Sonic Colors GUI elements missing

[MastaG]

Hi there,

I just got a new smartphone which features a snapdragon 855+ / andreno 640 gpu.
I've tried to fire up Sonic Colors and it suprises me it actually runs (near) fullspeed.

Only some of the GUI elements seem missing?
Like the HUD and the "Press Start" button before the title screen.

I don't have this problem on my Linux PC where I compile Dolphin from source.

Is there some fix available for this?

[MastaG]

I figured that if I switch to Vulkan the HUD is rendering correctly.
Only on Vulkan Sonic Colors is not running at full speed as opposed to OpenGL ES.

[MastaG]

I also verified the same issue with the HUD missing on my Galaxy S9 when using the OpenGL ES renderer.

But a kind member sent me a PM with a link to an unofficial build: Dolphin 5.0-9779 MMJ.
This build is based on a outdated revision, but does fix rendering of the HUD in Sonic Colors when using OpenGL ES.
Thus it let's me play the game in fullspeed.

Now I'd like to know if I can find the commit "MMJ" did to fix the issue, so I can apply it myself and make a custom Android build based on the latest master branch.

[JMC47]

It's likely a hack/offset they put in. Because their builds aren't well documented and some of them are missing source code altogether, it's not really easy to figure out how they fixed things.

[MastaG]

Well I checked out the latest official git and I was able to reproduce the problem on my laptop.
By adding PreferGLES = True in ~/.config/dolphin-emu/GFX.ini under [Settings] it will switch to Mesa's OpenGL ES renderer.
And the HUD is also missing like on the official Android releases.

When I switch to regular OpenGL (core profile 4.6) by setting PreferGLES to false it will render fine.

Now the custom Android build by "MMJ" is a bit outdated as it's based on 5.0-9779.
So it's either a OpenGLES regression that got into dolphin just recently.. or "MMJ" fixed the OpenGL ES renderer in his builds somehow.

But if I look at the commits he did (clicker-de-click) https://github.com/weihuoya/dolphin/commits?author=weihuoya
I can't really find anything that justifies fixing it.
EDIT: Just did a build from this fork and the same problem happens on GLES only, confirming it's either something that broke recently OR MMJ fixed it without commiting it to his repo.

I'll try to build the official dolphin-emu first from a revision that's close to MMJ's 5.0-9779 release and see if the problem persists.

[MastaG]

It seems it's a clipping issue which was reported 5 years ago: https://bugs.dolphin-emu.org/issues/6914
Which got ultimately fixed by: https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/commit/bfc62d2adaf350cfb990c9de98039b48707c1347

However it only seems to apply to D3D, OpenGL and Vulkan ?

Or it just broke on GLES recently I guess... still have to try older builds..

[MastaG]

Alright the clipping issue is not something that got fixed by weihuoya or "MMJ" at all.
It's a bug that got into Dolphin just recently by some commit and it only affects the GLES renderer.
Building an older rev here and the GLES renderer is working fine.
Trying to pinpoint the offending commit.

[MastaG]

Alright, it turns out weihuoya fixed it afterall.
It's in his regression-vulkan branch.
This commit: https://github.com/weihuoya/dolphin/commit/01b5244f608949d5a3aa5a5522d5899aa709404e

It contains the fix for rendering the HUD and other GUI-elements (Sonic Team and Gamecube controller logo's) in Sonic Colors (and possible other games such as Sonic Unleashed as well) when using OpenGL ES.

Confirmed here on my laptop.

It's a bit of a mess but it would be nice if some more experienced developer such as Connor McLaughlin (stenzek) could have a look and backport the fix to the current dolphin-emu master branch.
This would benefit the Android users a lot since OpenGL ES is a lot faster compared to Vulkan for many games.

[MastaG]

Well I asked weihuoya and he was so kind to reply me with the commit to revert and now the problem is fixed !


For the record the problem where the GUI fails to render for Sonic only occurs when using OpenGL ES.
Vulkan and regular OpenGL are not affected.

This is the commit I had to revert in order to fix this on OpenGL ES as well: https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin/commit/debaf63fe8abc4d534c0cac7540eb8607e2c5c91
See the attached patch.

I've verified this on Linux (Fedora 31) by adding PreferGLES = True in ~/.config/dolphin-emu/GFX.ini and on Android using my Galaxy S9+ and OnePlus 7T.

My Android build: https://mega.nz/#!Sl9XUQbT!3AONny5FApY6b_K2oKA10GuePkDiKrg-TWJAQwVQfNc
My x86_64 Linux build: https://mega.nz/#!T0shxATD!iAdkm0WXWzr1ugMhL991WPzTRqo3wnjahGo4Z6cP7BY
(the Linux build will probably only run on Fedora 31 due to dynamically linked dependencies)

[JosJuice]

Thanks for pinpointing it! I've created a report on the issue tracker so that the graphics devs hopefully will see it: https://bugs.dolphin-emu.org/issues/11897