Disgaea 3 - Playable by how much?

[derpf]

Look in this video , there is still an issue in battle where the cursor always wants to go down for some reason... I can't say for sure if it's the d-pad or one of the analog sticks that's doing it though. However since the d-pad can be used to fight against it, maybe it's the analog sticks.

Can you see if there are any other games with this problem? It's hard for me to test Dis3 because I can't see anything, don't know the inputs and it runs at 1/3 a frame per second... The analog stick(s) seemed to work fine in Arkedo SWAP as well.

[ssshadow]

Look in this video , there is still an issue in battle where the cursor always wants to go down for some reason... I can't say for sure if it's the d-pad or one of the analog sticks that's doing it though. However since the d-pad can be used to fight against it, maybe it's the analog sticks.

Can you see if there are any other games with this problem? It's hard for me to test Dis3 because I can't see anything, don't know the inputs and it runs at 1/3 a frame per second... The analog stick(s) seemed to work fine in Arkedo SWAP as well.

I will look when I get home. Note that Disgaea input works as expected until the tutorial battle, which takes about 45 minutes to reach at interpreter speed

[derpf]

Look in this video , there is still an issue in battle where the cursor always wants to go down for some reason... I can't say for sure if it's the d-pad or one of the analog sticks that's doing it though. However since the d-pad can be used to fight against it, maybe it's the analog sticks.

Can you see if there are any other games with this problem? It's hard for me to test Dis3 because I can't see anything, don't know the inputs and it runs at 1/3 a frame per second... The analog stick(s) seemed to work fine in Arkedo SWAP as well.

I will look when I get home. Note that Disgaea input works as expected until the tutorial battle, which takes about 45 minutes to reach at interpreter speed

Yup! I tried playing it for a bit, between the invisible graphics (lol, that's the unimplemented z-culling probably), 1/3 fps speed, and invisible character sprites, I had no damn clue where I was going. Not sure why that would have problems when SWAP works fine with all of its buttons, too. Humph. I wonder if there are action replay codes or similar to move the player position... that would be useful for testing this game.

Anyway, let me know what you find.

[ssshadow]

Look in this video , there is still an issue in battle where the cursor always wants to go down for some reason... I can't say for sure if it's the d-pad or one of the analog sticks that's doing it though. However since the d-pad can be used to fight against it, maybe it's the analog sticks.

Can you see if there are any other games with this problem? It's hard for me to test Dis3 because I can't see anything, don't know the inputs and it runs at 1/3 a frame per second... The analog stick(s) seemed to work fine in Arkedo SWAP as well.

I will look when I get home. Note that Disgaea input works as expected until the tutorial battle, which takes about 45 minutes to reach at interpreter speed

Yup! I tried playing it for a bit, between the invisible graphics (lol, that's the unimplemented z-culling probably), 1/3 fps speed, and invisible character sprites, I had no damn clue where I was going. Not sure why that would have problems when SWAP works fine with all of its buttons, too. Humph. I wonder if there are action replay codes or similar to move the player position... that would be useful for testing this game.

Anyway, let me know what you find.

Reading about z-buffering and z-culling on Wikipedia, that makes sense. It would also explain the black "trail" left behind objects moving when hidden surfaces become visible. TIL

So, to get into the tutorial battle, skip everything after pressing new game by pressing triangle. Once in game, outside a big door, move down the stairs, and across the big floor, so that you end up on the opposite side of where you began. There is a blue portal thing, and the shadow of a guy in the middle of it. (Picture) Talk to him, triangle several times to skip all the talking. Then select chapter 1, skip more talking with triangle, chose to do the tutorial, skip more talking with triangle, and you are done. You should be able to move the cursor/marker thing freely at this point in order to dispatch people from the blue thing in the middle, and move them around the field. (Look in my video)

Until the battle begins you do have an horrible 0,3 fps, and it takes about 45 minutes to reach the tutorial. Once there the frame rate becomes and acceptable 3 fps, although it actually feels even faster. At this point the speed isn't much of a problem at all. (It is 10 times faster than it was before)

A workaround for the missing graphics/flickering is to open the menu with triangle. This is just a small list in the corner, so you can clearly see all the graphics. Moving next to an NPC also fixes it as long as the NPC level and all that is displayed on the screen.

Finally, you can rotate the camera with R1/L1 and zoom in/out with R2/L2. At certain angles and zoom levels (such as furthest out) the flickering is much less severe.

[derpf]

Until the battle begins you do have an horrible 0,3 fps, and it takes about 45 minutes to reach the tutorial. Once there the frame rate becomes and acceptable 3 fps, although it actually feels even faster. At this point the speed isn't much of a problem at all. (It is 10 times faster than it was before)

Haha, 45 minutes of agonizing 3 seconds per frame just to test an analog stick, then going and changing code only to have to re-do that isn't really worth it though. That's why we need to find another game with the same problem. Or for the game to go at least 1 FPS at all times.

And yeah, a lot of the Z-buffer stuff is not done (much like the rest of RSX and GCM...). 3D graphics be hard, and we be understaffed, man.

[ssshadow]

Haha, 45 minutes of agonizing 3 seconds per frame just to test an analog stick, then going and changing code only to have to re-do that isn't really worth it though. That's why we need to find another game with the same problem. Or for the game to go at least 1 FPS at all times.

Or wait for the PPU recompiler I guess... I may try it again tonight. I guess I will hold down every possible combination of keys and see if I can find any pattern and draw some conclusions... Any other plan? Perhaps you/I can just add some informative output on key presses? Like print "Triangle" whenever that is detected. And if we suddenly get an endless spam of "Left analog stick down" then we know for sure.

[derpf]

Perhaps you/I can just add some informative output on key presses? Like print "Triangle" whenever that is detected. And if we suddenly get an endless spam of "Left analog stick down" then we know for sure.

It's not about it sticking, but rather about what the game registers. The only reason I saw for this behavior would be the same reason buttons stuck previously, but I don't want to change it if it's just going to break something and I can't test it.

Gee I sure wish someone would make homebrew tests that actually test useful things...

[ssshadow]

Perhaps you/I can just add some informative output on key presses? Like print "Triangle" whenever that is detected. And if we suddenly get an endless spam of "Left analog stick down" then we know for sure.

It's not about it sticking, but rather about what the game registers. The only reason I saw for this behavior would be the same reason buttons stuck previously, but I don't want to change it if it's just going to break something and I can't test it.

Gee I sure wish someone would make homebrew tests that actually test useful things...

There is pad_test.elf, and both analog sticks don't work in it (even after remapped to something that doesn't just control scrolling in input/output window). However I don't know if they are supposed to.

[derpf]

There is pad_test.elf, and both analog sticks don't work in it (even after remapped to something that doesn't just control scrolling in input/output window). However I don't know if they are supposed to.

Yeah, that's weird. Arkedo SWAP and the Mandelbrot demo (see that thread -- it's updated with a binary where you can test that as well), so it's either only Disgaea 3 or there is some non-obvious issue here...

If it's still an issue, we'll come back to this once Disgaea 3 can run at a somewhat-approaching-sane speed.

[ssshadow]

There is pad_test.elf, and both analog sticks don't work in it (even after remapped to something that doesn't just control scrolling in input/output window). However I don't know if they are supposed to.

Yeah, that's weird. Arkedo SWAP and the Mandelbrot demo (see that thread -- it's updated with a binary where you can test that as well), so it's either only Disgaea 3 or there is some non-obvious issue here...

If it's still an issue, we'll come back to this once Disgaea 3 can run at a somewhat-approaching-sane speed.

I fixed the latest revision by removing a bit of code (just ".ToULong(&pc, 16)" which fails), and am now running at a slightly faster 0,4 fps

A very nice bug that should never ever be fixed: If I hold down, and then loose the window focus, the character keeps moving down, so I can just do something else while he automatically moves down the stairs and down to the portal where I can enter the tutorial battle. Will report what I find soon.

Update: It still happens. No combination of analog sticks/dpad stops the down movement of the field cursor... It is always moving down relative to the camera position, which basically means the game really just thinks you are pressing down, plain and simple. Only got to test for about 2 minutes this time before I got a seemingly random [E : RSXThread]: glDepthFunc: opengl error 0x0500 Well, I guess it's just best to wait for either the PPU recompiler so this doesn't take an hour, or more games to test with.