06-16-2023, 11:51 PM -
Follow~up: All DLC Courses are now fully playable on every build of PGA Tour '14, PARAM.SFO no longer needs to be moved out of the Standard Edition's Root Folder to get past the Trophy Loader screen and thus this now means that all 045 courses can be run without needing to insert nor reengineer the DLC files in any capacity.
This was first discovered by me when I finally returned to the emulator after roughly a month and change, following a recent move; Build 15080 is the first time that I had witnessed this uplift back on May 027, but I am certain that it can be trailed back further (potentially around the time that major updates involving Vulkan were done), this now leaves PGA Tour '13 as the only entry in the series to still suffer from issues with PARAM.SFO when loading the DLC courses is concerned and it's only a matter of time before that can be followed up on.
At present, I do not have the time to film more than a brief sampler of the Fantasy Courses (Greek Isles, The Highlands, Emerald Dragon, and The Predator; all on Hole 01), but wishfully this will suffice for the time being until a proper session can be recorded; the footage was done on Build 15211, still on the same Ryzen 5950X/Radeon VII/064 GB of DDR IV at 3200 (CL 016) combo that I have been using for every test up to now, the EA Audio DAC issue that leads to an Unmapped Memory error when getting to the Scorecard Loading Screen if running the PPU Decoder on LLVM still persists and thus it is obviously still recommended to always run PPU on Interpreter (Static) when playing on at least any Zen III (Ryzen 5000) CPU (though according to current Intel testers using Alder Lake and onward, this particular issue with LLVM doesn't seem to be as prominent, though users' mileage may vary).
~ Tiger Woods PGA Tour '14: RPCS3 Data Logues for Build 15211 (Mediafire)
~ Tiger Woods PGA Tour '14: Fantasy Course Sampler on LLVM
Further local analysis has also presented to me the discovery of other major crashes that will be experienced on a Zen III/Vega 020 setup: Akin to what happens on occasion with PGA Tour '14 via Xenia: Canary, there will be instances where a crash of the game (and, occasionally, the whole emulator) will happen virtually at random when a Commentary Audio clip is played and also when incredibly specific forms of Texture Corruption happen while running in Vulkan (the latter will usually happen within a second after the game transitions to the next Human Player in a Local Multiplayer round, almost always with scattered textures dancing around onscreen; this is most likely to happen when a player is stuck deep between the Vegetation), these crashes are incredibly rare to replicate and will never consistently occur every time that the game is loaded even on the same build of RPCS3 across multiple test runs; this truly can be a pain for some players, especially when they are on a lengthy session with Four Players and witness this happen on Hole 017 or 018, this is why I usually play games of Stableford to speed up the session and thus it is less likely to witness when handled this way.
Considering how much has improved with this title on the emulator over the past (almost) Eleven Months, it truly is comforting to witness how much its compatibility has evolved as quickly as it has, being able to go through all of the game's offerings (barring Online Mode for now, obviously) will introduce it to a new era of players and the mixed reception of '24 (EA Sports PGA Tour) makes it all the more certain that '14 will easily coexist with its successor for newcomers that want an effective alternative in the meanwhile.
Barring the follow~up episode for Offline Sessions that will cover the Fantasy Courses, this will probably be my final major update on '14 until the subject of Online Mode Restoration enters the realm of experimentation; I'm really happy to see how far things have come with this entry in nearly a year, the later EA Sports titles on the console have always been tricky to get working but the team here has truly delivered genuine hope to keep them alive well past their original support phase that there's only gratitude coming from here. (:
This was first discovered by me when I finally returned to the emulator after roughly a month and change, following a recent move; Build 15080 is the first time that I had witnessed this uplift back on May 027, but I am certain that it can be trailed back further (potentially around the time that major updates involving Vulkan were done), this now leaves PGA Tour '13 as the only entry in the series to still suffer from issues with PARAM.SFO when loading the DLC courses is concerned and it's only a matter of time before that can be followed up on.
At present, I do not have the time to film more than a brief sampler of the Fantasy Courses (Greek Isles, The Highlands, Emerald Dragon, and The Predator; all on Hole 01), but wishfully this will suffice for the time being until a proper session can be recorded; the footage was done on Build 15211, still on the same Ryzen 5950X/Radeon VII/064 GB of DDR IV at 3200 (CL 016) combo that I have been using for every test up to now, the EA Audio DAC issue that leads to an Unmapped Memory error when getting to the Scorecard Loading Screen if running the PPU Decoder on LLVM still persists and thus it is obviously still recommended to always run PPU on Interpreter (Static) when playing on at least any Zen III (Ryzen 5000) CPU (though according to current Intel testers using Alder Lake and onward, this particular issue with LLVM doesn't seem to be as prominent, though users' mileage may vary).
~ Tiger Woods PGA Tour '14: RPCS3 Data Logues for Build 15211 (Mediafire)
~ Tiger Woods PGA Tour '14: Fantasy Course Sampler on LLVM
Further local analysis has also presented to me the discovery of other major crashes that will be experienced on a Zen III/Vega 020 setup: Akin to what happens on occasion with PGA Tour '14 via Xenia: Canary, there will be instances where a crash of the game (and, occasionally, the whole emulator) will happen virtually at random when a Commentary Audio clip is played and also when incredibly specific forms of Texture Corruption happen while running in Vulkan (the latter will usually happen within a second after the game transitions to the next Human Player in a Local Multiplayer round, almost always with scattered textures dancing around onscreen; this is most likely to happen when a player is stuck deep between the Vegetation), these crashes are incredibly rare to replicate and will never consistently occur every time that the game is loaded even on the same build of RPCS3 across multiple test runs; this truly can be a pain for some players, especially when they are on a lengthy session with Four Players and witness this happen on Hole 017 or 018, this is why I usually play games of Stableford to speed up the session and thus it is less likely to witness when handled this way.
Considering how much has improved with this title on the emulator over the past (almost) Eleven Months, it truly is comforting to witness how much its compatibility has evolved as quickly as it has, being able to go through all of the game's offerings (barring Online Mode for now, obviously) will introduce it to a new era of players and the mixed reception of '24 (EA Sports PGA Tour) makes it all the more certain that '14 will easily coexist with its successor for newcomers that want an effective alternative in the meanwhile.
Barring the follow~up episode for Offline Sessions that will cover the Fantasy Courses, this will probably be my final major update on '14 until the subject of Online Mode Restoration enters the realm of experimentation; I'm really happy to see how far things have come with this entry in nearly a year, the later EA Sports titles on the console have always been tricky to get working but the team here has truly delivered genuine hope to keep them alive well past their original support phase that there's only gratitude coming from here. (: