PCSX2
GameDB: DaH1 & DaH2 bloom and lens flare
Description of Changes
Fixes lens flare occlusion and improves bloom alignment when scaling.
Rationale behind Changes
Fixes some graphics, the busted shadow mask unfortunately still makes these games ugly to play on GS-HW.
Suggested Testing Steps
Check bloom and lens flares.
GS dump please 🙂 also what is DaH1 & DaH2?
No problem, with fixes applied: gs_20220724174056_Destroy All Humans_ 2_SLUS-21439.zip
Sorry, Destroy all Humans! (1 + 2), I can amend the commit/pull request titles if needed.
is their a gs dump for Destroy all Humans! 1 ?
Didn't upload as the issues seem to be identical between 1 and 2, here's a dump of 1: gs_20220724174908_Destroy All Humans__SLUS-20945.zip
Personally from looking the only fixes I'd say are worthwhile right now is autoflush the others can be revisited once the game is working properly in hardware mode.
Personally from looking the only fixes I'd say are worthwhile right now is autoflush the others can be revisited once the game is working properly in hardware mode.
With these fixes I believe the only graphical issue is the shadow mask corruption. That corruption actually made the misalignment fixes easier as the bloom takes shadows into account so I was able to line up the bloom with the gaps in the corrupted shadow mask.
I doubt fixing the shadows will make any difference to the bloom alignment.
Edit: A scene with no shadows at all would be the DaH1 title screen so that avoids the shadow corruption but still shows the misaligned bloom without these fixes.
I tried your settings, and tbh merge sprite did nothing, most of the other settings are kind of subjective, but tbh although it underblooms,I prefer just Autoflush and HPO: Norma(Vertex); It's not as bloomy but hardware mode isn't anyway, even in Native resolution. There's likely other stuff going on and you're trying to compensate for which isn't right, which isn't really the idea for the upscaling hacks, so we should really employ the KISS methodology here (Keep It Simple, Stupid)
The shadow mask can be cut out with skipdraw, like 6-9 or something, I forget the range, but I don't really want that in the GameDB.
I don't believe these change the intensity of the bloom, just better align it so less of the overall image is bright, just highlights where bloom should be. I wasn't able to see any differences with HPO: Norma(Vertex), only Special and above.
The issue is a lot easier to see in DaH2 and in daytime maps, here's an example of what each setting does. I would encourage opening all in tabs and flicking between them. The sky against the shadow texture is a good place to look, and Crypto's leg.
All off:
Half Pixel Offset (bloom shifts a bit):
Half Pixel Offset + Round Sprite (bloom shifts more but seams can be seen in bloom texture, highlighted):
Half Pixel Offset + Round Sprite + Merge Sprite (Fixes seams but seems to undo some of the boom offset)
Similar fixes were accepted for R&C but I concede that these are more aggressive (Texture - Aggressive, in fact).
Half Pixel Offset (Texture - Aggressive) + Wild Arms Hack does a better job and doesn't require Round Sprite + Merge Sprite:
GameDB isn't used for making random hacks and see what fits, it can have other worse effects in other locations that you don't see at first.
The real fix is going to be in the fixing itself like the texture cache and other incorrectly emulation of post-processing.
I understand, Round Sprite and Wild Arms Hack do have other noticeable changes and shouldn't be included. Half Pixel Offset and Auto Flush, however, operate off the same logic as other GameDB entries.
HPO in Ratchet and Clank 3 & 4 improve misaligned post processing where a real fix would be preferable. Auto Flush fixes occlusion issues with lens flares in GoW, as in these games.
Any opinions on autoFlush: 1 + halfPixelOffset: 3?
@refractionpcsx2 If you'd prefer HPO:1, I'd argue we'd just remove that hack as well as I can't find any improvements or changes from it being set only to Vertex.
Agressive didn't really look any better to me tbh, just even more too bright.
Ah, if you're working off of my DaH1 dump it's not very obvious, mind trying this from the menu? gs_20220727001103_Destroy All Humans__SLUS-20945.zip
Off:
Vertex:
Texture:
Texture Aggressive:
An earlier version of this pull request also included round sprite full and merge sprites to fix an unwanted side effect of rounding but I was told this wasn't the place to experiment. You can see my screenshots of the results in DaH2 further up.
No change on half, I'm afraid, otherwise I'd probably have taken screenshots of that too.
Just a passing comment.. Here's my pre-round sprite PR with pre-round, Special(Texture) and nothing else
I don't think that looks any better than master with Special(Texture) but it's difficult to tell
It does, without preround its still a bit offset, which you can see at the top of the ufo if you try master
You're right, it's much easier to spot on the spindle to the left of the UFO and after replicating your settings.
We can leave this PR until #6553 is merged and set HPO to Special(Texture). Doubt these games are being played on GS-HW as it stands
Yeah sure, I dunno how long my pr is going to be, I need to sit down and work on it and make it suck less
Closing as the game has many issues, the hacks don't really fix anything, just hides issues or make them worse.
I disagree that these make anything worse, sprite occlusion is broken without auto flush and misaligned post process effects are commonly fixed with HPO in other games with the same side effects.
I do agree that it's not important while the game suffers worse problems that make it barely playable in GS-HW.