Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4

dankcushions

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

@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

@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

@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

@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

@quicksilver On it now! Thank you.

AdamBeGood

@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

@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

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

AdamBeGood

@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

@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.

AdamBeGood

@quicksilver Goeman doesn't work on anything anyway. Gles2rice is as good as I've seen it on a Pi. Thanks for the info though!

George Spiggott

Has anyone managed to get any noticeable increase in performance since installing the new v5.4 kernel? As with PSP I have noticed that there are definitely incremental improvements to both kernel and emulator, for example smoothing only has a small overhead and can be used in several games. Also Rogue Squadron will now play fairly smoothly in 640x480.

retropieuser555

@George-Spiggott is this due to the new kernal though? I don't have it and Rogue Squadron runs for me on GlideN64. Wonder if Glide got updated and that's what caused the improvement.

George Spiggott

I agree. I put a similar statement in my PSP post but didn't repeat it here. Will edit for clarity.

Changes have occurred since I started this thread and I think the 5.4 upgrade offers a good opportunity to discuss any changes and improvements we can benefit from.

Dr Nick

Just got a Raspberry pi + Retropie.

Some very odd experiences with the N64. Very laggy on large TV, so changed video resolution to lowest options, and moved to smaller (non-smart) TV.
And the picture was off the bottom corner of the screen. Good audio though.
Opened settings, and behold: back in the middle. Closed settings, off to the Right again.
Reset to defaults, and back into the middle. WIth virtally no audio during gameplay (F-Zero-X).
Reasonable picture (bit laggy at times).
Suggestions?

mitu

@Dr-Nick Please open a separate topic and add the info requested in https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first.

roslof

I started up an N64 compatibility list, specifically for Pi4B and all of the various supported RetroPie emulators and added a section for emulator default overrides. Yes, there are other lists out there, but I was unable to find one detailed enough for my liking. There are MANY facets to emulating N64 on this device. x86 folks won't have as much trouble... we're still trying to squeeze out as much performance and fun as possible.

After reading through this thread and personally trying to maximize performance on N64, I learned a lot. I wager y'all know more than I do... So if you see anything funky, just call it out. With your help, I'm sure I can do better and improve the list...

I'm exclusively using a Raspberry Pi4B w/2GB RAM and an Argon One case, with the following overclock settings:

force_turbo=1
arm_freq=2000
over_voltage=6
v3d_freq=830
hdmi_enable_4kp60=1

Of course, your settings may vary... This is my baseline.

Also, I made sure that all emulators are using their DEFAULT configuration (as of 2020/09/01) unless otherwise noted in the Compatibility List.

EDIT/Removed: ~~One exception: I enabled Threaded Renderer for the lr-mupen64plus-next emulator.~~

Some of this work is subjective, but I try to be consistent. As an example, I usually lean more towards performance-based gameplay, even if there are minor graphic issues, or slow-down in menus. But I also push for 640x480, and may be willing to sacrifice a small amount of performance for this, and note it accordingly so others can make an informed decision to pick a different emulator. If no emulator can handle 640x480, I lower res to 320x240. This is my stake-in-the-ground... I'm not playing with higher resolutions at this time.

With that, here's is my N64/Pi4B Compatibility List (work-in-progress, and using a highly optimized ROM list that doesn't cover duplicate titles from different countries). Maybe this can help Pi4B owners get rolling more quickly, as it takes a long time to find recommended emulators for ~400 games.

akamming

@roslof nice work!

If you lean towards performance based gameplay: try switching off Fram Buffer Emulation. This will give a big performance boost. I haven't noticed different graphics on my pi4 apart from a few ingame tv monitors which no longer show an image in that ingame tv monitor

There is however one issue: you can only use ntsc (us) roms, since there is an issue with alignment of objects on pal (eu) roms with Framebuffer Emulation off. This one is already acknowledged by the developer of gliden64 and will probably fixed a near future release.

So on my system i use default settings + threaded renderer on + Frame Buffer Emulation off on all roms. Except for a few roms wich are not available in the us version where i have fb emu enabled

ReadyPlayaWon

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

try switching off fb emulation

That's Frame Buffer Emulation for any newbies (like myself) that aren't familiar with abbreviations

FYI ;)