Fast forward not going fast

RetroArch Android devices
#1

I have some questions about how the fast forward feature works.

You see, on my PC, the fast forward functions multiplies the speed by probably 3 or 4 times, but on my android device, I only get a speed increase of about 5%. This happens on all cores.

My questions are

  1. does the fast forward function work based on the processing power of my device? Is it a minor boost because the emulation itself is already maxing out my device?

  2. is there a way to increase the fast forward speed on my device?

  3. is there a way to slow down the fast forward speed in my PC? ( I’m using the fast forward to make grinding in an RPG go a little faster, but at the speed It is now, the character movement is uncontrollable)

#2

FF in RetroArch is really just disabling vsync and letting the emulation run as fast as possible. If it’s not going much faster, it’s because your device is already running at close to top speed, as you suspected.

On your PC, you can go into settings > frame throttle and set the max run speed to something like 2-3x, which will still be faster but more manageable.

#3

Thanks. That’s a great help.

Is that information in any of the documentation? I tried looking for it, but maybe I didn’t do the right search.

#4

Not sure. Probably not. Documentation isn’t really our strongest suit.

#5

If your Android device is not strong enough or stuck with bad chip drivers/throttling while you have shader enhancements on with rewind enabled,that may be the cause of your ineffective fast forwarding,or you possibly changed some settings that prevent it from working properly.

Cores like NES and the fastest equivalent of the SNES cores should definitely be able to hit higher speeds (despite native game lag),mostly even with all of that other stuff enabled too. Maybe you are using a shader at high scale that it can barely handle along with rewind,usually many devices tend to struggle with both enabled in most cases,so try to see how fast you can get it by disabling rewind and taking off any shaders you have enabled if you have some on. If it still refuses to go faster than 5% more,then the problem is related to something else entirely,hope this helps if its causing the issue.

#6

See, I thought that might be the case, so I disabled everything that I thought was unnecessary, shaders, rewind, video filters, but it didn’t help. I turned the frame throttle up to 10x, but that didn’t help, turned a bunch of video settings on, then off again, trying to see if any of them were holding me back, and didn’t see any change. I think it’s most likely like hunterk said, my discount phone just doesn’t have enough juice to fast forward.

#7

Perhaps it is over-zealous throttling that’s causing your issue,or a really strong VI limiter on the phone. Did you try outright disabling Vsync in RetroArch?

Maybe do that and try enabling Hard GPU Sync to see if that does anything for your situation,if not,then revert those changes and try to have fun without fast forward.

#9

I’ve tried a number of different things with the video settings, always setting them back if they don’t make any visible difference.

For the record: Phone - Sky Devices Sky 5.0q Game - Earthbound Core - vanilla Snez9.x

I haven’t had much luck with bsnes or mercury, so I kinda like to stick to what I know. But would maybe switching to mercury accuracy help at all?

#10

No, any of the bsnes varieties will be much, much slower than any of the snes9xes. The older the snes9x version, the faster it should run (e.g., 2003 vs 2005).

#11

Thanks!

I guess I’ll just have to transfer my saves to my PC when I wanna grind quickly.

#12

Earthbound has native lag (especially with all 4 party members and a teddy bear) that can make it difficult to fast forward,and using older versions of SNES emulators will more likely cause increased encounter rates due to anti-yarhar measures,lagging the game out more often while making it much more difficult.

Any chance you ever tried coughToby’scough Earthbound Halloween Hack or Arn’s Winter Quest via the patches?

#13

[QUOTE=retroben;47984] Any chance you ever tried coughToby’scough Earthbound Halloween Hack or Arn’s Winter Quest via the patches?[/QUOTE]

Actually, I did just play the Halloween Hack, and that’s what made me wanna play through earthbound again.

I’ve discovered recently that I really enjoy what I like to call “grindtastic runs” when I replay some RPGs. I pick something that is a good indicator of when I should stop grinding, and grind until that happens before I progress the story much farther. In earthbound my indicator that I’ve done enough is when the bad guys all start fleeing from me and when I can instakill any green encounters in the area. In FFV I use the jobs, get new jobs, can’t progress until I’ve mastered all jobs with all characters. Makes the games last longer.

#14

Arn’s Winter Quest holds the missing piece for a certain theorist unless he already played through it to get footage. There’s a few familiarly themed enemies,a certain “annoying” encounter with funny results,and the final boss is quite difficult.

#15

I’ll have to keep that in mind. Thanks.