How to test games to help things get fixed

[[Unknown]]

Even if you're not a programmer, there's tons of things you can do to help out. If you are a programmer, there's even more. Below is a list of things from easiest to hardest.

1. Try dev builds. Check whatever games you want to see if there are improvements or problems. Slower, faster, better lighting, anything.

2. Enable reporting. In System settings, check "Enable compatibility server reports".

This will send problems the emulator encounters to a server so we can understand them better. There will probably be more features later.

3. Compare with the actual PSP playing the game. Sometimes glitches are not obvious, especially when something is missing or not happening.

You can use savegames to sync up between the PSP and emulator (unless there's a save bug.) You can even use something like pspstates and PPSSPP's turbo feature for things far from save points.

4. Take screenshots of graphic problems on the PSP to make it easier to compare. This one is more advanced, but if you install psplink (tutorial here: http://forums.pspslimhacks.com/threads/t...apps.5200/), and then when you have pspsh open type:

scrnshot my-screenshot.bmp

Which will create a perfect screenshot for you. Some games even have screenshots built in.

5. Dig into what's actually happening with JpcspTrace. This one can be fairly advanced, you don't need to be a programmer but you definitely need to be a power user.

There's a readme here:
http://code.google.com/p/jpcsp/source/br...README.txt

It can be used to trace syscalls made by the game - and find out which ones PPSSPP isn't running correctly.

6. If you're a developer, contribute. Even if you're not sure you're up to the task of working on an emulator, if you have a PSP you can tinker with it and find out what we're doing wrong. See here for more info:

https://github.com/hrydgard/pspautotests#readme

-[Unknown]