Satourne Speed Guide

After messing around with Satourne's settings last nite (and getting my very first whiff of Daytona USA running on it) I decided that there may be the need for a little FAQ on how to speed up the games running on it. I am sure this is far from complete and there are tons of possibilites to add, but this is it for now.

First of all, here are my specs:

Athlon XP 1800+
256 MB RAM
GeForce2 MX
40 GB Maxtor HDD 7200 RPM
Windows XP Pro

Note that this FAQ is meant for satourne-debugger-dynarec-v01102002 (english). All referrals are made to this version (Get it at http://saturn.emulation64.com/emus/s...1102002_en.zip).


Texture Cache

There are certain optimizations that do not affect visual quality. They don't bring as much speed as those that decrease it tho, so you may need to live with lower quality in the game in order to play it.

Your first optimization should be enabling the texture memory cache, to do this go to

VDP1 --> Texture Cache --> Always active

Master SH2

Another effective way to speed up the emulation is setting the Master SH2 frequency. This however decreases the visual quality. I have fooled around with it a bit and till up to around 17-20Hz the quality is still ok.

To set the Master SH2 frequency, go to

Master SH2 --> SH Frequency

VDP1

Ok, this is not really a valid idea because it virtually makes the games unplayable, but still ... the VDP1 options allow you to disable objects such as Sprites or Polygons. Needless to say you will be missing some stuff in the game, but it may be neat for experimential purposes

VDP1 --> Disable --> ...

VDP2

This is a very effective way I have found. It decreases visual quality but the effects are fairly moderate compared to disabling stuff in the VDP1.

By disabling the various "NBG" options, you turn off special effects. This creates a high speed increase but you have to go easy with them because turning off certain ones may crash your game.

Example: Disabling "NBG3" in Daytona USA causes the game to freeze and reset during the intro.


With those optimizations, I was able to get Satourne to run games at playable (approximately 50 fps) speed

That's all for now, soldiers. Any feedback and additions appreciated

And those are what I actually did and got 60+ fps in Daytona USA and Panzer Dragoon..

Only 30 fps in Radiant Silvergun though.. No matter what fiddling I did..

I posted some shots I made at ngemu.com

http://www.ngemu.com/forums/showthre...threadid=26494

what can i do about an error on satourne that i get? it says

Oppcode invalid (SH2 Maitre)

what can i do about an error on satourne that i get? it says
Oppcode invalid (SH2 Maitre)

You can't do anything. It just means that the game isn't supported yet.

Oh yes, actually you can do something : wait for a new version. (Sorry :innocent: )

Originally posted by kuz
what can i do about an error on satourne that i get? it says

Oppcode invalid (SH2 Maitre)

Does that happen with everygame? You will get that error too if you don't have a proper bios file.. Should be about 512 kbytes and be named "Saturn_bios.bin"..

I'll give it a try and see how Sonic Jam runs (will it start?)

I know it's been a while since I was here, a very long while in fact, but hey! I was curious! Plus I got Burning Rangers for £77 and want to emulate it lol

I think we need to get up a compatibilty list. BTW, for those curious, Guardian Heroes runs up to where the movie would play, then drops to about 10-17FPS and doesn't move. A real bummer as its my favorite game

Good luck with Burning Rangers...it's an awesome game

Originally posted by MihoKiyo
I think we need to get up a compatibilty list.

yeah, it seems like time has cometh to start compiling one since speed is increasing dramatically. in the past you had to feel like lying when saying "playable" to a game that runs at 5 fps ...

I followed the speed guide, and I'm trying to plat Radiant Silvergun ST-V, but after it runs through all the warnings and patent screens, the screen size goes up, and the FPS drops to 10.

Any ideas?

Also, how can I bind buttons on my gamepad? When I click on a section I want to map, it changes from '???' to 'on mappab'

my PC Stats:

AthlonXP 2100+
512MB 333 Ram
Radeon8500 64MB
WinXP
Gamepad: Xbox Controller & Saitek P750

Thanks

Satourne doesn't support all games. It did the same with me for Guardian Heroes. You'll have better luck running it on SSF with Frame skip