media-> Use Media Engine
Media-> Use SonicStage
- Both of these options are required to play background music (combined with SonicStage installation)
The laptop I used to test these settings is equipped with an i5 processor, 4GB RAM, and has integrated Intel graphics. Overworld and menus topped out at around 42 fps for the most part. In towns, however, there is significant fps drop (on the order of 50%) down into the 20-25fps range. The change in emulation speed can be a bit jarring. Using the 'Frame Skip' menu item mitigated this to some degree, but it wasn't perfect.
Hope this helps folks who are looking for potential settings to play this game. If anyone has an answer to the hanging of the game after the opening cinematic, please let me know!