[Resolved] SpongBob: BFBB - shadows issue

[Scootaloo]

I noticed while playing SpongeBob: Battle for Bikini Bottom that the shadows were not showing up properly. The shadow issue is only on SpongeBob (or whichever player you have selected) and enemies.

Please excuse all of the images (I know they take up a lot of space), but spoiler tags (these: ) don't work on this forum I guess.

Screenshots:




How it should look:



Notice how you can see his shape rather than just a rectangular block in my screenshots.

Settings:








This is not that big of a deal and the game is still very much playable, but if there is a way to fix it this minor bug (if it could be called that) I would love to know. For the record: I know the SpongeBob: Battle for Bikini Bottom inst the most popular game so not so many people may know about this bug. Cheers!

[refraction]

Itll probably be fine if you press F9 (software mode), not a lot we can do, just ignore it

[Scootaloo]

Itll probably be fine if you press F9 (software mode), not a lot we can do, just ignore it

Thanks. That fixed it however in software mode it drops down to 20FPS-24FPS which is not playable (unless you like playing in slow motion anyway). Oh well the good news is that the graphics (aside from the shadows on moving enemies/npcs) appear to be fine and I get 59FPS-60FPS.

However I wanted to ask: why does software mode render (I think that's the right word/term) more accurately than hardware mode? (correct me if I phrased that wrong)

[refraction]

because everything is done in software mode, hardware mode relys on DirectX and the GPU shaders to do everything, where software mode does the lot by hand, which is why its slower.

If you have a quad core CPU, you could set "Extra rendering threads" in the gsdx config to 3, that will speed things up.

[Koji]

Thanks. That fixed it however in software mode it drops down to 20FPS-24FPS which is not playable (unless you like playing in slow motion anyway). Oh well the good news is that the graphics (aside from the shadows on moving enemies/npcs) appear to be fine and I get 59FPS-60FPS.

However I wanted to ask: why does software mode render (I think that's the right word/term) more accurately than hardware mode? (correct me if I phrased that wrong)

Simply put, when using hardware mode, you're relying on what your video card can do. Video cards, by their nature, are very specialized pieces of hardware and how PCs handle displaying 3D graphics is VERY different from how the PS2 handles it's 3D graphics. You can translate most of these differences to native techniques (which is why most games work near flawlessly) but there will always be things that just want translate well in hardware.

In software mode, you're relying on your CPU. PC CPU's are general purpose by nature, and therefore are able to emulate the PS2 hardware much more accurately, but it of course comes at the price of speed.

In short, software mode leverages your CPU's general purpose nature to give as accurate a PS2 render as possible. Hardware mode leverages advanced GPU's ability to do the work faster and at better quality but sacrifices accuracy.

[Scootaloo]

@Koji so basically when in "software" mode PCSX2 is trying to run entirely off of the CPU which is what causes the lag. However when in "hardware" mode (most of the time) PCSX2 offloads a lot of the work to the GPU. Thanks for the clarification!

[Scootaloo]

If you have a quad core CPU, you could set "Extra rendering threads" in the gsdx config to 3, that will speed things up.

I tried that and it seems to work well however the FPS fluctuates from a solid 59FPS to 35FPS. However this is a improvement from the 20FPS-25FPS at least. Though it is still playable it is not very fluid at all - would it be a bad idea to set it to 4 threads or is that pushing it?

Here is a video demonstration to show the fluctuation:


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EDIT: after looking at a few other lets plays (that were played on actual PS2's that sky bug thing does occur there two. I guess that it just never got fixed, but it is not big deal I suppose.

I didn't really want to make a new thread for this, but I wanted to show my findings:

I noticed on the "Goo Lagoon" area of the game which is in a beach setting the sky is supposed to have a more tan-ish color to it. However I noticed while playing you can see the edges becoming blue. I tried "software" mode just to see if it might make a difference, but it didn't. Again this is just a minor issue however I want to see if I can do anything about it.

Note: I can't say for sure, but I am guessing this is something that has do with the skybox? honestly though I am not sure so correct me so I know.

How it looks like on PCSX2:


(or you can just view screenshots (look at the upper corners)

How it is supposed to look like (not my video so I advise you to mute it and look at the sky for the sake of comparison):