Modding the MGS1 emulator | Metal Gear Network - MGN | Page 20

pure radish May 22, 2025, 12:35 AM

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shit all over the C++ standard

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take a steaming dump on it

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committee designed monstrosity

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thats like 500 lines of code deleted

pure radish May 22, 2025, 12:59 AM

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fuckin chuffed with how that turned out

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now where im calling stuff its just normal d3d11 code

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and the hooks are neat too

rancid hare May 22, 2025, 1:01 AM

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pure radish take a steaming dump on it

Lmao

pure radish May 22, 2025, 1:03 AM

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here's the magic behind it

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wow i actually have that ifdef backwards and it still worked

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gonna fix it tho

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reinterpret_cast<unsigned char *&>(method);

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paranormal activity

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i came here to fix MGS not revolutionise x86 hooking

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god its nice to just be able to call anything without setting up a bunch of struct/enum defs

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best 4 hours ever spent

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now m2fix is an ideal d3d11 hacking toolkit loool

red cradle May 22, 2025, 1:31 AM

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from fixing MGS1, to support many games, now evolve to this, damn

pure radish May 22, 2025, 1:33 AM

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yeah i mean if we want to do more gfx enhancements in future we are in a prime place to do them

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(PGXP)

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floodgates are open now

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PGXP is definitely a conversation we can have now, it would've been extremely difficult before all this

red cradle May 22, 2025, 1:39 AM

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https://github.com/libretro/beetle-psx-libretro/blob/master/pgxp/README.md (search what is PGXP) oh interesting

GitHub

beetle-psx-libretro/pgxp/README.md at master · libretro/beetle-psx...

Standalone port/fork of Mednafen PSX to the Libretro API. - libretro/beetle-psx-libretro

pure radish May 22, 2025, 1:40 AM

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all the versions of it that ive seen require changing the shaders, which we can do easily now

red cradle May 22, 2025, 1:41 AM

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I imagine that will fix a lot issues too

pure radish May 22, 2025, 6:45 AM

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macros on top of templates, you love to see it

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got rid of moar code haha

dawn flare May 22, 2025, 6:04 PM

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https://tenor.com/view/palpatine-good-gewd-star-wars-episode-3-gif-15386400457909814305

Tenor

pure radish May 22, 2025, 9:03 PM

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nice, pulled these out into "resources" rather than std::strings

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seems like that triggers them to be precompiled

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hmm

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wonder how I do that

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👏 D 👏 X 👏 B 👏 C 👏

pure radish May 23, 2025, 10:37 AM

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Direct X Bit Code?

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https://tenor.com/view/ea-sports-e-ea-meme-gif-14922519

Tenor

pure radish May 23, 2025, 4:58 PM

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it's quite weird that it compiles the shader as I'm not sure how to access the compiled version in my code

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so basically at the moment, compiling M2Fix compiles the shaders and then throws it away, only to compile it on the fly every time you start the game

dawn flare May 23, 2025, 5:26 PM

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Ah, just like Unreal Engine

pure radish May 23, 2025, 5:33 PM

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https://tenor.com/view/error-fail-microsoft-system-error-gif-14211402

Tenor

pure radish May 23, 2025, 6:18 PM

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tbh i think i was gaslit

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by adding it as an EXE resource, it became a "source file"

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as a source file it was examined for stuff like e.g. file extension

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in this case, hlsl

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there isn't really any evidence that you can include a shader as an EXE resource and reference the compiler output

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but

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i will probably keep things as they are, as it's useful to know at compile-time if i borked the shader

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i only stumbled upon this quirk because i already use EXE resources

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i use one to store the SqDbg Squirrel script

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and it seemed sensible to me that if I'm embedding a program in another non-C++ language, that should also be a resource

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that's the previous use of EXE resources

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i quite like it to signify that it's not your average std::string

rancid hare May 23, 2025, 10:41 PM

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mfw three of the features i've been adding to mgshdfix have universal reshade addons already avaiaible
fuck lol

pure radish May 23, 2025, 10:42 PM

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that's a first world problem if I ever heard one

rancid hare May 23, 2025, 10:42 PM

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(and i can trigger/toggle them from mgshdfix with reshade's header file)

pure radish May 23, 2025, 10:42 PM

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you have TOO MANY MODDERS

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meanwhile m2engage crickets

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i like that HDFix and M2Fix share tech though

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probably the first online community i've been in that isn't toxic

dawn flare May 23, 2025, 10:45 PM

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rancid hare >mfw three of the features i've been adding to mgshdfix have universal reshade a...

Eh, means we don't need to dick around with reshade, which is nice

pure radish May 23, 2025, 10:48 PM

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yeah i'm also not a reshade enjoyer

rancid hare May 23, 2025, 10:55 PM

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pure radish i like that HDFix and M2Fix share tech though

i'm one of those folks who used to spend more time setting up mods for games than actually playing them, so my mindset is definitely a "make the -entire- collection one seamless experience" sorta deal - making things as simplified and universal as they can be between the games so that people don't have to fuck around with 50 billion different mods configs and researching the compatibility between x & y

pure radish May 23, 2025, 10:55 PM

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i get ya

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and btw if there's anything useful in m2fix v3.0 feel free to steal it 😄

pure radish May 24, 2025, 12:32 PM

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^ tbh, I'm more interested in 2&3 being good than 1 (loads of ways to play it), it's just that modding 1 in MC is more my wheelhouse and leverages shit I'm very good at (besides graphics)

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so if anything can help HDFix take it, don't even ask

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 8:14 PM

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pure radish ^ tbh, I'm more interested in 2&3 being good than 1 (loads of ways to play it), ...

Yeah... But you're making this the best way to play MGS1.

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Also, the least fussy for normal users. If I want to introduce a PC-friend to MGS1, I can just tell them to get it on Steam and slap M2Fix in and ez-pz.

No dicking around with emulator settings, no having to wrangle the old GoG release, achievement support, both sets of Ghosts, all versions of the game.

pure radish May 24, 2025, 8:38 PM

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oh yeah im not saying what im doing is worthless

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but as a "gamer" it would be more beneficial for the only way of playing 2&3 on PC to be good

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i like the MC packaging & launcher

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if you can just grab a ROM and duckstation and it's better than MC, i have to overcome that to be superior

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we're getting there...

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a lot of people seem to have a very different understanding of the passage of time vs mine

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if it wasn't all fixed and amazing in 6 months, i abandoned it

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no maybe i was busy playing my part in semiconductor manufacturing and life doesnt work like this teenager thinks

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i said i was committed to this project, i don't have the fucking bandwidth to be committed to multiple

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and the cretin that said i was waiting for more ko-fi donations, yes, the sum total of those so far would not even pay one month rent

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definitely making financial decisions on that basis

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no, im doing my fucking day job instead

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but i guess he wouldn't know what one of those is

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people seem to think i entirely forgot about this 9 months ago but no it was ticking away in my mind the whole time

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and i also remember being the age where 9 months was a long time

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now i blink and that passes

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so these teenagers call your project "dead" but actually it's just next Tuesday

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as i will evidently prove with 3.0

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why do they even care about MGS1 anyway, my dad was alive when that game impacted me on a demo disc

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they weren't even born?

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the kind of person who genuinely cares about this game would not really protest having to wait a few months

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for a game that they played 25 years ago

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 8:54 PM

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🫂

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:05 PM

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its like the matrix bro

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i envy anyone who saw it in the cinema on release

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but i cannot claim my experience of watching it on DVD/BluRay since is comparable to being there in the year 2000

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we are all reliving the late 90s

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so it's just a bit weird to receive those sorts of comments

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these people should have kids now but instead they're starting arguments on a GitHub repository

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haHAA

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wyd honestly

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man's job: predicting my level of commitment based on when the last git commit was

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git commit history is about as useful as the local radio in telling you when the next M2Fix update will come out

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even i don't know when the next update will come out, so what chance have they got

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90% of this update was ready 6 months ago

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 9:11 PM

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Are people still being shitty, or is it just those couple of folks from the other day?

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:11 PM

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yeah it's just the GitHub idiots, people in here are based

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I'm quite glad that I ignored GitHub until like, last week

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 9:12 PM

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Yeah, good call

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:15 PM

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but yeah i mean life just happens like that

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 9:15 PM

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Oh absolutely

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:15 PM

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maybe i don't touch the hobby thing for 9 months

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and then suddenly rewrite it and fix major problems in a week

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 9:16 PM

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"Feel free to fork off"

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:16 PM

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with ADHD i definitely cant apologise for that

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 9:16 PM

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Feel that in my bones

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and my neurons

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:16 PM

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the timeout was necessary to be revitalised for working on it

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 9:16 PM

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100%

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:17 PM

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and then i ended up working on it thru to 5am, so

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how about that for commitment

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i could not sleep for several days knowing i was so close

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 9:17 PM

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Ugh, I'm sorry

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:17 PM

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now that impacts my actual day job

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which ko-fi does not compensate for

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so

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yep i was definitely waiting 9 months for people to buy me a coffee

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 9:18 PM

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one single coffee

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:18 PM

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i mean its so absurd, its ridiculous

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imagine posting that sincerely with a straight face

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dude needs his head felt

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 9:19 PM

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Dude needs to go outside

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:20 PM

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i mean it'd probably be fun to work on this full time but it ain't gonna pay rent

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 9:20 PM

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Eh, if it's a job the ADHD will kick in and you'll stop wanting to work on it

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:20 PM

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so you get what is supposed to be relaxation hours

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relaxation hours that i spend looking at visual studio

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:21 PM

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dawn flare Eh, if it's a job the ADHD will kick in and you'll stop wanting to work on it

im extremely lucky in that i have a job that pertains to my natural interests

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 9:21 PM

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Right?

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:22 PM

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so most of the time, the ADHD ends up being a perk

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he says, after multiple days working at 2am

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because i seem to care about what we do

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my mind can't really distinguish between stuff i do because i get paid and stuff i do for fun

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i only have this job because i want to do it

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so everything is stuff i do for fun

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being paid is a bonus

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i am basically part of the furniture

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so yeah any given problem just requires some background knowledge (previously missing for MGS1) and the attitude of "i can do it because ive fuckin done everything else"

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but pragmatically from a gaming POV i would rather HDFix be better than M2Fix

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i have a PS2 slim piped to an OSSC here, i am not without ways to play MGS1

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so please steal my shit

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 9:30 PM

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lol

dawn flare May 24, 2025, 9:30 PM

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pure radish i have a PS2 slim piped to an OSSC here, i am not without ways to play MGS1

I have a Gamecube in about 30 pieces on my desk for refurb and flippydrive installation, so I'm not far behind 😛

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(I tore the thermal pads, so I'm waiting on replacements)

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:35 PM

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lmao

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i have never disassembled a console ngl

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i got a mate who studied electronics to replace the leaking capacitors on my inherited mega drive

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because i am not good in meatspace with my hands

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i managed to destroy a socket in our thermal chamber about a week into my job

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that was like yeah bro just put me on low level software and i'll pretend the hardware works

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and these aren't the kinda sockets you find on commercial motherboards

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they are expensive

rancid hare May 24, 2025, 9:39 PM

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pure radish but i cannot claim my experience of watching it on DVD/BluRay since is comparabl...

Even then the DVD & Blu-ray aren't accurate to the original experience, they all got their color grading changed. Only way to have experienced The Matrix in the original format was on the big screen. Same shit with MGS1, without a CRT you're still gonna have terrible dithering on textures that looked like smooth gradients no matter what upscaling & perspective correction you throw at it

pure radish May 24, 2025, 9:39 PM

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YEPPPPP

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100%%%%

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this stuff wasn't designed for the present day

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i mean it was called the HD Collection for a reason

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im dealing with a totally different paradigm with MGS1

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any sense of it being 3D is basically a cute hack

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damn this fucking game i played on a demo disc

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played the demo multiple times too

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ended right after the darpa chief dies

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how can you not be curious after that cliffhanger

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you're literally like, 7, bro

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now tell me i don't give a shit

pure radish May 24, 2025, 10:03 PM

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just, man

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the way i use git at work

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extremely sophisticated! by company standards

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but has absolutely no bearing on how much work was involved

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I have to convince my manager about git features introduced 15 years ago

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and you want to moan about a mod for MGS1, a game that released 1.5 years ago on Steam, just what is the perspective here

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I cannot feel like I failed these people as they just have zero life experience

wanton phoenix May 25, 2025, 9:09 AM

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Just don't bother with them, a lot of people these days are extremely entitled, I see it in the Linux desktop space as well

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Just because they consume something, they think of themselves as a consumer - even when it comes to work that is a fruit of volunteer labour / a community project

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They don't get it that such attitude is unwelcome and out of place, when it comes to projects that are free as in beer, with no advertisements and where user data is not monetized either

hoary pier May 25, 2025, 9:33 AM

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rancid hare Even then the DVD & Blu-ray aren't accurate to the original experience, they all...

They eventually fixed this with the 4k release, but the fact it took that long just puts it more into perspective

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Or Star Wars. The only version that's totally accurate to the original release is Project 4k, and it's taken about a decade for that to get to where it is now where you can truly call it accurate (and 4k80 1.0 only came out last year)

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If people can wait decades to finally see Star Wars in HD as it was originally released, these kids can wait nine months for this one specific MGS1 project

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Like, they have other options, this is just to fix a specific release. It'll be nice when it's done, you can play an accurate (or semi-accurate if you wanna bump up the resolution and stuff) MGS1 and get all the epic Steam achievements but they're freaking out over literally nothing

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It's funny seeing that when I've been lurking this thread daily lmao, they think nothing's happening but really every week has had some significant amount of progress made

humble ravine May 25, 2025, 11:27 AM

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Sorry but this just unlocked a memory as a kid I remember trying to buy The Matrix on VHS in Woolworths. They refused to sell it to me because I was about 9. I reckon if they did they’d probably still be in business. SMH 😤

pure radish May 25, 2025, 12:01 PM

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rancid hare May 26, 2025, 3:53 AM

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Hey Nuggs, does m2engage support surround sound?

red cradle May 26, 2025, 11:43 AM

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https://github.com/nuggslet/MGSM2Fix/issues/22 oh yeah, was wondering before that besides ppf, maybe we can see more patch formats in the future, heck even ips for nes Metal Gear / Snake's Revenge. lol

GitHub

[Feature Request]: Xdelta format mods? · Issue #22 · nuggslet/MGS...

Will there be support for mods in Xdelta format too?

pure radish May 26, 2025, 12:08 PM

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rancid hare Hey Nuggs, does m2engage support surround sound?

ive not seen it in any of the currently supported games, but m2engage is designed to be extensible

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all the console subsystems are in separate "modules" which can even be loaded from separate files

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once they go to retail, all those modules get baked into the EXE typically

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but it still retains that support

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and then there's squirrel which well, can be scripted to do whatever

pure radish May 26, 2025, 12:11 PM

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red cradle https://github.com/nuggslet/MGSM2Fix/issues/22 oh yeah, was wondering before tha...

i briefly looked at xdelta and its not as nice for loading in m2engage for PSX at least

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other patch formats might make sense for the other consoles

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main problem with ketchup I can see is you have problems with resizing files in the CDROM image, the change propagates through the entire disc

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IPS for NES should be doable though

red cradle May 26, 2025, 12:13 PM

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I see, yeah there's some nice IPS hacks for NES MG

pure radish May 26, 2025, 12:14 PM

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pure radish once they go to retail, all those modules get baked into the EXE typically

as i said before, G-Darius HD actually has a couple of "playstations" and which game you select decides which playstation loads it

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so there must be some differences somewhere

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that's on top of the accelerator system where each game can have its own overrides in native code

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so its very pluggable

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a fun one is

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spdlog::info("[Emulator] BIOS at {}.", fmt::ptr(cpu->Bus->Machine->ImageBIOS));

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that's always zero for us

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maybe could naively support other games by putting the BIOS back

pure radish May 27, 2025, 8:46 AM

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ive been doing some fairly boring code cleanup, stuff that has been bugging me for ages, so nothing super fun to share (soon™ though)

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stuff like

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i.e. these are now static class members rather than free global variables, removes all the extern shit and the namespacing is nice

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just trying to reorganise stuff now so that dllmain.cpp isnt a huge assortment of totally random shit

rancid hare May 27, 2025, 9:29 AM

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In case you haven't caught it yet/it's not intentional, MultiProcessorCompilation isnt enabled for your project file
(Only noticed it the other day with MGSHDFix lol)

pure radish May 27, 2025, 9:48 AM

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ah indeed, I did wonder

rancid hare May 27, 2025, 9:50 AM

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Vroom vroom

pure radish May 27, 2025, 11:01 AM

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pure radish May 27, 2025, 6:21 PM

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that's a new feature btw

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turn that on (^:

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going thru to see if there's any other fun stuff

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only makes sense for Release build ofc, presumably your Debug build isn't optimised

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the only pain is

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i have to enable stuff separately for both 32bit and 64bit lol

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gonna have a pop on the new F1 game, realise its shit again, and then get back to this

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ooh you can put the mod version in the asi file metadata

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EA Javelin Anticheat poggers

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wonder if it's allergic to leaving Visual Studio open

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not even worth trying with IDA

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reverse tracks, lol

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LIDAR data wow 2010 called

pure radish May 27, 2025, 7:00 PM

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it is incredibly average

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as close to the previous years game as it has ever been

pure radish May 27, 2025, 7:58 PM

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wtf

rancid hare May 27, 2025, 8:06 PM

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pure radish

One day we're just gonna have games running in their own fucking VMs lol

pure radish May 27, 2025, 8:13 PM

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or get this

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they'll sell you the ready-made computer to play the game on and you won't be able to do other stuff on it

rancid hare May 27, 2025, 8:14 PM

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So a console

pure radish May 27, 2025, 8:14 PM

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haHAA

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full circle

pure radish May 27, 2025, 8:32 PM

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reorganisation nearly complete

rancid hare May 27, 2025, 8:35 PM

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https://youtu.be/CwgWJgc58_4

YouTube

Ocelot

MGS Master Collection in 2025: Did Konami Fix It?

The MGS Master Collection was a little rough when it launched in 2023. After almost 2 years, did Konami fix it with patches? Let's take a look at the current state of the 3 main games in the collection!

Support me on Patreon: https://patreon.com/The1Ocelot

Follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/The1Ocelot

#metalgearso...

▶ Play video

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You got a mention btw :3

pure radish May 27, 2025, 8:36 PM

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is it a mention with the recent info

rancid hare May 27, 2025, 8:37 PM

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Unfortunately no. 2:40, they just said the mod is still experimental/ based it off the current release version

pure radish May 27, 2025, 8:37 PM

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ah

pure radish May 27, 2025, 9:16 PM

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man i really did just dump shit anywhere without much care

pure radish May 28, 2025, 8:22 AM

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i think im actually going to give each game its own class now

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base class that exposes some set of shared hooks

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inherit from that to define game functionality

dawn flare May 28, 2025, 2:45 PM

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Yessssssa

dawn flare May 28, 2025, 4:25 PM

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I know it doesn't have any effect on me as an end-user, but that shit makes me so excited

pure radish May 28, 2025, 5:59 PM

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im in so deep here i cant back out now lol

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fortunately all the upscaling stuff is in one file im not touching

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basically making the rest of the project adhere to how the upscaling stuff was structured

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some entire source files here ive had it in for

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for a loooong time

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dllmain.cpp was weak piss

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patch.cpp caused more problems putting it all in one place than it solved

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emulator.cpp had a terrible name

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since 99% of it pertains to the psx core

pure radish May 28, 2025, 6:19 PM

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the names i gave shit

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so inconsistent

pure radish May 28, 2025, 10:06 PM

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mh

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this will be gr8 if it works

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all the MGS knowledge in an MGS file

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all the PSX knowledge in a PSX file

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all the squirrel knowledge in a squirrel file

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i think im through the worst of it

pure radish May 28, 2025, 11:08 PM

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oh my god it builds for the first time in a day haha

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lemme guess it dont work

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oh wow it does

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dllmain.cpp went from 1400 lines to 110 lines

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that kinda surgery

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dawn flare May 28, 2025, 11:32 PM

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Damn

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$5 says the software gets an update after the Switch2 release and we have to start all over

pure radish May 28, 2025, 11:42 PM

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it's working well for too many games at this point for it to break that badly lol

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it's just very scary when I put the project in for wholesale open heart surgery like that coz I have no idea where it'll end up or if it'll go back together again

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it might be harder than my job or I just become smoothbrained in my own time

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original code was fine for a quick mod but not really as a framework for stuff to be built on and loads of games to be supported

pure radish May 29, 2025, 10:05 AM

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hell yea

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at some point last night i was like "what the hell am i doing"

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felt like i was making a mess

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but nah its paying off

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random bits of shared code across all games having random bits of MGS1-specific shit in the middle sucked

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now that's formalised as a mechanism that any game is entitled to use in the same way

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so you can see how the MGS1 modding is done and then do that for e.g. castlevania

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obv for a non-PSX system it requires writing an equivalent layer to the PSX module in M2Fix, but that's not actually too difficult with some basic reverse engineering

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atm I only have the PSX layer but might do others myself eventually

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but that is also better compartmentalised now

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so there could be multiple consoles supported in a similar way

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dllmain.cpp used to be an extremely random collection of most of the mod

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now its just the minimum code to get the ball rolling

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as it should be

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now we have borderless.cpp, guess what, it has everything responsible for borderless

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😄

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it's set up like this atm

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where M2Game is just a basic game with no special stuff

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and yes that is a special character in the Ray'z directory name

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it's not actually a '

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' vs ’

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that caused so many problems haha

rancid hare May 29, 2025, 2:50 PM

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Ah-ha, now we're cooking!

Been trying to line an effect up in MGS2 justttttttt right and 30hz was a bit off - kept poking and 37hz was almost frame perfect to the original.

Plugged this number in and now everything's 1:1. Guessing some of MGS2's effects were bound to the PS1 cpu's clock speed (since it was being used as a I/O subprocessor)

pure radish May 29, 2025, 6:28 PM

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chefs kiss

pure radish May 29, 2025, 8:01 PM

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i have big plans

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man i have the whole thing worked out in my head now

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but i cant type fast enough

dawn flare May 30, 2025, 4:49 PM

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pure radish but i cant type fast enough

Need more caffeine

pure radish May 30, 2025, 4:50 PM

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Catpls

crude zinc May 30, 2025, 5:31 PM

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cat_styledance

pure radish May 30, 2025, 6:20 PM

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pure radish May 30, 2025, 9:01 PM

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thinking to reorganise the sources like:
src/m2/
src/m2fix/
src/squirrel/

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so "external" is gone

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"m2" is purely struct/enum/etc definitions that map onto various games

#

"m2fix" is the actual mod stuff

#

so e.g. stuff like this:

#

#

would belong under "m2"

#

as it's describing how the emulator works and m2fix has no authority over that

#

but when it gets to anything that changes behaviour, that belongs in "m2fix"

#

basically safetyhook is the only "external" i haven't modified, so partitioning all of that stuff under an "external" directory is a bit silly

#

Squirrel and Sqrat have been modified (template-ised, so that the mod can support the bizarre differences in the various Squirrel structures etc.)

#

so it's not really an external distribution anymore

#

for better or worse I kinda own that "fork" of Squirrel now

#

i mean it's all working superbly well but it's not verbatim upstream Squirrel

#

I have a header which is just this:

#

and basically a "game" (think "Steam app") is associated with one of these, and it controls how the Squirrel structures are laid out

#

but actually propagating that through the entire Squirrel codebase is a lot of changes

#

it's all done months ago, it's just that it's not really a "Squirrel release" anymore

#

e.g. you won't find a Squirrel release with this:

#

and my god was it extremely painful to template-ise the entire Squirrel codebase

#

i have PTSD

#

I'm just glad it works so well and I don't have to think about it anymore

#

Squirrel is not really an "external" here anymore, I'm basically obligated to extend it

#

so we have this extremely fun shit

#

to match the struct layout depending on which game the mod is being loaded into

#

and the Squirrel hooks underpin everything else, they're critical

#

maybe people here just care about MGS1 but this stuff supporting other games is great for testing and proving correctness

#

when this only supported MGS1 it's easy for it to work via luck

#

not anymore, it works because it's correct

#

my primary motivation is MGS1 but it made a lot of sense to expand support to all these games to iron out faulty assumptions etc

pure radish May 30, 2025, 9:24 PM

#

pure radish it's set up like this atm

the mod working flawlessly for every game in that list means the mod is doing something right

#

esp. when some of those are 32bit and some are 64bit

#

it's basically a statement that we understand how this shit works

#

curveballs nbd

#

and when curveballs nbd, you have something pretty fuckin robust

#

here endeth the sermon

pure radish May 30, 2025, 10:23 PM

#

#

it means Squirrel Quirk

pure radish Jun 1, 2025, 3:11 PM

#

alright rubber has to hit the road now on reorganising the source folders

#

kinda decides what happens next so

#

i won't know if this is a good idea until after i try it i think

#

ok maybe no "m2fix" dir

#

#

this? maybe

#

d3d11.cpp still 33kb, christ

#

stuff under "m2" should just be structures from the game and separate from code that might be relevant but is still a construct of the mod

#

don't like confusing things by having my own inventions next to their stuff

#

i think this is a good way to proceed

#

now i have to edit the vcxproj manually because the VS GUI will shit the bed

#

i want my own header called "d3d11.h", but that overrides the system d3d11.h

#

fucking C/C++ headers

#

if I put %(AdditionalIncludeDirectories) at the start does that mean #include <> will see the system one first

#

ayy i got it to work

#

that looks a bit cursed but

pure radish Jun 1, 2025, 4:27 PM

#

#

Pepenga

#

clean!

rancid hare Jun 1, 2025, 4:29 PM

#

pure radish ayy i got it to work

I hate this lol

pure radish Jun 1, 2025, 5:15 PM

#

it works because the "src" directory is not in the include path

#

but #include "header.h" will always check the current directory regardless

#

so #include <header.h> will always fall back to the system one allowing both to coexist

#

anyway we're basically into finishing touches here

#

dllmain was 1400 lines it's now 80

pure radish Jun 1, 2025, 8:45 PM

#

right where was i

pure radish Jun 1, 2025, 10:08 PM

#

hell yeah

#

i think im basically done w/ code

#

and this is now nice and tidy as well 🙂

#

crazy how much busy-work involved in that sort of cleanup

#

surely we can pay a chimp to do this instead

#

got rid of almost all the explicit template instantiation as well which kinda tells me its better code quality

pure radish Jun 2, 2025, 6:32 AM

#

d3d11 hax got ported to a class as well

#

you can make the methods static, and then you don't get a this pointer so all the arguments still check out

#

everything is a class now!

#

ah my 64bit build is broken because it tries to build the shaders for vs_2_0

#

this is the VS configuration being duplicated isnt it

#

#

what the fuk

#

what if I don't want a condition

#

ye u can just delete it

#

man i would be stuck without being able to manually edit the vcxproj file

#

you can get lost in the GUI

#

cool 64bit builds again

#

and debug also builds

pure radish Jun 2, 2025, 5:00 PM

#

alright

#

now i want to put together something to test all the games

#

this'll be pretty basic at first

#

just "do they start and not shit the bed"

dawn flare Jun 2, 2025, 5:13 PM

#

I'll say again, if you need someone to do some testing, I have a good chunk of the supported games (all Castlevania, MGS Coll.)

pure radish Jun 2, 2025, 5:28 PM

#

yeah i may end up doing something like that

#

but i need some basic automated smoke tests as well

#

im done reorganising the source anyway

#

so more release focused now

pure radish Jun 2, 2025, 7:13 PM

#

Hahahahah I did it

#

I have a script that starts all the games on Steam, closes them

#

and can tell if it crashed

#

this might seem extremely dumb (it is) but that will genuinely catch most of my issues

#

and saves so much hassle

#

watching them all flash up on my screen one by one

#

haHAA

#

its bonus content's turn

#

very nice very nice, good splash screen

#

does this to ur steam list tho

dawn flare Jun 2, 2025, 11:17 PM

#

pure radish does this to ur steam list tho

What have you done

pure radish Jun 2, 2025, 11:22 PM

#

haHAA

#

really you would be impressed how a simple thing like that catches the vast majority of crashes and shit

#

"launch everything and try to close it normally"

#

the problems people report are after all that shit is skimmed off

#

and require a bit of a deeper manual look at specific features

#

anyway, I won't forget a game now and I know they were all tested on the same build

#

good way of knowing if I've completely buggered it and whether it's worth giving to anyone else

#

pure radish Jun 3, 2025, 12:15 PM

#

i have an idea to even fix shrinking the internal resolution

#

its the same thing but in reverse

#

instead of upscaling the texture memory, upscale the framebuffers

#

don't want to downscale the texture memory as that will just ruin sampling

#

it's probably quick enough to fart about with tonight

pure radish Jun 3, 2025, 7:22 PM

#

rancid hare Jun 3, 2025, 7:34 PM

#

pure radish Jun 3, 2025, 11:20 PM

#

pure radish it's probably quick enough to fart about with tonight

mh, by doing that i found better ways of doing the upscaling as well

#

still have to do the silly bit of pulling numbers out of my ass for the downscaling but it works in principle

#

it was a funny bonus of the original upscaling that you could turn it into an 8bit game

#

has to attach itself to a different point in the pipeline for downscaling

pure radish Jun 4, 2025, 1:20 AM

#

hah, the downscaling is working fine now besides some flickering (which i previously had for the upscaling)

#

yea bro

red cradle Jun 4, 2025, 1:24 AM

#

hahaha, that can be a feature I guess

pure radish Jun 4, 2025, 1:25 AM

#

should be a competition for who can complete the game at the lowest resolution

red cradle Jun 4, 2025, 1:26 AM

#

that sounds fun, you have to rely on your memories of the game layout

pure radish Jun 4, 2025, 1:26 AM

#

Wx128 is quite playable but you can't rely on text so no item names

#

Wx64 is a challenge

#

even with the flickering when downscaling its better than if I didn't bother at all

#

before if you tried to do it, it applied the upscaling approach but in reverse and totally fucked everything up on screen

#

they need slightly different techniques so which one you get now depends on whether you ask for higher or lower resolution

#

the flickering is just in cutscenes tho ofc

#

I got rid of that issue already for upscaling

#

so should be a matter of time

#

some of the changes for this have benefited the upscaling as well coz it's reusing code that I've had to improve

red cradle Jun 4, 2025, 1:42 AM

#

can't wait for the release to try out

pure radish Jun 4, 2025, 1:47 AM

#

not long now HotPeepoHappy

pure radish Jun 4, 2025, 10:11 PM

#

oh

#

i mostly fixed the downscaling flickering

#

that was... not what i expected to be the cause

#

but again its something that makes even the upscaling more robust

#

now the only bit that flickers is the "a hideo kojima game" etc text, but the cutscenes don't anymore

#

fixing that must be along the same lines

#

there we go

#

fixed

#

this is getting silly now 😄

#

ok, it worked through renderdoc but crashed without, but i fixed that as well

#

why does it look so good like this

pure radish Jun 4, 2025, 11:02 PM

#

#

hahahaha oh boy.

#

height 32 pixels

#

this is gonna be a good time

#

naw man im gonna call 32 pixels unplayable

fringe shore Jun 4, 2025, 11:03 PM

#

Game boy color mode

pure radish Jun 4, 2025, 11:35 PM

#

it might seem stupid but the alternative was limiting what number people could enter for internal resolution so it can't go below the game's default

#

haha

#

if anyone is interested in testing, DM me (but I must stress I am after testing, if I have no idea who you are its prob not gonna happen)

#

no hard feelings 😛

#

(won't be long to wait, this isn't 6 months early access here)

#

coz of timezones it'll be tomorrow when I can action it though, need to sleep now

#

also builds are gonna be watermarked so dont even think about it

#

haHAA

#

been way too long for this release to get fucked up

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 12:13 AM

#

What was it?

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 12:15 AM

#

v3.0 beta testing basically

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 12:26 AM

#

pure radish that was... not what i expected to be the cause

Oh sorry discord was lagging behind, was a reponse to this xP

#

I'm down to help test, I need a break from MGS2 for a bit lmao

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 12:28 AM

#

oh, basically the pipeline is more complicated than I expected and there were multiple passes for which I had to replace SRVs when downscaling

#

upscaling is actually the more simple case

#

but both are working great now

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 12:30 AM

#

pure radish upscaling is actually the more simple case

coz for texture memory it comes from CPU

#

but for framebuffers they have multiple passes all within GPU

#

and which I target depends on whether upscaling or not

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 12:31 AM

#

rancid hare I'm down to help test, I need a break from MGS2 for a bit lmao

I'll get back to you after I sleep

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 7:06 AM

#

3 beta copies dispensed

#

if any with the beta have non-MGS1 supported games, worth giving them a try as well, but i expect most testing to be on MGS1 obviously 😄

#

but yes, pls try to break it

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 7:46 AM

#

(still happy for more testers, same terms and conditions as above :P)

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 11:19 AM

#

hm, i seem to be experiencing all the same bugs that 2.2 had.

i do notice that the logs are reporting the external resolution as 3072x1728 - my screen is 3840x2160 (i was one of the folks with a 4k monitor that supports a 17:9 max resolution, 4096x2160, and the vanilla game forces itself to that max resolution which is an issue you had previously fixed - in case that guides you in a direction)

tried with both MGS1 US & Integral

📎 afevis_-_MGSM2Fix_-_widescreen_disabled.log 📎 afevis_-_MGSM2Fix_-_widescreen__hardset_external.log 📎 afevis_-_MGSM2Fix_-_widescreen_enabled.log

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 11:23 AM

#

looks like it hasn't activated at all somehow

#

created all the hooks but they aren't doing anything

#

lol

#

that screen bounds thing i wouldn't pay much attention to

#

it's only used for computing widescreen ratio

#

can you try setting RendererLevel to 3 and log that?

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 11:30 AM

#

📎 afevis_-_MGSM2Fix_-_RendererLevel_3.log

#

[2025-06-05 <t:1749122916:t>:35.588] [MGSM2Fix] [info] [D3D11] ID3D11Device::CreateTexture2D(4096, 2048, 87) -> 0x1c362324
ah, it's also pulling my max resolution, 4096

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 11:32 AM

#

that's unrelated to resolution

#

[2025-06-05 05:28:06.063] [MGSM2Fix] [info] [D3D11] ID3D11Device::CreateTexture2D(1024, 1024, 28) -> 0x15686c64
[2025-06-05 05:28:06.063] [MGSM2Fix] [info] [D3D11] ID3D11Device::CreateTexture2D(8640, 8640, 28) -> 0x156875a4

#

this is the texture set the upscaling is applied to in your case

#

the first one is created by the game, the second one by the mod

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 11:35 AM

#

Ah!

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 11:35 AM

#

so that part is working right

#

on to the next part

#

ah I see

#

for whatever reason

#

the game never calls ClearDepthStencilView for you

#

but it does for me

#

???

#

I used that to attach the main upscaling hook to

#

that is

#

fascinating

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 11:37 AM

#

the plot thickens

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 11:37 AM

#

i'll find another way to do it

#

damn good that we tested this

#

i can hopefully have another build for you later today

#

does help if the code runs xD

#

maybe I can recycle the hook I used for downscaling but for upscaling as well now

#

no way will your system not hit that one

#

oh hang on

#

it might be more complicated than that

#

I don't see CopySubresourceRegion either

#

there is probably a pattern here

#

I see

#

none of the ID3D11DeviceContext hooks are being hit

#

but you do have a deferred context

#

[D3D11] ID3D11Device::CreateDeferredContext() -> 0xd7def98

#

so something funky happened with the vtable cross-referencing

#

ill have a think l8r

#

hol up

#

one quick test to rule something out

#

sent

#

that moves the hooks from the deferred context to the immediate one

#

and well there are only two contexts lol

#

if that is the issue then I will have to work out a way to detect which one to use

#

if it isn't the issue then something very bizarre is going on

#

it'll work as soon as we get you through the front door haha

#

the context explanation makes sense, at least

#

as i had the same issue until I attached to the deferred one instead

#

i initially used the immediate one

#

surely

#

that must be it

#

the virtual-hooking is working for ID3D11Device, just not ID3D11DeviceContext, and that must be because it's selected the wrong context

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 12:17 PM

#

black screen on game open now

📎 MGSM2Fix.log

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 12:17 PM

#

Ooooooooooooooh

#

ah, but

#

the hooks are firing now

#

are they recognisably running the game pipeline, lets see

#

ID3D11DeviceContext::CopySubresourceRegion(0x1a22cc24, 0x1a22cfa4, 320, 320, 224) # 1 -> 2700 2700 1890

#

very much looks like it

#

but

#

the ClearDepthStencilView hook still isn't doing anything, presumably because it thinks it doesn't have any work to do

#

based on when the SRVs are released and it clears the mapping

#

so that explains the black screen

#

the textures are being swapped, but it's swapping in a blank texture because the upscaling routine didn't run for it

#

good progress though

#

gotta head out now

#

why does the game create a deferred context and not use it in your case

#

a bit weird

#

maybe I can just force it to use it 😄

plush coyote Jun 5, 2025, 2:40 PM

#

Are you looking for any Linux testers?

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 4:01 PM

#

~~Doesn't seem to be kicking in the WS~~ Needed to set it in the launcher
No text on load (NG+ initial)
This intro is super borked.

#

No codec channel numbers either

#

📎 MGSM2Fix.log

#

Ah hold on, I might be dummy. Lemme test again now that I've set it to WS in the launcher.

#

Nah, same issues, just not being cropped lol

#

Also, not sure if this particular one is in the base game, but holding the item-menu button causes Snake's breath to shake.

#

Switched my OBS output to mp4, so video should embed properly now

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 5:20 PM

#

so basically it only works for me? haha

#

works flawlessly for me

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 5:20 PM

#

plush coyote Are you looking for any Linux testers?

will be once these initial issues are sorted

#

just best not to confuse things more at the moment

#

can only cope with so many things at once 😄

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 5:25 PM

#

dawn flare 1) ~~Doesn't seem to be kicking in the WS~~ Needed to set it in the launcher 2) ...

seems like you have the same problem as @rancid hare

#

only 1 of the 3 testers got it working

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 5:27 PM

#

_>

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 5:27 PM

#

interesting though, seems like there's two "modes" the game can choose

#

depending on machine

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 5:27 PM

#

I have a lotta problems...

#

That's weird

#

Uh, any options I should play with for testing Castlevania/MG1?

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 5:29 PM

#

the other games don't have much special yet

#

MG1 has the skip notices

#

the rest is just, external resolution, borderless, debugging/tracing

#

but really, does it crash

#

and is the mod working for external resolution / borderless

#

there isnt a huge amount to test there

#

it's just one main issue at the moment, i can tell

#

and it's a fairly obvious thing to learn about directx11

#

chatgpt moment

#

#

man chatgpt is shitting on... some of us

#

it thinks some of us are running on potato

#

i think this explains some code i saw ages ago and wondered wtf it was

#

in some functions the game makes a decision about which context to use

#

@rancid hare you're probably best placed to do this, can you get me a renderdoc capture during the submarine intro without the mod?

#

just need to visualise what the immediate pipeline looks like there

#

i strongly suspect this doesn't require major reworking, it's just getting things running at the right time

#

so we have 2 ppl deferred 2 ppl immediate

#

both deferred fundamentally work

#

i have no idea how the game decides though because the "machine characteristics" are all over the shop

#

you guys have low-end laptops

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 6:12 PM

#

Bahahaha

#

I could use a new GPU, but I need all my limbs and organs still.

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:14 PM

#

well the thing is @rancid hare has a fairly equivalent machine to me

#

5800X3D vs 5900X

#

3080 vs 3080

#

32GB vs 64GB

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 6:16 PM

#

I mean, my specs are the same aside from the 2060 instead of the 3060/80

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:17 PM

#

would be really interesting to find how that decision is made

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 6:17 PM

#

Yeah!

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:17 PM

#

because it looks like coin toss

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 6:17 PM

#

I wonder if there's a way to tweak it through the Nvidia control panel

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:21 PM

#

i just cannot see it caring about RAM

#

we literally have identical GPUs

#

it can only be 5800X3D vs 5900 that triggers it for us

#

and i believe the trade-off there is

#

loads of cache vs more cores

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 6:21 PM

#

Core count perhaps?
Just woke up, will get the renderdoc thing in a few

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:22 PM

#

awesome, ta

#

yeah, core count is my guess

#

it's a factor chatgpt mentioned

#

i must've taken hundreds of renderdoc captures of the sub intro, and i finally have a vague idea what im looking at

#

ideally, we fix this without forcing everyone to deferred, but it's there as a backup option

#

i really doubt it's going to make a dent in performance for a decent machine emulating a playstation game

#

i at least need to detect which type is used, which probably requires finding where it's decided

#

probably impossible to have it work properly for both without knowing which type is used

#

at the moment the mod has no clue

#

when i gave you the immediate build i just moved everything that was previously happening for deferred

#

therefore breaking it for me

#

as that stuff can't be in both places at the same time

#

well, it cooouuld... but i'd have to add a buncha hook stubs

#

my hooking (well, the stuff that allows calling the original function) works by having a big mapping of hooks created to their original functions

#

so you pass in your own function pointer and it looks it up

#

e.g.

#

#

that can only work if they're unique, so i would need to create a bunch of wrappers to handle each type

#

im just glad the vtable mapping stuff is working, the whole thing has been written to depend on that 😛

#

#

i'd literally die now if this was the problem

#

the huge upscale routine is working for downscaling and upscaling at different points in the pipeline, so we have the technique perfected, just need to get it positioned correctly for immediate

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 6:46 PM

#

Interestingly, Renderdoc seems to work great if I point it to another game (Jedi Fallen Order), but immediately closes the capture tab if I point it to the mgs exe.

#

¯_(ツ)_/¯

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:46 PM

#

without even launching mgs?

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 6:47 PM

#

Nah, launches MGS fine

#

But nothing happens in renderdoc

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:47 PM

#

you might need to remove steamstub so the game can be debugged

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 6:47 PM

#

Ah, probs

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:47 PM

#

a tool like steamless can do it

#

or i can just DM you the debuggable EXE

#

also need to create steam_appid.txt in the game folder

#

with the contents "2131630"

#

steamless is safe to use, hasn't stolen my account and mine is... high value

#

not VAC banned either 😛

#

you'll need to rename the original exe and make the debuggable exe called "METAL GEAR SOLID.exe" as well, or the mod won't detect it

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 6:49 PM

#

Okay cool, now it works

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:49 PM

#

the one good thing about steamstub is how easy and clean it is to remove

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 6:49 PM

#

Just need to rename the exe

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:50 PM

#

yeah, take some captures and you'll have a view into my personal hell

#

i like having these set as well

#

which you find in there

#

if you do enough backflips you can work out cause and effect

#

i.e. what output connects to which input and follow the entire pipeline through

#

it makes associating an output render target view to a new input shader resource view needlessly difficult though

#

i also run it with all of these

#

#

just capture everything lol

#

oi oi

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 6:54 PM

#

was missing some capture stuff, 1 sec

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 6:55 PM

#

Just sent mine over, I didn't set the same capture settings, so @rancid hare' might be more useful

#

But hey, a data point

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:55 PM

#

did you run modded?

#

i'm hoping for unmodded

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 6:55 PM

#

Ah, well then

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:55 PM

#

still useful

#

all data useful

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 6:56 PM

#

If Afevis doesn't have any luck, I'll come back to it later

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:56 PM

#

unmodded tells me what im surrounded by

#

modded tells me how im fucking up

#

xD

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 6:56 PM

#

suffering, mostly

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:56 PM

#

oh @rancid hare, a capture with the mod's second build would be nice as well

#

the half-assed immediate mode (black screen) thing

#

ideally wait until roughly the submarine

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 6:57 PM

#

unmodded for these

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:58 PM

#

i had the same experience of black screens waiting for sound cues to take captures

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 6:58 PM

#

📎 afevis-frame6398.rdc 📎 afevis-frame5872.rdc 📎 afevis-frame5621.rdc 📎 afevis-frame5377.rdc 📎 afevis-frame4612.rdc 📎 afevis-frame4480.rdc 📎 afevis-frame3570.rdc 📎 afevis-frame2547.rdc

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 6:58 PM

#

sick

#

this should help a lot, pretty blind without it

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 7:00 PM

#

Excellent @rancid hare, age hasn't slowed you down one bit.

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 7:02 PM

#

those are really interesting

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 7:02 PM

#

📎 afevis-modded-frame4125.rdc 📎 afevis-modded-frame3846.rdc 📎 afevis-modded-frame3350.rdc 📎 afevis-modded-frame2973.rdc

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 7:03 PM

#

quite easy to see that its not gonna work haha

#

i should have enough info now, cheers

#

it sounds like the mod "fundamentals" are solid though

#

nobody has reported a crash yet 😄

#

that stuff also took a long time to truly figure out

#

i had MGS1 fairly solid before because it got the most attention but the other games were a mess

#

if its been so seamless otherwise, thats great coz it's literally been completely rewritten and with a new structure

#

challenge you to find a line of code that is the same

#

the rewrite isn't as sexy as "features" but it makes it so much easier to add em

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 7:50 PM

#

Gooooood

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 7:55 PM

#

glad i got ppl to test

#

i am very foolish and innately think my machine can test everything

#

but there's a whole new thing to learn which is kinda blessed

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:03 PM

#

Glad we could assist

#

I'll play around with CV over the next few days just in case it has weird issues there

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:04 PM

#

heres how it was sposed to look

#

the fact you didn't see the text top-left is also a tell

#

as that was done at the d3d11 level

#

if you see that, you have deferred rendering, basically

#

otherwise immediate

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:09 PM

#

Iiiiiinteresting

#

Yeah, no tag

#

Which, good call. That should stay in post-beta

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:09 PM

#

not sure tbh

#

it's not graffiti, im not here to advertise myself

#

it's there to reduce the chance of leaks 😛

#

which wouldn't be worth doing anyway, coz as soon as this is decent for everyone it's gonna be released

#

but still the release should come from the proper source i.e. github, not some idiot

#

especially since its been so long since the last and a lot of people waiting for this feature

#

maybe i'll keep it but as something you optionally enable, so that people can instantly tell if they have the mod installed or not

#

but im not about thrusting it upon people

#

the mod should be invisible unless you want it not to be

#

im a player of the game as much as anyone else

#

its actually generated by imgui, the intent was to have some proper hax widgets that would let you fiddle with the game with overlay menus

#

i.e. use it to display snake position and maybe have game cheats there

#

but atm it's not used to draw a window it's just drawing a box with some text in, but it's a good demonstration that imgui is working

#

eventually there might be stuff u can click etc

#

to screw with the emulator, game and frontend UI

#

all i ask is that the release comes out when its ready and not before, so we have this stupid text box for now (i also have it)

#

getting imgui to work on top of my d3d11 hacks was kinda wild

#

since obv, imgui is also going to walk right into those hacks

#

so basically when it's imgui's turn to render it all gets "functionally" turned off temporarily

#

otherwise asplode

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:20 PM

#

pure radish it's not graffiti, im not here to advertise myself

It's a good indicator for bug reporting down the road. Even if it only splashes for 10sec or so. Enough that there's an indicator for the end user that it's working and what version is running

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:20 PM

#

there's a logfile for that

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:20 PM

#

Fair

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:20 PM

#

and if you bump the tracing settings in the ini to the max

#

you're gonna have a MASSIVE log

#

i really went to town printing stuff

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:20 PM

#

I do also appreciate that the final release version is seamless for the user

#

So I'm good either way

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:21 PM

#

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:21 PM

#

Maybe if you do future betas leave it in? Then drop is for the actual release

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:21 PM

#

like you can really follow what directx11 is doing from this

#

following pointers through each line

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:21 PM

#

Nice

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:22 PM

#

some of the games use directx9 instead which would eventually be fun to look at

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:22 PM

#

When you're done this can you fix the post processing pipeline for mgs2 and 3? :p

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:22 PM

#

dawn flare Maybe if you do future betas leave it in? Then drop is for the actual release

yeah, betas will have it

#

the point is testing not early access

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:23 PM

#

For sure.

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:23 PM

#

not trying to be a prick but it's very useful that you two diagnosed the problems and sent as much info as possible without hundreds of ppl storming github issues with personal insults

#

😄

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:23 PM

#

Was just throwing it out there if you did want to take that route in the future

#

Totally get it, my guy

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:24 PM

#

it was the right call this time

#

again im foolish and think if it works on my machine it will work on everyone's

#

so had to suppress that instinct to do a beta

#

but yeah that's like blatantly an issue i would never have seen even if i spent a year polishing it

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:26 PM

#

Yep

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:26 PM

#

u can see how good it already is on my side

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:26 PM

#

Yeah, jealous :p

#

Guess I should replace my cpu

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:26 PM

#

yeah just buy a clone of my machine

#

ez

#

want the specs? here you go

#

[2025-06-02 20:31:07.717] [MGSM2Fix] [info] MGSM2Fix v3.0 loaded.
[2025-06-02 20:31:07.717] [MGSM2Fix] [info] ----------
[2025-06-02 20:31:07.717] [MGSM2Fix] [info] [System] CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D 8-Core Processor
[2025-06-02 20:31:07.723] [MGSM2Fix] [info] [System] GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 (driver 32.0.15.7640)
[2025-06-02 20:31:07.726] [MGSM2Fix] [info] [System] RAM: 31.93 GB (32690 MB)
[2025-06-02 20:31:07.726] [MGSM2Fix] [info] [System] OS: Windows 11 Pro (build 26100)

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:26 PM

#

In the year of our Lord 2025

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:27 PM

#

do not deviate

#

lest M2 deem you unworthy

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:27 PM

#

Wait. Mine's also a 5800x3d

#

It's that pesky gpu

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:27 PM

#

wow

#

so yeah it's not even a single factor

#

they might as well have randomised it

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:27 PM

#

(we should also try to find someone with an Intel chip and an AMD GPU)

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:28 PM

#

better, or worse CPU doesn't mean it works

#

better, or worse GPU doesn't mean it works

#

wtf

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:28 PM

#

My wife has a Deck, so I'll get it loaded up on there tonight. I think Deck testing is probably something we should do too

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:28 PM

#

yeah that's good

#

maybe the deck is lucky

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:28 PM

#

Standardized hw config and all

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:28 PM

#

i was meaning to do deck testing before release but if u wanna do that it saves me a job 😛

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:29 PM

#

What else... Asus Rog Ally would be handy if we know someone who has one. I think that's the only other big handheld

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:29 PM

#

pure radish i was meaning to do deck testing before release but if u wanna do that it saves ...

Can take a look for sure

#

Oh, hypothetically there's someone out there using one of the new Intel GPU's. I'd be interested to see if those run into any problems since they're so new.

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:30 PM

#

I'd be interested to know if you can set the launch options as WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dinput8=n,b;d3d11=n,b" %command%

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 8:30 PM

#

Nuggs, are you a fresh win 11 install, or an upgrade from 10?

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:30 PM

#

i.e. combine them rather than have to set the right one for 32bit or 64bit

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:31 PM

#

rancid hare Nuggs, are you a fresh win 11 install, or an upgrade from 10?

upgrade from 10

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 8:31 PM

#

Mines fresh

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:31 PM

#

a rather... rocky one as well

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:31 PM

#

Fresh

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:31 PM

#

had to fix a lot of system stuff in post

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:31 PM

#

_>

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:31 PM

#

worst windows upgrade in recent memory

#

my start menu was full of non-existent apps

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 8:31 PM

#

100%, I've had to reformat 4 times at the start of the year cause shit just kept breaking

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:32 PM

#

Mine's been good, barring explorer choking up sometimes.

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:32 PM

#

pure radish I'd be interested to know if you can set the launch options as `WINEDLLOVERRIDES...

i.e., my plan was to suggest:
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="dinput8=n,b" %command% for 32bit games
WINEDLLOVERRIDES="d3d11=n,b" %command% for 64bit games

#

but ideally we can combine the two to just have a single instruction

#

much like the release itself is packaged now

#

so testing that on deck would be helpful

#

on both sides, bonus content and MGS1

#

(bonus content being 64bit and MGS1 being 32bit)

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:33 PM

#

I'll do the full MGS/CV suite.

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:33 PM

#

noice

#

cheers

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:33 PM

#

I don't have... Gradius?

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:33 PM

#

yeah you don't need every game dw

#

https://gist.github.com/nuggslet/4dea502450b2cb41a84584862fd3be2f#steam-decklinux-additional-instructions

Gist

README.md

README.md. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

#

these were the instructions in my proto-readme

#

which is a bit confusing for a first timer

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:34 PM

#

That's annoying

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:34 PM

#

any game in both lists is useful for this test

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:34 PM

#

Also annoying that we need launch options at all

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:34 PM

#

yeah that's just gonna be deck life really

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:34 PM

#

Yeah. It's the price you pay

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:35 PM

#

most games off-piste need a bit of a tweak

#

but it's cool that it's just one download now

#

that seems to have worked for everyone

#

thanks windows for that neat trick

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:36 PM

#

Feature request: can you have a "create mods folders" in the ini?

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:36 PM

#

you mean so it creates them for every ingame "title"?

#

like INTEGRAL etc?

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:36 PM

#

Yeah

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:36 PM

#

yeah that shouldnt be too difficult

#

all the information is already in the mod

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:37 PM

#

Just because it's a fair amount of manual work for an end user to build out

#

Either do it automatically or have a non-default flag to do it

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:37 PM

#

looool

#

these magic numbers are offsets in the CD-ROM images

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:38 PM

#

Oh god

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:38 PM

#

those were all fun to work out

#

but hey only has to be done once

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:38 PM

#

Ooooo, be cool if on first run of any of the variants, it generates the mod folder structure for that particular release

#

This is what happens when I'm checked out of work and the ADHD meds aren't quite working lol

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:39 PM

#

know the feel

#

i was at work today waiting to be able to think about this stuff again

#

😄

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:40 PM

#

Thank you for keeping on it. I know how easy it is to burn out on a project when you're not getting the results you want

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:41 PM

#

i was always coming back to it 😛

#

right circumstances and recovered from some burnout

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:41 PM

#

Yeah. I just know how easy it is for a project to lay on the workbench because it hasn't given you enough dopamine lately

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:41 PM

#

realistically its my only personal programming project so

#

and also one of few places where there hasn't been internet divorce-worthy drama

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:42 PM

#

yet

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:42 PM

#

being left to basically just crack on most of the time is better than a guy demanding you sign your life over to him coz hes an internet celebrity haha

#

traumatised

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:43 PM

#

Eeeew

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:43 PM

#

people just help here and i try my best and occasionally theres some code in a repo

#

😛

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:43 PM

#

Your best seems to be pretty good

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:44 PM

#

on the previous thing im glad i kept it closed source so this dude wouldn't steal my shit

#

here im glad its open source, please steal my shit

#

world of difference just from the environment

#

(steal my shit when it's published that is)

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:44 PM

#

Lolol

#

One sec, gonna go post the beta on reddit

#

And nexus

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:44 PM

#

https://tenor.com/view/cat-stare-angry-cat-funny-cat-memes-gif-14595486679217135725

Tenor

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:44 PM

#

And mods.io, just because

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:45 PM

#

well if anyone with beta does do that i can figure out who

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:45 PM

#

Nah, I've seen enough developers stop working on cool shit because of harassment or bad actors. I wouldn't pull that crap

#

And I'm not smart enough to remove your watermark if I was.

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:46 PM

#

this is my bidness, use autofire and i'll know

#

there are multiple watermarks 😛

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:46 PM

#

Developer Nuggscelot

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:46 PM

#

the one you can see is just so you know you're being watched

#

not that i don't trust the people i gave the beta to

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:47 PM

#

I actually don't see any at all on my screenshots

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:47 PM

#

it's "trust, but verify"

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:47 PM

#

Might have been hidden by the background

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:47 PM

#

oh you won't get it like i said

#

coz you have immediate rendering

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:48 PM

#

Aaaaah

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:48 PM

#

but also then im not too worried about it, coz also your upscaling doesnt work either

#

but if someone had upscaling working they'd be tempted

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:48 PM

#

I was wondering why it didn't look as amazing as I'd expected, but the minimap looked clean enough

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:48 PM

#

either way i can work out where the builds came from

#

its annoying to have to do it and be like this

#

it's kinda like defense spending

#

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:49 PM

#

"nuggs, why is my Social Security number on the screenshots I take?"

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:50 PM

#

but i mean i want it to be done and published and open source more than anyone coz the code visible to the public is fucking shocking

#

ive seen better sewers

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:50 PM

#

Lolol

#

Yeah, sucks that you have to put the work into locking it down, but it's for a good cause/goal

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:51 PM

#

it's just that it's been so long and so hyped lol

#

this is the only way to keep things somewhat calm

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:51 PM

#

Yep. Gotta come out of the gate strong

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:51 PM

#

and i need things to be somewhat calm

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:51 PM

#

I should start writing an article on the project...

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:52 PM

#

true

#

it's quite disappointing konami didn't do it because they would've had much better access to do so

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:53 PM

#

Right?

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:53 PM

#

it's not actually that hard when you achieve it

#

it's just i have to do hundreds of hours of faff to figure out the recipe

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:54 PM

#

I'm just glad that it's something that can be fixed. If the files were encrypted and whatnot, we'd be stuck with the not-great release version.

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:54 PM

#

but from the inside you have perspective over how the entire thing renders

#

here i have to work within what exists around me

#

so there is a gfx pipeline, replacing the entire thing is a lot, so you have to try and insert yourself into it without upsetting it

#

there's a lot of code just restoring state that i temporarily overwrote

#

this lol

#

this is just so the remaining pipeline steps can continue as originally intended

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:57 PM

#

dawn flare I'm just glad that it's something that can be fixed. If the files were encrypted...

i was more worried about performance, but that was when i thought the CPU had a greater role in the rendering than it does

#

it's mostly GPU for the framebuffers / screen, so unless you take a huge dump on your graphics driver you can basically do whatever you like

#

coz it's never gonna be a demanding game

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 8:58 PM

#

Even if it was cpu limited, there's still a gulf in performance I think you'd have been fine

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:58 PM

#

(first ever version of this did crash my GPU)

#

(that was quickly fixed)

#

konami logo
device disconnected sound

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 8:59 PM

#

dawn flare Even if it was cpu limited, there's still a gulf in performance I think you'd ha...

i mean it's like

#

it's not exponential, whats the word

#

but going from 320x256 to WHATEVERx1440 is a huge more amount work for a CPU

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 9:00 PM

#

True!

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 9:00 PM

#

coz it's a square

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 9:00 PM

#

Especially if it's single-thread

#

Log?

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 9:00 PM

#

and i remember in various experimentation ages ago (before i knew i had to fuck with directx) i managed to make it run so slowly the sound was crackling

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 9:01 PM

#

Woof

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 9:01 PM

#

so i wasn't optimistic if it was more CPU driven

#

but yeah, CPU just does texture memory

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 9:01 PM

#

Huh, no idea.

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 9:01 PM

#

which is always the same size

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 9:01 PM

#

Glad it panned out

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 9:01 PM

#

and that's what I upscale on the GPU side

#

(the texture memory)

#

but it's cheap there

#

the essential problem was that the game rendered as what you asked of it, but the texture memory was always the same size (PSX size), so the two didn't line up

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 9:02 PM

#

Makes sense

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 9:02 PM

#

so we scale it by the same multiplier as PSX vs the resolution you ask for

#

then everything is aligned properly and it just works

#

then there was the whole 320x224 320x240 320x256 kerfuffle

#

#

which was obv really fun

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 9:04 PM

#

Yeah, that was weird

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 9:05 PM

#

and if this stuff isn't exactly right it's not positioned at the exact right spot and you get all sorts of weird shit like codec digits not aligned properly

#

and there's that 384x256 mode which is only used in PAL for user interfaces like codec

#

adding even more fun

#

on PAL when you enter and exit the codec screen the game switches into an entirely different resolution

#

NTSC that doesn't happen

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 9:06 PM

#

That's... Wild.

#

I wonder how that doesn't cause an HDCP handshake on modern hardware

#

I guess it's just rendering resolution rather than display res

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 9:07 PM

#

yeah it'd just be handled behind HDMI

#

like this emulator "program" is just always 2560x1440 for me

#

all the weird shite is within

#

and i strongly suspect

#

the 320x224 vs 320x{240, 256} difference is responsible for the black borders on NTSC/Integral

#

iirc it presents a 320x224 render in a 320x240 window

#

that seems deliberate, not sure why

#

but maybe we could just change one side to match and get rid of the borders

#

since there is enough space for 256 pixels height in the VRAM

#

320x224 is a standard "cutscene" resolution, like FMV, on playstation

#

but no idea why they have the entire integral game set to it

#

PAL doesn't have that confusion of being two resolutions at the same time, so no borders

#

but for now i just kept it coz it was confusing enough already

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 9:11 PM

#

Yeah. Definitely a tomorrow-problem

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 9:11 PM

#

removing borders is a separate task yeah

#

the way it renders the codec digits is frankly insane, not sure the original game did that

#

it kinda just dumps them in a no-mans-land in the VRAM temporarily

dawn flare Jun 5, 2025, 9:12 PM

#

Hm, wonder why

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 9:12 PM

#

near the framebuffer but not quite in it

#

then samples it again later

#

to put it in its final place

#

#1168512986491670548 message

#

ah here it was

#

its actually supposed to be in that neighbourhood and happens unmodded as well

#

wonder if anyone has done d3d11 api hacks this extensive just to improve graphics for a game

#

😛

#

maybe you inject a shader

#

here we've devised a whole system for tracking future resource replacements and mapping them to different stages of the pipeline, injecting a whole new draw pass to be man in the middle

#

for a ps1 game

#

the game creates a certain texture? we jump in and create an extra one and associate them

#

im not sure how this could be done more simply

#

it seems quite complicated but also what else do you do

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 10:16 PM

#

pure radish iirc it presents a 320x224 render in a 320x240 window

The black borders are them just accurately emulating the CRT overscan padding id assume. (This is what the game looks like on CRT if you crop out those black bars on the output signal)

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 10:18 PM

#

but why is that an NTSC only thing?

#

all TVs were equally shit at the time

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 10:25 PM

#

From what I'm reading, PAL TV's had 576 scan lines, NTSC had 480, and doing a linear port without adjusting for the overscan diff would result in a fuzzy image on actual hardware (Or something like that. There's tons of results about it on ancient emulation forums)

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 10:51 PM

#

......lmao

pure radish Jun 5, 2025, 10:54 PM

#

wazzap

rancid hare Jun 5, 2025, 11:00 PM

#

sorry for the dangling ellipsis lol

was doing comparisons on duckstation and i had a realization

m2 fucked up and cropped part of the right side of the screen off on the pal version as well. it's probably just sloppy work xD