Gripshift Euro - audio lockup

[mintyc]

Game or games this happens in

Gripshift Euro ULES00177

What area of the game / PPSSPP

Startup - wait at least 5 seconds into the 'Gripshift - what you wanna do' opening music.
Audio then has a stuttering loop superimposed. Can continue through the menus at this point, but attempting to run a game never progresses beyond the 'LOADING .... screen.

What should happen

After all the menu selection working (albeit with a stuttering audio) the 'Loading ...' screen (which is animated and visually performing) should progress to gameplay itself

Logs

Also submitted via compatibility server report/screenshot
Feedback response from my submission suggests other users are reporting the same issue.

Archive of earlier win64 binaries (say 2019) I can try?

Additional info:

All other PSP games I have work fine in ppsspp throughout.
Gold support using pauljbaxter@hotmail.com (Dec 1 2019)
Revised gold support - added level 5 on 14 October 2021 in appreciation of ppsspp.

PPSSPP is one of the finest, slickest pieces of software I own. Amazing multi-platform support.

Attempted with many many settings/audio compatibility/different recent PPSSPP versions from v1.11.2 onwards.
Tested on Android and win64
Followed your advice on settings simplifications. Lots of variations.
Last I tried and used it was probably a couple of years ago. (Dec 1 2019)

Platform

Windows

Mobile phone model or graphics card

AMD Radeon (R7) M465X v2.0.158 (but also OpenGL on win and Android)

PPSSPP version affected

v1.12.2.9-g11...

Last working version

unknown < v1.11.2 - cannot download older binaries

Graphics backend (3D API)

Vulkan

Checklist

• Test in the latest git build in case it's already fixed.
• Search for other reports of the same issue.
• Try resetting settings or older versions and include if the issue is related.
• Try without any cheats and without loading any save states.
• Include logs or screenshots of issue.

[ghost]

Duplicate #7601?

[mintyc]

Duplicate #7601?

Thank you so much.
Perhaps I never did get gripshift euro to work on ppsspp after all. I was more interested in my PS3 version at the time but now attempting to retire my physical PS3 in favour of the PSP version (which still works from minidisk and image on my real PSP).

Judging by the comments, it doesn't sound like a fix worth making for one game.

Still glad I upped my support for this marvellous software though.

[anr2me]

@mintyc The reason why you got stuck (at 60/60 (100%) FPS) on "Loading..." screen (when you try to play a challenge for example), is because of this first appearance of "FF: Invalid start bit!"

If you go fast enough (ie. press X button as soon as the menu changed) to start the challenge before this "FF" Log appeared for the first time, you won't get stuck on Loading screen.

But after you finished the first challenge, you'll be stuck again when you tried to play the next level, it will shows 0/0 (100%) FPS, which is similar behavior to what happen when you try to lower down the "Music Volume" from in-game Sound Options down to 0 after the first appearance of "FF" Log (which will also froze at 0/0 (100%) FPS), which is different than the stuck at Loading screen when starting the first challenge (ie. 60/60 (100%) FPS instead of 0/0 (100%) FPS)

Here is the trick if you wanted to play the challenge successfully, including the next levels!
1). Go as fast as possible to the in-game Sound Options and lower the "Music Volume" down to 0
2). Accept and save the new changes to your profile
PS: Make sure you do this before the "FF" Log appeared! otherwise the game will froze with 0/0 FPS if you tried to lower the Music Volume to 0.
Changing the Music Volume to 0 will prevent "FF: Invalid start bit!" from appearing in the Log, thus you can play the game without getting stuck.

[mintyc]

ANR2ME - thank you for the tip/solution.

Success in accessing all challenges - thank you SOOOO much.

I did it by creating a gripshift game configuration and setting software rendering for a much slower framerate to give a chance of reaching the music volume option and setting it to zero.
(There may be other ways to slow things down or achieve this, but at normal 60 FPS I couldn't get close. S/R gave my PC a reported 10 FPS, YMMV)

First step is to create a default character and a new game save to speed up later steps.
Restart and load game, then options - sound - music volume to zero.
Now at your own pace, save and exit.
In PPSSPP game config now revert whatever you did to slow things down and you should now be able to run with full speed, some sound, FX just no 'What you wanna do' music.

Played through a few challenges without issues.

Summary of the 'problem'
Gripshift and maybe a very few other games use an uncommon API relying on a hardware feature of a real PSP to generate a audio media 'start bit'.

When emulated, the function is unimplemented so does not return a correct start bit. Comparisons fail and generate an invalid start bit.

My understanding is that the invalid start bit is detected and reported into the "FF" log.
PPSSPP reads the debug message and actions it to cause the problem with audio buffers.

Perhaps there could be an 'ignore invalid start bit' log report option in PPSSPP one day?

[anr2me]

Since this a duplicate of #7601 You don't need to reopen this, i'm just giving you a pointer of how to prevent getting locked up if you still wanted to play the game while waiting for Atract3 issue to be fixed properly.

And i don't think there will be 'ignore invalid start bit' option, because the reason why it got lockup is what happen after the "invalid start bit" error, where the game keeps trying to decode it endlessly.