B3-Express v0.1.5

Fewer hitches on a first play and when entering new areas, and a Save settings button in the launcher.

No game files are included. You need your own extracted dump, updated to v1.2.0. See INSTALL.txt in the zip, or the install guide.

Added

• Save settings button. The launcher's Graphics and Controller pages now end with a Save settings button, usable once you change something, and a line that tells you whether your changes are saved. Before, settings were only written when you pressed Play. Closing the launcher with unsaved changes now asks whether to save them.

Improved

• Fewer freezes on the first play. The shader preparation that runs the first time you press Play now also covers the game's compute shaders. On a PC that had never run the game, 8 of them used to compile in the middle of the first fight, about a sixth of a second each. Now 1 does, in 17 ms.
• Smoother area entry. Entering a new area used to decode all its new textures in one frame, and the game waited about a sixth of a second for it. Large new textures now appear slightly soft for a few frames and sharpen as their full detail loads over the next frames. In the test, the long frame after the area entry is gone, though the entry frame itself can still be slow.
• The 1% low the game logs now counts only real 60 FPS play. Loading screens and in-engine scenes, which the game itself runs at 30 FPS, used to count as stutter. Some log windows may read lower than before because fewer frames are counted, so each real spike weighs more. Nothing got slower.

Results on the test PC (Ryzen 7 5700X3D, RTX 3080, 2560x1440)

• First play with nothing cached (the game's and the graphics driver's shader caches both empty): compute shader compiles during the scripted fight went from 8 (1,074 ms in all) to 1 (17 ms), and five frames of 200 to 290 ms are gone
• Scripted fight, area entry: textures decoded in the entry frame went from 234 to about 17 megapixels, and the 157 ms frame after it is gone. Time lost to slow frames after the first 30 seconds went from 1,010 to 708 ms
• Normal play with everything cached: no change

Upgrading from 0.1.4

Unzip 0.1.5 to a new folder and run Install again from your extracted dump. Your graphics card's shaders are prepared again on the first Play, a few minutes once.

Known limits

• Entering an area can still hitch while shaders load. The frame in the test above still took 129 ms
• About 10 rarely used shaders still compile during play the first time they are needed
• Textures that sharpen after an area entry may be visible as a short soft moment in bright scenes. Setting SNX_ASTC_SPREAD_MPX=0 in the environment turns the change off
• Tested on one PC. AMD GPUs, other PCs and most chapters are untested

Built on ScarletNX, GPL-3.0-or-later. Not affiliated with Nintendo, SEGA or PlatinumGames.

SHA-256 of B3-Express-0.1.5-windows-x64.zip: 87f1eaaf205746edee7fa98200059ea610ffc9c012ec4da5e8d6d3a41aaaf42a