Visualboyadvance Slowdown

[MRSKELETON]

So far while playing Boktai, any areas that have lots of enemies in them always slow down alot, I'd usually solve this by turning music off instead of muting it but then I have to do it everytime I switch areas, and it's a huge pain.

[YourAverageJoe]

Well I remember playing Boktai 2 on my DS via GBA slot and it tended to lag in large areas.

[Haz]

Due to some uptight people, this should go in emulation =P

But to answer that, you try increasing the frameskip?

[Shellshock]

Or buying a faster computer.

[YourAverageJoe]

Or updating your emulator?

[MRSKELETON]

I've updated my emulator and increasing the frameskip makes it laggy, I dont think it's a PC problem because I can run games like Battlefield 2142 and TF2 with no problems.

[greenlink21]

What OS are you using? I've had slowdown problems with it on Vista, and changing the skin from Windows Vista Areo to Windows Vista Basic helped.

You could also mess with the Render Method and see if you can get more speed by going into Options -> Video -> Render Method; the default should be DirectDraw and the other options are GDI, Direct3D, and OpenGL.

[Malroth]

I don't suppose you're surfing the net while playing? A lot of banner ads on websites have a tendency to screw with emulators.

[ReyVGM]

What VBA version are you using?
I suggest you use version 1.2 which was really fast and stable or use k54 1.8 build.

[Revolver Ocelot]

I've been having some problems with VBA as well. I've tried the Collector's Edition which was supposed to be optimized for slower PCs but it's been giving me some trouble too. I also don't have any problems running middle-ground 3D PC games, but for some reason, when I'm playing GBA games, the music sometimes gets scratchy at regular intervals. I'm thinking this problem is tied to the speed. When I enable the clock, the game constantly fluctuates between 100% and 95-96%, and it's when it dips into those mid-90s that the music starts getting ugly.

I've tried everything to make it run faster, like running it at the lowest resolution, turning off all filters, disabling stretch, switching between DDraw and D3D, setting the music to the lowest sample rate, increasing the frame skip or setting it to auto, etc., but no luck. The emulator tends to run best when I just take out frameskip entirely. I have a 3.93ghz processor.. so.. I don't think I should be having these problems.

[Yuan]

Play the game on the original hardware.

There are some games that have emulation slowdown (you can easily tell because the music which is normally in a format like s3m does NOT slow down, and that would make no sense because the GBA has no dedicated separate sound hardware like the SFamicom, which did have instances of slow gameplay/normal music).

Metroid Zero Mission has parts that slow down in emulation, but not on the GBA. Frameskip or anything won't imprve it because they are errors in emulation. I heard that some folks are updating the VBA emulator which was left there untouched by its author for a very long time, so if you're lucky the quirks like sound pops and corrected video modes might be fixed sometime soon. As for emulation accuracy, I'm not sure if that part will be addressed soon.

[Revolver Ocelot]

yuan said:

Play the game on the original hardware.

Yeah.. I'll take the choppy music over playing it on that microscophic screen.

[Revolver Ocelot]

reyvgm said:

What VBA version are you using?
I suggest you use version 1.2 which was really fast and stable or use k54 1.8 build.

Tried both of these. K54 1.8 is actually worse than the Collector's Edition, and the 1.2 version is the best so far but it still does it, just not for as long. Are their any faster builds?

[ReyVGM]

As far as I remember version 1.2 was the last one with really great speeds until it went downhill after that.

Version 1.7 is pretty nice too if you don't want to use an older version.
But if you want a VBA without that sound crackling, then you're out of luck. I still haven't seen one with that fixed even though some have claimed to have done it.

What that sound routine needs is one big overhaul.

[butanebob]

Or buying a faster computer.

Good one.....

VBA seems to have slowdown on many games where it shouldn't, there's not much you can do about it.

so if you're lucky the quirks like sound pops and corrected video modes might be fixed sometime soon.

There is a project underway that is aiming at combining all the different versions (unofficial included) of VBA into 1 tidy emulator, that way you get all the features in one. Unfortunately it's not out yet.