Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time (NPUA80875) Particle Effects Glitching Out Depending on Viewing Angle

sinisterseed commented 2 months ago

Quick summary

There seems to be a problem with certain particle effects in Sly 4, most notably with fire, as of version 0.0.32-16865-3dc75dc3. They are glitching out depending on the viewing angle, so it can also fix itself, but the effect is somewhat intrusive when too many torches are present in an area.

When it happens, the effect seems to be a HOM (Hall of Mirrors). Repositioning the camera fixes the problem, until the next angle makes them bug out again. It looks like the rate of occurence for this bug is especially frequent in the third chapter set in the prehistoric times, but happens later down the road as well. Most curiously, it seems to occur only after playing for some time, it doesn't immediately occur when starting a new session. In fact, I had this happen after at least an hour of gaming.

A few other things I thought I should mention: The wiki page recommends limiting the framerate to 60 to fix infinite loading screens, inconsistent controls, and potentially game-breaking glitches. However, that does NOT seem to do the job, actually. Infinite loading screens, at the very least, still occur when the framerate is capped to 60 in the emulator. That being said, it seems other values do correct this behavior (and likely all the other framerate related issues) and fully fix the infinite loading screens. In my case, just setting the limit to something "safer" like "PS3 Native" permanently fixed it.

Apart from this, I wasn't able to spot any other issues with this game, be they big or minor, other that it has the potential to crash even with "RSX FIFO Accuracy" set to Atomic, but in over 10 hours of gaming, the game only crashed once (the emulator detected the crash correctly, as the message saying that the game has likely stopped working appeared in the corner). I wanted to share that log, but I accidentally restarted the emulator to update, whoops. And I have also not experienced any crashes since - or any other issues apart from those mentioned above.

Details

See previous section.

Attach a log file

RPCS3.log.gz

Attach capture files for visual issues

dadadadss zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

System configuration

AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU, chipset driver version 6.07.22.037. AMD RX 6700 XT, Adrenaline GPU driver version 24.7.1. 16gb of RAM DDR4 @3600mhz. MSI B550-A Pro motherboard. Windows 11, version 23H2.

Other details

Game is running on the default emulator settings, except for those mentioned on the wiki, with the only notable exception of:

Framerate limit set to "PS3 Native" rather than 60fps - see above for the rationale.
Game is upscaled to 150% (1080p), using AMD FSR from the options.
The game patch to disable MLAA is enabled in "Game Patches" for this game version.

SlyCooperReloadCoded commented 1 month ago

Note that enabling that MLAA patch and Force CPU Blit Emulation does fix this issue. I remember seeing this issue brought up before, but with no ETA on a fix. This definitely goes back hundreds of updates.

sinisterseed commented 1 month ago

Note that enabling that MLAA patch and Force CPU Blit Emulation does fix this issue. I remember seeing this issue brought up before, but with no ETA on a fix. This definitely goes back hundreds of updates.

That's good to know. Unfortunately I already finished the game a while ago and uninstalled it, so I can't see the results for myself. However, if these two settings do fix the problem, perhaps updating the wiki page to include the changes would be worth it, along with changing the framerate cap to something else/lower than 60, as limiting the framerate to 60 does not actually fix issues like infinite loading screens.

SlyCooperReloadCoded commented 1 month ago

"along with changing the framerate cap to something else/lower than 60, as limiting the framerate to 60 does not actually fix issues like infinite loading screens."

THANK YOU, finally someone else experiencing this issue! Framelimit of 30 doesn't even fix it.

sinisterseed commented 1 month ago

"along with changing the framerate cap to something else/lower than 60, as limiting the framerate to 60 does not actually fix issues like infinite loading screens."

THANK YOU, finally someone else experiencing this issue! Framelimit of 30 doesn't even fix it.

I mentioned that in my original post :p.

However, "PS3 Native" absolutely fixes it. Inconsistent controls and infinite loading screens never trigger afterwards.

Also, though unsure if an RPCS3 issue, while I was playing I noticed that the medieval chapter (forgot its name, been a while) suffers from frame drops, especially when looking in the distance.

It's the only chapter to suffer from this, and I suspect the reason might be the fact that it's the most graphically intense chapter to be a reason for this, as it rains nonstop.

RPCS3 / rpcs3