When you use an dusty GC and a disk with scratches and shit smeared on it, it would be clear that your loading times aren't the best anymore.
I assume the loading times in Dolphin are based on flawless GCs and disks.
When you use an dusty GC and a disk with scratches and shit smeared on it, it would be clear that your loading times aren't the best anymore.
I assume the loading times in Dolphin are based on flawless GCs and disks.
First, you're missing the point. Of course a middle path would probably be faster in this scenario. I'm just illustrating how the game works and how loads change strategies.
Secondly, itspersonnal is far from the only person to say that dolphin's load times are still inaccurate. Miles has been playing Metroid Prime on dolphin quite a bit with his work on randomizer, and he notices the difference as well.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
When you use an dusty GC and a disk with scratches and shit smeared on it, it would be clear that your loading times aren't the best anymore.
I assume the loading times in Dolphin are based on flawless GCs and disks.
Console loads are very close to consistent among all players, there is the odd door that varies by a half second, though often that's only something that happens in segmented runs, and I believe it's due to the game not dumping everything when you restart from a save, causing some things to load faster? (that's what it seems like to me at least). Anyway, my game disks (yes, I have more than one I've tested on. 4 in fact.) are in good condition. Sure some time may be lost to my Wii being kind of old, but that's a problem deemed "normal" by the community. Emulating a system better than any Wii/GC out there, the "flawless GC" is not fair in my eyes. My opinion isn't the law, I don't care all that much if people other than myself work on the game with imperfect loads, but it is the reason that I personally stopped working on my TAS.
Completed:
2010-Current | Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - Individual Level TASes
2014 | Spongebob: Battle For Bikini Bottom - Any% in 1:05:03.23
2014 | Sonic Adventure 2: Battle - Hero Story (w/ THC98) in 25:11.87
2016 | Metroid Prime - Any% in 00:37 (In-Game Time)
2018 | Spongebob: Battle For Bikini Bottom - Cheat% in 1:42.350
2020 | Spongebob: Battle For Bikini Bottom - Any% in 0:39:20.10
2022 | Spongebob: Battle For Bikini Bottom - Cheat% in 1:25.567
Currently working on:
SA2:B DARK STORY
I totally believe that Dolphin's load times could be wrong thinking about it. It sucks, but if things are as far off as said, something isn't being emulated close enough.
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Some good news, I consider myself now completely used to tasing via Tas input. I actually enjoy it lol :) Definitely new way for me to tas. Tiniest update: I shot two red dots and I'm moving to the left. I moved left earliest possible to shoot the two remaining ones. Something tells me I will redo this because as soon as I gained control of Samus, I jumped on the earliest frame but I suspect I need to move a few frames forward to gain momentum and then jump forward. If all things go well, expect an encoded wip reaching the first door within 1-2 weeks.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
When you use an dusty GC and a disk with scratches and shit smeared on it, it would be clear that your loading times aren't the best anymore.
I assume the loading times in Dolphin are based on flawless GCs and disks.
Console loads are very close to consistent among all players, there is the odd door that varies by a half second, though often that's only something that happens in segmented runs, and I believe it's due to the game not dumping everything when you restart from a save, causing some things to load faster? (that's what it seems like to me at least). Anyway, my game disks (yes, I have more than one I've tested on. 4 in fact.) are in good condition. Sure some time may be lost to my Wii being kind of old, but that's a problem deemed "normal" by the community. Emulating a system better than any Wii/GC out there, the "flawless GC" is not fair in my eyes. My opinion isn't the law, I don't care all that much if people other than myself work on the game with imperfect loads, but it is the reason that I personally stopped working on my TAS.
i think itsPersonnal ;D ;D ;D
also.. angerfist
1-2 weeks per door D:? sounds huge
I've been experimenting with Cleanrip on Dolphin (it actually runs and works!) and I've found out that Dolphin runs at about 3000KB/s constantly. Metroid Prime should be about 1500 - 1700KB/s on the inner rim and 2600KB/s to 2700KB/s on the outer rim.
Older builds of Dolphin went extremely fast before eventually failing, so this is a lot better than before, but it leaves a lot to be desired.
Efforts will continue to make it more accurate in the future.
This is actually good news; it looks like you've identified what may be responsible for the inaccuracies (and why they were inconsistent). Perhaps we can get accurate loading times after all.
I've been experimenting with Cleanrip on Dolphin (it actually runs and works!) and I've found out that Dolphin runs at about 3000KB/s constantly. Metroid Prime should be about 1500 - 1700KB/s on the inner rim and 2600KB/s to 2700KB/s on the outer rim.
Older builds of Dolphin went extremely fast before eventually failing, so this is a lot better than before, but it leaves a lot to be desired.
Efforts will continue to make it more accurate in the future.
That's really strange to find out because GC discs are CAV.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
That's really strange to find out because GC discs are CAV.
How is that weird? Even the wikipedia article you linked states that CAV means higher data rate on outside. Unless you find something else weird, in which case I misunderstood.
The behaviour JMC47 reports is exactly what we'd expect with a CAV disc. The behaviour Dolphin's using is not CAV.
This opens up a path to fixing the loading times: change Dolphin to use CAV.
You'd need information about what data lies "where" on a disc to use that kind of emulation. As far as I know, ISOs do not store this kind of information. I don't know if there are other other disc formats out there that do.
Yeah, but a computer doesn't care about different sectors. It only cares about the information. So it would be natural for an ISO not to store a lot of information about discs such as where exactly on the disc such data is located.
I don't know if a binary 1:1 copy might contain such info, though.
That's really strange to find out because GC discs are CAV.
How is that weird? Even the wikipedia article you linked states that CAV means higher data rate on outside. Unless you find something else weird, in which case I misunderstood.
Because I was under the impression that they used variable density as well (like a LaserDisc). Rather than zones (like a hard drive). Or constant data density (like a DVD? Can't find much info on this.)
I know the disc is based off of a DVD. However, I figured that because it was CAV (not like a DVD) they altered the layout. I guess I was just working under an incorrect assumption.
Sorry, I articulated my surprise unclearly.
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
ISOs don't store the locations the bytes are at, but if the physical locations of two bytes are known (easy to find out - just measure the start and end of the disc), the approximate location of any other byte can be interpolated based on that. I've been working on a patch that makes the drive CAV, but it doesn't work properly right now. Hopefully I will find out what's wrong with it soon.
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
I pmed JosJuice and like he said, once he is done with his patch, he'll submit it and hopefully his pull request will be accepted asap by team Dolphin. Since I have barely tased the first set of red dots, I have no trouble restarting. If this patch is good as it sounds, maybe Itspersonnal can resume his work so an outsider like myself don't need to tas it since his wip is of good quality. Let's see what the future holds.
Edit: I have delightful news, skid_au has made ram watch for Dolphin! Though it's for debugger only but he said Lioncash will do a non-debugger version. So if Itspersonnal or any other won't work on Prime, I'll restart once JosJuice and Lioncash's patch is done. Oh.. and I managed to find and persuade a deity of a kind new partner :P Here is a hint, he managed to blow everyone's mind this year ^_^
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
Edit: I have delightful news, skid_au has made ram watch for Dolphin! Though it's for debugger only but he said Lioncash will do a non-debugger version. So if Itspersonnal or any other won't work on Prime, I'll restart once JosJuice and Lioncash's patch is done. Oh.. and I managed to find and persuade a deity of a kind new partner :P Here is a hint, he managed to blow everyone's mind this year ^_^
Not sure how relevant it maybe for this game, but is there a pointer scanner as well? That would really help with roaming addresses. :)
Did more studying on disc read speeds. They make no sense. A Wii disc on the very inside of the disc reads at about 2800KB/s, where as a GC game reads at little over half that. Wii disc maxes out at about 3000ish; will test on more discs later. Unless my USB/SD card is the limiting factor at that point.
GameCube games max out before that, so I don't think it's my SD card there.
CLEANRIP RESULTS:
So, I got two freshly polished games at my local shop (Non-Duallayer for the wii game) and dumped them to see how it would work.
Okay, so, Wii Discs end up 2800KB/s - 3000KB/s from start to finish on the disc on my white wii. That means the Loadtimes on Metroid Prime Trilogy should be really, really close to console. If anyone has that and wants to confirm, that's be nice, maybe a tiny bit faster or slower depending on our seek accuracy
This GameCube game started out at about 1900KB/s and steadily rose to 2500KB/s (2527 to be exact.)
The patch is almost done now! Unlike the old versions that used 3 MiB/s for reading discs, this one is currently set to 2-3.3 MiB/s, which is roughly the same speed as a fast Wii drive. (Turns out that the one JMC did some testing on is a worse one.) However, I don't know if Metroid Prime "feels" right with these speeds since I haven't played it much on a real console, so it would be nice if someone could test this build. If it's too fast or too slow, it should be easy to tweak.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26683170/Dolphin-cav-disc-drive.exe
I don't think the changes I made affected Wii games correctly, so there's not much point in testing them. Only GC games for now.
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
JosJuice wrote:
The patch is almost done now! Unlike the old versions that used 3 MiB/s for reading discs, this one is currently set to 2-3.3 MiB/s, which is roughly the same speed as a fast Wii drive.
I am confused but shouldn't it be based on a Gamecube's drive?
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
The patch is almost done now! Unlike the old versions that used 3 MiB/s for reading discs, this one is currently set to 2-3.3 MiB/s, which is roughly the same speed as a fast Wii drive.
I am confused but shouldn't it be based on a Gamecube's drive?
This is based on a Wii reading GameCube discs, so it's like playing a GameCube game on a Wii, which is slower than playing a Wii game. Using the speed of an actual GameCube could also be appropriate - it depends on what people would prefer that Dolphin does. I think the main reason that Wiis were timed for this was because it was easier to test speeds by running CleanRip on a Wii than on a GameCube.
Also speedrunners have been using Wiis to get the faster reads anyway.
I'd honestly like itspersonnel (sorry if I misspelled your name, lazy right now and don't feel like scrolling back pages) to compare and see if it works in various parts of the game. The best way to fix a bug is to find the people that care about them the most; they'll do the most thorough job looking for problems.
