Rockman DASH: Hagane no Boukenshin

[Dospraline]

Title: Rockman DASH: Hagane no Boukenshin
Genre: Action-adventure RPG
Region: JP
Format: ISO
Version: v0.9.5
Game ID: UJLM05030
OS: Windows 7 - 64-bit
Compatability: Ingame
Notes: Throughout the whole game (intro, menu, cut scenes, and ingame), the right half of the screen is black. The only time this does not occur is at the beginning when it shows the Capcom logo and then says Now Loading in the right-bottom corner. The sound and controls seem to work fine, however.

Also, I'm not sure if this is from the emulator or the game, but I wasn't able to skip through the cut scenes. I know this was an option with the original game (PSX and N64).

I saw that the black half-screen was an issue with Rockman DASH 2 a while back, I'm not sure if this was ever resolved.

EDIT: In some areas of the game, the sound stutters a little bit.

[Ritori]

maybe you can post some log so dev team can take a look
(to get log on window press log.bat and play you game)
and please try again with latest version look if that fix you problem
http://www.ppsspp.org/downloads.html#devbuilds

[Dospraline]

I downloaded the most recent one, and it still had a black screen. So I played for a little bit until getting to the island, and then saved my log, which I have attached to this post.

I also figured out how to skip cut scenes. Turns out the way to do it is different than it was originally, so that is no longer an issue.

[[Unknown]]

Hmm. It seems to be using standard sized fbos, and they seem normally spaced.

It will be really slow, but does it render correctly with the "software renderer"? (last option in the graphics settings.) Or does it have the same behavior? It might also render completely wrong, it's still buggy, but if it works there that would be interesting.

If you open Debug -> GE Debugger... and then hit Step Draw a lot (you can click it once and then hold the enter key down), does it ever show the other half of the screen in the preview, or never? If never, can you try the same with "Step Prim"? It will highlight regions it's drawing in red. Does it ever highlight the right side?

-[Unknown]

[Dospraline]

I tried all of these suggestions. When I turned on Software Renderer, it did show the whole screen, but as you foretold, it was extremely slow and buggy.

When I did Step Draw, it would show the other half of the screen at times, although when it did, there would be a small black bar at the bottom, and the screenshot seemed to be off-center. As for Step Prim, the highlighted regions would sometimes be on the right side.

[[Unknown]]

Hmm, that's interesting. When it shows the other half, does it show both halves, or just the right half?

If it works in the software renderer, it's probably some issue with buffer management, and the coincides with your description of a black bar. It sounds like it's using two separate buffers.

In the GE Debugger, under the preview, it should show something like "Color: 0x04000000". In most games, this will typically stay the same (even as you hit step draw) until the next frame, and switch to "0x04044000", stay the same, and then switch back the next frame.

Anyway, that number indicates which "buffer" it's using. What I described above is known as "double buffering", which almost all PSP games use. But some use triple buffering or other methods, which it sounds like this game uses.

When you see the black bar and the other side of the screen, does it show a different number for the color buffer?

-[Unknown]

[Dospraline]

When I tried the Step Draw, it did show both halves of the screen when the black bar was at the bottom of the screen. Also, the color buffer does change when the right half is hidden compared to when the full screen is shown.

I'm not sure if the color buffer numbers matter much, but when it shows the full screen, it has a number of 0x00150000. But when the right half of the screen is black, it is usually 0x00044000, and sometimes 0x00000000.

Another thing I noticed while playing was once I got into the market area of the game, the sound stutters sometimes. This seems to happen only in certain areas of the game, though.

[[Unknown]]

Hmm, okay. That's definitely useful.

A log would help, maybe I can figure out what it's doing (and yes, the numbers do help for that.) If you run "log.bat", it will create a log while running. Then while it's showing only half the screen, go to Debug -> Dump Next Frame To Log (4th option.) After that you can close PPSSPP, you should have a log file.

You can attach it here or upload to pastebin / gist.github.com / etc.

-[Unknown]

[Dospraline]

Okay, I made sure to try that.

I uploaded it to GitHub Gist. The link is https://gist.github.com/Dospraline/7838169

[[Unknown]]

Okay, interesting. I think I know exactly what it's doing.

https://github.com/hrydgard/ppsspp/issues/4739

-[Unknown]

[Dospraline]

Interesting...so would there be any possible way to fix this? Or is that all dependent on the emulator settings/updates?

[[Unknown]]

It will definitely require changes in the code to make it work, and testing. It's similar to the Breath of Fire 3 issue, I think (although it does it for triple buffering.)

Basically, in OpenGL we treat each address (those numbers) as a "buffer". But in reality, it's just memory. When the game uses an address half-way into a buffer, it should give the second half of the buffer.... but right now, we create a brand new buffer instead.

The trick will be finding a good way to detect this that doesn't break other games, and then adjusting render-from-texture to use the offset. So, it's not a small amount of work but it is fixable.

Anyway, with the current version of PPSSPP there's no setting that can correct it (well, except the software renderer, but that's not really practical...)

-[Unknown]

[Dospraline]

Well, it's good to know that the issue will be able to be fixed eventually. I really appreciate the trouble you've gone through in order to help figure out the issue, even if I can't play it for the time being. I look forward to when it will be able to be resolved. Thanks again!

[Beavr]

Title: RockMan DASH: Hagane no Boukenshin
Genre: Action RPG
Region: JP
Format: ISO
Version: 0.9.6-784-gde1c756
Game ID: ULJM05030
OS: Windows 32bit
Compatability: Ingame
Notes: Game plays with you seeing 2x the left side of the screen (see screenshots).

[vnctdj]

Merged.