Dialog during gameplay (not cutscenes) causes frame rate to drop sharply

[jeffreytwoods2]

Acknowledgements

• I have searched for duplicate or closed bug reports
• I understand that I am supposed to provide my own legitimately obtained copy of the game

Describe the Bug

Any time a character speaks during gameplay, the frame rate drops to about ~17fps. It happens with any dialog that has subtitles available, whether or not they are turned on: Praxis's broadcasts in the slums, guards saying "Patrolling this sector", etc. Does not happen during cutscenes.

Hardware trace:

A Crimson Guard said, "Seal off the area" at 0:02. I toggled the "Limit frames" and "Sleep during frame limit" settings; no change.

How To Reproduce

1. Start the game and go to the slums
2. Hop in a hover car and begin driving through a quiet area
3. Wait for a Crimson guard to say something, or drive next to a Praxis loudspeaker

Does this problem occur on original hardware or PCSX2?

Yes, it's unique to OpenGOAL

Expected Behavior

When dialog occurs in the game, the frame rate should remain relatively steady.

Environment Information

CPU/GPU: Apple M1 (2020 MacBook Pro, 16GB)
OS: MacOS Sequoia 15.2
Launcher: v2.6.3
Tooling: v0.2.21

Game Version

NTSC 1.0 (black label)

Have you set the game to something other than 60fps?

Yes

[xTVaser]

Another M1 user reported this in the discord. To my knowledge this was never a problem on the Intel Macs, and at this time I have no way to test that anymore.

So assuming that is correct, my guess would be that the audio related components are poorly handled by Rosetta's translation layer and there may not be much that we can do. However that's partially a guess, there may be a simple solution once investigated.

It would be interesting to hear if this also effects Jak 1, if it doesn't that would narrow things down a bit.

[jeffreytwoods2]

Just tried on Jak 1; it does the same thing. I'll see if my university has Intel Macs in any computer labs (doubtful, though).

[sirj0k3r]

Can confirm the issue on Apple Silicon.

Once you start the game you'll notice that, whenever Daxter tells you about some mechanic (such as jumping, rolling, punching, etc.), the game immediately slows down.

This being said, I tried this on each chip (Intel and M1) and I believe it only happens on M1.

I say believe because the Intel's IGPU is not that great therefore I also notice it getting slowed down from time to time but I wouldn't say it's due to the dialogue issue, since it also happened right as I got to the city.

[AmyZee]

M1 Macbook Pro here. I made a quick video about what I think is the same problem. It's at least interesting to see which dialog shakes/slows down the game and which doesn't. It doesn't seem to be character-based, as some of Daxter's dialog slows down the game but other dialog of him doesn't. It is consistent which dialog shakes/slows down the game and which doesn't across game restarts.

Lastly, when pausing the game mid-dialog and pressing R2 in debug mode to advance the game 1 frame, the game does not shake like in the video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CsQB6S_RncI