How to test games to help things get fixed

[[Unknown]]

Even if you're not a programmer, there's tons of things you can do to help out. If you are a programmer, there's even more. Below is a list of things from easiest to hardest.

1. Try dev builds. Check whatever games you want to see if there are improvements or problems. Slower, faster, better lighting, anything.

2. Enable reporting. In System settings, check "Enable compatibility server reports".

This will send problems the emulator encounters to a server so we can understand them better. There will probably be more features later.

3. Compare with the actual PSP playing the game. Sometimes glitches are not obvious, especially when something is missing or not happening.

You can use savegames to sync up between the PSP and emulator (unless there's a save bug.) You can even use something like pspstates and PPSSPP's turbo feature for things far from save points.

4. Take screenshots of graphic problems on the PSP to make it easier to compare. This one is more advanced, but if you install psplink (tutorial here: http://forums.pspslimhacks.com/threads/t...apps.5200/), and then when you have pspsh open type:

scrnshot my-screenshot.bmp

Which will create a perfect screenshot for you. Some games even have screenshots built in.

5. Dig into what's actually happening with JpcspTrace. This one can be fairly advanced, you don't need to be a programmer but you definitely need to be a power user.

There's a readme here:
http://code.google.com/p/jpcsp/source/br...README.txt

It can be used to trace syscalls made by the game - and find out which ones PPSSPP isn't running correctly.

6. If you're a developer, contribute. Even if you're not sure you're up to the task of working on an emulator, if you have a PSP you can tinker with it and find out what we're doing wrong. See here for more info:

https://github.com/hrydgard/pspautotests#readme

-[Unknown]

[Villori]

Thanks for this Unknown, I didn't know I could send reports to a server directly from the emulator, It is enabled now.

I wish I could help even more but I'm not a programmer, I know a little Ruby but nothing of C++, but I will see if I can find a good course of it and dig into it, I'm very interested in the emulator and wish to help more (If you could help me with a link to a C++ course it would be awesome!)

And again, thank you all for your hard work!

[[Unknown]]

Well, if you know Ruby, I'd recommend just trying to get into it and see where you land. The pspautotests are very simple and self contained.

That said, I'd start by trying to understand JpcspTrace, and using it on a game or to. For example, the default config just watches for sceKernelThreadCreate and sceUtilitySavedataInitStart iirc, and you can look at the log and see how that works. Just being able to trace the calls and compare with the log in the emulator can already really help find bugs and problems making games not work right.

-[Unknown]

[vnctdj]

Very useful thread, thank you [Unknown] !
I will look at that more in detail soon

[Ritori]

Soo that another way to report i don't about this but which better report host or upload some log??

my english never improved...

[[Unknown]]

Both server reporting and logs can be helpful in their own ways.

-[Unknown]

[Ritori]

Thank, maybe i will try both of it

[combusken]

Hi, is there any guide to understand how ppsspp works? I mean not 500 - 1000 page book about emulators, but just a short guide, like, which file to start, or a link to the oldest ppsspp build, so i can start reading simpler code, and follow the improvements?

[xsacha]

(06-21-2013 07:14 AM)combusken Wrote:  I mean not 500 - 1000 page book about emulators

There's a book?

[[Unknown]]

Theoretically this is the best thing available:

http://www.ppsspp.org/development.html

-[Unknown]

[combusken]

(06-21-2013 11:26 AM)xsacha Wrote:  

(06-21-2013 07:14 AM)combusken Wrote:  I mean not 500 - 1000 page book about emulators

There's a book?

I dont know

[akimikage]

So if I enable the reporting and a crash occurred the emu reports it automatically ? or do I have to intentionally look for bugs ?

[[Unknown]]

Unfortunately, crashes (like when the emulator automatically exits) are not reported at this time.

However, a lot of other things, features we don't support yet, things we don't expect to happen, things we want to find games that do for further testing, etc. are all reported.

For example, this is a really bad thing, that should theoretically never happen:
http://report.ppsspp.org/logs/kind/280

Clearly, it is happening, although only in certain games. This gives a big clue as to what might be wrong in those games, and also means that if a developer has one of those games, it's probably really useful to debug that particular issue.

Anyway, if it doesn't happen, it won't get reported. So to some degree, looking for issues helps. But, just playing games is enough - it'll find them automatically as they happen.

-[Unknown]

[Weapon X]

Seems as if since 9.6.1640 the framrate had been lower on Nexus 7. Trying to find thhe exact change log that shows this. Any ideas?

[[Unknown]]

The best way to find when a problem started is bisecting. That is, you try one a bunch ago, see if it works, and if it does, try in between, etc. If you have 1000 changes to try (meaning: the last version you know did work was 1000 versions ago), you can find it in about 10 attempts (less if you're lucky) if you do this correctly.

However, there aren't builds available for every change, unfortunately. So if you find at least the first broken version and the most recent working version, that gives a range to examine.

If you have a compiler, you can use git bisect and find the exact change. There's a page about that here:
https://github.com/hrydgard/ppsspp/wiki/...oke-a-game

-[Unknown]