Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4

dankcushions · 27 May 2020, 13:27

@akamming said in Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4:

@Brunnis said in Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4:

In the meantime, you could test changing RetroArch’s audio driver to ’tinyalsa’. Notice any less stuttering? I’ve made some tests with this and have noticed improvements. It’s something I’d like to look into some more, but unfortunately rarely have much spare time these day.

A nice… i'll give it a try…

Something else: I noticed on my rpi4b in SW episode I racer i noticed the racer, pod and character grahpics are not always OK. Same behaviour in mupen64plus (also if a change the the video plugin: same behaviour on all plugins) and lr-mupen64plus and lr-mupen64plus next.

Since i als have a dell laptop with debian on it i did a little test by installation retropie. On that laptop all is fine. both mupen64plus and lr-mupen64plus next show correctly.

I searched on the internet and it looks exactly like this issue. this issue refers to a 'depth hack' option.. but i can't find it … does any now how i can enable or disable this option?

idk what that option is but AFAIK this can't be done on a raspberry pi because the GPU doesn't have the necessary GL extension: https://github.com/gonetz/GLideN64/issues/2176

quicksilver · 27 May 2020, 14:00

@dankcushions Haha I thought that sounded familiar :)

akamming · 27 May 2020, 17:34

@dankcushions said in Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4:

idk what that option is but AFAIK this can't be done on a raspberry pi because the GPU doesn't have the necessary GL extension: https://github.com/gonetz/GLideN64/issues/2176

aha tx .. that's a clear anwser, unfortunately not what i'd hoped… fortunately i just found out the same game is also available for dreamcast and that one works fine within retropie (btw only if i use redream. in lr-flycast the game freezes the start screen.), so i can still play it on my self built arcade ;-)

akamming · 4 Jun 2020, 06:02

Still tryin to figure out how to get the best N64 experience on my Pi 4, so i decided to give lr-parallel a try

it crashed rightaway, here's the crashlog (the part where it crashed)

[INFO] [GL]: VSync => on
[libretro INFO] mupen64plus: Starting R4300 emulator: Dynamic Recompiler
[libretro INFO] mupen64plus: Init new dynarec
[libretro INFO] mupen64plus: ARM CPU Features:, Half, Thumb, FastMult, VFP, ESDP, NEON, VFPv3, TLS, VFPv4, IDIVa, IDIVt
Ongeldige instructie

(i have dutch locale settings. "ongeldige instructie" means something like "invalid instruction")

i tried bothe the self compiled version and the pre-built version for the pi4. also tried several games. But all lead to the same crash. can someone help to troubleshoot??

quicksilver · 4 Jun 2020, 11:59

@akamming the only game I got to work with parallel on my pi 4 was GoldenEye. On my pi 3 using an older version of parallel N64 I was able to run quite a few games with it but overall it's not the best choice for N64 on the pi.

George Spiggott · 4 Jun 2020, 16:10

I'm hearing a lot about Parallel updates at the moment but I haven't been able to get better speed than Mupen64-plus next provides on my PC. I haven't tried it on my Pi. It uses Vulcan which may make it more useful in future.

akamming · 4 Jun 2020, 17:42

@quicksilver said in Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4:

@akamming the only game I got to work with parallel on my pi 4 was GoldenEye. On my pi 3 using an older version of parallel N64 I was able to run quite a few games with it but overall it's not the best choice for N64 on the pi.

ah.. you're right.. with GoldenEye indeed it does not crash. It actually seems to have the same performance as Mupen64plus but with all the added functionality of retroarch (shaders, overlay, etc...).. nice… ! so overall much better than Mupen64plus on the pi..

unfortunately it crashes on all the other games i try… would be nice if that could be fixed...

quicksilver · 4 Jun 2020, 17:43

@akamming I believe goldeneye multiplayer is glitched though so you can only use it for single player (assuming there are no issues in other levels)

akamming · 4 Jun 2020, 17:44

@George-Spiggott said in Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4:

I'm hearing a lot about Parallel updates at the moment but I haven't been able to get better speed than Mupen64-plus next provides on my PC. I haven't tried it on my Pi. It uses Vulcan which may make it more useful in future.

mupen64plus next works on my pi4, however performance is much worse than mupen64plus so i can only run on a very low resolution...

dankcushions · 6 Apr 2020, 20:21

parallel is essentially useless to use on the pi - the meat of it is the vulkan angrylion renderer, which the pi can't run (and even if it had vulkan, it would be a slideshow), so if you run it on a pi it defers to the ancient versions of HLE renderers it also (for some reason) includes - GLideN64 i believe.

there's no reason to use it ahead of any of the other n64 emulators on the pi. you may get ok performance on some games, but i can almost guarantee there will be accuracy or stability issues if you persist.

they should just get rid of those plugins on it IMO. so many people must get a bad impression of those advancements when they run it on insufficient hardware. i not they have just ported parallel RDP to mupenp64plus-next, as an optional renderer. i hope that paves the way for the old cores retirement, maybe...

AdamBeGood · 15 Jun 2020, 14:02

@quicksilver I find lots of the Textures are black on Star Road on lr-mupen64plus, I am struggling to get it to work on my Pi. Any thoughts? It is vexing. Parallel-N64 works better but I can't pause and it sometimes just chucks me out.

quicksilver · 15 Jun 2020, 14:16

@AdamBeGood see my reply here https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/17605/how-to-install-previous-version-of-mupen64plus-to-get-super-mario-star-road-working/8

AdamBeGood · 15 Jun 2020, 14:16

@quicksilver Made the screen update change you mentioned and Pilotwings is so much better! Thank you!

I think Legend of the Mystical Ninja is the only game I don't have running fairly well (Killer Instinct Gold could be better, and some of the effects on Perfect Dark like Camspy but these are trifles).

quicksilver · 15 Jun 2020, 14:18

@AdamBeGood said in Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4:

Killer Instinct Gold could be better

If you let the game run for about a minute or so using mupen64plus-gliden64 (just play a match or two) the game will become fullspeed for the rest of that play session. Im not sure what is going on behind the scenes, but while the game is running choppily you can see that something is being loaded into memory. Once the memory usage stops climbing the game becomes fullspeed.

AdamBeGood · 15 Jun 2020, 14:19

@quicksilver On it now! Thank you.

AdamBeGood · 15 Jun 2020, 14:31

@quicksilver You are totally right! Damn my previous impatience, KI seems to run fine now. Just Goeman left, but I think that is a lost cause (oh, and Star Road which you are helping with).

AdamBeGood · 16 Jun 2020, 12:45

@quicksilver or anyone else - on another issue, I've got some crackle with voice samples on Mario Kart 64. Does anyone know how to stop that happening? It is running really well on mupen64-gliden64 aside from that.

quicksilver · 16 Jun 2020, 12:52

@AdamBeGood to confirm you are on a pi 4 right?

AdamBeGood · 16 Jun 2020, 12:58

@quicksilver I am indeed, yep!

Just trying Mystical Ninja Starring Goeman now that I have gles2rice working, but it is still poor. Is it something to do with the sky? Always seems to be when the sky is in view. So weird!

quicksilver · 16 Jun 2020, 13:02

@AdamBeGood gles2rice and gles2n64 are old and no longer developed so unfortunately things will never get better using them. You are likely to run into graphical inaccuracies.