DragonQuest 8. black above characters noses,face and hands

[smackjack22]

I notice when panning the camera around in game , black artifacts can come over the hero's nose and around the other characters, as well as the hero having black lines on his hands..I looked into the fixes for this game and this wasn't mentioned.. What is the solution?

[pandubz]

What version of PCSX2 are you using? I think I vaguely recall this being a thing on older versions, but I am able to run this game with upscaling and no such artifacts while using OpenGL on the development builds. If it's not an issue with an out of date PCSX2 version, then it may be a GSdx hardware hack. Half Pixel Offset for example may screw up the character outlines, in some cases.

[smackjack22]

i'm using 1.5 and it shows black like a smear line that goesa way and comes back at the right hand side of the screen too. I'm using open gl hardware. i have attahced a screen shot of what I see

[pandubz]

Oh. Those. Yeah fair enough, I haven't found a good solution to those, in any of the few games I have that do that. Might just have to deal with it for now.

[smackjack22]

What other games do you have this issue with? The only thing I can think of is maybe it's because it supports 16:9 in the game... I cannot find a dragon quest 8 widescreen patch to test that theory out though.. messed with a lot of settings with no luck. It happens on native res so it's not a scaling only issue. Nobody else has had this issue??

[rizzlecg]

I have this exact same issue, and from testing older builds I discovered that revision 1.5.0-dev-2699 is the cause. If you download and use the build just prior to that one (#2698), the black artifacts do not appear. I was hoping this would have been spotted by more others in regression over the past 4 months given the popularity of Dragon Quest 8, but seems that's hasn't happened yet.

For reference, here is the commit log for the build where this issue originates:

"GSdx: Always enable Unscale Point and Line. Always enable unscale point and line hack on upscaled resolutions, and purge the gui option. It was discussed in the past with Gregoy that it can be enabled without causing any issues which will be beneficial to getting rid of 1 less option and fixing a bunch of fmv issues without relying on a gui toggle."
Author - lightningterror

[pandubz]

I have this exact same issue, and from testing older builds I discovered that revision 1.5.0-dev-2699 is the cause. If you download and use the build just prior to that one (#2698), the black artifacts do not appear. I was hoping this would have been spotted by more others in regression over the past 4 months given the popularity of Dragon Quest 8, but seems that's hasn't happened yet.

For reference, here is the commit log for the build where this issue originates:

"GSdx: Always enable Unscale Point and Line. Always enable unscale point and line hack on upscaled resolutions, and purge the gui option. It was discussed in the past with Gregoy that it can be enabled without causing any issues which will be beneficial to getting rid of 1 less option and fixing a bunch of fmv issues without relying on a gui toggle."
Author - lightningterror

Can confirm, unscale point and line is the culprit for the bad character outlines. In the newer builds it is enabled by default, but can be disabled with "Disable Safe Features" in the GSdx Advanced Hardware Hacks.

[rizzlecg]

Nice! Thanks for confirming pandubz, enabling that checkbox in the latest dev build definitely fixes it!

[Arethien]

Can confirm, unscale point and line is the culprit for the bad character outlines. In the newer builds it is enabled by default, but can be disabled with "Disable Safe Features" in the GSdx Advanced Hardware Hacks.

I was just passing by, reading today's posts for no real reason and found this thread. So happy I did!
I usually update my PSCSX2 dev builds before playing, so this new "bug"(?) in Dragon Quest VIII would have made me very sad.
I'm on my 160ish hour of playthrough, still haven't cleared.

Thank you smackjack22 for pointing it out, rizzlecg for finding the culprit and pandubz for the solution.

Attached my current Dragon Quest VIII settings. Looks fine now.

Dragon Quest VIII - Settings (New Bug) & Dragon Quest VIII - Settings (Fix)
       

[Kyle Cross]

As someone who rarely browses the forums, I'm so happy I happened to see this thread. Hopefully this gets noted on the wiki entry for the game.