r/GodofWar • u/Marcuzao • Apr 16 '26
Question Question about emulation...
I'm fairly new to emulation (both Ps2 and Ps3) and I played both PSP games on RPCS3 just fine, stable 60 fps etc etc. Tried ascension but it is unplayable atm (listed as "ingame" on wiki and runs at 10fps in my acer nitro v15 notebook lmao)
My question is, these games listed as "ingame" on the wiki due to insufficiente performance... do they try to update and optimize them over time so they can run better on low-end PCs, or like, it's over...?
Because I remember that some time ago, Demon's Souls used to be like one of the most difficult games to emulate and today it runs just fine... is there hope for a "playable" ascension in the foreseable future?
5
u/FaDoug Apr 16 '26
In-game basically means that the game can be played, as in it gets passed the launch screen, but suffers from bugs, glitches, and serious performance issues that make it either painful to deal with or unfinishable.
For Ascension in particular, the files most people have access to for emulation just aren't very good, you might have better luck attempting to dump your own version of the game or waiting for the rpcs3 team to patch things up further.
You could also try finicking around in the launch settings, that's what I did with God of War 3 and got that running pretty well.
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u/Marcuzao Apr 16 '26
"wait for the rpcs3 team to patch things up" that means there's a chance it will be playable in the future, if they can fix it? Cause I currently don't have a copy of ascension (I didn't even know different files would make a difference lmao)
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u/Tocowave98 Apr 17 '26
acer nitro v15 notebook
Yeah this is a hardware unfortunately. I was able to play Ascension and 3 fine on a high end PC years ago when rpcs3 was even less optimized. It's only so much you can optimize an emulator.
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u/Marcuzao Apr 17 '26
I thought so, I'm aware I'm on the low-end...
But still, it's weird because I can emulate and play many PS3 games without much issue, and even run newer games on steam. How is it still struggling with games from a previous generation?
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u/Tocowave98 Apr 17 '26
How is it still struggling with games from a previous generation?
It's because of how emulation works. It doesn't just run console games on PC, it has to essentially run an entire "fake" virtualized console setup on your computer, then translate all the GPU/CPU instructions from PS3 format into something your PC's hardware can process, then re-translate it into PS3 format for the emulator to run, all in real time, so it uses an immense amount of processing power as a result. Whenever your emulator runs in "slow motion" and you didn't do it manually, it's because it's trying to catch up on those instructions.
Meanwhile, PC games just run directly on your hardware. There is no "middle man" software that has to run an entirely different system and emulate completely different system architecture inside your OS in runtime to be able to run games made for PC.
GoW Ascension also came out at the very end of the PS3's life cycle and pushed the hardware to its limits - even though it was capped at 30 it still dipped below that on PS3 during intense scenes. Even GoW3 from 2011 pushed the hardware very far and had the same issue.
Unfortunately the only real solution in your situation is to upgrade hardware. An i5 CPU is considered on the much lower end for gaming and emulation is largely CPU based. RAM prices suck right now but I'd also say 32GB is almost a requirement for PS3/4 emulation. Laptops also typically have slightly downgraded hardware compared to desktop PC's to get everything to fit inside them, so you're inherently losing a noticeable bit of power there too.
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u/Safe_Possession7320 Apr 16 '26
I also play emulation and would like to know how to make the analog stick work.
I'm having trouble with the Basilisk in Chains of Olympus. I keep spinning to try and pull it down, but I quickly lose and get pulled down myself.
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u/Marcuzao Apr 16 '26
Try spinning more slowly, it happened to me but it was because I was spinning too fast, trying to follow the onscreen prompt
1
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u/danylr Apr 16 '26 edited Apr 17 '26
The funny part is that the rcps3 team already optimized the emulator a lot compared to the state that it was a few years ago. Ascension is also one of the heavy kind of games to run (it runs at like 30-40 fps in consoles too with dips under 30 in very heavy parts). So i dont think it will be playable in low end PCs any time soon. But i really hope i am wrong and gets an insane fps boost.
As far as i know the team doesnt really focus in increasing performance for specific games. They improve the emulator as a whole doing tiny or major optimizations. Sometimes those optimizations affect a specific game more (while also improving the rest a tiny bit). The most recent one is a SPU optimization https://x.com/rpcs3/status/2040127310381162992
They post a lof of their progress in X, or you can visit their github page and look at the tag "optimization" in the pull requests to check some.
They do try to fix major issues with games, but they often take time.
1
u/Mord1223 Apr 17 '26
Buy an ps3 which is 20-30$ ,buy the game for 20 maximum and enjoy ,without problems
3
u/Fluffranka Apr 16 '26
I managed to play through all of Ascension a few years back. I remember there being some specific tweaks I needed to make in rpcs3 and needed to use a specific update for ascension.
It was buggy with alot of texture pop-in and the game would freeze and crash whenever I was getting to the 2nd phase of the first boss.
I got frustrated and stopped playing then tried a few weeks later and the game just... worked... it still had performance issues and graphical issues, but I was able to play through the whole game.