play! progress report + ares compatibility report (08/2023)
play! progress report
As mentioned in the last report, this last month started focused on fixing From Software games related issues, but things went much better than what I've expected. Our journey started with me randomly thinking "yes, I would like to suffer, so what should I play for this entire month...".
First game that came to mind was Shadow Tower Abyss. And here I've found our first issue: as soon as you try to walk down the stairs at the start of the game, it hangs. Issue reported and 1 day after it was fixed by taking down two specific problems: handling PSMZ16S framebuffer type and implementing NOWAIT mode in IOP SifCallRpc. With that fixed, all that was left was... to finish the game, and oh boy that was another kind of pain. In the first few areas you'll face the usual headaches (weapon durability, armor durability... rings breaking from just some few uses...), but after some time: you're a god that regenerates more HP than enemies can damage, and you're carrying a sword, an AR-15 and a rocket launcher. Game finished, final boss could barely touch me... let's do it again! Yes, this game has a New Game+, but isn't the usual New Game+ you would expect from playing something like Dark Souls: enemies aren't stronger and yet you keep all your status and equipment from the first playthrough. So not only you can humiliate those enemies that killed you in 3 hits at the start of the game, but you'll also notice many new items (even more powerful) are placed all around the world for you to be even more overpowered.
Ok From Software, what's next? Armored Core, off course! Starting with Armored Core 2, had some fun at the first few missions... then the first gamebreaking issue showed up: the first mission that had lava as part of the scenario not only caused me to die, it killed the performance so much I wouldn't be able to even explore the arena properly. I've noticed that disabling the option GS RAM Reads in the emulator made the performance go back to normal, but the price of that was textures not rendering properly and many needed elements of the game just not being visible. The solution for having our cake and eating it too was: async GS memory readbacks. With this implemented, we no longer had visual issues, performance was great and I could suffer with the final missions kicking my ass over and over again. And even better: GS RAM Reads was a major performance hit in many games, so this means that a ton of other games should be running much better as well.
Next was Armored Core 2 Another Age: no gamebreaking emulation issues here, the only problem I had was it's length, since the game has around 100 missions (which you need to finish every single one to end it properly). All that done, I've started Armored Core 3 and found a gamebreaking issue right at the first mission: performance would tank hard with GS RAM Reads enabled. Wait a second... wasn't that just fixed for Armored Core 2? Well, yes, but PS2 games can do weird things and this demanded some specific optimizations. Performance is good again and... sorry, I just didn't had the time to finish the game yet, but it's on my list for the next month/report.
The improvements from those games also fixed performance issues in Ape Escape 3 (which uses GS RAM Reads for screens/TVs in some levels), so I took the oportunity to finally finish it. As I was curious, Ape Escape 2 was also tested and I've found a gamebreaking issue halfway into a boss fight (the game just froze). The problem was fixed with the implementation of iResumeThread, which allowed me to finish the entire game. In this case, the game will not be promoted to playable status yet as there's some very distracting visual issues left to fix (probably related to mipmapping), but it's a major progress nevertheless.
Outrun 2006 - Coast 2 Coast was another game that was painfully slow with GS RAM Reads enabled, but unplayable if it was disabled due to breaking all the menus. With the async implementation, I was able to finish the entire game with only some minor visual issues left to be fixed.
Best part: this isn't nearly half of the games that became playable or improved in some major way this month, you can check the entire list in order of newest to oldest at this link.
ares compatibility report
Nintendo 64 had some nice improments, so I had to poke at some game there as well. Regardless of the games mentioned as verified, I've checked many others but still didn't had the time to finish them, those will come in time (probably next month).
Nintendo 64 verified playable games:
Star Fox 64 (Japan)
Star Fox 64 (USA)
Bust-A-Move 2 - Arcade Edition (Europe)
GBA verified playable games:
Street Fighter Alpha 3 (USA)
Super Puzzle Fighter II (USA) (Rev 1)
Super Puzzle Fighter II (Europe)
Tetris Worlds (Japan) (Rev 1)
For next month: regression hunting for play! while still trying to find everything that improved (which is a lot) and GBA+N64 testing for ares. Stay tuned!
Useful links
ares site: https://ares-emu.net/
ares compatibility lists: https://ares-emu.net/compatibility
Luke Usher (project's main maintainer/leader): https://www.patreon.com/LukeUsher
Play!'s official site: https://purei.org/
Play!'s developer: https://www.patreon.com/jpd002
Play!'s compatibility tracker: https://github.com/jpd002/Play-Compatibility/issues