Framebuffer Effect Issue With lr-beetle-psx.

Parabolaralus

Hi Everyone,

I was in the middle of playing ff7 using beetle-psx on my x86 build and decided to load the CRT-PI shader mid game. It looked great, but what i noticed immediately is that the framebuffer effect - battle swirl in ff7 stopped working. It just goes to a black screen then your battle starts so gameplay isnt effected and the effect worked fine until the moment i loaded that shader...so wise man thinks if he removes the shader then hit apply, tada magically fixed! Well that didnt work at all...

I exited the game and changed a line in opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/config/Beetle PSX HW/Beetle PSX HW.cfg from video_shader_enable = "true"to video_shader_enable = "false"
I also removed all beetle-psx entries from the retroarch-core-options.cfg file just in case basically resetting the core before even trying to see if the first fixed it...

I left everything alone and started the game with no change at all...Anyone have any ideas? Is there perhaps another file that pertains to shaders in this particular core?

I was even able to replicate the scenario using my laptop, but this time i had to save the shader change, exit the core and reload my file to get the black battle swirly. It was not immediate on this device.
Uninstalling and reinstalling retropie removing everything in /opt/retropie made no difference so there must be a file outside of that. Im searching for a needle in a haystack as far as im concerned now.

Edit: I seem to have found a temporary solution...maybe permanent since there isnt much downside. Instead of starting over i can switch the video driver in psx from OpenGL to Vulkan and everything is hunky dory. I wonder if there's something that gets saved to the opengl libraries somehow...

mitu

@Parabolaralus You probably had a game override somewhere which loaded the shader. Try searching in ~/.config/retroarch or run with Verbose logging and look at the log output to see what configurations are loaded when starting the game.

Parabolaralus

@mitu said in Shader Issue with Framebuffer Effects on PSX.:

@Parabolaralus You probably had a game override somewhere which loaded the shader. Try searching in ~/.config/retroarch or run with Verbose logging and look at the log output to see what configurations are loaded when starting the game.

Hrm! I did have one on the desktop for controller configs, but not the laptop as that was a clean install. I'll check that folder in the morning though and see if there's something there! Thanks for the tip!

Parabolaralus

@mitu said in Shader Issue with Framebuffer Effects on PSX.:

@Parabolaralus You probably had a game override somewhere which loaded the shader. Try searching in ~/.config/retroarch or run with Verbose logging and look at the log output to see what configurations are loaded when starting the game.

It would appear that ~/.config/retroarch is a symlink to opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch which ive already cleared to no avail!

Here's my pastebin of the log:
Runcommand
I loaded a save state which is indicated at the bottom and got into a battle immediately after - it also does this black screen thing without loading a save state. It seems to load the framebuffer effect at 320x240, but all i see is a black screen! Supa strange!

mitu

@Parabolaralus Check the RA global file (``/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg) or the PSX config file (/opt/retropie/configs/psx/retroarch.cfg`). Did you enable 'Save Config on Exit' in RetroArch ? Some settings might be saved one of those 2 files.

Parabolaralus

@mitu said in Shader Issue with Framebuffer Effects on PSX.:

@Parabolaralus Check the RA global file (``/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg) or the PSX config file (/opt/retropie/configs/psx/retroarch.cfg`). Did you enable 'Save Config on Exit' in RetroArch ? Some settings might be saved one of those 2 files.

No, i did not enable save config on exit. I did that once a few years ago and holy heck does that cause chaos!

for opt/retropie/configs/psx/retroarch.cfg i have the following:

Settings made here will only override settings in the global retroarch.cfg if placed above the #include line

input_remapping_directory = "/opt/retropie/configs/psx/"
#include "/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg"

In the global RA config file there's this line which seems suspicious:
auto_shaders_enable = "true"
But no change by switching it to false.

Parabolaralus

To reply to my own post with more info...I believe this to be a bug with the Mednafen core and/or Retroarch. Possibly moreso Retroarch

Using the Vulkan renderer worked great for a while then all the sudden mid game my battle swirl went away and all i get now is a black screen with this as well. Same with the GL renderer as mentioned before if this is what you're reading. I replicated the same scenario with another device as well...

The swirls work fine initially then stopped working entirely for some unknown cause however i was reading this issue which had a very valid workaround:
Github-beetle

If on both OpenGL and Vulkan you want your battle swirlies and they just stopped working start the game, toggle ANY option on and off in Retroarch then resume the game and everything is fine. I cant believe i had not even tried that even by accident...

Edit: I ended up recording a video of this along with what actually works as a fix. Keep in mind there are NO core overrides and this is with stock retroarch settings which use OpenGL.