Help with gpsp-kai on PSP (Testing)

[leapster]

Hi,

I'm trying to fix a few things on the RetroArch version of gpsp, which is currently the most active fork of this emulator.

Banjo Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge was recently fixed in-game, so that it no longer crashes when Banjo comes out of his house after the intro. But what is not yet fixed is that the screen remains black during the opening intro which shows the THQ/Rare logos.

I know this works in TempGBA-Mod, but I need to know if it works in gpsp-kai also. Would someone be able to test this on a real PSP and let me know?

Thanks!

 

[benone]

Hello!
Just saw your post and gave a try on my PSP using gpSP kai.

And my results are that there is exactly a crash at the specific moment you mentioned: when Banjo leaves the house in the introduction. The game auto-restarted by itself the first time I tried, without resetting I tried again and after Banjo left the house, once again it crashed with unpleasant "screechy" sounds.

I used the USA,Europe rom.

Tell me if I can test something else for you.

 

[leapster]

Hey @benone , thanks so much for taking the time to try it out!

Yes that part of the game has always been a problem, but it is fixed now in RetroArch gpsp (i.e. Banjo comes out of his house and the game continues, no crashing!). And I've also now found the fix for the Black screeen intro - the fix for this was actually introduced in gpsp Kai, which I've located in the source code and added a PR to the RetroArch gpsp for this to be fixed!

Do you have TempGBA (or better, TempGBAMod) on your PSP? There's a couple of things I'd like testing on those gpsp-derived emulators if you are able to?

One thing is Pokemon Pinball Ruby & Sapphire - on TempGBAMod, is the frame in the middle of the table that spins round with options corrupted? I mean does it spin round with pictures outside of the frame (difficult to describe what I mean).

 

[benone]

Hello leapster! I'm happy to help out!
I downloaded TempGBAMod like you suggested.

I tried Pokemon Pinball Ruby & Sapphire (North America and Europe) on TempGBAMod and I think I figured out what you meant. Here's a picture from a video I took with a camera. And yes the pictures outside are corrupted a little. The error is the same on both regions.

 

[leapster]

Hello leapster! I'm happy to help out!
I downloaded TempGBAMod like you suggested.

I tried Pokemon Pinball Ruby & Sapphire (North America and Europe) on TempGBAMod and I think I figured out what you meant. Here's a picture from a video I took with a camera. And yes the pictures outside are corrupted a little. The error is the same on both regions.

Thanks @benone ! OK that will take a bit more investigation.

The other ones to try on TempGBA-mod are -

Payback (do menus display correctly?)
Doom 2 (general performance)
Duke Nukem (general performance)
Top Gear Rally (do road objects show incorrectly in distance, I.e 'through the road)
Metroid Fusion (does enemy pixellation effect show when they are shot)

The last two are the subject of issues on the libretro gpsp Github if you need more explanation.

Many thanks for your help!!!!

 

[benone]

Hello!
So here's the results using TempGBA-mod on PSP.

• Payback - no, menus do not display correctly. sound is weird and choppy too!
• Doom 2 - framerate tends to slow down when there's too much elements. and when there's not so much things anymore, the game goes a bit too fast. I don't know if it could be acceptable. It's playable but a bit annoying because of drastic changes of framerate.
• Duke Nukem Advance - a little better than Doom 2 in general, but has the same framerate issues.
• Top Gear Rally - it's a bit subtle, but yes the issue is still occuring. we can see things things that should be hidden behind the road.
• Metroid Fusion - this issue seem solved on my side. the graphics show very well when an enemy is destroyed. in the intro and in-game as well!

I'll stay tuned.

 

[leapster]

Hey @benone that's great thank you so much! Can you help me one more time please -

In Golden Sun there are two issues raised for RetroArch gpsp. One is the lens flare effect on the intro (when you start the ROM and a save game is present). Basically it looks wrong and probably some transparency/flickering issue between the sun and the lens flare objects.

The second issue is that in one of the dungeons, when the player sprite gets near to the wall, black boxes appear.

There's a better description in this thread and also a Save File (don't use the Save State, it won't work) -
(I can't send links yet, so please go to libretro gpsp on github, and find issue 74 'Black Wall issues in Golden Sun' , which is what I'm referring to!)

Would you be able to test Golden Sun in TempGBA4PSP-Mod and let me know if you see either of these issues?

Many thanks!

 

[benone]

Hello, I can confirm that both issues are still occuring using TempGBA mod with my PSP (it's the same that you mentionned, right?)

Here are the proofs in picture.

 

[leapster]

@benone thank you! Yes that is both issues I meant. The reason why this is important is that we're looking at the codebase of TempGBA-Mod which is probably the most developed one out of the forks (apart from Retroarch gpsp), to see if any of these long-standing issues got fixed. The testing helps because as we see, they are not fixed, so I can take a fresh look at this knowing it didn't get fixed before.

OK! Very useful thank you - I'll come back if I need anything else testing. Many thanks again

 

[benone]

@leapster no problem! thanks for explaining your work!
I'm glad if I can help you and it can help a little the community in a way.

let's keep in touch for further tests!

 

[AncientBoi]

Hello!
So here's the results using TempGBA-mod on PSP.

• Payback - no, menus do not display correctly. sound is weird and choppy too!
• Doom 2 - framerate tends to slow down when there's too much elements. and when there's not so much things anymore, the game goes a bit too fast. I don't know if it could be acceptable. It's playable but a bit annoying because of drastic changes of framerate.
• Duke Nukem Advance - a little better than Doom 2 in general, but has the same framerate issues.
• Top Gear Rally - it's a bit subtle, but yes the issue is still occuring. we can see things things that should be hidden behind the road.
• Metroid Fusion - this issue seem solved on my side. the graphics show very well when an enemy is destroyed. in the intro and in-game as well!

I'll stay tuned.

off topic, What's the Duke Nukem game about? jc

 

[benone]

@AncientBoi
Well, not much of a storyline I guess. It starts more or less like comic book frames of Duke killings pigs with guns. And then the first mission, aliens are invading area 51. New alien species, blah blah. I am not so familiar with Duke Nukem, to be honest. It seems different than the original on PC back in the day.

 

[leapster]

@benone another test for you when you have time please!

Please can you check Street Racing Syndicate on TempGBA4PSP-Mod? It doesn't work on any other variant of gpsp that I've tried - the opening logo screens are emulated wrongly (they are block loaded from left to right instead of fading in and out), and then the game crashes immediately after pressing 'Start'.

 

[benone]

Hello @leapster !
I just tried it on TempGBA mod and Street Racing Syndicate runs, actually. There's a lot of use of 'sexy girls photographs', I say. Outside of that, there's graphic corruption a little bit. The game is laggy, but it runs, you can do a race and play the game as far I could get..!

 

[leapster]

@benone that's great thank you! OK so we can look at this to see what the issue is, should be interesting!

I think I can post links now. For Metroid Fusion, the pixelation effect I was asking about appears here in the intro -


On most versions of gpsp I've tried, the pixelation doesn't occur and actually there's not even a pause for it to happen. The enemy just moves to the next frames of animation. Wondering if the effect happens as per the video in TempGBA4PSP-Mod?

Also, can you test Activision Anthology, specifically Boxing and Baseball - these games rely heavily on timers and don't seem to work correctly in gpsp (although they are a lot better on RetroArch gpsp now that we fixed the timer bug from 2014!!!)

 

[benone]

@leapster - here's some screenshots of Metroid Fusion to confirm again there's no issue with the graphics during the intro scene. Using TempGBA mod. You can see screenshots I added!

For Activision Anthology, I have to say that many of the games do not respond to the A button at all. I couldn't play Boxing at all, no characters moving, weird sound, etc. As for baseball, I can move the batter player, but cannot hit a ball. The A button doesn't respond.

 

[leapster]

@benone thank your very much for the testing! The effect I'm looking for on Metroid Fusion is the GBA Mosaic effect - it's not present on the lr-gpsp we're developing but I believe an implementation is in the works!

Could you please help me one more time? I'm looking at the Turbo selection menu in Street Fighter 2 Revival. Can you check TempGBA to see if the Turbo menu after player selection displays correctly? What happens on lr-gpsp is that the menu starts distorting once you select 'Turbo 2' or 'Turbo 3'. I've confirmed that gpsp-j behaves correctly but (of course) we don't have the source for that! But if TempGBA works then I can check/extract the related code to fix.

Many thanks!

 

[benone]

@leapster No problem!
I tested Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo - Revival (USA) with TempGBA mod and once I select 'Turbo 2' or 'Turbo 3', there is no corruption. So it works fine on my side!

hope it can help!

 

[leapster]

@benone thanks so much! I checked the code from TempGBA and looks like we had a bug with VRAM wraparound which they solved there. So was able to adapt a fix for RetroArch gpsp which has now been committed!

Recently, the video renderer in RetroArch gpsp has been completely rewritten (not by me!!! - but finishing up development, to be merged shortly and will start to appear on RetroArch nightlies), but the bug existed there too! So the fix has been incorporated

The Golden Sun and Pokemon Pinball errors we discussed above have been fixed too, as well as many other minor visual issues which occurred due to broken elements of the old code. Payback will also be fixed eventually and Metroid Fusion will be better (the 'Mosaic' effect used there isn't implemented - yet).

So lots of good things happening! Many thanks for all your assistance, it has really helped!

Post automatically merged: Jul 30, 2023

@benone I'm closing out some old issues now on the Github. Can you confirm that Pokemon Emerald works ok on RetroArch gpsp on your PSP (most recent version you have)?

 

[benone]

@leapster Hello Leapster!
so, I installer RetroArch on my PSP console and managed to play Pokémon Emerald without problems. It seems to run pretty fine!