Progress Report: November 2018

Welcome to November’s Progress Report! As 2018 now comes to close, we hope you’re enjoying the holiday season. In this report, we will be detailing kd-11’s work on rewriting the FIFO and draw call processing which provides a noticeable improvement in performance in quite a few games. This month also saw the return of another long-time contributor, GalCiv whose contributions fixed a large number of regressions in multiple games. We also saw exclusive titles such as Gran Turismo 5 and MLB: The Show 16 go ingame for the first time on RPCS3. We’ve got lots to share so let’s jump straight into it!

In addition to the following report, further details of Nekotekina and kd-11’s work during November and upcoming contributions can be found in their weekly reports on Patreon. This month’s Patreon reports are:

Status update from Nekotekina (2018-11-04, part 2)
Status update from kd-11 (2018-11-08)
Status update from kd-11 (2018-11-24)
Status update from Nekotekina (2018-11-30)

Table of Contents

Major Improvements
Games
Other Improvements
Upcoming
Conclusion

For the first time, the percentage of games in the Ingame and Playable categories have risen above 80%. This marks yet another milestone in game compatibility for RPCS3. As the accuracy and performance improves, we will see this ratio improve even further! Thanks to the intensive testing done by our testers this month, 95 games were moved out of Intro and Loadable categories. Also, multiple duplicate titles across all categories were identified and merged, improving the overall accuracy of the compatibility list. Finally, the elusive Nothing category has dropped to just 4 games. For a more detailed look, you can view the compatibility history page to see exactly which games had their status changed this month.

Game Compatibility: Game Status
Game Compatibility: Monthly Improvements (November 2018)

On Git statistics, there have been 4,229 lines of code added and 1,843 removed through 30 pull requests by 11 authors.
Continue reading Progress Report: November 2018

Progress Report: October 2018

Welcome to October’s Progress Report! Thankfully, there have been no major delays in publishing this time around, and we hope to continue gradually closing the gap even further in the future.

On the other hand, since both of our main developers were busy this month doing heavy refactors and rewrites in the background, not all of the changes are ready to be showed off just yet. While Nekotekina’s current efforts aren’t about yielding direct and spectacular changes to begin with, we did do a write-up about kd’s changes and another graphics related PR from ruipin here in the Upcoming section below.

This isn’t to say that October was without any changes, as one entry of a cult-classic and previously PlayStation exclusive AAA series, Yakuza, just hit playable this month! For this, and more, let’s dive in and see what happened during the month!

In addition to the following report, further details of Nekotekina and kd-11’s work during October and their upcoming contributions can be found in their weekly reports on Patreon. This month’s Patreon reports are:

Status update from kd-11 (2018-10-07)
Status update from kd-11 (2018-10-21)
Status update from Nekotekina (2018-10-28, part 1)

Table of Contents

Major Improvements
Games
Other Improvements
Upcoming
Conclusion

Looking at the compatibility database, we can see the numbers continue to move in the right direction at a slow, but steady pace. Around 60 new games have been added to the Ingame and Playable categories, and several has transitioned up between those. Also, with the consistent bug fixes and accuracy improvements, our developers and contributors continue to chip away the Intro and Loadable categories, as well as improve the games of other categories. For further details, take a look at the compatibility history page to see which games in particular had their status’ changed during the month.

Game Compatibility: Game Status
Game Compatibility: Monthly Improvements (October 2018)

On Git statistics, there have been 4,128 lines of code added and 2,583 removed through 30 pull requests by 8 authors.
Continue reading Progress Report: October 2018

Progress Report: September 2018

Welcome to September’s progress report! Firstly, we would like to apologize for the delay. Our progress reports are written by voluntary writers and sadly most of them were unavailable to contribute this month. However, there is a silver lining here. The additional time we had gave us a unique opportunity to convert this month’s progress report into a technical exposition hybrid!

We’ll be featuring a deep dive into the inner workings of the texture cache in RPCS3, and how it was improved thanks to the contributions of ruipin and Nekotekina. We will also uncover the wide variety of improvements that kd-11 made and showcase some massive improvements to various AAA titles. Without further ado, let’s jump straight into September’s irregular progress report!

In addition to the following report, further details about Nekotekina’s and kd-11’s work during September and about their upcoming contributions can be found in their weekly reports on Patreon. The month’s Patreon reports were:

Status update from kd-11 (2018-09-10)
Status update from Nekotekina (2018-09-17)
Status update from kd-11 (2018-09-23)

Table of Contents

Major Improvements
Games
Other Improvements
Conclusion

In the compatibility database statistics, we can see all the numbers moving further in the right direction. The Ingame category has breached the 1300 games barrier while Playable continues to slowly raise due to the amount of time it takes to make a playable compatibility report. Intro also saw a decent reduction as a result of recent improvements and lots of testers making compatibility reports. For more details, take a look at the compatibility history page, to see which games in particular had their status’ changed during the month.

Game Compatibility: Game Status
Game Compatibility: Monthly Improvements (September 2018)

On Git statistics, there have been 10,178 lines of code added and 6,751 removed through 53 pull requests by 12 authors.
Continue reading Progress Report: September 2018

Progress Report: August 2018

August has been an amazing month for RPCS3 as we crossed multiple new milestones. This month saw massive performance improvements to many AAA titles, accuracy and performance enhancements to SPU LLVM, support for C++ 2017, laying the foundation for macOS support and much more!

In addition to the following report, further details of Nekotekina and kd-11’s work during August and upcoming contributions can be found in their weekly reports on Patreon. This month’s Patreon reports are:

Status update from kd-11 (2018-08-09)
AAA PR Update
Status update from kd-11 (2018-08-21)
Status update from Nekotekina (2018-08-30)

Table of Contents

Major Improvements
Games
Commits
Upcoming
Conclusion

The Playable category has finally crossed 1,000 titles milestone! Considering that this time last year, the Playable category was only a little over 400, it truly demonstrates the amazing pace of development. For all other categories, we can see the metrics moving in the right direction with the elusive Nothing category dropping by 1, with only 5 games remaining in it. For a more detailed look, you can view the compatibility history page to see exactly which games had their status changed this month.

Game Compatibility: Game Status
Game Compatibility: Monthly Improvements (August 2018)

On Git statistics, there have been 7,086 lines of code added and 4,298 removed through 127 commits by 21 authors.
Continue reading Progress Report: August 2018

Progress Report: July 2018

This month has seen major improvements to the SPU LLVM recompiler and RSX emulation as well as implementation of new features such as a user manager and a refreshed UI design, among many other improvements and additions.

In addition to the following report, further details of Nekotekina and kd-11’s work during July and upcoming contributions can be found in their weekly reports on Patreon. This month’s Patreon reports are:

Status update from kd-11 (2018-07-05)
Status update from Nekotekina (2018-07-12)
Status update from kd-11 (2018-07-21)
Status update from Nekotekina (2018-07-30)

Table of Contents

Major Improvements
Games
Commits
Conclusion

Game Compatibility: Game Status
Game Compatibility: Monthly Improvements (July 2018)

On Git statistics, there have been 8 047 lines of code added and 4 671 removed through 135 commits by 12 authors.
Continue reading Progress Report: July 2018

Progress Report: June 2018

In addition to the following report, further details of Nekotekina and kd-11’s work during June and upcoming contributions can be found in their weekly reports on Patreon. This month’s Patreon reports are:

Status update from kd-11 (2018-06-05)
Status update from Nekotekina (2018-06-12)
Status update from kd-11 (2018-06-20)
Status update from Nekotekina (2018-06-27)

Table of Contents

Major Improvements
Games
Commits
Upcoming
Conclusion

On compatibility database statistics, we can see a big decrease in Loadable games due to several recent changes targeting issues that kept those games from progressing further. The Nothing category also went down by 2 games, with only 6 games remaining in it.

Game Compatibility: Game Status
Game Compatibility: Monthly Improvements (June 2018)

On Git statistics, there have been 16 605 lines of code added and 10 558 removed through 135 commits by 21 authors.
Continue reading Progress Report: June 2018

Progress Report: May 2018

RPCS3 continues to see major improvements over the month of May, with Nekotekina implementing SPU LLVM (still WiP) and kd-11 continuing with improvements to RPCS3’s RSX emulation. More major AAA exclusives have also started to go ingame for the first time! We also saw new contributors join in and make much appreciated improvements to RPCS3.

In addition to the following report, further details of Nekotekina and kd-11’s work during May and upcoming contributions can be found in their weekly reports on Patreon. This month’s Patreon reports are:

Status update from kd-11 (2018-05-05)
Status update from Nekotekina (2018-05-14)
Status update from kd-11 (2018-05-20)
Status update from Nekotekina (2018-05-29)

Table of Contents

Major Improvements
Games
Commits
Conclusion

The Nothing category is now at an all-time low, reducing by just over half, work is already being done to make this category shrink even further! The Playable category has had another nice increase, as more Playable titles were found. Furthermore, many entries for the same Game Media on the list were merged (due to new reports for different regions being submitted these past months), so the overall game count has decreased, even though there were new unique submissions. For a more detailed look, you can view the compatibility history page to see exactly which games had their status changed this month.

Game Compatibility: Game Status
Game Compatibility: Monthly Improvements (May 2018)

On Git statistics, 23 166 lines of code were added and 6 732 were removed by 17 authors.
Continue reading Progress Report: May 2018

Progress Report: April 2018

April has been a month full of advancements in nearly every aspect of RPCS3. Performance boosts, graphics fixes, and compatibility improvements are plentiful.

Table of Contents

Major Improvements
Games
Commits
Conclusion

On Compatibility statistics, we can see a huge increase in Playable titles. A lot of games were retested, and many Ingame or below ones were found to now be Playable. There was also a considerable decrease on the amount of Loadable games and a slight increase in games classified as Nothing, as new games were added into the category.

Game Compatibility: Game Status
Game Compatibility: Monthly Improvements (April 2018)

On Git statistics, 7 018 lines of code were added and 4 535 were removed by 12 authors.
Continue reading Progress Report: April 2018

Progress Report: March 2018

March has been an amazing month full of progress for RPCS3. This month marks the first time that games in the “Nothing” category fell beneath 1%! We had massive strides in graphical accuracy, along with improvements in SPU performance and game compatiblity. From giant pull requests that generated tons of hype, to a small typo fix that had unexpectedly wide-ranging impacts, this month has had it all.

Table of Contents

Major Improvements
Games
Commits

Below are the usual compatibility database statistics, with all metrics moving in the right direction. The tiny number of games left in the Nothing category is quite exciting, especially considering this was the largest category not long ago.

Game Compatibility: Game Status
Game Compatibility: Monthly Improvements (March 2018)

Continue reading Progress Report: March 2018

Progress Report: February 2018

RPCS3 has reached version 0.0.5! The full change log since 0.0.4 can be read here, but the highlights are massively improved compatibility (nothing section is down to 1.34%!), better AVX-512 and AVX2, as well as input improvements and profiles.
We also saw the end of PSP2 emulation in RPCS3. While it remains alive in a separate branch, the Vita emulator has been removed from master in light of the Vita3K project.
kd-11 also implemented a native user interface, allowing for games to be played fully with a controller, with the small exception of the on-screen keyboard, which doesn’t exist yet.

This report will focus on the changes that happened in February, which include some exciting work slimming down the nothing and loadable sections. RPCS3 is within reach of having every tested PS3 game be at least in the loadable section, if not the intro section!

Table of Contents

Major Improvements
Games
Commits
Upcoming
Conclusion

On compatibility database statistics, there’s not a big difference from last month as less games were tested, even though there were massive changes to the emulator (expect a beefier March report!). We can see an overall ~0.20% decrease on all categories except Ingame, which increases by ~0.80%. Note that we currently only have 34 games left on Nothing, and plan on making that number even smaller very soon!

Game Compatibility: Game Status
Game Compatibility: Monthly Improvements (February 2018)

On GitHub statistics, 6 939 lines of code were added and 36 937 were removed through 43 Pull Requests by a total of 15 authors.
Continue reading Progress Report: February 2018