Emulator

Please bisect and provide a fifolog, without that we can't do much. Instructions for both of these can be found at the links in the template.

I did try both, but since the appearance of this bug seems completely random, I don't notice it through bisecting various builds as the test ends before I play long enough for it to appear, and I could only possibly record it via fifoplayer after it appears, again due to randomness, which I don't know if it'll help.

It just seems to come up if I play it enough, and randomly so, but often enough to be noticeable.

Based on the other issue you reported, it seems like you may have a graphics driver or hardware issue.

Entirely possible, though it's only these two games that have issues. And only on the most recent build as going back to the stable build of Dolphin 5.0 seemed fine. Every other game I used, like all the James Bond games (aside from the VP6 video lines issue), the Godzilla games, Star Wars games like Rogue Squadron 2 or Bounty Hunter etc. all worked fine. Just these two creates problems. Heatseeker's was random, though King Kong was replicatable to me.

I'm also noticing that Dolphin Bisect seems to crash when I switch builds, which probably was it stopping rather than it automatically changing. What would you recommend I do? I've been lurking and scouring different forums for these issues and when I couldn't find it, I reported them here.

Ah, okay, maybe not a driver/hardware issue then if it's only affecting these games. As for the bisect tool, you are using the latest version (1.2.1 at this time), correct? If so, I'm not sure. Will have to ask Helios about it.

Yeah, specifically off Github. I never used it or Fifoplayer before, so I had to learn how to use it a bit, but running into that issue. And with Heatseeker, again, it's entirely random. I could play one mission and have nothing go wrong, then replay the same mission and immediately have bugs, and then replay the same mission and have it start fine, but then bug out again. The last time I tested, I actually had an opposite situation happen where the text stayed, but all the visuals on the HUD bugged out. Not disappeared, but just bugged out and displaying improperly. But the mission ended soon after and I didn't get a screenshot.

So that's why it's just so odd to me. I don't even know if Dolphin 5.0 itself is entirely bug free and I just got lucky there.

So that's why my ability to provide much info beyond "this is broken, here's a screenshot for proof" is limited.

Hmm, well JonnyH has pointed out to me that games can utilize the GPU in different ways, resulting in hitting bugs that other games don't. That would also kind of explain why it only happens on newer builds, as Dolphin has changed a lot since the last release. I would make sure your graphics driver is up to date, and possibly try doing a clean install of it.

Oh and again, if you could provide a fifolog that would be immensely helpful. It would pretty much put the nail in the coffin as to whether this issue is Dolphin itself, or something outside it.

My graphics driver is always up to date, and I always do a clean install, so that's not entirely the issue. If I could get DolphinBisect to work properly, I could at least narrow down which build causes it, but the crashes makes it a slow process.

I could try providing a fifolog, but I still don't exactly know how to use it so it might be a while. Spent all day trying to get this figured out, and didn't have much success with my other issue with King Kong either.

One thing I will say is I'm using a laptop, with a laptop GPU. I wonder if that could be causing issues as I'm sure most people play games on desktops.

I'm more interested in the fifolog than the bisect. Also, have you made sure Dolphin is using your dedicated graphics and not integrated graphics? Our nvidia optimus hint doesn't seem to work, so you have to manually force it to use the correct GPU via a setting NVCP.

Okay, so I recorded a fifolog (I assume that's what the .dff file is), where the HUD's visual parts get screwed up rather than the text, but it exceeds the 5MB limit apparently. What did I do wrong there?

I also uploaded one for King Kong.

It's normal for them to be big. Try putting it in an archive like a zip file and see if that gets you below the limit. If it doesn't, you'll have to use an external file hosting service.

Can you provide a screenshot of what that fifolog should look like?

The fifolog looks fine. Have you tried all graphics backends.

You said this doesn't happen in Dolphin 5.0? Please bisect the issue, that would help a ton.

Dolphin Bisect keeps crashing whenever I try a second Dolphin build after the initial test, and this is also completely random, making it even harder to get.

That's why I was unable to provide a bisect for either this or the King Kong game I was using.

I've ordered the game.

Thanks for taking a look at it. It was one of the games I enjoyed playing at the time, given the lack of arcade flight games on the Wii (Ace Combat was always PS2 before going to 360 and PS3, and Tom Clancy's HAWX was PS3/Xbox 360/PC).

As mentioned earlier, have you tried all graphics backends? Something is getting mucked up after it's passed to your GPU, cause the fifolog looks fine here.

I did. Tried all the backends, though I usually prefer Vulkan. Was the first thing I fiddled around with.

Another update, well that's odd but it seems like changing the backend to either Direct3D 11 or OpenGL seems to have made it go away. At least I played a mission twice without the bug showing up.

Could be a Vulkan issue then? I swear I recall seeing it as well when I tried it last time on those other backends, but now it seems it only really shows up on Vulkan.

I've been playing the game now for... maybe 45 minutes, probably not long enough to reproduce the issue, but, enough to get a sense for the game.

I was past the two missions at the start. I have a suggestion - try setting the Texture Cache to Safe and try using single core. If the bug does occur, can you try toggling the texture cache to make it reload values?