Some time ago, the InFamous series for PlayStation 3 was a kind of response to the Prototype franchise from Activision. The games were released almost at the same time (2009) and turned out to be strikingly similar to each other: the action of the projects unfolded in an open world, which was in full power of the player endowed with certain superpowers.
InFamous was originally a PlayStation 3 exclusive, while Prototype was a multiplatform release. As a result, not all gamers were able to try out the first project, while Prototype fans have been looking towards InFamous with undisguised interest for 14 years.
At that time SONY didn’t release its exclusives on PC, so gamers had a hard choice: either to buy PS3 or to wait for the cherished moment when RPCS3 emulator will be able to work with InFamous. And it looks like that day has come. Nevertheless, let’s start with the traditionally classic preface:
The first thing you need to do is to check the version of your emulator: it should be at least RPCS3 v0.0.29 HEAD | local_build (main branch). Update if necessary. If your version is significantly newer, it is likely that you will no longer need some of the settings. Try to play the game without additional changes. It may happen that with the settings below, the game will refuse to run at all. In that case, let us know in the comments of this post and we will try to compile a new guide as soon as possible.
Second: at the moment the InFamous project on RPCS3 emulator has some problems: from rare visual artifacts (with particles and effects), to less rare program crashes, critical bugs and FPS drops in graphically loaded scenes.
Also, don’t forget that this title has not yet received the status of “Playable”. Therefore, no one gives 100% guarantees that you will be able to pass the game to the end without catching some critical bug.
RPSC3 configuration for InFamous
Start the emulator and right-click on the “InFamous” icon, then left-click on “Change/Create Custom Configuration” in the drop-down menu:
In this window set the settings according to the selected options and screenshots below.
Processor Configuration (CPU)
| Setting | Option | Description |
|---|---|---|
| SPU XFloat Accuracy | Accurate XFloat | Fixes the disappearance of some enemies. |
Graphics card configuration (GPU)
| Setting | Option | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ZCULL accuracy | Relaxed | Improves performance. |
| Resolution scale threshold | 256×256 | Only with this option can you increase the resolution of in-game rendering above 720p. |
| Multithreaded RSX | On | Improves performance a little bit. |
| Asynchronous texture streaming | On | If you have a relatively powerful GPU (RX 470+ / GTX 1060+), enabling this option will improve performance. |
Advanced settings (Advanced)
| Setting | Option | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Sleep timers accuracy | As Host | Improves performance. |
| RSX FIFO accuracy | Atomic | Increases stability. |
Hidden settings (Debug)
By default, this tab is hidden in the emulator settings, but this is easy to fix: open File Explorer and go to the RPCS3 folder, then to GuiConfigs and open the CurrentSettings.ini file, then find and change the line showDebugTab=false to showDebugTab=true. Save the change, restart the emulator and open the game settings again. Now the Debug tab is available for editing.
| Setting | Option | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Disable ZCull occlusion queries | On | Slightly improves the overall performance of the game. |
Now let’s move on to the results obtained.
RPSC3 setting results for InFamous
For the umpteenth time I regret to inform you that owners of old processors (for example, Ryzen 1000 or Xeon E5-2600v3) will not be able to play InFamous comfortably. On my personal PC with Ryzen 5 3600 chip and RTX 3090 videocard with all the above settings I get something around 22 FPS in especially heavy-loaded scenes (city center and so on) and up to 35 FPS in simple locations.
But Ryzen 5 3600 is far from being a powerful processor. Core i5-12400F, which we have in our lab, produces 28-49 frames per second, which is much more comfortable.
Below are screenshots taken on AMD Ryzen 5 3600 processor and RTX 3090 video card:
As a result, after spending more than two hours on InFamous, we found out that the emulation is not perfect: in some places there are problems with visual effects and a significant FPS drop on relatively weak processors. Nevertheless, during several hours the game never crashed and worked extremely stable.
Now a couple of words about the required hardware on the current version of RPCS3 v0.0.29+ emulator. According to our measurements, InFamous is more or less adequately emulated starting from 6-core chips of AMD Zen 2-3 / Intel Skylake/Rocket Lake generation and AMD Radeon RX 400 / NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1000 videocards, and for comfortable passing at stable 30 frames you will need a high-frequency 6-core (better 8-core) Alder Lake (Core 12-13) or Zen 4 (Ryzen 7000) chip. Otherwise, significant performance issues will be extremely difficult to avoid.
Test the above settings and describe the results in the comments, as well as ask questions.
