Silent Hill Shattered Memories: EDIT: nevermind, pretty sure it's a new bug.
#1
You can totally skip this first part where I get really miffed because I thought someone re-broke something I poured hours into reporting on a long time ago. At this point I'm fairly convinced it's a different bug that is new. Skip to the video in my sixth post to see how we have bigger issues than cut off sound files.

Please read before making any assumptions. I had to make a new account to post this, but I have been through these same issues 8 years ago and just couldn't recover my account. I am very, very familiar with using software mode to fix flashlight, fixing the cursor offset for tests yadda yadda. Please don't just respond with "Press F9 n00b! Solved years ago!"

So way back in the day, Shattered Memories used to have this issue where character animations would get out of sync with audio in cutscenes and it would cause audio files not to play or be cut off. We fixed it back then by enabling "INTC Spin Detection" speed hack. Made it playable, though still a little janky.

I haven't tried to emulate this game in forever, but yesterday I booted it up and was surprised to find the issue back again in current 1.5. Turning INTC detection on or off does nothing, neither does messing with sound sync settings or other speed hacks. Also just FWIW, I downloaded the older 1.4 build that is available publicly on most emulation sites, just to see if it was an issue with the newest build. Same issue on 2 PCs.

I searched the forums and didn't see any posts between 2012-18 mentioning these previously squashed bugs returning. Anyone have a clue? I've changed almost every setting and it has no effect. It used to be as simple as changing one setting to fix. I could just hunt down that version from 2011, but I would rather know wtf happened than actually play the game.

I am stoked that Shadow Tower Abyss now works flawlessly. Bravo somebody.

Systems tested on:
Desktop: i7 6700k, gtx960 6GB, 16GB DDR4, Samsung EVO 950 500GB SSD
Laptop: Macbook Pro late 14 (Windows Partition), i7 4850qm, 750m gt 2GB, 16GB DDR3, Samsung EVO 850 500GB SSD
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#2
I'll take that as a no, so I researched it. Game was broken after 1.2.1. I tested all the way back to 1.0. Still says playable in the Wiki, but was only tested by one person back in the days of SSE3. So correctly it should say "playable from .97-1.2.1 with INTC detection hack, reduced to 'in-game' after 1.2.1.

Anyone who has played since and is calling the game "playable" must not have completed it on original hardware. There are audio clips and camera suggestions that are essential to the game that will not play properly. I mean granted, you can pretty much walk through this game start to finish, but the story is most of the game. My emulation standards for playable means it includes all gameplay cues and plot-related dialogue. No content not represented.

I'm just going to go on my way and assume this community is mostly dried up. This game has been tested inside and out on Dolphin and PPSSPP, well documented and with plenty of info to be found. The fact that it went broken for 3 years on this emulator without a peep is sad. I feel bad going on a "back in my day" rant, but seriously in 2011, this topic would be full of benchmarks and output files by now.

If you're another frustrated user wondering what the heck got borked with this game, here it is. Shattered Memories and Origins get their animations messed up when the framerate goes too far above or below the standard hertz rate for your region. Although audio timestretch fixes this in almost every other game, for some reason Climax' Silent Hill games don't trigger sound files in a normal way. In older versions, running too slow was the issue for the majority of systems, so enabling INTC Spin Detection would speed up those scenes enough to mostly remove the issue.

Newer versions of PCSX2 have enough speed improvements built in that almost any modern PC will actually run the game too fast, causing the same issue again. Even though you are frame-limited at 60Hz generally, the game will internally bump up to 63 or 66fps on occasion when loading, which is enough to set the cutscene animations off. None of the normal fixes resolve it, unlike pretty much every other PS2 game now. The closest I've gotten is by artificially limiting the game to 59.5Hz (NTSC standard) and then messing around with audio sync settings until it was close enough to play most cues and dialogue. This will vary system to system unfortunately as you are trying to artificially match your system's performance to how the game wants to run. Key is to keep internal FPS as close to NTSC or PAL refresh rate at all times when playing.
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#3
Sorry to hear you feel this way but the truth is that we don't prioritize any game over another. Several games have been broken for years but these things take alot of time to track down and fix properly. It isn't always that easy, and a comparison to other emulators isn't really fair. Also, if you really want to help us out - making a compatibility report and bug reports for any of the currently existing bugs is a big help Tongue

Did you try the latest dev build: https://buildbot.orphis.net/pcsx2/
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#4
Quote:Anyone who has played since and is calling the game "playable" must not have completed it on original hardware. There are audio clips and camera suggestions that are essential to the game that will not play properly. I mean granted, you can pretty much walk through this game start to finish, but the story is most of the game. My emulation standards for playable means it includes all gameplay cues and plot-related dialogue. No content not represented.
sorry for you if we don't meet your emulation standards.. Laugh
Quote:I'm just going to go on my way and assume this community is mostly dried up. This game has been tested inside and out on Dolphin and PPSSPP, well documented and with plenty of info to be found. The fact that it went broken for 3 years on this emulator without a peep is sad. I feel bad going on a "back in my day" rant, but seriously in 2011, this topic would be full of benchmarks and output files by now.
Well.
time to dig out your old PS2 console and play it on it, then.
or make proper bug reports...
CPU : AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
Mobo : Asus PRIME B450-PLUS
GPU : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
RAM : 16 Go
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#5
(01-24-2018, 07:08 PM)CK1 Wrote: Sorry to hear you feel this way but the truth is that we don't prioritize any game over another. Several games have been broken for years but these things take alot of time to track down and fix properly. It isn't always that easy, and a comparison to other emulators isn't really fair. Also, if you really want to help us out - making a compatibility report and bug reports for any of the currently existing bugs is a big help Tongue

Did you try the latest dev build: https://buildbot.orphis.net/pcsx2/

Thanks CK1 and I apologize for getting snarky. I'm just an old school tech who is used to a different era. It's not so much about expecting people to jump on testing all 1200 commercial games with every new build, it's more about expecting standards of documentation. I got really miffed because the game was just listed as "working" for the last several versions, when in reality it is completely untested. It also seems to have been listed as working based on only a single tester's results and hardware, 6 years ago. So sorry, I am definitely being peevish, but it irked me. I brought up PPSSPP and Dolphin because those communities both use an almost identical format for forums, testing and wiki. In both of those communities, this game would not have received carte blanche with so little testing.

And yes, I am using the current build normally to emulate all my PS2 games. I just tested every build still available on github, as well as every modified build people had made at specific times to resolve specific issues. I even tested the old build that most non community members get off emuparadise or such sites, just to confirm that I was seeing what most YouTube posters were before I commented on their videos. I may not be scientific in my ranting, but I certainly am with my testing.
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#6
(01-24-2018, 07:28 PM)jesalvein Wrote: sorry for you if we don't meet your emulation standards.. Laugh
Well.
time to dig out your old PS2 console and play it on it, then.
or make proper bug reports...

I should restate that those are the standards of most emulation communities then.

Sure, I could easily pull my BC PS3 out and just play the game upscaled on my TV and it have it work fine. That's not why I'm in a bitchy rant about this. It's because one person tested this game on one system a freaking eternity ago and that was enough for it to be called "playable" in the DB. Sorry if that is too high a standard, but seriously that is not proper testing and documentation.
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#7
Can you please test it and document it properly, then ?
thanks a lot
CPU : AMD Ryzen 7 3800X
Mobo : Asus PRIME B450-PLUS
GPU : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070
RAM : 16 Go
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#8
(01-24-2018, 07:40 PM)jesalvein Wrote: Can you please test it and document it properly, then ?
thanks a lot

Working on it here, patience. I'm not going to complain about poor documentation and then not show you how we did it back in the days of dinosaurs. I'm doing dumps and video of both with the bug happening and what it looks like when I've mostly fixed it. Takes a bit to do the OBS captures, GS dumps and system monitoring.

Within another 24 hours I should have all of the above finished. Once again, sorry for being peevish, but seriously there were great wars over such things in ancient times. I just got triggered. I am a well-meaning community member and I am absolutely going to resolve it, not just complain.
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#9
So I'm still working on getting a dump that captures it perfectly, but video is far more forgiving. My YouTube account is public, so hopefully the hilarity of this video charms people into not trying to swat me or my 30 cousins with the same name.

I meant to capture a glitch, but instead I have captured "Formal Cybil" trying and failing to be "Sexy Cybil" by winking at me like she's having a seizure.

SHSM bug video

If youtube links are not allowed, get your laugh before it's taken down. I didn't notice it in my brief skimming of forum rules.
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#10
You can get a GS Dump by pressing Ctrl + F8
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