jul23 draft

site/content/entry/yuzu-progress-report-jul-2023/index.md

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+date = "2023-08-06T06:45:00+05:30"
+title = "Progress Report July 2023"
+author = "CaptV0rt3x"
+coauthor = "GoldenX86"
+forum = 0
++++
+
+Hey there yuz-ers!
+Welcome back to our monthly report on all the improved features, performance gains, and bug fixes we made.
+Let's jump right in!
+
+<!--more--> 
+
+## Aliens and ghosts are real! And they run on Unreal Engine
+
+The wait was long but worth it, another game in the charming Pikmin franchise is finally arriving on Earth, just in time to join the wave of UFO declarations!
+
+{{< imgs
+	"./pk1.png| Imagine a cross-over with Toy Story, it would explain The Claw! (Pikmin 4)"
+  >}}
+
+This time, `Pikmin 4` decided to use Unreal Engine 4, which guarantees good performance and quality on the Switch.
+This engine also guarantees headaches implementing its particular interest in sparse textures and the stability problems it introduces to NVIDIA GPU users running Vulkan, as previous Unreal Engine 4 games have demonstrated.
+
+As you can expect, there’s a lot of work to do to improve compatibility on games running this particular popular engine.
+
+[byte[]](https://github.com/liamwhite) took the first blow, by finding which part of the texture cache code caused a regression {{< gh-hovercard "11093" "affecting stability" >}} strong enough to cause device losses (the driver cutting off the GPU from rendering, resulting in an emulator crash) on NVIDIA GPUs.
+
+{{< imgs
+	"./pk2.png| Moss seems tired (Pikmin 4)"
+  >}}
+
+[emufan](https://github.com/GPUCode) followed up, he identified that hardcoding the total number of texture buffers to `16` was causing crashes in some Unreal Engine 4 games and {{< gh-hovercard "11098" "bumped up the count" >}} to `32`.
+
+{{< single-title-imgs
+    "Good thing this game didn't cross paths with Pikmin (Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE)"
+    "./rain1.png"
+    "./rain2.png"
+    >}}
+
+This not only has helped `Pikmin 4 but also `Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE`, another recent release using this same engine.
+
+{{< imgs
+	"./rain3.png| Yeah, good name for a train, I'll board it in Dracula Station (Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE)"
+  >}}
+
+# Per-game configurations - Reimagined!
+
+If you're not a new yuz-er, it is very likely that you've seen and used per-game configurations.
+But incase you haven't yet, per-game configurations are a way to set game specific settings without having to redo your settings for every game you start.
+Imagine if few games require GPU accuracy to be "HIGH" instead of "NORMAL" or if some games work best with "OpenGL" over "Vulkan", with per-game configurations you can easily override these specific settings for just those games.
+
+So, what's new, you ask?
+The brains behind this feature's implementation and our trusty slice of toast, [toastUnlimited](https://github.com/lat9nq/), started working towards a future where yuzu could essentially download a game-specific configuration file, that was curated by the community, and then instantly apply those settings.
+Thus users obtaining the optimal settings for any game without having to tinker with the several configuration options we have today.
+
+Sounds exciting, right? Heck yeah!
+While toast was finalizing his designs, he quickly ran into a road-block of his own design that is our current per-game configuration system.
+The existing system's design made it difficult to programmatically define and override each setting in multiple places across yuzu's backend and frontend systems.
+
+toast decided to take the challenge head-on and {{< gh-hovercard "10839" "rewrote the entire settings backend" >}} to improve it while making it programmatically easier to define and implement any setting.
+Thanks to these changes, developers now only need to write out the UI text for a setting and the system will do the rest (reading, writing, representing in the UI, resetting global state).
+
+This also had the benefit of providing the perfect timeframe to rework several parts of the global settings UI!
+For example, System settings now includes `Multicore CPU Emulation` support, all three possible values for `Memory Layout`, and `Limit Speed Percent`.
+
+{{< single-title-imgs-compare
+	"Important changes to System settings"
+	"./systembug.png"
+	"./systemfix.png"
+>}}
+&nbsp;
+
+The Graphics section also got its fair share of changes. 
+Besides reorganizing the different options, the new `ASTC Decoding Method` option now lists our 3 different alternatives for handling that pesky ASTC format, CPU, GPU, and asynchronous CPU decoding.
+
+{{< single-title-imgs-compare
+	"Graphics settings also got some love"
+	"./gpubug.png"
+	"./gpufix.png"
+>}}
+
+And more!
+
+But enough of the global settings, toast also changed how per-game configurations are also updated, they will now show an X button on the right of each setting if they were modified over the global value, allowing to quickly revert them if needed.
+
+{{< single-title-imgs-compare
+	"Graphics settings also got some love"
+	"./custombug.png"
+	"./customfix.png"
+>}}
+
+Keep your eyes open for follow-up changes that will build on top of this foundation!
+
+# Graphics Changes
+
+[Maide](https://github.com/Kelebek1) continued his efforts on improving performance through optimizations and {{< gh-hovercard "10996" "his latest changes further optimize" >}} one of his {{< gh-hovercard "10457" "earlier optimizations." >}}
+While the original changes aimed to reduce memory allocations while copying data from guest to host (User's PC), the latest changes remove data copying entirely, resulting in nearly 10% performance boost in parts of `Super Mario Odyssey` like the Metro Kingdom area, and `Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition` reporting similar gains.
+
+[byte[]'s](https://github.com/liamwhite) {{< gh-hovercard "11136" "latest fix" >}} significantly improves the slowest shader compilation in `Splatoon 3` with time taken reduced from `30 seconds` to about `4 seconds`.
+A {{< gh-hovercard "10583" "recent change to our texture cache's `AccelerateDMA` logic" >}} was identified to have been causing device losses and {{< gh-hovercard "10993" "has been since been reverted." >}}
+
+{{< imgs
+	"./sp3.png| She calls it Sasha (Splatoon 3)"
+  >}}
+
+# Input Changes
+
+[German77](https://github.com/german77) continued his reverse engineering of the Switch NFC service and {{< gh-hovercard "11096" "improved yuzu's code accuracy" >}}.
+He also fixed a bug which caused users' mouse to stop working after some time, by avoiding an accidental division by zero.
+
+Newcomer [SuperSamus's](https://github.com/SuperSamus) first contribution to yuzu was to {{< gh-hovercard "11050" "fix how button mapping was being handled within yuzu." >}}
+With these changes, it's now possible to share the same mappings between Nintendo and non-Nintendo controllers. Thank you!
+
+Note: This change **BREAKS** controller configurations for those using Nintendo controllers without the direct driver.
+
+# Android Changes
+
+[bunnei](https://github.com/bunnei/) implemented changes to {{< gh-hovercard "11017" "fix an issue where Turnip drivers would fail" >}} on certain Snapdragon devices, and added checks for broken Qualcomm 7xx drivers.
+This means any Snapdragon user should be able to run Turnip drivers now, links will be provided in the Hardware section later in this article.
+
+[t895](https://github.com/t895) {{< gh-hovercard "11067" "disabled yuzu from asking to save user data on uninstall," >}} which could cause issues when users attempted to use different APK versions.
+
+t895 also {{< gh-hovercard "11070" "added some help text messages" >}} to inform users why certain buttons were disabled on some devices but not others.
+The most common case is Mali or Xclipse users trying to install custom drivers, a feature that is only available and possible to Adreno users, at least for now.
+
+{{< imgs
+	"./mali.png| Abstract art generator (Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity)"
+  >}}
+
+# Miscellaneous changes
+
+Apart from the ones highlighted above, there have also been several smaller changes:
+
+[FearlessTobi](https://github.com/FearlessTobi) added {{< gh-hovercard "11047" "detection for compressed and sparse NCAs within yuzu's filesystem." >}} Instead of failing silently, yuzu will now log this info and abort the parsing.
+
+toast added a {{< gh-hovercard "11042" "new Linux build script which added the libraries required to enable `Wayland` support" >}} on our official AppImage releases.
+
+Not ending there, toast {{< gh-hovercard "11186" "fixed a memory leak with the new timezone data generator," >}} which happened when games tried to ask for timezone information too many times. 
+This was resolved by keeping track of the generated timezone binary instead of recreating it repeatedly.
+
+And toast also {{< gh-hovercard "11030" "bypassed a MSVC build crash on `Windows version 10 1809 LTSC` with the new timezone binary changes," >}} by temporarily disabling this for MSVC until there is a solution from Microsoft. 
+The reason, for those interested, is [documented here](https://github.com/microsoft/STL/issues/3853#issuecomment-1627630752).
+
+byte[] {{< gh-hovercard "11113" "fixed a bug that caused `Quake` to fail to launch," >}} and {{< gh-hovercard "11135" "also fixed a bug that resulted `Splatoon 3` having an endless loading screen when LAN was enabled," >}} by implementing the missing service functions.
+
+byte[] also {{< gh-hovercard "11016" "fixed an issue within yuzu's filesystem" >}} which resulted in either corrupt save data or failing to save data.
+
+A previous merge caused games with non-ASCII titles to crash on Linux, due to `DBus` expecting a `UTF8` string. This has now been {{< gh-hovercard "11007" "fixed." >}}
+Thanks [zeltermann](https://github.com/zeltermann)!
+
+[Morph](https://github.com/Morph1984) {{< gh-hovercard "10999" "fixed a bug that broke the game installation progress bar" >}} after the recent buffer size increase, by refactoring the progress bar calculation code.
+
+Morph also {{< gh-hovercard "11173" "fixed a bug where yuzu would crash on systems with weak CPUs running very low clock speeds" >}}, due to yuzu's strict requirements on CPU clock precision.
+
+German77 reduced almost 2GB of memory usage, by {{< gh-hovercard "11128" "fixing a memory leak within yuzu's discord game presence" >}} presumed to be caused by `cpp-httplib`.
+
+German77 also {{< gh-hovercard "11142" "fixed a crash in yuzu's gamelist" >}} which happened when you loaded yuzu without keys.
+
+yuzu newcomer and Citra expert [Steveice10](https://github.com/Steveice10) made {{< gh-hovercard "10974" "a few improvements to Vulkan surface creation on macOS," >}} and [comex](https://github.com/comex) made {{< gh-hovercard "10990" "few fixes and workarounds for macOS to resolve few undefined behaviour errors." >}} Thanks to you two!
+This doesn't mean full MoltenVK support yet, but the gap is now smaller.
+
+## Hardware section
+
+### NVIDIA
+
+The currently latest driver released at the time of writing, 536.99, is stable and also seems to have improved Vulkan performance a small but measurable notch, between 3% and 7%.
+Free performance is free performance.
+
+### AMD
+
+It's July and we have another new AMD GPU driver with yet another extension causing issues.
+If you recall from our [June progress report](https://yuzu-emu.org/entry/yuzu-progress-report-jun-2023/#amd), we reported that latest AMD drivers had broken a Vulkan feature - `extendedDynamicState3ColorBlendEquation`, and we had to temporarily disable usage of it on AMD driver version `23.5.2` and above.
+
+Fast-forward to July, and it's still broken, for some.
+Giving credit where due, AMD ***did*** fix this issue with driver version `23.7.2` but only for `RDNA2` GPUs (RX 6000 series), with `GCN4`, also known as `Polaris` (RX 400 and 500 series), confirmed to still be broken.
+In light of this, and the fact that the fixed driver still reports the same Vulkan version, we {{< gh-hovercard "11182" "reverted" >}} {{< gh-hovercard "11163" "our revert" >}} of {{< gh-hovercard "10946" "our original change from June" >}} and have {{<gh-hovercard "11204" "currently disabled usage of this extension on all AMD official drivers," >}} until this is fixed and has a new version number.
+
+### Turnip
+
+Mesa never slows down its progress, and [K11MCH1's](https://github.com/K11MCH1) AdrenoTools releases are a true blessing from the fairies.
+
+For A600 users (Snapdragon ### series), [progress is steady](https://github.com/K11MCH1/AdrenoToolsDrivers/releases/tag/vk.1.3.261-A6XX). 
+But the [best news](https://github.com/K11MCH1/AdrenoToolsDrivers/releases/tag/v23.3.0-dev) are for A700 users (Snapdragon # Gen # series), which now see much improved rendering and performance on the Mesa Turnip drivers.
+
+Some games still require the proprietary Adreno driver to be more stable or faster, but at this rate of progress, we’ll most likely see this change soon!
+
+## Future projects
+
+Behind the counter, there has been great progress in some key projects.
+The last missing piece of `Project Y.F.C.` the `Query Cache Rewrite` was released, but we'll talk about it next time. We're sure Xenoblade and Luigi's Mansion fans will love it
+byte[] continues to improve the current file system emulation--maybe some particular games will start working soon?
+And Maide has some interesting ideas to implement in the shader cache code.
+
+That's all folks! Thank you for staying with us until the end. See ya next time!
+
+&nbsp;
+{{< article-end >}}
+{{< imgs-compare-include-end >}}
+{{< gh-hovercard-include-end >}}