Rengoku II: The Stairway to H.E.A.V.E.N.

[sfageas]

Region : US
Format : ISO
Version : v0.6-966-g33c6df5
Game ID : ULUS10127
OS : Win/Android(tested with galaxy s2 4.1.2 60fps)
Compatability : Playable
Notes : theres a 'blur' kind of on screen in game-missing music

[Gurlok]

I made some tests with the 0.8.1-1332-gebb2aba x64 build and there are some graphic improvements with buffered rendering enabled, I provided a screenshot:


link due to image size

There is always some kind of blur, but it's definetely better than before.

[Tabman]

ppsspp-v0.9.1-962-g83f39fd-windows-amd64

Games seems to run without any problems. Movies, GFX, BGM, sound, speech, save/load everything O.K.
I haven't noticed any blurring issues.
           
Log file x64:
  RengokuII_x64.zip (Size: 5.13 KB / Downloads: 1006)

[Gurlok]

(09-16-2013 10:10 AM)Tabman Wrote:  ppsspp-v0.9.1-962-g83f39fd-windows-amd64

Games seems to run without any problems. Movies, GFX, BGM, sound, speech, save/load everything O.K.
I haven't noticed any blurring issues.

Log file x64:

You should not see those hexagones, they were a result of disabling buffered rendering if I'm not wrong, while turning it on should cause a bit of blurr effect on the screen.

[Tabman]

(09-16-2013 04:23 PM)Gurlok Wrote:  You should not see those hexagones, they were a result of disabling buffered rendering if I'm not wrong, while turning it on should cause a bit of blurr effect on the screen.

It makes sense that those hexes shouldn't be visible, they are extremely annoying during gameplay.
But they are not the result of disabling buffered rendering; they show up on all rendering modes, non-buffered/buffered/to cpu/to gpu.

[Gurlok]

Well, I can confirm now that with the latest build I tried (0.9.1-997-gf061288 as for the moment) and buffered rendering enabled along other things like mipmapping, texture filtering set to linear, while scaling to x2 (xBRZ) the game looks outstanding, all those issues are gone (keep in mind that I'm using a nvidia gpu though), here some screenshots as proof:

ren 2-1

ren 2-2

(link due to img size)

[Kolrath]

I'm testing out Rengoku 2 currently and having some graphical issues with it.

The version of PPSSPP I'm using is...
ppsspp-v1.11.3-832-g8e9b0122a-windows-amd64

The main problem is the lighting. Its like there is an excessive amount of glow on anything with light. Lit areas have an overbloom look to them in a sense. The most obvious though is to just look at the green light on the back of the character.

A secondary issue, which might be part of the first is that there seems to be a bit of a blur to things. Particularly things in the distance. When fighting an enemy in the game its very hard to identify the weapons on their arms and heads since they just look like mush from anything but a point blank distance.

I notice that from some spots it seems there is a bit of a ghost image around the character, often most noticeable around the shoulders.

I am using Vulkan backend rendering mode with Buffering enabled.
NO post processing shaders are being used.
Upscaling is disabled.

Here is a screenshot of the game at 10x resolution...
   

Here is a screenshot of the game at 1x (native) resolution)
   

In this github thread...
Rengoku 2 wrong display #2450
https://github.com/hrydgard/ppsspp/issues/2450

There is this screenshot (second to last one in the thread) posted by the user Puniasterus...
   

In their screenshot the game is nice and clear. You can see things in the distance well and most noticeable the green light on the characters back isn't glarringly obnoxious.


I have tried everything I can to replicate the results of their image with no luck. I tried all the backends, a heaping ton of different graphics settings, and also countless different versions of PPSSPP. I saw their version of PPSSPP is ancient in that screenshot so I tried going back to the oldest build available on Orphis buildbot even.
However, in all cases my results are the same.

I was going to post the issue on github incase this is a regression of some kind, but wanted to check here first to see if there was anything that I can do first.

*As a side note, I've also noticed that the shadow of the character isn't properly displayed in the status screen. You can see some vertex junk here and there and when rotating the model you can see it shift around but thats it. This visual error was present in all modes, versions, and settings I used. It is even present when using software mode.

[LunaMoo]

What you consider "good" is actually ripped of any postprocessing effects in game, you can achieve that simply by using skip buffer effects rendering mode, through other things might also go missing as most games require buffers to draw things and it's not always just effects.

What you consider ghosting is just typical PSP quality bloom when rendered at too high res, we have a hack to reduce resolution only for effects, but it unfortunately doesn't work for all games. When using x1 native resultion it should look like real PSP with blurry glow instead of "ghosting", but unless you actually play in small window and use a shader that reduces refresh rate of the display it might still appear to be more ugly than on the small awful PSP's LCD.

Also this game is pretty bright on real PSP, but it depends on glowing objects in the map, there are lighter and darker places. "Nice and clear" is NOT this game's proper look, it's kind of impossible to find a video from real hardware of it aside of trailer which is mostly grayed out, but you can easily see how eye burning bright it is in some rooms like in https://youtu.be/ZA-JNTofh1A?t=19

So in short the game works fine, you're ruining effects by using very high rendering resolution which turn from blurry to sharp and appear as ghost instead of blurry light. Best solution would be to create a cheat to disable game's bloom and then apply bloom via PPSSPP post process shaders, but if you can't do that, you might simply remove all buffer effects hoping it doesn't break other stuff.

Edit: the shadow not rendering properly might be a bug worth opening issue for, no clue how it looks and how it should look through, so feel free to open a new issue on that part.

[Kolrath]

Thanks for the reply.
I think I'm confusing my memories with the first game. I checked out the first one on PPSSPP and it is crisp and clear without any of the fancy lighting effects.
That screenshot of Rengoku 2 without the effects that Puniasterus posted looks like Rengoku 1 did. So its not a PPSSPP regression, but just me having a mental regression. Heh.

I had tried using the hack to have effects in a lower resolution, but that causes constant whitish flashes of light all over the screen. Especially when moving.
Disabling buffered rendering isn't an option on this game. The majority of the time it will just result in a crash, normally with an exception error of some kind. If it makes it in game then you'll have a warm colored pixelated haze over the screen.

Creating a cheat to disable the game's bloom might be something worth persuing. Unfortunately, I haven't the foggiest idea of where to start for that.

I made a CRC hack in the past to remove a motion blur effect in the Playstation 2 game Disgaia 2 using Cheat Engine, but I was only able to pull that off because there was easily controllable times in game when the motion blur was enabled and disabled. It was disabled while stationary, but enabled while moving. So it was fairly easy to track down where in memory the motion blur toggle was and force it to be always off. Testing Rengoku 2 I didn't notice any points when I could say for certain the blur effect was off to try to track it down and disable it.

I saw a number of CWcheats to disable effects and such in various games posted. I think even some from yourself as well. Sadly, nothing for this game. Searching around turned up a lot of various cheats for games including some bloom removal, but I didn't come across any information on how to actually make one of these hacks from scratch.
Any advice or information anywhere on how I could go about disabling the bloom myself?

As for the shadow, I managed to track down a youtube video taken on an actual PSP and it shows what the shadow should look like in the games menu screen. In normal gameplay the shadow effect is just the common dark circle on the ground under the character. When I was testing on PPSSPP I was trying to address the bloom and only noticed the shadow issue in passing. If its an issue worth reporting to github I'll do some more proper testing and check various render modes and such to see if any of it has an effect on the shadow.