The framerate lock makes the game feel really, really bad. The PS2 version feels far better, and it runs at 30FPS! But PC version runs at 30 too, right? Well... I went through captures of both the PC and PS2 (emulated) versions, and it seems the PC version has some crazy stuttering. Frames coming out at strange intervals. After going through Fraps' framerate logs, it seems that the PC version actually runs at 29FPS. That's terrible! Why would they do that? Even with triple buffering and vertical sync both on and off, it runs at a solid 29FPS. For reference, an average PC monitor runs at 60 refreshes a second. 60 divides into 30 quite nicely. 29, however, does not play ball so well. In order to prevent sensationalism in the case that my neophyte testing skills prove to have produced inaccurate results, I must note that I'm not a pro analyst-type dude. But if my readings are correct, this game is absolutely fucked, and I can only hope this is something that they can fix with a patch; especially one that shifts the framerate up to a good 60FPS.
I've had no problems playing this on my PC. Granted my PC is also hooked up to my TV and I've a feeling you're just used to a certain framerate on your monitor. I've had no issues regarding stuttering video or anything like that.
29fps would be NTSC 29.97, which is half the speed the console game ran at, and most PC monitors don't even display 60hz properly but display uneven between 60-61hz (despite saying 60hz). So of course it is laggy if it tries to straight copy the console framerate.
I should clarify this. Here are the averages collected from the benchmark. Opening Demo: Frames Time (ms) Min Max Avg 577 19781 28 31 29.169 Normal test: Frames Time (ms) Min Max Avg 1683 58016 28 30 29.009 Saturn Mode test: Frames Time (ms) Min Max Avg 5497 190063 28 30 28.922 The 30FPS spikes only happened ten or so times in the Saturn test. Either way, it seems to me that either the game is just set to 29FPS or is somehow trying to go at 29.97 and just rounding it down for whatever reason.
Bahaha, this shit just gets worse. Everyone else uses 360 degrees; Modern Sega uses 24. Everyone else uses 30 FPS; Modern Sega uses 29.
You are looking at the numbers the wrong way. 1. The game was originally made to run on a machine capped at 59.94hz, and on that it ran, apparently, half of that. Not factoring in random slowdowns on more excessive places (last time I played, the game was jerky as fuck on the Saturn) 2. They ported that to PS2, from there to X360, and from there to PC. Who knows what framerate optimizations they did when doing that. For simplicities sake lets assume an even 30fps, even though that's likely wrong. (PS2 also ran at 59.94 due to ntsc compatibility, x360 I imagine can do whichever with hdmi) 3. pc monitors usually don't do proper 60hz but some odd number like 60.64891165165498491hz or so. If you have a monitor that does proper 60hz, then congrats, but the majority of TN panels don't do that. 4. factor in driver issues, vsync/triple buffering, background services, power management, driver polling, and so on. So you have a game that might run in 30fps, on a system that inherently cannot run at a straight 60fps unless there is an unnatural alignment of stars and/or the gods are smiling down on you. Vsync alone would round down your frames to begin with, and on top of that you might have driver lag, your monitor might not be running real 60hz (and the game is trying to sync to THAT), you could be running a radeon that has no drivers or a geforce that cooks itself, Windows might decide to do a windows update check, you might get a video call on skype while playing, and so on and on and on. From your numbers it seems to me that it's trying to target 30fps, but for any number of reasons it cannot always hit that target, and instead of displaying half frames it just skips a frame completely to stay in sync. You probably have vsync or triple buffering on, but I wouldn't be surprised if it would act up without that too as it has a built-in frame limit. Any other PC games might not be able to hit straight 30 or 60 fps either, and that is one of the reason why pro gamers play with vsync off: the game doesn't round off half frames, so in turn they have less frame lag and ever so slightly smoother framerate, but in return there is screen tearing.
Slowdowns? How does that apply to the PC version? My computer is not indecent. Mysterious framerate optimisations? Okay, so the game's "optimised" to run at 29.97FPS... but doesn't. Huh? Monitor not running right? Well, either feel free to find a system with a proper 60hz monitor that the game can run at a proper 30FPS on, or provide a better explanation of why this runs conversely to every other 30FPS game I can remember playing in recent memory. Plus, I don't recall this being a problem with Sonic Adventure 2, which was (seemingly) ported by the same people, and likely uses framerate limiting code that works the same way. C'mon, man. The stuttering might somehow be an artefact from my computer, sure, but that doesn't tell me anything about why the numbers would be wrong, just that apparently I'm doing something wrong and the game feeling weird is just my problem. But what? You aren't really suggesting any aside from "something is going wrong/you are reading it wrong/clearly you are running a billion programs in the background which limits the FPS". I tested with both of those on and off, and there was no difference. If the game is doing some weird vertical sync that limits it to 29FPS instead of 30, then that's still a problem! But it doesn't happen with other games. That's kinda important, here. I'm afraid your points fail to strike any chords with me, nor help me understand this supposedly tangled mess of a problem that is either just one value being screwed up or a number of different factors contributing in a way that happens with no other game I've played before. Occam's Razor comes into play here, I reckon.
Well yeah NiGHTS into Dreams runs with lots of stutters. While Sonic Generations runs perfectly. It's a shame
Sorry for the double post, but this is very important. I decided to download the PS2 version of Nights into dreams... It runs @60fps (interlaced) (59~61) (at least on PCSX2 and feels a lot smoother) and looks better (in this case it looks a bit pixelated because the resolution of textured 3d models only enhances with anti aliasing, weird and I'm with only 4x antialiasing):
I put this game on my Steam wishlist and a friend got it for me not twenty minutes later. Unlike many of the folk here, this is my first time playing NiGHTS. My thoughts: -Stuttery and terrible port. My graphics card isn't exactly the greatest, but a GTS 250 really should be able to maintain 60fps in this easily. -By the time I beat the first boss, I still wasn't really clear on how to play. But it's so soothing I don't care. Endless ocean can eat my dust. -No, but seriously, how do you advance in the game? I gather it's related to that gate thing, because sometimes it grades me and changes my direction, and sometimes it sends me up into the sky to a boss, and sometimes it loops me around where I came from. What is the pattern? -Running at 1680x1050, it appears slightly stretched. Does this game run at 16:9 regardless of chosen resolution, or am I just seeing things? -3D platforming in this game is seriously annoying.
Does the PC version come with the How to Play option like the other versions? It should clear things right up. In any case, every dream (level) is broken up into four courses/mares (circuits). A course is over when you've overloaded the Ideya Capture with 20 blue chips and brought the Ideya back to the Palace (gate thing), thus you rank highly by flying OVER the Palace after getting the Ideya and scoring as much as possible while still flying into it before time runs out (which will zero out your course score). You'll face the boss after all four courses, and then open up the next level; rinse and repeat with the exception that you need overall grades of C or better in every dream for a character for his/her last level.
Well, it's the first boss and it's quite noticeable o.o The people who tested the game had to compare it with the original version at least...
Well, the lighting on the scenery and Nights is there, why just leave the monster with flat lighting? It integrates everything better:
The game does indeed stretch to 16:9 regardless of your resolution, which is a crying shame seeing that the SA2 port would handle any resolution you throw at it with no stretching.
Gillwing looks less... plastic-y(?) without the shading, I think. More importantly, can this game be hacked wide open like SA2 was? Lots of things could be fixed with it.
I think I know what Ayu means about the shade-less plastic look... I'm not sure if I feel it looks any better or worse personally... Without the shading, I feel like there's a slight bit more uniformity to Gillwing's overall appearance. That said, he looks out-of-place being in the same scene as Nights, who clearly has shading applied. With shading, the polygons on the tail stick out like a sore thumb to me. This makes his overall appearance seem inconsistent at best. On the upside, he does generally 'fit' into the scene better, tail aside. Having said all that, background objects look identical to me. Is there any difference in the lighting and shading for non-characters? I'd prefer the PS2's shading, if only because now I know it's supposed to be there -- wait, I forget, does the original Saturn version have shading as well?
Yes, but it's less complex: Depending on the position of the monster it's very similar to the PS2 lighting: You can see the lighting is absent from the Saturn dreams too on the HD version:
