Emulator

Can you attach two fifologs (one with SafeTextureCacheColorSamples = 0 and one with SafeTextureCacheColorSamples = 512) to this issue, please? It'd help with checking it. (Use 7-zip to compress them if they're too big to attach.)

Also

pokechu22 wrote in #note-1:

Can you attach two fifologs (one with SafeTextureCacheColorSamples = 0 and one with SafeTextureCacheColorSamples = 512) to this issue, please? It'd help with checking it. (Use 7-zip to compress them if they're too big to attach.)

In addition to the uploaded logs I'll add this: The issue occurs regardless of the internal resolution. Native and 3x Native 1080p produce the same result.

Hmm, the fifologs don't seem to work properly; rendering is completely broken in them. (It looks like the texture coordinate matrix is messed up; rows 60-63 should be the identity matrix but they're all zeros instead. The color swap table is also messed up, being RGRR instead of RGBA. And something else is wrong too; probably there's more state that only gets set once and isn't being captured properly in the fifolog.) Even working around those issues I can't see anything that looks like it should be drawing text, which is odd. (I might just be missing something obvious though.)

I'll buy a copy of the game and take a look at it in a few days, hopefully things will be easier to understand then.

pokechu22 wrote in #note-4:

Hmm, the fifologs don't seem to work properly; rendering is completely broken in them. (It looks like the texture coordinate matrix is messed up; rows 60-63 should be the identity matrix but they're all zeros instead. The color swap table is also messed up, being RGRR instead of RGBA. And something else is wrong too; probably there's more state that only gets set once and isn't being captured properly in the fifolog.) Even working around those issues I can't see anything that looks like it should be drawing text, which is odd. (I might just be missing something obvious though.)

I'll buy a copy of the game and take a look at it in a few days, hopefully things will be easier to understand then.

Is it something I did wrong in the fifolog recording? What I did was opened the journal, then went to fifoplayer, set 3 frames, record, then save.
Would it be helpful if I recorded a video of the problem?

Is it something I did wrong in the fifolog recording? What I did was opened the journal, then went to fifoplayer, set 3 frames, record, then save.

No, it seems like it's probably a bug with the fifolog recorder itself.

Would it be helpful if I recorded a video of the problem?

I don't know how much additional information that would give compared to the screenshot. If you think it would be helpful, go ahead, but if it's a lot of extra effort it's probably not needed. (I assume that opening the journal is something that's self-explanatory once I actually have the game.)

The way the text changes when the page flipping animation ends in the 512 version is very odd.

One other thing to check is if disabling dual core changes things. Dual core is can cause lots of weird issues, though this doesn't match what I'd expect. But it'd be good to rule it out.

Disabling "Store EFB Copies to Texture Only" and "Defer EFB Copies to RAM" might also do something, but I'm not sure about that either.

pokechu22 wrote in #note-8:

One other thing to check is if disabling dual core changes things. Dual core is can cause lots of weird issues, though this doesn't match what I'd expect. But it'd be good to rule it out.

Disabling dual core didn't change anything.

Disabling "Store EFB Copies to Texture Only" and "Defer EFB Copies to RAM" might also do something, but I'm not sure about that either.

I disabled "Store EFB Copies to Texture Only" but left "Defer EFB Copies to RAM" and now it works! I really thought I had tried that as I was messing with tons of settings but apparently I didn't. Awesome!

I tested this on my laptop. When I get home I'll test it on my desktop where I first encountered the issue. After playing some I'll confirm if the issue is gone and ensure it didn't cause any other odd issues.

Alright, that makes some sense. I guess Dolphin's texture cache is getting confused by the text and thinks that two different versions of it are the same texture because it's mostly either transparent or black.

Can you test whether there are issues with the different SafeTextureCacheColorSamples values when "Store EFB Copies to Texture Only" is off (in particular when flipping between pages)? If it changes book behavior when EFB copies to texture only is on, it might cause issues when it's off too. (SafeTextureCacheColorSamples = 0 is the safest/most accurate value, with 512 the midpoint and 128 being the fastest but least accurate value.)

"Store EFB Copies to Texture Only" being disabled might also explain why I don't see the text in the fifologs; if the game renders the text once and then uses it as a texture later on, but that texture never gets saved into main memory, it won't be saved into the fifolog either.

(Also, as a note to myself: the fifolog renders properly if the call to LoadRegisters in FifoPlayer::AdvanceFrame() (which normally handles resetting things when looping) is commented out and then an external debugger is used to change xfmem.posMatrices[60*4+0] (0xf0), xfmem.posMatrices[61*4+1] (0xf5) and xfmem.posMatrices[62*4+2] (0xfa) to 1.0 (restoring an identity matrix starting at row 60), bpmem.tevksel.ksel[1].hex to 0xe (setting swap_rb to blue and swap_ga to alpha, so the first swap table maps RGBA to RGBA instead of RGRR), and bpmem.dispcopyyscale to 256 (so that the screen is actually the right height; this was the step I missed before). All of those values were previously 0, which makes me think the initial register values weren't saved properly. I'm not sure what would cause that though and will need to investigate.)

pokechu22 wrote in #note-10:

Alright, that makes some sense. I guess Dolphin's texture cache is getting confused by the text and thinks that two different versions of it are the same texture because it's mostly either transparent or black.

Can you test whether there are issues with the different SafeTextureCacheColorSamples values when "Store EFB Copies to Texture Only" is off (in particular when flipping between pages)? If it changes book behavior when EFB copies to texture only is on, it might cause issues when it's off too. (SafeTextureCacheColorSamples = 0 is the safest/most accurate value, with 512 the midpoint and 128 being the fastest but least accurate value.)

I tested this and the journal works regardless of the SafeTextureCacheColorSamples value when Store EFB Copies to Texture Only is off. This seems to have resolved the issue. I can't believe I missed this step in my own troubleshooting. Working in Information Technology for 13 years I should have known better lol.

I'm waiting to be given edit rights to the dolphin wiki so I can add these minor configs to the game's wiki page for future players. Hopefully it'll save somebody a headache.

I know this isn't a popular game so I appreciate your tenacity!

It's probably better to update the default gameini to force "Store EFB Copies to Texture Only" off by default - it seems like the journal is a pretty important part of the game (compared to, say, Super Mario Galaxy's ability to screenshot your progress and save it to the message board). It also seems like the gameini forces SafeTextureCacheColorSamples = 512 by default which is odd - that was added 12 years ago along with forcing proper XFB emulation to fix cutscenes (#4723), but it's not clear if the texture cache setting is actually needed. If everything works properly at 128 as well, that can probably be removed from the gameini.

pokechu22 wrote in #note-13:

It's probably better to update the default gameini to force "Store EFB Copies to Texture Only" off by default - it seems like the journal is a pretty important part of the game (compared to, say, Super Mario Galaxy's ability to screenshot your progress and save it to the message board). It also seems like the gameini forces SafeTextureCacheColorSamples = 512 by default which is odd - that was added 12 years ago along with forcing proper XFB emulation to fix cutscenes (#4723), but it's not clear if the texture cache setting is actually needed. If everything works properly at 128 as well, that can probably be removed from the gameini.

I assume you're referring to the "ImmediateXFBEnable" setting in the default gameini. I did notice that about 'SafeTextureCacheColorSamples' and 'ImmediateXFBEnable'. I decided to test it for you.

Leaving 'SafeTextureCacheColorSamples' at 512 and changing 'ImmediateXFBEnable = True' causes flickering when opening the journal and flipping through pages. It also causes cutscenes to not display at all as reported in bug #4723 . Changing 'SafeTextureCacheColorSamples' to any other value causes the same flicker.

Leaving 'ImmediateXFBEnable = False' and the flicker does not occur and cutscenes display properly. At this point, changing 'SafeTextureCacheColorSamples' to 0 or 128 makes no difference and the journal and cutscenes still display properly.

Perhaps 'SafeTextureCacheColorSamples = 512' was added to the default gameini 12 years ago because it caused the journal to somewhat function, though not correctly. But it seems with adding 'EFBToTextureEnable = False' the 'SafeTextureCacheColorSamples' value no longer makes a difference.

This is my current gameini as shown under the "..\Dolphin-x64\User\GameSettings\SFI.ini" file...

[Video_Settings]
# Probably not needed since Dolphin's default config is set to "fast" but I left it here anyways.
SafeTextureCacheColorSamples = 128

[Video_Hacks]
EFBToTextureEnable = False
ImmediateXFBEnable = False

... and everything works great so far.

I agree changing to default gameini in future dolphin builds would probably be the best course of action. Would that be something you do as a developer (your profile says you are so I'm just assuming) or is that something I have to do?

pokechu22 wrote in #note-15:

Thanks for the testing! I've created a pull request at https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/pull/12189 (this kind of change is fairly easy for anyone to make, though, so if you run into a situation like this for another game feel free to create a PR yourself).

It's better to remove unneeded settings from the gameini since if they're present at all, they override the user's settings, which is good if the setting makes the game work when it wouldn't otherwise, but is less helpful if the setting doesn't actually affect anything.

Yeah I'll probably remove that setting.
You're welcome! I'm glad we were able to get this sorted rather easily.
Thanks again!