pcsx2 Shadow Hearts: Covenant - Judgement Ring In HW Rendering

PCSX2 version: 1.6.0

PCSX2 options: I've tried all EE/IOP and VU options, OPH Flag Hack, and all HW video hacks. Speedhacks on and off. No change.

Plugins used: GL HW and D3D HW

Description of the issue: I think this is fairly well-known, but I didn't see any existing issues for it.

No issues in software renderers, but in hardware renderers, the judgement ring (the timing-based input part of attacking in combat) will make the entire background turn black while it's on screen. What it's supposed to do is to freeze frame the scene (you can tell that it's basically taking a screenshot because the resolution is lower than normal with upscaling). In prior versions of PCSX2 it used to make about half the screen black, and half of it frozen, in more recent versions it makes the entire background black. The particularly strange part is that it doesn't happen every time, sometimes it does exactly what it's supposed to do. You can use a savestate, start an attack, and sometimes you'll get black, load the state, wait a different amount of time before attacking, and sometimes it'll display correctly. Then, when you attack with a different character, sometimes it'll be black and sometimes it'll show a frozen frame from when the previous character attacked.

The same attack is in both frames below. Hardware rendering in both. It worked correctly, loaded the state, displayed black. Sometimes it'll work, sometimes it won't.

How to reproduce the issue: Use either hardware renderer, get into combat, and start an attack.

Last known version to work: None

PC specifications: i7 4770k / 32GB RAM / GTX 780 / W7 64

Jun 04 '20 00:06 Zombeaver

A gsdump will be nice of the issue.

Jul 11 '20 21:07 lightningterror

Sure, no problem. Here are dumps with a couple seconds of gameplay where it works correctly, where it doesn't work correctly, and a single frame of it not working correctly.

Jul 11 '20 22:07 Zombeaver

can new GS dump be made of the issue preferably on master the GS dumps links in the above comment are dead :slightly_smiling_face:

Aug 17 '22 10:08 Mrlinkwii

Links are still working here, but yes I can.

Aug 17 '22 13:08 Zombeaver

Those links send me to an access denied page.

Sep 05 '22 10:09 MistressAshai

If it's doing a GS download, the dumps won't help much, since the bad re-upload will get baked in. I guess you could watch for the RB stat in the OSD, but it might be difficult to catch if it's only a single download.

Sep 05 '22 10:09 stenzek

Not OP, but here are 2 GS dumps showing the above using OpenGL. One working and one taken a few seconds later that had the error. This is using the latest nightly build (1.7.3284). These were both taken during a demo video that plays on the title screen and it's very easy to reproduce, so if a multiple frame dump would help I can capture that. I am not familiar at all with the terminology or lingo, but I noticed when I turned on OSD stats for display I saw that RB stat briefly go to 1 on times when the judgement ring worked, and stayed as 0 on times when the screen went to black background.