Silent Hill Shattered Memories: EDIT: nevermind, pretty sure it's a new bug.

[UnilateralOptimizer]

Does your workaround make the second cutscene(Harry going back into the car to grab the flashlight) work correctly?

The first cutscene worked as it should when I tried to keep it to 100% (slow-motion mode 50% doesn't help), but I couldn't get the 2nd cutscene to run smoothly.

The part where Harry is supposed to grab the flashlight and look under the car does not animate at all on PCSX2. It's always been that way AFAIK. It shouldn't cause the bug, because no decision based animations or sound are playing at that point.

If you compare it to native hardware, or emulated versions of the PSP or Wii game, you will see that Harry is supposed to do a much longer animation where he looks underneath the car. It seems to be an separate bug, though it could be related. I've only noticed the one I'm working on during in-engine, plot decision related cutscenes.

[UnilateralOptimizer]

Also I want to state at this point that I believe I was initially wrong. This is not the exact same bug that was squashed years ago mysteriously returning. This is something new now that systems run PCSX2 too fast. It's similar, but I thought it was just an issue with sound syncing and game speed like before. This is something far more game-breaking, because it is related to only the plot choice scenes that are the heart of the game.

Current state of testing:
GSDX: dumps don't look significantly different taken during a broken cutscene or a working one. In both cases GSDX seems to be running at full speed without dropping anything. All visual elements not related to PI dialogue or characters still animate normally and game runs at normal speed even during broken animations and sound. Results are consistent across all tested versions, barring increase in speed of software emulation in newer versions.

SPU2: Sound appears to remain in sync with video, even when bugs occur. Other background sounds and music continue to play normally, even after a cutscene is broken. Changes made to plugin version, sync method, latency and device driver used have no effect (besides normal undesirable effects from tweaking these settings). Results are consistent across all tested versions.

EE % and CPU usage: This is the only place where any symptoms occur before the glitch. Every time it happens, there is a tiny peak or valley in reported frames and CPU usage, then the glitch happens. Once the glitch is happening, you can see the reported frames start to fluctuate a bit as the game freaks out. That is the only thing that is at all visible to any sort of performance monitor or output. Even that is within the normal range of speed for many games, so almost impossible to even record the difference. Any Dynasty Warriors game has way more frame reporting variance, so to just about anyone it looks like nothing. I'm only aware of it because I've been staring at these same 6 windows all day.

Besides what I already mentioned about limiting the framerate to avoid the "too fast" bumps, that is the only software solution besides tweaking PCSX2 for steady performance with normal settings.

Hardware wise I have found that the Turbo function on my CPU was responsible for many of these peaks. When the game goes to black and nothing is on the screen, my CPU was trying to turbo the first 2 cores, which caused the jump in performance. Normally this would be a completely unnoticeable slit-second thing, but it appears to be related. Once I used XTU to create a profile that kept all four cores active, the bug is almost completely gone.

These are crude fixes, but so far my methods of starting from basics are creating results. So I'm going to keep at it. If this is an issue that is directly related to how the game was made, they may be the only fixes that ever work. There are many games (like Xenoblade X's caching) that are just designed in a way that makes them never emulate perfectly. Still working on it. Still going to create a detailed report once I'm done.

[prafull]

The part where Harry is supposed to grab the flashlight and look under the car does not animate at all on PCSX2. It's always been that way AFAIK. It shouldn't cause the bug, because no decision based animations or sound are playing at that point.

If you compare it to native hardware, or emulated versions of the PSP or Wii game, you will see that Harry is supposed to do a much longer animation where he looks underneath the car. It seems to be an separate bug, though it could be related. I've only noticed the one I'm working on during in-engine, plot decision related cutscenes.

Did you try using no sound option? I remember animations worked correctly for me that way. I know sound is an important element of this game but most probably this is a spu related issue and not core issue.

[UnilateralOptimizer]

Did you try using no sound option? I remember animations worked correctly for me that way. I know sound is an important element of this game but most probably this is a spu related issue and not core issue.

I did! Thanks for the idea though. I have another video with null sound of the same cutscene with the exact same results. I will most likely put that in my main video as well at some point. Cybil still alternates at high speed between her "sitting back, suspicious" posture and her "leaning forward, showing cleavage and winking posture." She also seems to randomly alternate between "nice" and "stern" responses. I have the subtitles on, so I can still see it with no audio. Game still runs at full speed, just like if the cutscene was working normally.

Also for anyone joining late, I have a fully working PS2, a BC PS3 and the other 2 versions of the game to compare to. This is not the normal glitchyness of the PI system. In the video you can see that Cybil is having an identity crisis of which version to be. Never seen that on native hardware. Please don't ask me why I have all this stuff. Not trying to get into a boast about my game collection or reasons for working on a game I have 6 methods available to legally play.

[prafull]

Open SPU2-X.ini file and set delay cycles to 0

[UnilateralOptimizer]

Open SPU2-X.ini file and set delay cycles to 0

I had not tried that yet, but just did and same results.

[FlatOut]

I had not tried that yet, but just did and same results.

Can you try this:
Extract it in a folder with the latest git version. Start the exe, then go Config -> Emulation Settings -> Gamefixes and enable the bottom gamefix (alternate Vsync...). Then test the game.

[prafull]

This is beginning to feel like another one of those issues which I can't reproduce on my PCSX2. As I reported earlier setting delay cycles to 0 instead of 4 fixes issues with animations and missing sounds but OP reports it doesn't. I hope he isn't using async mode or loading savestates.

Anyway since I have only tested the initial part of the game a memory card save before the part shown in youtube video will help me to further diagnose this.

[UnilateralOptimizer]

Can you try this:
Extract it in a folder with the latest git version. Start the exe, then go Config -> Emulation Settings -> Gamefixes and enable the bottom gamefix (alternate Vsync...). Then test the game.

Interesting, my guess would be that method is more strict about frame limiting. Just to be scientific, I did a fresh install of your build from 10 days ago, then ran from that test exe and only modified the minimal settings to setup my gamepad (plus the vsync fix).

It was almost as effective as the method I was using. I started a fresh file, rather than importing my save. Ran great the first time through. Then I went through again and managed to get it to bug out. Same results again. It was very close though. I did notice that my overall fps seemed much more consistent with that fix on. While it still jumped above 100% when I tested it repeatedly, it was far more even than without, even once scenes were bugged. I don't know if that's an old fix, but it may be effective for people with newer Intel chips in general.

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This is beginning to feel like another one of those issues which I can't reproduce on my PCSX2. As I reported earlier setting delay cycles to 0 instead of 4 fixes issues with animations and missing sounds but OP reports it doesn't. I hope he isn't using async mode or loading savestates.

Anyway since I have only tested the initial part of the game a memory card save before the part shown in youtube video will help me to further diagnose this.

What CPU are you testing on? I think what you are talking about is the old glitch I first thought this was, where sound files don't play sometimes. If your CPU is fairly fast, it's hard to even see that glitch anymore. This is more like multiple cutscenes trying to play at once. The sound files and animations are happening, just the wrong ones at the wrong time in a very strange way.

[prafull]

Interesting, my guess would be that method is more strict about frame limiting. Just to be scientific, I did a fresh install of your build from 10 days ago, then ran from that test exe and only modified the minimal settings to setup my gamepad (plus the vsync fix).

It was almost as effective as the method I was using. I started a fresh file, rather than importing my save. Ran great the first time through. Then I went through again and managed to get it to bug out. Same results again. It was very close though. I did notice that my overall fps seemed much more consistent with that fix on. While it still jumped above 100% when I tested it repeatedly, it was far more even than without, even once scenes were bugged. I don't know if that's an old fix, but it may be effective for people with newer Intel chips in general.

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What CPU are you testing on? I think what you are talking about is the old glitch I first thought this was, where sound files don't play sometimes. If your CPU is fairly fast, it's hard to even see that glitch anymore. This is more like multiple cutscenes trying to play at once. The sound files and animations are happening, just the wrong ones at the wrong time in a very strange way.

Please upload your memory card save before the issue.