JPCSP is unplayably slow

[Khift]

Specs:
Intel i7 920 @ 2.67GHz
ATI Radeon HD 4890
6GB triple channel ram @ 534MHz
MS Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP2

Long story short: Been playing Disgaea1 on JPCSP, FPS was 60 in town and about 30 in fights. 30 is too slow for me, so I went looking for ways to improve it. Played around with a bunch of settings, none improved FPS. Realized I hadn't updated my video drivers in a couple months so I did that and now the game is running at 30 FPS in town.

This is a computer that can play Crysis on max and get 60 FPS. This is not a hardware issue. This is a software issue. Hopefully, it's a software issue that can be solved, which is why I'm asking.

Pre-emptive answers:
I have Java 6.26 installed.
I am using the Windows x86 JPCSP build 2239 as linked on the front page.
I am using Catalyst version 11.7, the latest ATI driver.
I have the Catalyst AI disabled, as per this thread's recommendation.
I have Sonicstage installed and am using the media engine (was the only way I could find to get music working).
I encounter the same performance issues regardless of window size.
I have this issue with only basic settings plus media engine on (no shaders or anything). No settings I've turned on have improved it.

Is there any way to get this program functional? What settings should I use? All the settings I've tried either have no visible effect or have been detrimental to FPS. Rolling back the drivers is an option, but even if I did that 30 FPS in combat is half the speed the game is supposed to play at and that is not good enough. 60 FPS has to be possible.



Also, while I'm on the topic, some other issues I've noticed while using JPCSP:
- The 'pause' and 'reset' buttons are entirely broken. Pressing either will render the program useless; it is impossible to get the program to start playing a game again without shutting it down and restarting it.
- The quicksave and quickload features are broken. Sometimes they work, sometimes they crash the game. And by sometimes, I mean at least 50% chance of crashing JPCSP.
- There is a massive gap of black space in the window. Do not tell me this is an aspect ratio issue. It is not. The window is approximately 1680x1050 but the game is playing at approximately 1440x900. Both are 16:9 aspect ratio. There is no reason why the game shouldn't stretch to fill the whole window. Picture related.



I apologize if I sound unnecessarily frustrated. I just want this program to work. I am really enjoying Disgaea, but the slow combat speed is very annoying and I want to fix it. Thanks in advance for any help.

---

Okay, I downgraded to 11-5 and it seems slightly better than it was prior to this whole nonsense (I was running 11-6 before). However, I still get low FPS in combat.

Some things I've noticed:
Until the unit count on the field passes a certain number, FPS is fine. If I only deploy half my units it stays at 55-60.
Even with all my units out, if I keep the cursor on an empty square the FPS is still 55-60. When I put it over any unit, though, it drops to 30-40. Same with any actions at this point.

My gut says it's a memory issue. Are there any settings I can turn on to improve this?

[Hadoken]

Specs:
Intel i7 920 @ 2.67GHz
ATI Radeon HD 4890
6GB triple channel ram @ 534MHz
MS Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP2

Long story short: Been playing Disgaea1 on JPCSP, FPS was 60 in town and about 30 in fights. 30 is too slow for me, so I went looking for ways to improve it. Played around with a bunch of settings, none improved FPS. Realized I hadn't updated my video drivers in a couple months so I did that and now the game is running at 30 FPS in town.

This is a computer that can play Crysis on max and get 60 FPS. This is not a hardware issue. This is a software issue. Hopefully, it's a software issue that can be solved, which is why I'm asking.

Pre-emptive answers:
I have Java 6.26 installed.
I am using the Windows x86 JPCSP build 2239 as linked on the front page.
I am using Catalyst version 11.7, the latest ATI driver.
I have the Catalyst AI disabled, as per this thread's recommendation.
I have Sonicstage installed and am using the media engine (was the only way I could find to get music working).
I encounter the same performance issues regardless of window size.
I have this issue with only basic settings plus media engine on (no shaders or anything). No settings I've turned on have improved it.

Is there any way to get this program functional? What settings should I use? All the settings I've tried either have no visible effect or have been detrimental to FPS. Rolling back the drivers is an option, but even if I did that 30 FPS in combat is half the speed the game is supposed to play at and that is not good enough. 60 FPS has to be possible.



Also, while I'm on the topic, some other issues I've noticed while using JPCSP:
- The 'pause' and 'reset' buttons are entirely broken. Pressing either will render the program useless; it is impossible to get the program to start playing a game again without shutting it down and restarting it.
- The quicksave and quickload features are broken. Sometimes they work, sometimes they crash the game. And by sometimes, I mean at least 50% chance of crashing JPCSP.
- There is a massive gap of black space in the window. Do not tell me this is an aspect ratio issue. It is not. The window is approximately 1680x1050 but the game is playing at approximately 1440x900. Both are 16:9 aspect ratio. There is no reason why the game shouldn't stretch to fill the whole window. Picture related.



I apologize if I sound unnecessarily frustrated. I just want this program to work. I am really enjoying Disgaea, but the slow combat speed is very annoying and I want to fix it. Thanks in advance for any help.

Hi and welcome to the forum.

Your post is nice, but ...
1. "unplayable slow" <-> 30-60 FPS, doesnt seem unplayable
2. "30 is too slow for me" ... take your PSP and have fun
3. the lower FPS maybe a software issue, but the JPCSP is v 0.6, so there is no need to run every game at 100%
4. the latest version of JPCSP can be found here
5. the not working buttons and quick options are know ...

This are only some thoughts of mine.

[Khift]

1. "unplayable slow" <-> 30-60 FPS, doesnt seem unplayable

20 FPS in town is unplayably slow, given that it'll be half that in combat. Thankfully that was just a driver issue.

2. "30 is too slow for me" ... take your PSP and have fun

If you enjoy playing a game at half the speed it was intended to run at then you are a strange beast indeed. I don't. It ruins the game entirely for me.

3. the lower FPS maybe a software issue, but the JPCSP is v 0.6, so there is no need to run every game at 100%

Except people ARE running games at 100%. I'm not able to. Thus the post -- I want to know how to get this program running at 100%.

4. the latest version of JPCSP can be found here

Why isn't this linked at the front page? Honest question. It's kind of an important thing.

5. the not working buttons and quick options are know ...

So why isn't it documented? I don't mean to get into criticizing the dev cycle of this game, but you would think that a button which breaks the program would at least have a note in the readme. I can understand why they would still be in there, as if you take them out you'd have to put them back in when you get around to fix them, but a little documentation never hurt anybody. A single line that says "By the way, don't press the pause, reset, save snapshot and load snapshot buttons because you will probably crash the game" takes a whole 5 seconds to type and would save new users hassle.

One final thing: Don't get defensive. Please. Feedback is feedback. If we're only allowed to talk about how awesome a project is then issues never get focused on and fixed. I am not saying that the team working on this is a piece of shit, what I'm saying is that I'm having trouble getting the same results as others are and want help. Don't read into it more than that.

[Khift]

Installed r2263. Testing FPS now with various settings. All tests done on map Flashy Passage in Dinero Castle; that map has 21 enemy units, the largest I've seen yet. Note that I have issues on almost all maps, it is just most pronounced here because of the extreme amount of units.

No settings: 30 FPS steady

Added 'Enable saving GE screen to Textures instead of Memory': 40 FPS
Feels like 10 FPS. Extremely chunky, even in town. Looks way, way better though. Actually fixes the aspect ratio issue I was having -- now the screen stretches to cover the whole window!

Added 'Enable decoding of indexed textures (using CLUT) in shader': 40 FPS
Still feels like 10 FPS.

Added 'Only GE graphics': 30 FPS steady
Actually feels like 30 FPS, though. Definitely an upgrade. Fixed chunkiness both in town and in combat.

Removed 'Enable decoding of indexed textures (using CLUT) in shader': 30 FPS steady
Might be slightly faster than previous. Readme says this should be an improvement. At the very least I don't believe it is hurting, so I added it back in.

Added 'Enable dynamic shader generation': 30 FPS steady
No noticeable change.

Added 'Use shaders': 30 FPS steady
No noticeable change.

Added 'Use a Geometry shader for 2D rendering': 30 FPS steady
No noticeable change.

Added 'Use vertex cache': 25 to 35 FPS
Feels slightly faster. Took more units to reach low FPS. Still had 60 FPS when I had 3 units out; didn't hit 30 til I had 9 out.

Added 'Enable VAO': 45 to 60 FPS
Flawless victory. Didn't drop below 60 FPS til I had 8 units out. Is at 60 FPS when cursor is over empty space, 50-55 in menus, 45 when scrolling past units. This is much better.

Removed everything but 'Only GE graphics', 'Use Vertex Cache', 'Enable VAO': 45 to 60 FPS
No noticeable change. Guess all those other options didn't do anything.

Removed 'Use Vertex Cache': 30 FPS steady
Unsurprisingly reverted the gain VAO added. Was worth checking. Re-added.

Added 'Ignore invalid memory access': 45 to 60 FPS
No noticeable change. Removed.

Added 'Extract media files to tmp folder': 45 to 60 FPS
No noticeable change. Removed.

Added 'Unpack PBP when loading': 45 to 50 FPS
No noticeable change. Removed.

Don't see any more config options that look like they could improve performance.

The TL;DR is: fuck with options even when a.) you don't know what they do and b.) the readme file says they probably won't do anything. "Most PSP programmers do not [follow] this approach", but evidently the Disgaea devs did. Go figure. 60 FPS with ~28 units on the map is a hell of a lot better than 30 FPS with 12, which is what I was getting.

[Khift]

Except when it doesn't work; now I'm running into memory leaks that cause the game to crash when you try to do two maps without restarting. Can't win for losing today.

[hyakki]

Jpcsp is still in-between releases so it's still beta the svn is public so the anyone can enjoy testing the latest changes, you might want to wait for the next stable release if you want a more polished emulator.

right now the fps meter is iffy and can show inaccurate sometimes, most games full speed is 30 fps on the real psp,
when you use the option 'Only GE graphics': and get 30fps , that is usually full speed for that mode since it closely matches the psp hardware.
so in short heres a quick rundown.
'Only GE graphics' = 0-30fps (30 fps being full-speed)
'Only GE graphics Off': = 0-60fps (60 fps being full-speed)

you can read more about some of the settings here
http://www.emunewz.net/forum/showthread....7#pid13327

out of memory errors are usually caused by the vertex cache option.

[mega3113]

My fps is 2 and average FPS is 1.5 its unplayable HELP!!

[Vegerunks]

My fps is 2 and average FPS is 1.5 its unplayable HELP!!

Post your hardware or our help will do very little.

[jasonvin]

I'm running into memory leaks that cause the game to crash when you try to do two maps without restarting. Can't win for losing today.

[serio]

2. "30 is too slow for me" ... take your PSP and have fun

If you enjoy playing a game at half the speed it was intended to run at then you are a strange beast indeed. I don't. It ruins the game entirely for me.

you didn't understand him. he said that if you're just playing a game to enjoy it and can't get it to run at full speed in the emulator, you can always play it on your psp handheld console.

you'll get the intended speeds easily, and if you use it, the real cwcheat's still better than the jpcsp one.