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Retroarch Playstation 2 it freezes #231

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andres0021 opened this issue Dec 3, 2023 · 24 comments
Open

Retroarch Playstation 2 it freezes #231

andres0021 opened this issue Dec 3, 2023 · 24 comments

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@andres0021
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Hello, I wanted to report that the PS2 retroarch, the GPS freezes in the vast majority of games, a few minutes after starting some games it freezes, all of this happens on the console. I have no idea if it also freezes in the emulator.
@hugorsgarcia
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I reported a lot of these problems back in 2021. I even recorded gameplay of 30 or 40 games I found freezing but there was a lot more. Recently I tested some games again like Golden sun 1 and 2, Zelda minish cap, Metroid Fusion and Gunstar Super Heroes. All of will freezing after some time playing. A lot of changes were made since them but they did not fix these problems. Metroid Fusion back in 2021 have no problems in my tests. But now some new bugs were also introcuced

@andymcca
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I've started playing around with ps2dev with a view to doing my own RA/gpsp static core build for PS2. If successful I'll try and troubleshoot this issue.
Absolutely no promises though!

@andres0021
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I've started playing around with ps2dev with a view to doing my own RA/gpsp static core build for PS2. If successful I'll try and troubleshoot this issue. Absolutely no promises though!

I've started playing around with ps2dev with a view to doing my own RA/gpsp static core build for PS2. If successful I'll try and troubleshoot this issue. Absolutely no promises though!

I hope you make it my friend, let me know anything!

@andymcca
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@andres0021 @hugogacia360 help me out pls - I've built a gpsp static core for my PS2 using the dev kit but when I go to Load Content and select a GBA ROM it comes up 'No Cores Available'. It does show gpsp as the core tho and I do have the core info file in place. Anything I'm doing wrong???

@zoltanvb
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Try disabling Settings / Core / Always reload core.

@andymcca
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Thanks @zoltanvb I was able to figure out what I was doing wrong (core directory needs to be set to the same directory you've run the static core from!)

So I have played around a lot with this over the last couple of days and also discussed with David. He suspected the Dynarec may have the issue and asked me to test with this disabled - sure enough, this seems to work around the issue at the expense of significantly reduced performance. @hugogacia360 @andres0021 please can you also test a few ROMS with Dynarec turned off (has to be from the very beginning i.e. set in Core Options) to confirm?

Will continue to investigate and update here if any further discoveries.

@andres0021
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andres0021 commented Dec 30, 2023 via email

@andres0021
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andres0021 commented Dec 30, 2023 via email

@andymcca
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@andres0021 be specific please, which game(s) are still freezing with dynarec off?

@andres0021
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andres0021 commented Dec 31, 2023 via email

@andymcca
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Thank you, I will try that today and report back here/to David.

@andres0021
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andres0021 commented Jan 1, 2024 via email

@andymcca
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andymcca commented Jan 1, 2024

Access the Retroarch Quick Menu while in-game, then go to Core Options -> Dynamic Recompiler and turn it off. You then need to save the Core configuration and restart Retroarch.

@andres0021
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andres0021 commented Jan 1, 2024 via email

@andymcca
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andymcca commented Jan 1, 2024

Yes it will be like that.on a lot of games in Interpreter mode. Am making some progress identifying this issue, need to get psclient set up to dump some useful crash info.

@hugorsgarcia
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Thanks @zoltanvb I was able to figure out what I was doing wrong (core directory needs to be set to the same directory you've run the static core from!)

So I have played around a lot with this over the last couple of days and also discussed with David. He suspected the Dynarec may have the issue and asked me to test with this disabled - sure enough, this seems to work around the issue at the expense of significantly reduced performance. @hugogacia360 @andres0021 please can you also test a few ROMS with Dynarec turned off (has to be from the very beginning i.e. set in Core Options) to confirm?

Will continue to investigate and update here if any further discoveries.

Dynarec off ? That will be quite slow

@andymcca
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andymcca commented Jan 8, 2024

Dynarec off ? That will be quite slow

It's not the solution - but it does demonstrate that the problem is with the Dynarec as David suspected. I have a lot of work on at the moment, hoping to get back to this soon and do some debugging with pslink to try and get to the bottom of it. In the Dynarec if I flush the PS2 dcache/icache unconditionally after each block compilation then it doesn't crash. But of course that makes things just as slow as the Interpreter (maybe not as bad). And also it's difficult to draw conclusions from that - so it needs more investigation.

@andres0021
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andres0021 commented Feb 6, 2024 via email

@andymcca
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I recently picked this up again. The next task would be to get ps2link working to debug the freezing. Have already started on this but not getting very far and it (like everything with RA/gpsp) is incredibly time-consuming.

@zoltanvb I think you did some work on fixing the audio for PS2 Retroarch. It may just be my test setup but I find that if I mess with the playback frequency in Retroarch settings it makes things even more unstable e.g. if I change the rate down to 22050 and the latency up to 128ms then gpsp won't even start a game for me (it brings me back to the game selection screen and then hangs). If you have some time would you be able to test this and see if you get the same instability?

@andymcca
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@andres0021 to be honest, you may be better off using TempGBA for PS2 instead if you're really set on GBA emulation on the PS2......

@andymcca
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@andres0021 and anyone else struggling with the freezes on PS2 -

Try this static core build for PS2, just put it over the top of the one that comes with the latest RetroArch PS2 release. In testing I found that increasing the frequency of icache invalidation helps with the stability of the dynarec at the cost of speed, so this build is a bit of a hack-y halfway house between the two. YMMV depending on the game.

gpsp_libretro_ps2.zip

@andymcca andymcca mentioned this issue Mar 29, 2024
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@andymcca
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Potential discovery with this - I tried out ReGBA this morning which is a standalone-gpsp variant, just to see how it runs etc. No crashing/freezing like in lr-gpsp in-game BUT at one point I pressed the triangle button to enter the menu.....and this triggered the exact same type of freeze as in Retroarch gpsp i.e. audio carries on playing the same note it was on, console becomes immediately unresponsive (have to hard power off, reset doesn't work)!

@andres0021 I think you described this on the Blazing Blade issue but I didn't realise that it's the exact same crash we get in lr-gpsp. May be something to go on....

@andres0021
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andres0021 commented Oct 12, 2024 via email

@andymcca
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It gives me something to go on to work at the problem. I'm now thinking the emulator gets stuck in a while loop somewhere when running on PS2. I want to test by recompiling TempGBA but the code needs changing to compile using the latest version of the PS2SDK. All so time-consuming.......

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@andymcca @andres0021 @hugorsgarcia @zoltanvb