Pokemon Heart and Soul 2.0.2 crash

[TwinTusks]

As title said, the new 2.0.2 version of Pokemon Heart and Soul tends to crash everytime enters a battle. The issue starts before it, once selected and pass the logo, the game shows a black screen, after a minute or so, it enters the menu. Everything proceed normally during the new game, but once enter the battle it will blackout and crash. See log for detail.

My theory is the 2.0.2 adds too much function to the point the emu/psp can't handle it anymore. But it'll be nice to confirm it.

tempgba_crash.log

[JxPv2]

I just tested on my psp 3000 and, even if I'm not experiencing the crash right now, the rom Is running with noticeable graphic artifacts. I'll try to look into it but honestly this is andymcca field of expertise.
Can you tell us which PSP version you use to play the rom?

[TwinTusks]

I just tested on my psp 3000 and, even if I'm not experiencing the crash right now, the rom Is running with noticeable graphic artifacts. I'll try to look into it but honestly this is andymcca field of expertise. Can you tell us which PSP version you use to play the rom?

I am playing on PSP3000

[SHAD0WW11]

crashes on psp 1000

[TwinTusks]

crashes on psp 1000

I think the game had became too big and heavy for old devices as our PSP.

[andymcca]

I'm taking a break from dev at the moment due to a bit of life burnout but this issue intrigued me enough to have a quick look.

From what I can see the game will run properly if you switch Performance Options -> RAM dynarec mode to 'Full Flush'. The problem with that is you then get glitches every 4-5 seconds. So the problem is with the Partial Flush modes, which this game really needs to be playable on the PSP. It would therefore appear we have a bug!

Heart & Soul was working prior to it's recent new 2.0.2 / 2.0.4 release, and the good thing with Heart & Soul is the source code is available, so in theory at least this will help to get to the bottom of the issue. I have seen other reports regarding Emulator crashes which seemingly go away when switching to full flush mode, so this reinforces the likelihood of a partial flush mode bug.

No idea if/when I will have time/motivation to fix. Happy for anyone else to try. If I do get into it I will post updates here. @TwinTusks would be useful to know if other variants which ONLY do Partial Flush Dynarec mode (so original TempGBA4PSP, FrogGBA etc) have the same issue?

EDIT: OK I suspected STM aligned store code as these are the stores which don't get checked for self-modifying code generally and it looks like that might be the smoking gun. Managed to get it working at the expense of slightly trashed music. Having a look at that now. 'Every time I think I'm out....it pulls me back in....'

EDIT 2: @TwinTusks I've done a quick test release - please can you try it and let me know if the issue is resolved? - https://github.com/andymcca/TempGBA4PSP-mod/releases/tag/test_fix_06092026

[SHAD0WW11]

for me(psp 1000) the test release fixes heart and soul not running

[andymcca]

Thank you @SHAD0WW11 . We will do a new formal release soon with this and the Sleep fix.

[TwinTusks]

@andymcca “Full Flush" does stutter every 4-5 seconds, but it's near unplayable when entering battle, like 0.3 frame per second.

Thank you for your hard work

[andymcca]

@andymcca “Full Flush" does stutter every 4-5 seconds, but it's near unplayable when entering battle, like 0.3 frame per second.

Thank you for your hard work

@TwinTusks have you tried Partial Flush + Reuse in the latest test release? That's what I was asking you to try.

[chloe6111]

It took a bit of fine tweaking on my psp3000, but it's running well with rare fps spikes. The settings I'm using is:
Video renderer: Old
OAM hijack support: On
VSync: Off

Frameskip type: AUTO
Frameskip value: 3
CPU clock freq: 333MHz

RAM dynarec mode: Partial + reuse

It does have slight lag spikes when starting battles and in some cities. If you want to completely remove all fps spikes. Go to the Options in the actual Pokemon Game, on the last page you can turn off the In-Game music and the game will run like butter. Not the best choice, but if you're running without sound anyways it's highly recommended.

[andymcca]

It took a bit of fine tweaking on my psp3000, but it's running well with rare fps spikes. The settings I'm using is: Video renderer: Old OAM hijack support: On VSync: Off

Frameskip type: AUTO Frameskip value: 3 CPU clock freq: 333MHz

RAM dynarec mode: Partial + reuse

It does have slight lag spikes when starting battles and in some cities. If you want to completely remove all fps spikes. Go to the Options in the actual Pokemon Game, on the last page you can turn off the In-Game music and the game will run like butter. Not the best choice, but if you're running without sound anyways it's highly recommended.

Yeah the music engine on H&S is particularly heavy on self-modifying code, moreso than Pokemon Unbound, and it smashes the dynarec even in 'Partial Flush and Reuse' mode. On the PSP that kind of thing is death for performance because we've only got a 333Mhz processor to play with, and we're already super-optimised in this emulator (credit to all previous contributors before I did anything!).

We can do a certain amount of mitigation with SMC Cutpoints in game_config.txt but these need to be targeted to certain areas of IWRAM (specifically the parts where the music engine/data gets loaded). With the recent version uplift for H&S I can see if I need to adjust these to improve performance. Also, overclocking with ARK5 will help if you are comfortable trying that.

Given this is a ROM hack, the ultimate way to fix it would be to change the H&S source code to fully separate the music engine from the data to minimise self-modifying code flushes being triggered but that could affect in-game performance on real hardware, and is probably why it's been coded the way it has!

[andymcca]

@TwinTusks @chloe6111 @SHAD0WW11

I've had a play with H&S and have patched the audio mixer to restructure and largely remove the SMC portions. This makes the game run relatively smoothly on my PSP even in Full Flush Dynarec mode and without any game_config.txt entries! I will open a PR on the main H&S repo but I'm also looking to see if I can create a patch for the latest 2.0.4 version which you can try out (if you would be so kind). I will update here once I have something.

UPDATE - try using either the IPS or BPS patch in the zip (use https://www.marcrobledo.com/RomPatcher.js/) -

hns-2.0.4-mixer-no-smc.zip

[chloe6111]

@TwinTusks @chloe6111 @SHAD0WW11

I've had a play with H&S and have patched the audio mixer to restructure and largely remove the SMC portions. This makes the game run relatively smoothly on my PSP even in Full Flush Dynarec mode and without any game_config.txt entries! I will open a PR on the main H&S repo but I'm also looking to see if I can create a patch for the latest 2.0.4 version which you can try out (if you would be so kind). I will update here once I have something.

UPDATE - try using either the IPS or BPS patch in the zip (use https://www.marcrobledo.com/RomPatcher.js/) -

hns-2.0.4-mixer-no-smc.zip

Yes, working flawlessly on my psp 3000

[SHAD0WW11]

@TwinTusks @chloe6111 @SHAD0WW11

I've had a play with H&S and have patched the audio mixer to restructure and largely remove the SMC portions. This makes the game run relatively smoothly on my PSP even in Full Flush Dynarec mode and without any game_config.txt entries! I will open a PR on the main H&S repo but I'm also looking to see if I can create a patch for the latest 2.0.4 version which you can try out (if you would be so kind). I will update here once I have something.

UPDATE - try using either the IPS or BPS patch in the zip (use https://www.marcrobledo.com/RomPatcher.js/) -

hns-2.0.4-mixer-no-smc.zip

works perfectly for me on my psp 1000 🔥

[TwinTusks]

@TwinTusks @chloe6111 @SHAD0WW11

I've had a play with H&S and have patched the audio mixer to restructure and largely remove the SMC portions. This makes the game run relatively smoothly on my PSP even in Full Flush Dynarec mode and without any game_config.txt entries! I will open a PR on the main H&S repo but I'm also looking to see if I can create a patch for the latest 2.0.4 version which you can try out (if you would be so kind). I will update here once I have something.

UPDATE - try using either the IPS or BPS patch in the zip (use https://www.marcrobledo.com/RomPatcher.js/) -

hns-2.0.4-mixer-no-smc.zip

Works pretty flawlessly on my PSP3000.