Star Fox Adventures

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Star Fox Adventures
Star Fox Adventures
Developer(s) Rare
Publisher(s) Nintendo
Series Star Fox
Platform(s) GameCube
Release date(s) NA September 23, 2002
JP September 27, 2002
AUS November 15, 2002
EU November 22, 2002
Genre(s) Action-adventure
Mode(s) Single-player
Input methods GameCube Controller
Compatibility 4Stars4.pngEdit rating: Star Fox Adventures
Playable
GameIDs
See also...

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Star Fox Adventures is an action-adventure video game developed by Rare and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo GameCube as part of the Star Fox series. Adventures is the third game in the series, succeeding Star Fox 64. Unlike the other games in the series, Star Fox Adventures uses many of the same gameplay mechanics as The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Fox is on foot for most of the game and pilots his Arwing only to reach another piece of the planet. Furthermore, he uses a staff instead of a blaster for melee combat, Fox jumps automatically, can talk and interact with NPCs, and receives power-ups throughout the game.

Emulation Information

Reflections

Reflective floors show the reflection offset from where they should be. Instead of being a mirror image beneath Fox's feet, the mirror image is well above his head. Additionally, there is bar along the bottom of the screen that doesn't get any reflections at all. This is not a problem with Dolphin; it occurs even on real GameCubes, but the reflections are so low resolution that it's difficult to notice.

16:9

Star Fox Adventures has a native 16:9 display option, but it requires enabling it in its internal options and setting Dolphin's Aspect Ratio graphics setting to "Auto". Using the widescreen hack with this title is not recommended.

Problems

Flickering Silhouetted HUD

In Direct3D, the HUD will occasionally flicker silhouettes over it. This usually happens when trying to shoot at a monster with the Fire Blaster (in battle stance).

Glow Effects

Glow effects render poorly with EFB Copies to Texture Only on all backends. Disable EFB Copies to Texture Only to fix them.

Shadows

In D3D, shadows may appear distorted, or even be copied from other objects, such as Fox with an arwing shaped shadow while near the ship. OpenGL has had shadowing issues in the past, but seems to work properly. If you still see issues, try toggling fast-depth; as some GPUs may vary.Fixed by 5.0-5404

Configuration

Only configuration options for the best compatibility where they deviate from defaults are listed.

Graphics

Config Setting Notes
Store EFB Copies to Texture Only Off Needed for correct glow rendering
Fast Depth Calculation Off Prevents distorted/z-fighting shadows in OpenGL

Version Compatibility

The graph below charts the compatibility with Star Fox Adventures since Dolphin's 2.0 release, listing revisions only where a compatibility change occurred.

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5.0-21264 (current)
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Δ
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2.0 (r5384)
Compatibility can be assumed to align with the indicated revisions. However, compatibility may extend to prior revisions or compatibility gaps may exist within ranges indicated as compatible due to limited testing. Please update as appropriate.

Testing

This title has been tested on the environments listed below:

Test Entries
Revision OS CPU GPU Result Tester
r6106 Windows Vista Intel Core 2 Duo P7350 @ 2GHz NVIDIA GeForce 9600M GT Almost perfect, minimal graphical/audio errors; runs slowly in open areas (read: areas with lots and lots of polygons), sped up 25-100% by using frame skip of 1; average VPS of 20 without frame skip, avg. VPS of 30 with frame skip of 1.
r7283 Windows 7 Intel Core i3-2310 @ 2.1GHz Intel HD Graphics Framerate slowdowns in outdoor environments, cutscenes, or in multi-camera renders (e.g. title screen) 13-60FPS Honguito98
r7338 Windows 7 AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.4GHz NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT Almost perfect, minimal graphical/audio errors; runs slowly in open areas (read: areas with lots and lots of polygons). BluPhoenix
r7419 Mac OS X 10.6.7 Intel Core i7 @ 2.66GHz NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M Playable. lots of slowdowns, especially during cutscenes, making them as much as 3x slower than the audio. Actual gameplay runs smoothly for the most part, couple of slowdowns but not worth complaining. Lastly, the stars in space render as translucent squares, doesn't affect gameplay, just looks funny. FeelGoodChicken
3.0 Windows 7 Intel Pentium E5400 @ 2.7GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 Framerate slowdowns in outdoor environments, cutscenes, or in multi-camera renders (e.g. title screen) 13-30FPS parasite64
3.0 Windows 7 Intel Core i3-2100 @ 3.1GHz AMD Radeon HD 6450 Playable, 15-60FPS, lots of slowdowns, ocasional crashes, sound glitches, 3x slower cutscenes, few graphical glitches. feargm
3.0 Windows 7 Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.3GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 Completely playable when using OpenGL. Game mostly stays at a constant 60 frames per second with mostly 100% speed. Shadows are still buggy, subtitles are ahead of dialogue, and music is still missing a few instruments. BioHazard
r7690 Windows Vista Intel Core 2 Quad NVIDIA GeForce 680 GTX Framerate slowdowns in outdoor environments, cutscenes, or in multi-camera renders (e.g. title screen). Some save states are not stable; in once case, it is unable to load a certain state directly, but if you use an intermediate state, it loads successfully. Anonymous
3.0-776 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-2670QM @ 2.2GHz NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M Playable, has some minor slowdowns but mostly just requires a GFX card that is discrete. Speedytech7
3.0-776 Mac OS X 10.7.4 Intel Core i7 @ 2.2GHz AMD Radeon HD 6750M Playable but slow, 30-60FPS depending on areas. Cut-scenes are particularly slow, resulting in important sound desynchronization during them. Tested with default settings and DSP HLE. Nolendil
3.5-141 Windows 7 AMD Phenom II 955 BE @ 3.2GHz AMD Radeon HD 6850 Playable. Video and audio are not sync and the first game minutes are slow depending on the area. However, I really don't recommend to start this game on the Dolphin emulator (this game is not playable in my opinion) ramaGZ
3.5-1282 Windows 7 Intel Core i5-3570K @ 4.7GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275 Very playable. There are still some weird bugs, sound desyncs are improved but not gone, and other various minor stuff, but it ran 60FPS smooth as butter and played very well with New-AX-HLE. MayImilae
4.0 Windows 8.0 Intel Core i5-2500K @ 4.3GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti Almost perfect. Full speed @ 60FPS @ 3X internal res with only a couple of missing effects. Using OpenGL as backend enable "skip EFB access to CPU" (disables slight glow around fires, but improves the FPS a lot), enable "EFB to texture" (disables another minor glow effect, but also improves FPS) and disable "fast depth calculation" (stops the shadow flickering associated with OpenGL making the shadows next to perfect). Using Xaudio2 the audio is perfectly synced during gameplay. Experienced a de-sync during cutscenes after a while. Don't know how often/reoccurring the audio de-sync is. Played until you get to play as Fox. knerlington
4.0-3178 Windows 7 Intel Core i3-2310M @ 2.1GHz NVIDIA GeForce 610M Barely playable. The main menu and most of the cinematics drop down ~30FPS with delayed subtitles. But apart the cinematics, the game was at 45-50FPS. HauruI
4.0-4231 Windows 8.1 Intel Core i7-4710M @ 2.5GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 860M Full 1080p @ 60FPS with 2xSSAA, set EFB to Texture and Disable CPU Access Honguito98
4.0-6112 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-3770K @3.5GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 Fully playable at 1080p @60FPS with 8x anti-aliasing and 3x native internal resolution. Also works perfectly in widescreen with the same settings. Some slowdowns during cutscenes, but video/audio are still in sync all the time. Mangaman1001
4.0-8342 Windows 7 Intel Core i3-3220 @ 3GHz NVIDIA GeForce GT 640 Playable until the end, but I had to use save states a lot due to random FIFO overflown errors which interrupts emulation or even causes black screens. Constant use of save states seemed to even had disabled my memory card for the game, so I had to use save states all the way through anyway. The overflow error seems to mostly happen in cutscenes or in front of fuel cells in clusters. There are some minor slow downs here and there, and like always with CPU intense games like this I had to have Skip EFB Access to CPU enabled. I also had issues with flickering shadows, but it's very minor and it could be due to my settings. Yugix
4.0-8417 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-4790 @ 4GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760 Tested at 1080p @ 60FPS (3x Native) with 4xSSAA at Main Menu/Thorntail Hollow. Set EFB to Texture (checked). Gameplay is workable, with a few stutters to ~90-95% emulation speed. Chugs a bit more when there are many particles on the screen. Shadows flicker a lot in my setting which leaves much to be desired, YMMV. Cutscenes have polarizing results- some portions emulate at virtually perfect speed, while 30 seconds later it may drop to < 50% emulation speed. 2xSSAA produces similar results, but gameplay and cutscenes are a more consistent in regards to emulation speed. FIFO overflows occurs randomly during cutscenes; remember to save often. Lessigen
4.0-9198 Windows 8.1 Intel Core i3-4160 @ 3.6GHz AMD Radeon R9-270X Tested with Direct3D 11 backend, V-Sync on, 2x native resolution, 4x MSAA anti-aliasing, 4x anisotropic filtering, Scaled EFB Copy, Per-Pixel lighting, Ignore format changes, EFB Copied to Texture Only, Texture cache accuracy set to the middle, Fast Depth Calculation, Progressive Scan and Borderless Fullscreen. Gets a near-steady 55-60fps with a few stuttering. Cut-scenes work fine. Both Direct3D 11 and OpenGL have flickering shadows, but OpenGL only gets 20-40 fps, so use Direct3D instead. sl1fka
5.0 Windows 10 Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.4GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti Tested with mostly default settings at 1280x720. Running perfect at 60 FPS during the Krystal intro, lags a lot during cutscenes and where grass and high detailed models (with fur) are shown. Emulation speed goes down to 60% in these cases. Underclocking the CPU down to 30% reduces the frame rate to 20~30 FPS, but emulation speed maintains a steady 100%.

Gameplay Videos