Help with gpsp-kai on PSP (Testing)

[leapster]

@benone thank you! Looks like most issues are in hand now. Your continued help has been greatly appreciated!

We also recently solved the Top Gear Rally issue with sprites appearing through hills etc, again this will be fixed on the main branch once the new video renderer is optimised and further tested (fix details for this game are contained in the Github issue). I'm going to be looking at the EEPROM issues that stop some games from saving/working properly, as these were also partially solved in some standalone gpsp versions.

Will let you know if we need help again!

Post automatically merged: Aug 2, 2023

@benone

EDIT: Don't worry about what was here - have managed to identify and resolve it. It was to do with copy protection and save types, as the Dragonball games in particular don't work properly at the moment but have now got a fix in the works!

Many thanks as always in advance!

 

[benone]

@leapster - it's a pleasure to help!
keep me informed if future assistance is needed.

good luck!

 

[leapster]

To @benone and anyone else following this thread!!! -

RetroArch gpsp has now been updated with a brand new video renderer, written by David G.F. from scratch! Literally hundreds of games previously with minor/major visual issues have been fixed! In terms of this thread, that includes -

Golden Sun - intro and black boxes in dungeons fixed
Pokemon Pinball - table selection and in-game slot fixed
Metroid Prime - Mosaic effect has now been implemented so the pixellation enemy effect is now displayed properly (this effect is also used in several other games, like Super Mario Advance 2: SMW, V-Rally 3 and Aria of Sorrow to name a few!)
Top Gear Rally - Scanline sprite limit has been implemented which fixes the 'seeing objects through hills and corners' issue. Again this fixes several other games with the same issue.
Payback - Mode 4 OBJ/Sprites have been implemented properly meaning menus now display correctly (still horrendous performance but that's a core issue). Lots of other Mode4 games now display correctly!
Street Fighter 2 Revival - 'Turbo' menu corruption has been fixed!
Rayman 3 Hoodlum Havoc - the graphics corruption on the water skiing stages have been fixed! This was a Mode 0 affine scanline issue, so again this fix will also address other games!

The other games mentioned on this thread (Doom 2, Duke Nukem, Street Racing Syndicate etc) are core issues which are still to be fixed. The saving issue affecting some games (Dragonball Z series, Yggdra Union, Top Gun Combat Zones) has been largely fixed on development builds, attention will now be turned to completing and merging these changes!!!

You can get these changes by using one of the nightly builds of RetroArch and the gpsp core -
https://docs.libretro.com/guides/install-psp/

More exciting news for PSP and other platforms is that David intends to do a standalone version of gpsp for adaptation to individual platforms! This may allow better platform-specific optimisation than can be achieved within a Retroarch core. Watch this space!

 

[leapster]

@benone two more games to test in TempGBA-Mod for me please -

Sims 2:The Pets
Tiny Toon Adventures

Specifically I want to know if the graphics are messed up in either/both on the intros and beyond.

Thank you!

 

[Happy1337]

TempGBA 20160527

-Sims 2:The Pets PAL
Intro was fine. Graphics looks fine to me. Fullspeed

-Tiny Toon Adventures - Buster's Bad Dream PAL
Intro was fine and I couldn't spot any graphical issues. Games had some slowdowns with many enemies at ones but emulator was still showing (60/60) so it's probably just how the game behaves

best regards

 

[leapster]

@Happy1337 Thank you for the test!! Please could you try the following games also? -

Teen Titans (I got the game wrong above, it should be this one, not Tiny Toon Adventures)
Monster House

 

[Happy1337]

TempGBA 20160527

-Teen Titans Usa - Could not find any issues ,except being slow (40-50fps even with 333mhz)

-Monster House Usa Some shadows are flickering (like in thisvideo)
Some slowdowns

 

[benone]

oh, good to know that there's reinforcements to help! good job out there! thanks Leapster for the updates!

 

[leapster]

Thank you @Happy1337 and yes other users helping you out @benone !

OK, it's a timing issue with RA gpsp. Timing is dealt with differently in this version compared to TempGBA, both forks do it slightly differently, plus TempGBA is running on consistent hardware (i.e. MIPS PSP/PS2 CPU @ 333Mhz, vs MIPS/ARM/x86 @ Variable Mhz!).

Not easy to fix unfortunately - I'm tinkering with it but ultimately it's probably going to be David sitting down with his code and working out some changes which will hopefully improve it. These games just seem particularly susceptible to timings/cycles, which is kind of difficult to fix on gpsp which is absolutely not a cycle-accurate emulator

 

[leapster]

@benone @Happy1337

I'm back

So I need your help again if that's ok? Above you say that Sims 2:The Pets / Teen Titans / Monster House works ok in TempGBA4PSP-Mod (I believe it is this variant because you quote 20160527 as being the version number).

I need to know if they work the same or have graphics corruption in -

gpsp-kai (any version but latest would be most useful)
TempGBA4PSP (non 'Mod' version)

If either of you or anyone else can help out I would appreciate it!!