Metal Gear Solid visual problems with hardware mode

[c-sanchez]

Game: Metal Gear Solid (PAL) [SLES-01734]

Version: Avocado develop-5cbb48c (2020-06-19 19:46:26) windows

Hardware: Intel Core i3 540 @ 3.07GHz (Clarkdale) 1023MB NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 4,00GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 665MHz Windows 7 Home Basic 32-bit SP1

Behavior: The games looks good in Software mode but have many visual issues in Hardware mode and Software + Hardware mode

Screenshots/Videos:

• https://youtu.be/EsdE37kQGtY

[JaCzekanski]

Looks like those are two separate bugs:

1. Flickering on codec screen - incorrect handling of 368x240 resolution (320x240 is used in-game, codec uses the wider resolution). This should be easily fixable. Note that this is only visible on PAL versions of the game - NTSC uses 320x240 on all screens.

2. Underwater effect - the game references framebuffer as a texture for green-tinted rectangles that are drawn over the current framebuffer. Current OpenGL implementation does not allow for access to the framebuffer causing it to use "trash" graphics that are in VRAM from previous frames. (Rectangle 1173 uses texture from the same area that it is rendering to)

After quick consultations with another developer, I think that it should be possible to implement support for those effects, but it'll result in a major hardware renderer rewrite.

I'll keep you updated on the progress in this issue.

[c-sanchez]

1. I have little knowledge of these issues, but I find it quite interesting that the pal version uses a different resolution than the NTSC version.

2. I see, That explains why you see traces of used images.

I'll keep an eye out for updates :)