Lr-glupen? Does this still exist?

quicksilver · 14 Feb 2018, 16:47

I have been messing around with N64 lately trying to get the best settings/emulators set up for each game (quixotic I know). And I noticed on the N64 wiki page that there is an emulator called lr-glupen. The GitHub page for it is missing and I can find almost no info on this emulator. Has it been removed? I also saw lr-parallel-n64 as an optional emulator in the retropie setup but I see no mention of it on the N64 wiki page. Can anyone shed some light on these two emulators?

dankcushions · 14 Feb 2018, 17:04

@quicksilver no, it was abandoned. the last version was forked by retroarch/libretro and is now available as lr-mupen64plus. however, that also has effectively been abandoned. it is libretro (so shaders, unified controls, etc), but it has old versions of the mupen64plus core, and the gliden64 graphics plugin, so generally will less compatible and worse performing than the default mupen64plus-auto/gliden64 standalone n64 emulator, which uses the latest of both.

lr-parallel-n64 is what was (previously to to the above) known (confusingly) as lr-mupen64plus. it's not really useful for pi users.

edmaul69 · 14 Feb 2018, 17:14

@dankcushions i have better compatibility and speed with the lr- versions. A lot of games on standalone mupen64plus just black screen or lag so bad they arent playable.

dankcushions · 14 Feb 2018, 17:24

@edmaul69 can you give an example?

quicksilver · 14 Feb 2018, 17:24

@dankcushions thank you for the info and I have a follow-up question:

What is mupen-auto and mupen-videocore? I can't get any games to run video core. Mupen-auto seems to behave just like glide.

quicksilver · 14 Feb 2018, 17:25

@edmaul69 that is interesting indeed. Lr-mupen has been a stuttering mess for me.

dankcushions · 14 Feb 2018, 17:31

@quicksilver said in Lr-glupen? Does this still exist?:

@dankcushions thank you for the info and I have a follow-up question:

What is mupen-auto and mupen-videocore? I can't get any games to run video core. Mupen-auto seems to behave just like glide.

mupen-auto i believe automatically decides the video plugin to use based on presets. for the most part, that will be gliden64 (which was retropie's previous default), but for some games, not. i guess it's all decided in this bit of code: https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/scriptmodules/emulators/mupen64plus/mupen64plus.sh#L308

mupen-videocore: https://github.com/tachiweasel/mupen64plus-video-videocore#mupen64plus-video-videocore
it is fairly non-functional, really, but it's a neat idea.

quicksilver · 14 Feb 2018, 17:37

@dankcushions do you know of a single game that will run on video core?

BuZz · 14 Feb 2018, 17:38

@quicksilver Don't use that core. It should be removed really.

[edit] actually it was removed March of last year. You probably just have it installed from an earlier install.

edmaul69 · 14 Feb 2018, 18:03

@dankcushions @quicksilver example is banjo kazooie. Runs great for me on lr-mupenplus64. Black screen on mupen64plus-gles2n64. Mupen64-gles2rice flickers and crashes back to emulationstation. Mupen64plus-gliden64 crashes back to emulationstation. And mupen64plus-videocore crashes back to emulationstation. After using any standalone mupen64plus the config menu no longer works so i have to reboot my pi to change emulators.

edmaul69 · 14 Feb 2018, 18:14

@dankcushions even after i just uninstalled and reinstalled mupen64plus and all games mupen64plus doesnt work at all for me. So im not sure what is wrong with the emulator.

Beldar · 14 Feb 2018, 18:38

I will also report better function and compatibility with the lb core compared to default. I really only care about Star Fox 64 and Mario 64 but the both work better with the old core.

Star Fox has audio issues on both, but far worse with the stand alone core. It also has lower frame rate and graphical glitches.

quicksilver · 17 Feb 2018, 03:07

@edmaul69 so I did some testing and I found at least one game that runs better with lr-mupen. Sarge's heroes 2. All three plugins just give me a black screen but lr-mupen will run it. Go figure. I had stopped testing games with it because it was always worse for me. I guess I will have to start trying it out again.

edmaul69 · 17 Feb 2018, 06:02

@quicksilver it used to be god awful. In super mario 64 half of mario was darker than the other half. One of the castle doors was darker than the other. Most games ran like shit. Then some update at some point in time changed all that. Now i can play a lot of games i never could on any emulator on the pi. I use a self powered usb hub on the pi so one power supply is dedicated to the pi 3 only and with no overclock they run pretty good and i hate video and audio lag so to me its a huge improvement.

edmaul69 · 17 Feb 2018, 06:03

@quicksilver banjo kazooie lags like hell on the standalone mupen64plus but runs fine on the libretro version for me.

quicksilver · 17 Feb 2018, 14:10

@edmaul69 most of the games I have tested, the glide plugin seems to be the best (although I just found that 1080 is completely glitched out with glide but is great on the libretro version). But now you have convinced me to go back and try other games using libretro mupen. Its just strange to me that an older basically abandoned core can function better than a newer more up to date one. I have also found the compatibility lists to be of limited help as they are either way out of date or inaccurate.

Anyway thanks again everyone for the info. I can now resume my quest of attacking windmills! I mean perfecting N64 settings...

Ranma · 18 Feb 2018, 15:49

@dankcushions said in Lr-glupen? Does this still exist?:

@quicksilver no, it was abandoned. the last version was forked by retroarch/libretro and is now available as lr-mupen64plus. however, that also has effectively been abandoned...

I did not know that. My take on lr-mupen64plus was that, like the Retroarch package itself, it was pretty up to date.

I'm glad I've discovered this thread as I too had not tried lr-mupen64plus for a very long time. It ran very poorly in the past. However colour me shocked to discover it runs many titles better than the default plugins. Ocarina seems to run much better with lr-mupen64plus than with any of the built in options or defaults for example. Thanks for the heads up. :-)

quicksilver · 18 Feb 2018, 16:01

@ranma for me mupen glide standalone still works better for me for most games. But there are some that lr-mupen works better. For OOT try the rice plugin, I get best results with it and can even run it it using the high-res option. For even better results try the master Quest version of oot. It runs even smoother for some reason.

Ranma · 20 Feb 2018, 18:20

To be honest the GlideN64 standalone is rough with many games for me, even with my slight overclock. And I really don't like the text over the image. I would have lived with it if performance was good, but for me it isn't.

All that said, between all the plugins and settings etc., I am largely quite happy with N64 on the Pi. When you consider what's being done, it's pretty impressive and many games do work well.

quicksilver · 20 Feb 2018, 20:01

@ranma looks like the fps counter is gone with the latest build from source. Maybe they figured it out and it's not needed anymore. Just know that if you update from source there is a chance there are new bugs.