PCSX2 Ico, Colossus, and Fatal Frame

[deathneko11]

Ok, decided to throw a few games into the bunch and see what yall think. Ico and Shadow of Colossus, and Fatal frame 3 are all having the same issue. I have a speed drop and cant get the frame rate up to play normal. any other game I've played I can play on normal speed though, with the exception of a few spots. Also, in Fatal frame 1 I can hardly get a light on the camera circle to take a shot with for enemies, and for normal no threat shots I cant get a blue circle for a photo at all.

Another weird thing is that the buttons dont seem to work right in all of the Fatal Frame games. For example, I have to hold down the LB button to use the B button (O on a ps2 controller) to bring the camera up, and the RT in order to use the A (X on a ps2 controller) to take a shot. The controller I am using is an XBOX 360 controller, hardwired, microsoft brand. so if anyone can help me figure this one out that'd be great, if not, then it's not that big of a concern I suppose. all the other games i've played function just fine with it.

I do use Game Booster to speed up my system for gaming.

Hardware: Toshiba Satellite, i-7 quad core, 3.20 ghz, 6 gigs ram, nvidia 540M.

Software: Windows 7 home premium 64, DirectX 11.

Emulator version is 0.9.8.
Bios USA v02.30(20/02/2008)
Plugins are whatever default that comes with the emulator.
I use the speedhacks EE Cyclerate on 2 and VU Cycle Stealing between 0 and 1 depending on the game.

I can't think of any other relevant information. got any ideas for either of these 4 games? the help would be greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

[istuffedsunny]

1 Grab the last build from here http://buildbot.orphis.net/pcsx2/
2 Enable mtvu hack
3 ???
4 Profit

Also with a 540m you're gonna have to play some games at native. FF3 is pretty demanding, at least the first chapter. SOTC is another native game

Lastly, with a mobile i7 you're going to run into throttling and fast. There's not much you can do if you have crappy cooling, but if you feel comfortable with your temps try ThrottleStop

[deathneko11]

all right will do, but I have a couple of questions if you dont mind. How do I play at native, and what exactly is throttling, and how does throttlestop work? and for ALL ps2 games, I run pretty cool, even without a cooling pad. I have run the laptop up to 190F before with higher end pc games, so running around 150F-160F without a cooling pad is pretty good for my system seeing as how this brand cpu gets notoriously hot. Also, can I expect a pretty good speed boost if I use throttlestop on the emulator? like I said before, most games I can run full speed without using the speedhacks but it'd be nice if that mostly fixed the few that's giving me trouble.

Thanks a lot, I'll look into it and I hope you can answer my questions.

eh, just browsed a page on the web that explains a bit about throttlestop, it looks like a somewhat complicated program to set up and I could be taking a risk of damaging my laptop. Nevermind then, I'll just see what a new build with that mtvu hack enabled, and playing at native. so if you could tell me how to set it to play at native that'd be great.

[Izuna]

Config-video (GS)-Plug in settings-Original PS2 Resolution: Check Native. I don`t know about running pcsx2 on a laptop but you have a much better processor than my pc lol and i manage to run Fatal Frame 3 and SoTC w/o slowdown in "2x Native". Speedhacks: EE Cyclerate: 2 VU cycle stealing in the middle between zero and one and using Super VU recompiler legacy (for the 5 or 6 extra FPS).

[deathneko11]

Ok, I went all out and followed whatever advice I could. I backed up all my stuff and rebooted my windows system, got rid of the junk and went with a fresh install of pcsx2. I even found a setup guide here on emuparadise for the plugin settings, and I got a significant speed boost in some games. Ico and Colossus seem to be running at full speed now, and Fatal Frame 3 is running at full speed through the first chapter with only a few hangups where the frame rate drops about 5 or so for a few seconds.

Something I did notice though, some games will actually run slower with the speed hacks enabled, and the only way to run them full speed is to turn off the speed hacks. I'm just curious here, has anyone else noticed that?

Now, that being said (and that was a HUGE improvement already) I still cannot fix the camera problem for fatal frames 1 and 3. I cant get a glowing circle to take a shot properly, so fighting ghosts on there is nigh on impossible. 'Also, the controls are so bizarre for both games. I have to hit certain L and R buttons in conjunction with action buttons such as Circle or Square to use that action, when I'm not supposed to be doing that because the required actions are supposed to be done with just the action button without the L and R buttons. As far as I know, that's the only problem I'm having with my emulator at the moment. Does anyone have any ideas?

[FlavaFlave]

eh, just browsed a page on the web that explains a bit about throttlestop, it looks like a somewhat complicated program to set up and I could be taking a risk of damaging my laptop. Nevermind then, I'll just see what a new build with that mtvu hack enabled, and playing at native. so if you could tell me how to set it to play at native that'd be great.

Try MSI Afterburner. It's a really easy and safe GPU overclocking system. On my laptop, which is about the same as yours, quad core i-7, 8 gig of ram, nvidia GT555M with 1 gig of ram, I use it for some graphic intense games such as the Witcher 2 and it works pretty well. If you put the settings up too high, instead of overheating your system you'll just see some weird screen tearing and glitches and that's your cue to turn it down a bit. Every game reacts different with it so give it a shot, and you can save settings too. Hope this helped.

[deathneko11]

holy.......crap...........*jaw drops* I just FINALLY got my video card (gtx 570) for my custom built gaming rig, and I actually ran standard settings, no speed hacks, and got xtremely close to full speed on that first slow up scene for xenosaga 1. wow.

oh and I tried afterburner on my laptop, even playing it safe it helped me with a few of my games. I dont think i'll be using my laptop anymore though, looking forward to playing with afterburner on my desktop. this is going to be fun :3 thanks a lot.

[Ice Queen Zero]

Now, that being said (and that was a HUGE improvement already) I still cannot fix the camera problem for fatal frames 1 and 3. I cant get a glowing circle to take a shot properly, so fighting ghosts on there is nigh on impossible

Change your renderer to DX9 Hardware...

[deathneko11]

all right, tested everything out on my new computer, all the games that gave me trouble before are working almost 100% now, the only problems that crop up are miniscule so got everything fixed and working fantastic now. thanks everybody.