Title Screen Bug 0.4.3

[Local-Toaster-Dealer]

intro works but it's slow as heck and when i skip it this happens it just shows me samus's model and when i touch anything i can hear the menu sound effects but i can't see the menu only samus's model

[MysteriousAeon]

Thanks for the report. This looks similar to the older compute-renderer failures we were debugging, but I don't want to assume it's the same bug yet.

Could you provide:

• your exact GPU model
• your Windows version

Also, please try one quick comparison from the extracted v0.4.3 folder.

Open CMD in the game folder and run:

set NDS_3D_RENDERER=soft && nds_runner.exe "bios" --interactive --rom "Metroid Prime Hunters.nds" --config "game.toml" --freebios --generated-firmware --boot direct

The important result is just:

• does the title screen/menu render normally with the software renderer?
• or do you still get the same Samus-only screen with menu sounds?

If software rendering fixes the missing menu, that will narrow this to the GPU/compute presentation path. If it happens there too, I'll look at the shared presentation/title-screen path instead.

No logs or additional testing are needed yet.

[Local-Toaster-Dealer]

i tried doing what you said about the command with powershell and it gave me this error i opened powershell in the game folder fyi At line:1 char:26

• set NDS_3D_RENDERER=soft && nds_runner.exe "bios" --interactive --rom ...

•                      ~~
  

The token '&&' is not a valid statement separator in this version.
+ CategoryInfo : ParserError: (:) [], ParentContainsErrorRecordException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : InvalidEndOfLine
as for my gpu and windows version here is a screenshoot of my specs,i also use windows 10 ltsc

[MysteriousAeon]

Thanks, that helps. The command I gave was for CMD, so the PowerShell error is just a shell syntax issue.

Your system is:

• AMD A4-3310MX
• Radeon HD 6480G
• 4 GB RAM
• Windows 10 LTSC

Since you're already in PowerShell in the game folder, please run these two lines instead:

$env:NDS_3D_RENDERER="soft"
.\nds_runner.exe "bios" --interactive --rom "Metroid Prime Hunters.nds" --config "game.toml" --freebios --generated-firmware --boot direct

Then just let me know:

• does the title screen/menu render normally now?
• or do you still only see Samus while the menu sounds are audible?

The software renderer will probably be slow on this hardware, so performance is not important for this test. I only need to know whether the missing menu itself is fixed.

[Local-Toaster-Dealer]

problem still persists and here is the result of the command you gave me for powershell [wifi_net] Winsock initialized (WSAStartup 2.2) before boot()
[network] disabled (--network off): no host networking backend will be attached
[gpu3d] renderer policy: auto (preferred: OpenGL 4.3 compute)
[gpu3d] threaded soft renderer: on
[bios] FREEBIOS (opt-in, no dumps): arm9 4096 bytes SHA-1 b85d6afdbf65d87c9ab11d4e7fb5ecfd6192ccf8, arm7 16384 bytes SHA-1 eaab9b21610978f05a0eb14a9c8ff345698f56a2
[identity] persisted MAC 00:09:BF:FB:30:C8 from bios/generated-identity.bin
[firmware] GENERATED image (opt-in, no dump), 131072 bytes, SHA-1 f0a48ae72189f6d1632ca7ac3928eafd355626b9
[load] freebios arm9: 4096 bytes, SHA-1 ok
[load] freebios arm7: 16384 bytes, SHA-1 ok
refusing to start: cartridge image is missing or truncated

[mstan]

@MysteriousAeon Thanks for checking into this! I suspect there could be a regression introduced into some of the ndsrecomp engine work I've been working on. I'd appreciate your support in continuing debugging this, but I'll also take up a workstream to see what I can find on my end as well.

[MysteriousAeon]

Sure, I'll keep helping narrow this down.

One important detail from the last test: the software-renderer run did not actually reach the title screen. The direct runner stopped earlier with:

refusing to start: cartridge image is missing or truncated

So we still do not have a valid soft-vs-compute comparison yet.

@Local-Toaster-Dealer, since you are using PowerShell in the game folder, please run:

Get-ChildItem -File *.nds

Then paste the output here.

Once I know the exact ROM filename in your folder, I'll give you one corrected software-renderer command. No other testing is needed yet.

[Local-Toaster-Dealer]

Directory: C:\Users\Ahmad Ashraf Alsaed\Downloads\MetroidPrimeHuntersRecomp-windows-x64-v0.4.3

Mode LastWriteTime Length Name

---

-a---- 12/24/1996 10:32 PM 67108864 Metroid Prime - Hunters (USA).nds

here ya go bud

[Local-Toaster-Dealer]

after trying out 0.4.9 the problem still persists nothing have changed from previous versions so far

[Local-Toaster-Dealer]

okay after trying 0.5.0 the game works and plays BUT only on software render i assume the problem is because in my opengl render it couldn't render specific things like the title screen,obv the performance is bad 18 fps on gameplay and 30 on title screen

[mstan]

okay after trying 0.5.0 the game works and plays BUT only on software render i assume the problem is because in my opengl render it couldn't render specific things like the title screen,obv the performance is bad 18 fps on gameplay and 30 on title screen

Thanks for confirming. odd that 0.5.0 resolved it. There were some changes to how the adaptive widescreen behaved.. It now offers fixed widescreen, which may have been a contributing factor.

As for performance, I am working on implementing a way to ship native sharding with production builds that should reduce fallback to interpreter. Furthermore, I'll be shipping an SDL3 switch from SDL2. These may materially improve performance, but I will need a test validation from you once it's available. I'll follow up here once I have those.

[mstan]

https://github.com/mstan/MetroidPrimeHuntersRecomp/releases/tag/v0.6.2-alpha

Just cut 0.6.2 alpha. this one makes several changes. It includes the adaptive widescreen changes, but also introduces sdl3 as well as performance changes. Let me know how this behaves for you.

Thanks!

[Local-Toaster-Dealer]

just tried out 0.6.3 and i think performance got worse? it was running better in gameplay at 18 fps but now it's 6 fps ofc it's software so we can't really trust it on a performance test ,sadly it seems that when i use opengl it cannot render some parts of the title screen that's why i had problems with it in 0.4.3 if you could get that problem (if the problem isn't related to my specs that is) i'll be able to test the performance on the game with opengl and see if it's really better now or not

[mstan]

Performance getting worse is certainly curious... I've been running these by multiple users, and been getting varying degrees of marginal improvements. I'm working on another one soon that should be another test release on performance I may have you try.

Software is going to be considerably worse performance. In almost all cases it'll never be at a playable frame rate. For the OpenGL issue specifically that's likely one to continue coordinating with MysteriousAeon on since I'm primarily focused on performance at the moment and am unable to reproduce (nor do I have others reproducing the behavior you're seeing).

[Local-Toaster-Dealer]

i guess im a special case then,thanks for notifying me about the new version i'll be waiting to see more new versions,good luck bud!