Two unusual problems

[goody_fyre11]

Disabling the Alpha hack causes the "blocky" health bar effect, which is probably over-drawing.  It seems to be related to distance, but I did get a screenshot of it.  This does happen at native resoultions.  Full game, demo, and Japanese import have this problem.

I believe the emulator is trying to render the health bar as three-dimensional object rather than two-dimensional.  I say this because you don't see this problem when starting the game, but when you have more objects in view, it over-draws the health bar like in my screenshot.  Every Sly Cooper game and demo that has these health bars suffers from this problem - that includes Sly 3.  Alpha is the only thing that fixes the health bar, but it makes the characters disappear like you saw.  It has been this way for a long time, I just couldn't post on these forums for 3 months due to some "MtBB Error" that prevented me from doing anything.

[lightningterror]

Alpha Correction =/= Alpha
Alpha Correction is not the same as Alpha in hw hacks. They are different.

Alpha Correction fixes but breaks other things, it won't get fixed since it's only for D3D9. (That caused your blocky health bar)
Alpha HW hack caused the portraits not to appear on the intro.

You should be using D3D11, automatic crc hack, msaa whatever you choose, Disable Alpha in Advanced Settings (hw hacks).

[goody_fyre11]

I updated my previous post with an updated explanation.  It's pretty technical.

Also, the blocky health bar happens in both 9 and 11, and it happens whether ot not Alpha Correction is on or not.  None of my screenshots used 9.

[lightningterror]

That's odd, I'm not able to replicate the issue, can you show me a ss from you GSdx settings and GSdx hacks ?

[goody_fyre11]

Here you go.  The other hacks I have enabled have improved performance for me, but this issue happens on the stable builds, and they don't have these hacks.

Just make sure Alpha is off, then play through the game and move the camera around a lot.  Something to note - if there are moving objects on-screen and they are near the health bar, the health bar will flicker rapidly between "blocky" and normal.  I think it has something to do with depth.

[lightningterror]

Still nothing, maybe it's a driver issue, I don't know.

[goody_fyre11]

Maybe the new build only fixed the final game. Let me try.

[goody_fyre11]

It still happens in the final game, but the new build made it less noticeable (see screenshot).  The health bar in the demo is a different shape - it's a curve rather than an oval.  I'll include a screenshot of that too.  The second screenshot shows the intended shape of the demo health bar - maybe the shape matters.