2014: Best Bug Fix of the Year

[JMC47]

We're doing an article at the end of the year and want your votes to help us decide what you think were the best things of 2014. This thread has to do with some of our best bug fixes of the year. Rather than bigger overall changes (which we'll get to in another category) these things have to do with a singular problem that afflicted one or more games. While our definitions of what is eligible or not is loose, we'll try to keep it as easy to understand as possible. If I miss anything that you really think needs to be mentioned, please let me know!

Information about the fixes...

Fix Wind Waker's Heat Effects and EA videos - An off by one bug causes years of grief for people wanting to enjoy this classic game. This was such a relief to be fixed that an entire article was posted about it! https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/01/06/old-problem-meets-its-timely-demise/ This also fixed the EA VP6 videos on most graphics cards; with NVIDIAs seeming to do something different.

Audio Latency Bug I made a mistake about this; while degasus was working on two audio issues, one of them were merged in 2013, not 2014. This will deal with the audio latency problems, where Dolphin's audio latency was nearly 200 ms behind the game action. This bug was fixed before the progress report era, and doesn't get nearly the attention that it deserves, but we thought it deserved a mention here because of how annoying it was. You can read about it here - https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/11/12/the-rise-of-hle-audio/ under the cleanup crew and other places.

Tev Combiner Fixes - This small fix closed some long-time nagging issues. Luigi's Mansion finally started drawing its shadows, boosting the game's signature moody graphics. This also fixed a depth of field effect we didn't even know existed in Mario Kart: Double Dash!! Read more here - https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/04/30/dolphin-progress-report-april-2014/

Consider Shifted Pixel Centers - This fixed a lot of severe shadowing defects in Sonic Heroes and Shadow The Hedgehog. Read more here - https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/04/30/dolphin-progress-report-april-2014/

Fix Indirect Texture Coordinate Computation - This fixes NES Virtual Console games. Because Dolphin can do that. Read more here - https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/05/30/dolphin-progress-report-may-2014/

Implement GQR Reserved Bits in JIT - While it's shameful enough that games were using this at all, the fix actually made a lot of games a lot more playable, while fixing graphical errors, and physics bugs. Goes to show you can never trust a game to make sense. Read more here - https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/08/31/dolphin-progress-report-august-2014/

Fix Hardware Depth Matrix Shaders - A small bug in D3Ds depth matrix shaders (which were copied to OpenGL during its rewrite last year) left a lot of popular games with minor to severe graphical defects. These included titles such as Super Mario Galaxy 2 and Skyward Sword. This fix closed several issues in those two games in one fell swoop. Read more here - https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/08/31/dolphin-progress-report-august-2014/

Fix MMU Loads/Stores that Cross Boundaries - This is in essence the Star Wars Rogue Squadron 3: Rebel Strike fix. It was somewhat accidentally discovered while playing the semi-functional PAL version of the game, and literally bisecting memory addresses to figure out what was going on. No idea why it fixed interpreter on the U.S. version still, as the interpreter wasn't even broken in what we were checking. Pure luck. Read more here - https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/10/31/dolphin-progress-report-october-2014/

Add Projection Epsilon - This is the latest fix for the Sonic Unleashed hack. It had a rocky start, causing a lot of regressions, but we sorted them out and now both the games affected by the removal of the Sonic Unleashed hack and other games can work together on the same settings. We don't have any full article on this yet, but you'll have to trust me when I say this is a very big fix. If this turns out to be a hack or an incorrect fix, we will remove the option from the poll. Read more here - https://code.google.com/p/dolphin-emu/issues/detail?id=6914

ES_Launch Fix - This feature fixed tons of nagging issues in the emulator and makes it so we can use the Wii System Menu to boot games and channels without problems! For more information, checkout this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56sNUvaSnlU&list=UU1US0SaXvIUPgnf-GLbfb3g

[Link_to_the_past]

Oh, it's difficult to choose one, is it possible to give multiple answers?

[JMC47]

We're looking to collect data for an article; we would like people to only choose one that they believe is their absolute favorite

I made a mistake about when one of the fixes were merged and edited it accordingly.

[Shonumi]

Tough choice between fixing Sonic Heroes and Wind Waker. I very much appreciate neobrain's efforts in fixing Sonic Heroes, and it shows the values of hwtests once again. But I gotta love an off-by-one bug. Sometimes they slip right by you.

[vanillaGamer]

Wind Waker heat fix, hands down. Love the game, and loved that the heat bug got squashed!

[Aleron Ives]

It's a tough choice between fixing Sonic Heroes and the audio latency, but I went with considering shifted pixel centers. Those black patches made the game almost unplayable. Now all we need is for someone to figure out how to fix the problem when AA is enabled.

[Buddybenj]

I was torn between ES_Launch, Wind Waker, and Shifted Centers. I ended up picking ES_Launch.

[neobrain]

Gotta vote for myself on shifted centers here. It was an important bugfix (seeing how Sonic Heroes totally glitched out about it) which wasn't due to a stupid mistakes or unexpected game behavior, but actually provided deeper understanding of the hardware to me. Too bad it's still sitting at (now) 2 votes, but whatever I guess :p

I also considered "Add Projection Epsilon" for the same reasons, but ultimately I think we still might be missing some understanding on what's really going on there.

[Link_to_the_past]

Personally i was thinking of voting the bug that fixed most games, but then i would have to vote the one that fixes NES games (they are a lot :-p). Yet i didn't care that much about nes games so i dropped that rule and picked the one that fixed most games that i care about, and that was Add Projection Epsilon. I also considered the windwaker as a close second, it fixes the videos from a lot of games apart from fixing windwaker itself. The es_launch fix was a close third (they were all really close in general, had trouble deciding).

[JMC47]

I think you should pick the one you like most

I'm not sure how I'm going to feature results in the article. I dunno if it's fair to pick an "official" best one, so I may just link to the forum results saying "Hey, we let our forum users vote on their favorite!"