[BUG]: Tales of the Abyss: Line Grid Effect in certain areas within the game

[Trixarian]

Describe the Bug

When upscaling Tales of the Abyss beyond Native resolution, and with Half-Pixel Offset enabled, it causes a line grid effect to appear in several areas within the game. Disabling HPO does solve this issue, but in return results in a ghosting effect around models. The issue also appears if a texture offset is used or when any of the other hacks that have a similar effect, like Align Sprite and Wild Arms Hack, is used. No other arrangement of settings seem to correct this behaviour while HPO is enabled, but notably setting Override Texture Barriers to Force Disabled reduces - and in some instances, eliminates - the effect at the cost of blurring the image.

Here's an example of the line grid effect in Engeve:

Current workarounds:
The use of the Skipdraw range of 355 and 359 corrects the issue for 90% of the areas affected, but does cause visual bugs within the Desert Oasis and Grand Chokmah.
Using the HPO setting Normal (Vertex) results in a sharper image, but comes with pixel thick lines of corrupted texture at the top and left side of the screen which requires setting a Zoom of 101% and enabling Screen Offsets to correct. Use of the Anti-Blur setting further sharpens the image. It, however, still requires the Skipdraw range to correct the line grid issue.
Notably the use of the Widescreen patch file results in the the Skipdraw code not working at all. This is due to the use of the No Bloom code within the file, and can be used outside of the Widescreen patch file to reproduce the problem.

Other known areas that this bug is present:

• Title Screen
• Cutscene where Tear attacks Van
• Tataroo Valley (Night)
• Engeve
• Kaitzur Navel Port
• Outside Baticul Castle
• Grand Chokmah
• Keterburg
• Keterburg Bay
  (See Screenshots below for examples of the above)

Reproduction Steps

Set any Internal Resolution higher than Native, then enter the affected areas within the game to observe the bug

Expected Behavior

Preferably a sharp image without the line grid effect in the affected areas, similar to this screenshot using HPO Normal (Vertex) and the Skipdraw range fix:

PCSX2 Revision

AVX2-Qt-v1.7.2991

Operating System

Windows 10 (64bit)

If Linux - Specify Distro

No response

CPU

AMD Ryzen 5 2500U

GPU

NVIDIA Geforce GTX 1050 4GB

GS Settings

Display
Renderer: Vulkan
Aspect Ratio: Standard (4:3)
FMV Aspect Ratio: Standard (4:3)
Bilinear Filtering: Disabled
Sync to Host Refresh (Vsync): Enabled
Anti-Blur: Enabled

Rendering
Internal Resolution: 4x Native (~1440p/2K)

Emulation Settings

Maximum Frame Latency: 3 frames
Adjust to Host Refresh Rate: Enabled

GS Window Screenshots

More examples of the bug in action:

Logs & Dumps

GSDumps of known instances of the bug:
gs_Tales of the Abyss_SLUS-21386-1.zip
gs_Tales of the Abyss_SLUS-21386-2.zip

[coornio]

Related (but closed) PR #6269

Currently has no reliable solution that doesn't introduce problems elsewhere in the game.

[Trixarian]

Currently has no reliable solution that doesn't introduce problems elsewhere in the game.

That's the biggest problem with it - there are no good fixes for it.
Lives up to the usual Tales games reputation of barely working on the system it's designed for

[lightningterror]

Closing, upscaling issue.

[Trixarian]

Closing, upscaling issue.

That none of the other hacks corrects and I was told by @iMineLink to make this report

[lightningterror]

Closing, upscaling issue.

That none of the other hacks corrects and I was told by @iMineLink to make this report

If Imine told you to make it then it's fine, we usually close upscaling issues.

[Trixarian]

It might be an rendering issue with this game since it does appear at Native. Upscaling alone doesn't make the bug appear, it requires the use of HPO or texture offset hacks to make it noticeable. It's mostly likely down to how the low scale animated parallax effect used in the game works. I assume it uses several such animated textures arranged in a grid, which is why when an offset is used on it, it makes the grid pattern far more noticeable due to overlapping textures.

Considering how sparingly it's used in the game, and how the developers designed most areas within game to avoid having to look at the sky box, it may have been a known issue for them. Coupled with the fact that a CRT would have hidden the grid lines, it was a fair compromise at the time

[Mrlinkwii]

i checked this on v1.7.5611 , seems ok at 7/8x with fixes that are on by default with the 2 set of gs dumps provided

@Trixarian can you recheck this for me

[jkcdarunday]

Happens to me in the title screen at 2x native resolution on my Steam Deck OLED running PCSX2 v1.7.5737.