Issues With PSX Games (Soul Reaver & Crach Team Racing)

George Spiggott

Pi Model: 3B+
Power Supply used: Direct to wall socket USB. Exact voltage/amps unknown. No power issues (lighting bolt icons or low power messages) showing.
RetroPie Version Used 4.4
Built From: SD Image downloaded from RetroPie website
USB Devices connected: USB Keyboard (only connected when needed)
Controller used: Xbox One 2016 (Bluetooth)
Error messages received: N/A
Log found in /dev/shm/runcommand.log (if relevant): ?
Guide used: N/A
File: ?
Emulator: Lr PSCX Rearmed? (the one that comes as standard with the Retropie image for Pi2/3)
Attachment of config files: N/A
How to replicate the problem: ?

Hi I'm having a couple of minor issues with the following games and I wonder if anyone has any solutions. I'm running the emulator in high res with smoothing set but both problems persist with these setting turned off.

Soul Reaver:
Game saves made in game (to the "memory card") sometimes disappear. I save the game, exit the game (to the game main menu) reload the save and play (no problems so far). I switch off the pi and when I turn it back on later the game save has disappeared. Earlier game saves still show so not all my progress is lost. How do I solve this?

Crash Team Racing:
This problem is best shown with these images. (not from my copy but the error is the same. https://i.ytimg.com/vi/EQbDL0a9moo/maxresdefault.jpg
As you can see the mountain in the top right of the image is not drawing properly. Similar errors occur in other parts of the game. On a PS1/PS2 the mountain renders normally (at 0:40 in the video below if you want to check)

My question is this. Is the error an inherent part of the emulation and unfixable at this time or is there a setting I can change to fix this? It's only a minor graphical glitch so not a big deal for me but I'd like to know why it is doing it.

Thanks

AssPunchMan

Hi

Some issue here with CTR and latest version of retropie.

Is possible fix this?

thx

zen

The save issue happens in others games too, like Azure dreams (rpi0 25-06-2019) with lr-pcsx-rearmed, it saved my first save on mc, but after playing for 2 hours and saving 3 times on mc the emu crashed to the emulationstation. I restarted the game and any of those new saves were actually wrote on disk. This is bad coding (the emu is not writing the srm when it should, it is storing the data only on ram and writing the disk whenever it wants), user data should be priority number 1 for any piece of software, only solution is to use savestates (which i didnt want to use cuz it breaks my retro experience).

hhromic

@zen: this is not a coding mistake but a design decision from RetroArch.

From their FAQ: https://www.retroarch.com/?page=faq

I saved in game but it didn't work / RetroArch crashed and I lost my save
RetroArch doesn't save in real time, SRAM is saved when you hit "close content". In some cases it's possible that closing RetroArch without closing the core first loses the saves from the current session (especially on Windows).
To fix this you can enable the "SaveRAM autosave interval" option under Settings > Saving. Be aware that it might corrupt your save if you close RetroArch while the game is saving, especially in games that heavily use the SRAM and with a low autosave interval. Another option is to use save states. If you're on Android, make sure your save folder isn't located on an external SD card, it won't work.

So what you can do, as the answer says, is to activate auto-save. I do this for myself too as I also have fell into this issue.

Edit /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg and make sure the option autosave_interval is uncommented and set to a number of seconds of your choice. A good setting is 30 to 60 seconds interval.

George Spiggott

The CTR issue was resolved in another thread. The dynarec in LR-PSCX Rearmed is cutting out some of the graphics. It is not AFAIK currently fixable since the game is unplayable and slow with the dynarec turned off. CTR runs perfectly in BEETLE HW and I think there has been talk (maybe just talk, insert salt as required) of it being possible to port it to the Pi 4.