Raw danger (graphic problem)

[refraction]

Hmm it used to work? Try ticking the "Aggressive CRC" option in the hw hacks, that option disabled a lot of game specific fixes when unticked, which may have introduced some old problems.

[avih]

Hmm it used to work? Try ticking the "Aggressive CRC" option in the hw hacks, that option disabled a lot of game specific fixes when unticked, which may have introduced some old problems.

It doesn't have a CRC hack at all, and the games which have aggressive hacks are very few (about 8, all/most of them listed at the hw hacks gsdx panel).

But I do recall playing this game (not sure if the same region as OP) for at least 2-3 hours with PCSX2 a long time ago. IIRC it worked reasonably well in HW mode.

[Levaniko]

This is known problem, I tried everything some time ago (it was 0.9.8 period) and went back to 0.9.6, even tried GSDX cutie with every possible options but nothing helped my CPU is not strong enough to run the game in software mode with playable speed so I dropped it hoping it will be fixed in future, it seems time hasn't come yet

P.S. I think I even tried 0.9.4 lol

[MyDreamName]

Hi all, it's been a while since I have posted on these forums, but I wanted to share my insights on Raw Danger's performance.

Around almost three years ago, I believe Shadow Lady and I corresponded about trying to fix the game's problems. She developed an experimental CRC hack to fix these issues. At the time, we had two problems we were trying to address:

1. The game was incredibly slow - (although, at the time, I had a friend with an nVidia card who had no problems when the game ran on his machine, I think it was a GTX 6xx of some kind - I now have a GTX 770, and the game runs just fine whereas it ran incredibly sluggishly on my ATI 6950, so it may be some weird AMD problem)

2. The game was near unplayable in HW rendering due to the postprocessing effects braking and obscuring gameplay from less than half an hour in.

Shadow Lady was able to fix one of these problems at a time, but was unable to fix both at the same time, so there were two different CRC fixes - one to remove the sluggishness (AMD only?) and one to fix the broken effects. I in fact also tested the hack which actually fixed these effects, but I no longer have access to it (I don't believe it's still in my private messages), and I doubt Shadow Lady has it on her local machine, assuming she is still active here (which I genuinely have no idea). If it's not floating somewhere around on this webserver, that data might not actually exist anymore.

However, it does mean that the game is fixable for certain graphics card with a CRC hack (although, for others, it'll still run incredibly sluggishly unless someone finds a way to fix both with one hack).

[faekplastik3s]

Hi all, it's been a while since I have posted on these forums, but I wanted to share my insights on Raw Danger's performance.

Around almost three years ago, I believe Shadow Lady and I corresponded about trying to fix the game's problems. She developed an experimental CRC hack to fix these issues. At the time, we had two problems we were trying to address:

1. The game was incredibly slow - (although, at the time, I had a friend with an nVidia card who had no problems when the game ran on his machine, I think it was a GTX 6xx of some kind - I now have a GTX 770, and the game runs just fine whereas it ran incredibly sluggishly on my ATI 6950, so it may be some weird AMD problem)

2. The game was near unplayable in HW rendering due to the postprocessing effects braking and obscuring gameplay from less than half an hour in.

Shadow Lady was able to fix one of these problems at a time, but was unable to fix both at the same time, so there were two different CRC fixes - one to remove the sluggishness (AMD only?) and one to fix the broken effects. I in fact also tested the hack which actually fixed these effects, but I no longer have access to it (I don't believe it's still in my private messages), and I doubt Shadow Lady has it on her local machine, assuming she is still active here (which I genuinely have no idea). If it's not floating somewhere around on this webserver, that data might not actually exist anymore.

However, it does mean that the game is fixable for certain graphics card with a CRC hack (although, for others, it'll still run incredibly sluggishly unless someone finds a way to fix both with one hack).

Hey, I have been looking to finally play this game on my computer, and just like you, it's nigh impossible on my 6770. The slowdowns are random, and at times playing in software mode manages to be multiple times faster, even if still nowhere near smooth. I would really appreciate it if you could find the slowdown fix or offer me some extra help, I have tried to fix this problem myself multiple times but there's no solution in sight (I tried using a custom GPU plugin, for example, and every combination of settings available) and the devs simply don't seem to care about such an obscure game or recognise this as a bug.

[MyDreamName]

Hi everyone.

I came to remind you all that Raw Danger is still broken. Nah, just kidding. I've done some poking at Raw Danger using the only method I really know to poke at the game, Cheat Engine, in order to remove some of the broken effects.

I'm not sure how much of an impact this will have on the first problem I listed a few points back, but this should be an incredibly helpful first start for those of you who have the hardware to run this game at a decent speed using the hardware renderer.

Before (screwed up the compression on this image, but meh):


After:


Software (still after):


I've not removed all of the broken effects that are in the game through memory editing, but it's a good start. I've achieved this effect by changing these three addresses from their 4-byte value of 1 to 0 using Cheat Engine:

2043E3E8 (not sure what this changes on SW)
2043EE38 (make sure you disable this one along with 2043E3E8, otherwise the game will appear green in SW/HW)
2048F5BC (not sure what this changes on SW)
204BFBB0 (not sure what this changes on SW)
207AC888 (not sure what this changes on SW)

Optionally, you can also remove the color filter altogether (which will remove it from the top-left corner in HW rendering as well) by setting the 4-byte value of address 20417E0C to 0. Color filter options such as colors used might also be able to be changed in that general area of memory somehow.

Hope this helps. If anyone wants to collaborate on some sort of CRC hack for the game, lemme know.

[faekplastik3s]

I suppose you don't happen to have that handy AMD slowdown fix for this game as well? I could put up with the glitchiness and maybe work through it using SkipDraw, but this game is nearly unplayable in hardware mode for me on a 6770M with an i7 and I don't understand what the deal is - your mention of a fix with ShadowLady gave me a glimmer of hope and I keep going back here and checking pcsx2 repos to see if, someday, this might get a solution.

[MyDreamName]

Unfortunately, no. That seems to be long gone. However, even with the slowdown fix you would still experience the intrusive filters, even with skipdraw. However, as I demonstrated, you could find these in memory an forcibly disable them, which would make the game much more playable and available for those with slower hardware (or just AMD hardware, I dunno if it's _specifically_ an AMD/Nvidia thing, I think someone said it has more to do with available VRAM, and I have a 4GB card)

I would make the CRC hack myself, if I knew how. I don't know where to find documentation on it, and I don't have an AMD card anymore. However, as I said, SL was having trouble fixing BOTH the slowdown and the filters, and could only do one at once. A better official CRC hack would be to fix the filters, as hopefully the slowdown issue would fix itself as time passed and technology progressed.

There's one part in the introduction cutscene where the framerate ~quadruples, so maybe there's just a certain graphics thing that's a VRAM hog or something that could also be forcibly disabled in CE, I dunno. I'll try to check out that particular part later.

[faekplastik3s]

My card has 2GB GDDR5 of dedicated video memory, and looking through MSI's Afterburner monitoring, emulating this barely scratches 1GB, which is a lot for an emulated game, but doesn't exactly tax anything these days. However, the GPU usage gets immediately stuck at 99%, even when overclocked, any time 3D rendering is going on (tested during the game intro), so I think it might be some problematic filter that pcsx2 isn't filtering out and forcibly emulating in hardware that is the issue, or it might simply be a AMD driver quirk that doesn't exist in other vendors. Software mode is multiple times faster during the intro, and looks visibly different as well - strangely clearer.

[MyDreamName]

There's a part during the intro cutscene where the camera moves towards the skylight of the underground Geo Tower where the Geo Opening Celebration is being held. When the camera enters the skylight, GPU usage drops sharply for me when using both HW/SW rendering. Do you experience a framerate boost during that part of the intro cutscene?

It's been something that has been tickling my curiosity for a while.