Soul Calibur Freezes During Intro (Before Mitsurugi) on libretro-flycast 2.5 – Batocera 42

[slimshdy]

Bug Description

Soul Calibur consistently freezes during the initial intro sequence, right before Mitsurugi appears on screen. The emulator stops responding and must be force-closed.

Environment

Batocera.linux version: 42

Core: libretro-flycast 2.5

Renderer: OpenGL

Resolution: 2x

GPU: Nvidia GeForce GT 540M

CPU: Intel Core i5-2430M @ 2.40 GHz

Steps to Reproduce

1. Launch Soul Calibur (Dreamcast).

2. Let the intro play normally.

3. The freeze occurs just before Mitsurugi appears.

Additional Notes

Other Dreamcast games run normally. Issue persists after using a different ROM dump, resetting core options, and restoring Batocera default settings.

[flyinghead]

I did several tests on linux with an nvidia GTX1080 and no freeze. I doubt this is an issue with the core since I would probably had earlier reports of the problem. Is it a regression compared to previous versions? The GT 540M is quite old so I'm wondering if it could be the issue here. Which GPU drivers are used in this distrib?

[slimshdy]

Thanks for your feedback. Just to clarify the behavior: the freeze happens only if the full Soul Calibur intro is left running until the very end. Since most players skip it, the issue is easy to miss.

This is also the first time I test Dreamcast emulation on Linux on this machine. Previously I only used nullDC on Windows on the same hardware and I never had any issues there, so the problem never showed up before.

Here is my current system information:

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M (Fermi)

Driver: NVIDIA 390.157 (legacy)

Reported OpenGL version: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 390.157

Graphics API shown in Batocera: “OpenGL 3.0 / GLSL” (this refers only to the Batocera UI context)

Given the age of the 390.xx drivers and the Fermi architecture, it might be related to this legacy setup — but at the moment we can’t confirm whether the issue also happens on more recent hardware or drivers.

Thanks for your time.

[flyinghead]

I left the intro running until the title screen for each test. Concerning nullDC, flycast also has a DX9 driver but it's only available on windows obviously.

[slimshdy]

Thanks for confirming you let the intro run completely. Since it doesn’t freeze on your setup, it’s probably something specific to my legacy NVIDIA/OpenGL drivers on Linux. nullDC can use OpenGL too, and I always avoid using DirectX whenever possible — even on Windows — so I'd prefer to stick with the OpenGL path