Random freezes happening on Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction

[Valtekken]

Quick summary

Sort of a continuation to #12585 (as in this issue was found while troubleshooting that one, and while that one was solved for me personally after PR #13875 this one is currently still happening). During gameplay, the game's video will randomly freeze, while the audio will keep playing (often in a loop, especially if there are any sound effects instead of just music). No user input gets through to the game, including the pause menu and the map screen. Only way to stop this is to stop the emulation, at which point the user can boot the game again.

Details

As mentioned in the quick summary, the game freezes randomly while the in game soundtrack keeps playing (in a normal way, the audio track keeps going as it's supposed too) and any sound effects start looping constantly. Video and controls show no signs of responding to any user input. Can't seem to find any specific error that's associated with this, but the latest log shows "E RSX: Fault in uninterruptible code! x2" and "E SYS: 'sys_mutex_destroy' failed with 0x8001000a : CELL_EBUSY [1]", two errors that I've definitely already seen right after a freeze.

Attach a log file

RPCS3.log

Attach capture files for visual issues

No response

System configuration

OS: Windows 11 21H2 (build 22621.1702) CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X GPU: NVidia GeForce GTX 970 GPU driver version: 531.79

Other details

Settings adjusted to standards recommended by the RPCS3 Wiki page for R&C: ToD (plus 300% scaling, bilinear filtering and anisotropic filtering set to x16). Do note that crashes happen with scaling disabled, with 150% scaling, with nearest filtering and with auto anisotropic filtering, so this isn't settings-dependent.

[readywer]

Same issue for me too. But i would call this a desync not a freeze. The only thing that i see form the log that maybe helpful is: "PPU: 'MFC Events read' aborted "

System configuration OS: Windows 11 CPU: Intel I5 13600k GPU: NVidia GeForce RTX 3070 GPU driver version: 531.79 log: RPCS3.log

[readywer]

Unfortunatelly https://github.com/RPCS3/rpcs3/pull/13917 Won't help in this case.

[mrtnptrs]

Here also seemingly random crashes for me, sometimes takes 10 seconds after loading a save, sometimes more than a few minutes. Happened twice for me so far during cutscenes. Seems thus to be quite random. Happened to me twice during cutscenes. As the three of us suffer from the same issue here while having a Nvidia GPU with recent drivers, it could possibly a bug in a recent Nvidia driver update or a bug in the way RPCS3 handles things on Nvidia drivers? (Could also just be coincidence of course.)

System configuration OS: Windows 11 CPU: Intel i7 13700KF GPU: NVidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU driver version: 535.98 Game configuration: tried wiki recommendations, but also just default configuration. Both resulted in crashes.

Log: RPCS3.log.gz (First time booting the game and playing it resulted in the freeze, second time I played it for a few minutes, it didn't. Will provide more clean logs next time)

[Valtekken]

Here also seemingly random crashes for me, sometimes takes 10 seconds after loading a save, sometimes more than a few minutes. Happened twice for me so far during cutscenes. Seems thus to be quite random. Happened to me twice during cutscenes. As the three of us suffer from the same issue here while having a Nvidia GPU with recent drivers, it could possibly a bug in a recent Nvidia driver update or a bug in the way RPCS3 handles things on Nvidia drivers? (Could also just be coincidence of course.)

System configuration OS: Windows 11 CPU: Intel i7 13700KF GPU: NVidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU driver version: 535.98 Game configuration: tried wiki recommendations, but also just default configuration. Both resulted in crashes.

Log: RPCS3.log.gz (First time booting the game and playing it resulted in the freeze, second time I played it for a few minutes, it didn't. Will provide more clean logs next time)

This has been happening for almost a year at this point, I wish it was just a driver issue

[mrtnptrs]

Here also seemingly random crashes for me, sometimes takes 10 seconds after loading a save, sometimes more than a few minutes. Happened twice for me so far during cutscenes. Seems thus to be quite random. Happened to me twice during cutscenes. As the three of us suffer from the same issue here while having a Nvidia GPU with recent drivers, it could possibly a bug in a recent Nvidia driver update or a bug in the way RPCS3 handles things on Nvidia drivers? (Could also just be coincidence of course.) System configuration OS: Windows 11 CPU: Intel i7 13700KF GPU: NVidia GeForce RTX 4090 GPU driver version: 535.98 Game configuration: tried wiki recommendations, but also just default configuration. Both resulted in crashes. Log: RPCS3.log.gz (First time booting the game and playing it resulted in the freeze, second time I played it for a few minutes, it didn't. Will provide more clean logs next time)

This has been happening for almost a year at this point, I wish it was just a driver issue

Yeah, could still be though, but seems to be a bug in RPCS3 itself. Btw, only just now noticed that this is mostly a duplicate of https://github.com/RPCS3/rpcs3/issues/12585 but with a slightly different root-cause. kd-11 fixed one cause of crashes/freezing in this game, but there thus seem to be more causes. Hopefully fixed when devs here have time for it :)

[Valtekken]

Yeah, could still be though, but seems to be a bug in RPCS3 itself. Btw, only just now noticed that this is mostly a duplicate of #12585 but with a slightly different root-cause. kd-11 fixed one cause of crashes/freezing in this game, but there thus seem to be more causes. Hopefully fixed when devs here have time for it :)

As I mentioned in the initial post, this issue was born out of that issue getting solved with the crashes still happening. Kd worked on that for a good while, but as I understand it NVidia needs to implement a specific Vulkan function for them to be able to diagnose this issue. We will have to wait for NVidia, not the devs.

[mrtnptrs]

Yeah, could still be though, but seems to be a bug in RPCS3 itself. Btw, only just now noticed that this is mostly a duplicate of #12585 but with a slightly different root-cause. kd-11 fixed one cause of crashes/freezing in this game, but there thus seem to be more causes. Hopefully fixed when devs here have time for it :)

As I mentioned in the initial post, this issue was born out of that issue getting solved with the crashes still happening. Kd worked on that for a good while, but as I understand it NVidia needs to implement a specific Vulkan function for them to be able to diagnose this issue. We will have to wait for NVidia, not the devs.

I know, read all comments in that issue right as I found it. Hopefully the devs aren't gonna be spammed about this issue now more people are probably gonna play it as Rift Apart will release for PC in two months. @kd-11 Is there any way I could possibly help you with finding the remaining causes of these freezes with this game?

[buzzlightyear1309]

I've had this issue for a while now. I played the first level with no issues or frame drops, but on the second level I would crash every 5-10min into the level. I found the following suggestion on a reddit post. With the changes I was able to complete second and third level with not a single crash.

Open the configuration and reset everything to default. From there in the CPU tab change SPU block size to mega. In the GPU tab set ZCULL to approximate, set frame rate to PS3 native and disable anti-aliasing.

I have not tried with an increased resolution scale after this fix (i normally play on 2k), but will test that tomorrow. Just sharing the fix that helped my in case it helps someone else, or maybe it helps the devs isolate the issue

[Valtekken]

A quick update: I upgraded to a RX 6600 and the issue was still present at the time, but after quite a few new builds and driver updates, the game hasn't frozen or crashed in basically half a playthrough, including some particularly crash-prone parts. Don't know if the issue is definitively fixed or not, but performance is incredibly consistent and stable (barring some big setpieces) and I'll keep playing over the next few days to check whether the crashes and freezes have been completely resolved. Perhaps play the entire game again from the start to be sure no crashes and freezes happen.

[thiagom123]

I am currently having this issue as well, the game will sometimes freeze and I need to restart the emulation. Sadly, the checkpoint system of this game is pretty poor and in some cases I needed to annoyingly do a "whole section" again.

My setup is a Ryzen 7 3700X CPU, RTX 3060 Ti GPU, Windows 11 OS

[ChrsBr]

Same issue here. I'm running RPCS3 from Steam Big Picture and when the freeze happens I can't see the Steam overlay anymore. Guess it's a graphics related issue since I can "hear" the overlay open and I can also navigate through the menu.

Unfortunately I don't have any logs, will save them next time the issue occurs.

My setup is a i5-10400F, 16 GB RAM, Nvidia 2070 Super, Windows 11.

When I find the time I will also try running on the Steam Deck.

[ElDubsNZ]

I'm having the same thing. Adding the canary patch hasn't resolved it for me. Random freezing after a while of play.

I'll turn on logs so these are recorded.

[Valtekken]

An update to this one. I've been meaning to get back to the issue and testing but life got in the way. Today I decided to clean all of the caches and start the game over in challenge mode to check whether the issue was fixed or at least mitigated (playing on the latest build, of course). I've played for 2 or 3 levels and I've had zero freezes. Only noticeable thing (that was there before too, when the freezes were happening) was framerate drops in hectic moments (or when the flamethrower gets used, but that's already a separate issue and tracked as such). Seeing how things stand now, I believe the issue has been fixed in the many updates that touched upon the R&C Future series. Let me know if I should close the issue or keep it open, but as far as I'm concerned, the issue isn't an issue anymore.

[segevfiner]

@Valtekken That's without the canary patch?

[Valtekken]

@Valtekken That's without the canary patch?

Only patch I have is "unlock FPS"

[SudoQvorum]

Crashes for me, recent updates have made opengl completely unusable and vulkan still crashes for me in 45 minute intervals, even on map screen and pause menus. Running it on ROG ally

Edit: Disabled Vsync and it hasn't crashed yet... Edit 2:Crashed after about 3 planets and around 1.5 hour of gameplay in the middle of a space battle.

[colin969]

Pretty close to the end of the game and I've had 4 or 5 hard freezes so far.

Seems to have gotten more frequent, around once per level. I wonder if it's because they get much busier?

[SudoQvorum]

Most likely yes, using the ryno messes it up lol

[Valtekken]

This is weird, I basically only used the RYNO throughout NG+ and I had no crashes. There must be something else causing them

[SudoQvorum]

Well, it's mostly random. Crack in time does it aswell.