04-17-2021, 11:33 PM -
I have experimented with the game for about 28 hours or so, running on a modern system with some fairly recent builds (I have been updating as they come out).
I wanted to post the best settings for Tools of Destruction on RPCS3 that I was able to find for those of us having trouble getting the game to run well on modern systems.
I used a bunch of tweaks to get the framerate in the 60-83fps range most of the time with less crashing, but since switching to a build released 4/3/2021, the game now runs fairly well with the default settings as well.
For me, the game appears fully playable with only minor graphical glitches and minimal crashing.
Some things to note:
I am using version 1.00 of the game
I am also using the freeze fix by Juhn, Epicalman found here: https://wiki.rpcs3.net/index.php?title=R...estruction under "Canary Patches"
These settings were tested on the latest few builds at various trouble points in the game. Your results may vary.
I made the following minor tweaks to default settings in order of importance:
CRASHING
Antialiasing: Set this to DISABLED to help performance and fix framerate drops when using the Combustor or Plasma Blaster. The AA is very heavy for alpha effects through this emulator/game engine. I am willing to bet most you are better off running a higher resolution instead of AA in this game on modern most GPUs anyway.
Write Color Buffers: Disabling it seems to prevent some crashes. Set to OFF despite common advice that this game needs it. It seems recent RPCS3 builds allow in game menus to (mostly) render properly without it. Have not had crashes during weapon upgrades at all as some had been saying.
VBlank Frequency : Set to 90, seems to reduce crashing significantly for me. Couldn't tell you why.
Firmware Libraries: Both lists left to default despite common advice to check liblv2.sprx. Seemed to cause less crashes at default settings in recent builds.
PERFORMANCE
Renderer: Vulkan seems to have the best performance, and all have the same crashes for me.
Framelimit: Set to OFF. This game has an inbuilt frame limit of 83FPS as far as I can tell. The framerate is uncapped and does not affect game speed.
Resolution: Try double native res in each direction. For me, 5120x2880p because I have a 2560x1440p monitor and additional GPU headroom. This essentially forces 2x SSAA. It is the old school way to eliminate jaggies without turning on the in-game AA. Set to an integer scale of your monitors native res or whatever makes sense for your GPU and monitor. As always use resolution scale not default resolution for tweaking.
Anisotropic Filtering: Set to 16x. As is typical, this is fairly light on modern GPUs, so if you CPU bottlenecked most of the time, might as well crank it to the max.
Silence All Logs: Led to smoother frametimes in my experience. Have not tried on newer builds.
Sleep Timers Accuracy: USLEEP ONLY. Appeared to smooth out frametimes and improve performance on older builds. Can't see an effect on newer builds.
Asynchronous texture streaming: ON, Mildly improves performance on my system overall.
Use GPU Texture Scaling: On. Minor performance bump.
Multithreaded RSX: ON. Mildly improves performance on my system, especially when lots of alpha affects are onscreen it seems.
UNSURE
SPU Block Size: Mega, not much change to performance but works for me.
Enable SPU Loop Detection: ON, no meaningful effect that I can spot but I always leave it on.
Start Games in Fullscreen Mode: Has had some effect on crashing in other games, and seemed to help this one as well, but can't confirm.
Enable time stretching: I have this ON. I do not expect this to have a meaningful effect, but mentioned it because it is not default.
Trouble spots (SPOILERS ahead) in order of appearance:
Metropolis Kerwan,
This entire segment is prone to crashing at random. No fix that I know of. I just kept trying it until I got through. Took me about 5 tries.
First Tachyon Cutscene,
I have not been able to reproduce the crash on exiting the last grind rail on Kerwan and thus don't know what can be done to mitigate it.
Mukow, anywhere where the rain affect is present
Setting the clock scale high enough to cause the rain affect not to render allows the level to be completed if it is crashing too much, albeit at hyper-speed pace.
In the latest builds, I have not seen crashing on this planet anymore.
Rakar Star Cluster, just as you reach the first solar harvester
This will freeze. I found turning write color buffers JUST FOR THIS LEVEL, seemed to work wonders.
Raykan V Halo Jump, upon touching the ground for the first time
This caused a freeze for me every single time in older builds. Have not tried halo jump in newer builds as it only occurs once per save.
Switch to Open GL renderer for this planet. Eliminates crashing but framerate is not ideal in OpenGL. Runs about 24fps fluctuating the entire time for me.
The latest build seems to have no problems with Vulkan on my system, but I have not tested the halo jump.
Kreeli Comet, Final Pirate Door
Freezes on Vulkan. Switch to open GL for this final checkpoint. That allows you to open the door. You are good to switch back to Vulkan for playing as Clank.
Verdigris Black Hole
Freezes on load of this level. Black screen with no sound and no new frames being rendered. Does not crash.
Newer builds have made this problem disappear for me. Give the latest build a shot.
I would like to go back and continually test these trouble spots and spot more as well as offer more advice for more of them.
The game appears completely playable to me, but I have just a few more planets yet to test for crashing on.
My System:
AMD R9 3900x
GTX 1070Ti (PCIE Gen3.0)
16 GB DDR4 3200 CL 14
Games running from M.2 NVMe over PCIe
I wanted to post the best settings for Tools of Destruction on RPCS3 that I was able to find for those of us having trouble getting the game to run well on modern systems.
I used a bunch of tweaks to get the framerate in the 60-83fps range most of the time with less crashing, but since switching to a build released 4/3/2021, the game now runs fairly well with the default settings as well.
For me, the game appears fully playable with only minor graphical glitches and minimal crashing.
Some things to note:
I am using version 1.00 of the game
I am also using the freeze fix by Juhn, Epicalman found here: https://wiki.rpcs3.net/index.php?title=R...estruction under "Canary Patches"
These settings were tested on the latest few builds at various trouble points in the game. Your results may vary.
I made the following minor tweaks to default settings in order of importance:
CRASHING
Antialiasing: Set this to DISABLED to help performance and fix framerate drops when using the Combustor or Plasma Blaster. The AA is very heavy for alpha effects through this emulator/game engine. I am willing to bet most you are better off running a higher resolution instead of AA in this game on modern most GPUs anyway.
Write Color Buffers: Disabling it seems to prevent some crashes. Set to OFF despite common advice that this game needs it. It seems recent RPCS3 builds allow in game menus to (mostly) render properly without it. Have not had crashes during weapon upgrades at all as some had been saying.
VBlank Frequency : Set to 90, seems to reduce crashing significantly for me. Couldn't tell you why.
Firmware Libraries: Both lists left to default despite common advice to check liblv2.sprx. Seemed to cause less crashes at default settings in recent builds.
PERFORMANCE
Renderer: Vulkan seems to have the best performance, and all have the same crashes for me.
Framelimit: Set to OFF. This game has an inbuilt frame limit of 83FPS as far as I can tell. The framerate is uncapped and does not affect game speed.
Resolution: Try double native res in each direction. For me, 5120x2880p because I have a 2560x1440p monitor and additional GPU headroom. This essentially forces 2x SSAA. It is the old school way to eliminate jaggies without turning on the in-game AA. Set to an integer scale of your monitors native res or whatever makes sense for your GPU and monitor. As always use resolution scale not default resolution for tweaking.
Anisotropic Filtering: Set to 16x. As is typical, this is fairly light on modern GPUs, so if you CPU bottlenecked most of the time, might as well crank it to the max.
Silence All Logs: Led to smoother frametimes in my experience. Have not tried on newer builds.
Sleep Timers Accuracy: USLEEP ONLY. Appeared to smooth out frametimes and improve performance on older builds. Can't see an effect on newer builds.
Asynchronous texture streaming: ON, Mildly improves performance on my system overall.
Use GPU Texture Scaling: On. Minor performance bump.
Multithreaded RSX: ON. Mildly improves performance on my system, especially when lots of alpha affects are onscreen it seems.
UNSURE
SPU Block Size: Mega, not much change to performance but works for me.
Enable SPU Loop Detection: ON, no meaningful effect that I can spot but I always leave it on.
Start Games in Fullscreen Mode: Has had some effect on crashing in other games, and seemed to help this one as well, but can't confirm.
Enable time stretching: I have this ON. I do not expect this to have a meaningful effect, but mentioned it because it is not default.
Trouble spots (SPOILERS ahead) in order of appearance:
Metropolis Kerwan,
This entire segment is prone to crashing at random. No fix that I know of. I just kept trying it until I got through. Took me about 5 tries.
First Tachyon Cutscene,
I have not been able to reproduce the crash on exiting the last grind rail on Kerwan and thus don't know what can be done to mitigate it.
Mukow, anywhere where the rain affect is present
Setting the clock scale high enough to cause the rain affect not to render allows the level to be completed if it is crashing too much, albeit at hyper-speed pace.
In the latest builds, I have not seen crashing on this planet anymore.
Rakar Star Cluster, just as you reach the first solar harvester
This will freeze. I found turning write color buffers JUST FOR THIS LEVEL, seemed to work wonders.
Raykan V Halo Jump, upon touching the ground for the first time
This caused a freeze for me every single time in older builds. Have not tried halo jump in newer builds as it only occurs once per save.
Switch to Open GL renderer for this planet. Eliminates crashing but framerate is not ideal in OpenGL. Runs about 24fps fluctuating the entire time for me.
The latest build seems to have no problems with Vulkan on my system, but I have not tested the halo jump.
Kreeli Comet, Final Pirate Door
Freezes on Vulkan. Switch to open GL for this final checkpoint. That allows you to open the door. You are good to switch back to Vulkan for playing as Clank.
Verdigris Black Hole
Freezes on load of this level. Black screen with no sound and no new frames being rendered. Does not crash.
Newer builds have made this problem disappear for me. Give the latest build a shot.
I would like to go back and continually test these trouble spots and spot more as well as offer more advice for more of them.
The game appears completely playable to me, but I have just a few more planets yet to test for crashing on.
My System:
AMD R9 3900x
GTX 1070Ti (PCIE Gen3.0)
16 GB DDR4 3200 CL 14
Games running from M.2 NVMe over PCIe