[Feature Request] Add custom texture dumping/injection support to Beetle PSX core.

[saftle]

Bounty Requirements:

• Ability to dump textures from VRAM
• Ability to replace textures with full-color, high-resolution images that the PSX cannot support natively
• Should preferably support use of custom textures of any size. Must at least support injection of textures up to 2k resolution .
• Support use of common image filetypes (such as PNG and JPG)
• Support for loading texture packs

https://www.bountysource.com/issues/70820889-feature-request-add-custom-texture-dumping-injection-support-to-beetle-psx-core

[faospark]

based on my experience... RE3 just crashes on dumping textures . also noticed that the textures it dumps actually has and alpha channel nope more like semi transparency on them. apologies if i dont know the technical terms for it. but for 2d games the texture dumping feature is fine. it does not have problem full on 3d games such as 40winks and crash bandicoot

[saftle]

Kupo in the libretro discord mentioned the following:

Besides the aspects that have been mentioned already I think at

• a missing merging feature: In Harvest Moon I got over 30k dumps after only 10 minutes of playtime. 98% of them were just thin strips and upscaling these textures wouldn't work
• an issue, that it dumps multiple files when the screen fades in/fades out. This for example happens during battles in Grandia. Whenever someone is casting a spell, the screen gets a bit darker and Beetle creates a new texture dump. At the end I had like 1000 slightly different dumps for a single battle background... hm there might be more issues that I encountered but atm I can't remember any of them

Raykusen mentioned this as well:

The main issue i have with that feature is the problem of the duping texture, where i get an insane amount of the same textures, duplicated, and that is a deal breaker for me Not sure if it would be possible later on, but i'd love to not get duplicated textures and the dumps of pixel art (such as megaman x3) games not being all those small slim lines, and instead, they to be complete textures sizes

For example, if a game shows the capcom logo, i don't want it to divide the capcom logo in multiple small little lines, and just let it one big and complete image of it

[saftle]

Two more reports on the discord:

theflyingzamboni:

certain animated textures will dump as a ton of different states somehow, instead of dumping the actual texture/textures. Not even sure how this one occurs.

Kupo:

Oh and because I recently talked about the annoying blur with my replacements in Beetle. In Duckstation the textures indeed look sharper. Here is a comparison:

Beetle:

Duckstation:

[Kupo91]

• an issue, that it dumps multiple files when the screen fades in/fades out. This for example happens during battles in Grandia. Whenever someone is casting a spell, the screen gets a bit darker and Beetle creates a new texture dump. At the end I had like 1000 slightly different dumps for a single battle background...

Can't remember if I included this one anywhere, but there's the issue where certain animated textures will dump as a ton of different states somehow, instead of dumping the actual texture/textures. Not even sure how this one occurs.

I think we described the same issue. Duckstation handles it different but also not perfect. I made a video to better illustrate it.

So here is a short scene of a battle without texture replacement. The video shows animations in ui. Look at the hp and the battle bar. It also shows what I meant with fade in/fade out. If it's your turn the battle background gets a bit darker. If she casts her spell the background is turning red.

https://youtu.be/S1LGRlKv41M

This is now how beetle would dump this scene:

Several textures for each state. That's actually okay, if there are not too many states. But the issue in my case is, that the battle background looks different with each spell. That's why I get like 1000 dumps of the battle background if I cast each available spell in the game. In this case I have to give up replacing it because the texture pack would be too big otherwise.

Now about how Duckstation handles it: It only dumps each texture one time. On the one hand it's good, because this way I could actually replace the battle background without being worried about the final texture pack size. BUT the downside is, that the background won't change its color anymore and also the animations stop being.. animated. Here is a video what it looks like in Duckstation atm:

https://youtu.be/mBYtXo2nw5M

Note that Duckstation is WIP. The video only shows what it looks like atm. This could change in the future

[Mohsen865]

Kupo:

Oh and because I recently talked about the annoying blur with my replacements in Beetle. In Duckstation the textures indeed look sharper. Here is a comparison:

Beetle: ............. .... ...

From those screenshots, it looks like the character texture on Beetle is filtered (with bilinear or something), while the one on Duckstation is pixelated. If the replacement texture is large enough, there shouldn't be a blurred/pixelated texture issue... Perhaps the emulator in somewhere scales down the texture (in half size of final drawing resolution) and upscale it again before putting it in its place! But why? Also there's a problem with the 'shadow' in Duckstation:

[Kupo91]

From those screenshots, it looks like the character texture on Beetle is filtered (with bilinear or something), while the one on Duckstation is pixelated. If the replacement texture is large enough, there shouldn't be a blurred/pixelated texture issue... Perhaps the emulator in somewhere scales down the texture (in half size of final drawing resolution) and upscale it again before putting it in its place! But why?

I don't know, texture filtering in both emus is set to Nearest Neighbor and the texture replacement has the size x4 of the original texture, which also matches my internal resolution x4

Also there's a problem with the 'shadow' in Duckstation

Ye, that probably is part of the issue two posts before. If I dump the character sprites in Beetle. I get two different dumps. One for the character and one for the shadow:

In Duckstation however I get only one dump for both textures: So if I replace this texture, it uses the replacement for both, character and shadow.

It's the same issue with the animated textures and the battle backgrounds. It happens with textures where the hash id is the same.

[saftle]

@Kupo91 do you by chance have bilinear filtering enabled in the Video options of RetroArch itself?

[Kupo91]

@Kupo91 do you by chance have bilinear filtering enabled in the Video options of RetroArch itself?

No, I already checked this, it's disabled. Must be something else :/

[SirFancyBacon]

@Kupo91 sorry to ping for a long dead topic; But i've noticed in Digimon World 3 sometimes the textures have random filtering applied depending on the angle of the sprites.. so i don't think this issue is related to only replaced textures.

[Kupo91]

@Kupo91 sorry to ping for a long dead topic; But i've noticed in Digimon World 3 sometimes the textures have random filtering applied depending on the angle of the sprites.. so i don't think this issue is related to only replaced textures.

you're all good. it's a shame that it became so quiet here. i really wish that this feature gets some more attention so i can finish my texture packs one day. about the filtering you mentioned, do you have screenshots from your findings? I don't remember experiencing anything like that. but the blur on textures that you replace is pretty strong. you can easily test this by using the exact same texture as replacement that you dumped shortly before without upscaling or editing it in any way. here is an example:

this is the result if you just move a texture from your dumps folder into your replacements folder. it's 1:1 the same texture, i didn't touch it, so it should look the same but it's blurry af

[stoofin]

@Kupo91 Hi, sorry, my fork used hardcoded trilinear filtering, so that's what you're seeing there. There isn't any pixel art in chrono cross so I never bothered with any additional filtering options. Not terribly helpful for your use case, but, the more you know!

[Kupo91]

@Kupo91 Hi, sorry, my fork used hardcoded trilinear filtering, so that's what you're seeing there. There isn't any pixel art in chrono cross so I never bothered with any additional filtering options. Not terribly helpful for your use case, but, the more you know!

Oh, hi. Yea I noticed that I can reduce the blur if I just increase the resolution of my upscale, even if it's just Nearest Neighbor. And this way I can also smooth out the conturs, which was always a bit difficult without having different grades of transparency. I think I'm more struggling with the missing-bug. In the game I tried to upscale, half of the UI was dumped properly and the other half had this missing-bug. That's odd and it also looks a bit weird if it only replaces half of the textures while the other half is still pixelated :/ That's probably what keeps the majority from making texture packs. That and the high number of paletted textures (200+ dumps for some tilesets in my game)