laureladastra/mcdub3-nx v0.5.0

mcdub3-nx v0.5.0

on GitHub

A big speed update for both games on the Switch. Races, especially in the rain, now run close to the game's own top speed of 30 FPS most of the time. Freezes during races are minimised.

Features

• Measured in rain races on the Switch (at the default 1x picture size):

  	v0.4.0	v0.5.0
  Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition	23 frames per second	28.5
  Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition Remix	20.5 frames per second	27.5

  The game itself never runs faster than 30, as on the original Xbox, so most of the time you are now at or near full speed.

• No more half-second freezes in races. The game stopped for about half a second now and then during a race, most often right after the start.

• Sharper look for less effort (Remix). The Remix's glow and blur effects are drawn at normal size even when you raise the picture size, which cost a lot of speed for something that is blurred anyway.

Other changes

• Each game now has its own tuned graphics settings, so improving one game does not change the other.
• Saves can be copied between the Switch and a computer for the Remix too (make save-sync-down GAME=remix).
• Fewer files are written to the SD card at every start (some leftover diagnostic files are no longer created; you can delete any progcache-slow files you find).
• For developers: a much more detailed performance report with MC3_PERF=2 (time per part of a frame, on the processor and the graphics chip, and why draws could not be combined).

Tips

• Remix: keep the picture size at 1 (RECOMP_GL_SCALE=1 in mcdub3remix_env.txt). Higher values still cost the Remix more than the DUB Edition.
• After updating, the first race or two may stutter briefly while the game prepares its graphics again. This settles once the file progcache.bin has been rebuilt; don't delete it afterwards.

⚠️ Known issues

• Remix: in the busiest parts of the city at high speed, the Remix's wide speed camera shows far more buildings than usual and the game can drop to around 12 frames per second for a few seconds; your car then feels slower too. This is the next thing being worked on.
• Right after a race starts, the game can still pause for about half a second while it loads the race's textures.

Build 0.5.0+6.435b9d6, commit 435b9d6.