3DO: The Pi4 Emulation Nobody Loves?

George Spiggott

I'm seeing a lot of love for 3DO Road Rash. I remember a local electronics store had it to demo along with AVP on the Jaguar. I bought the PS1 version not long after I bought my PS1. Is there anything special about the 3DO version?

sirhenrythe5th

@George-Spiggott gosh, i forgot about that! I had this game too on my real 3DO and played it a lot!
I started to play the PSX Version on Retropie a while ago, still a great game.
As far as i remember the soundtrack is different, i could swear that the 3DO Version came with "black whole sun" from soundgarden(?)

trapexit

@sirhenrythe5th @George-Spiggott

As I recall there is no real differences between the 3DO, PSX, and Saturn versions (outside framerate). Black Hole Sun isn't on there. Superunknown and Kickstand are the tracks from the album Superunknown. Outshined and Rusty Cage from Badmotorfinger.

https://vgost.fandom.com/wiki/Road_Rash
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0263941/soundtrack?ref_=tt_trv_snd

Some comparison videos are on YouTube:

trapexit

BTW... not sure how well it'll work on a Pi4 but Opera allows you to overclock the CPU and that can improve the framerate on Road Rash.

George Spiggott

I took the plunge and added 3DO Road Rash to my collection. The 3DO version seems to have an option to see the bike's speedo which I cannot replicate on the PS1 version. I can also confirm that the game seems to run at full speed on my Pi4, although I am running a fairly heavy overclock as per my sig.

The game music was a big draw for me as it also includes Therapy? and Monster Magnet on the soundtrack. I was always rather dissapointed that it did not play while you raced.

AdamBeGood

I've just got 3DO working - has anyone got any performance tips aside from Overclocking the CPU in the settings?

Sewer Shark is a little bit stuttery for me - I'd like to play it, it looks cheesy AF. :)

trapexit

Don't overclock the 3DO's CPU. That will make things worse.

The VDLP pixel format and VDLP bypass clut settings can be changed which may improve performance a bit. Make sure HiRes CEL rendering is disabled. I doubt OperaOS SWI HLE would make a difference on a non 3D game. WRT to core settings that's about it.

neek

@trapexit I just reached out to a few. There's some who would definitely have material, I'll just see what they're willing to share. :-)

neek

@sirhenrythe5th The 3DO version's soundtrack was from Soundgarden. Rusty Cage and Outshined, and a fair bit of other great music.

AdamBeGood

@trapexit Yep! That has definitely helped. It's a hard game now I'm giving it a play....

ReadyPlayaWon

@AdamBeGood said in 3DO: The Pi4 Emulation Nobody Loves?:

I've just got 3DO working - has anyone got any performance tips aside from Overclocking the CPU in the settings?

enable runcommand from the Retropie Setup screen and hit a button before the game launches and select a lower resolution eg. 640x480 @ 60Hz (which is the 3DO's native resolution) you won't see a big difference in resolution if you run higher than that, but you should see a better performance by using a lower resolution.

also in the lr-opera 'options' screen select Threaded DSP = On ... which is supposed to improve performance on multi core processors.

neek

@trapexit said in 3DO: The Pi4 Emulation Nobody Loves?:

As for your offer... that would be amazing. Any info could help out. Any official documentation would be great even if only for archival reasons. I'd really love to get access to the OS source code. I've seen evidence that it exists in someone's hands but it's never been released generally probably due to copyright concerns. TBH I really really doubt anyone cares about all that much which is why I've been pretty cavalier with uploading things to my website. Not that I'd not take things down if asked but the IP has been spread out so far and wide seems all abandonware now. If you think it wouldn't be uncouth to blanket ask if your acquaintances have and would be willing to share anything they might have that might be the easiest. Otherwise I'll reach out if I run into something specific.

I just sent you an email.. Got something which should be of help.

trapexit

@ReadyPlayaWon Threaded DSP is not stable. It's likely to crash. It was more of an experiment and would need a lot more attention to ensure proper synchronization.

AdamBeGood

@ReadyPlayaWon Cheers for the Resolution shout, I should have tried that. Think it has improved things slightly.

Trying out "Killing Time". I quite like it so far, but it is a bit juddery. Playable, just about.

ReadyPlayaWon

@AdamBeGood said in 3DO: The Pi4 Emulation Nobody Loves?:

Trying out "Killing Time". I quite like it so far, but it is a bit juddery. Playable, just about.

Killing Time on my RPi4 is pretty smooth for the most part.

RPI4 is overclocked and the lr-opera overclock settings do sometimes help .. i'm at 1.5x (18.75Mhz) and it's pretty smooth for an old game (not 60fps butter smooth, but better than what the real game on the real console could do)

Still have my original copy of Killing Time and a Panasonic FZ-1 for comparison :)

ReadyPlayaWon

@trapexit said in 3DO: The Pi4 Emulation Nobody Loves?:

Threaded DSP is not stable. It's likely to crash

Haven't had a single crash with it ON with the many 3DO games i have tried ... i guess i've been lucky ;)

AdamBeGood

@ReadyPlayaWon Interesting - my RPi4 is overclocked, and I'll try out 1.5x to see if that makes it any better. What do you have set for VDLP pixel format and VDLP bypass clut, and OperaOS SWI HLE? (Or anything else you might think is different to the default).

Actually framerate wise it is fine, it's the audio that is choppy rather than the graphical side of things.

I've never played the original console, think I only ever saw one demo model in a shop.

I have had crashes that I think are linked to Threaded DSP, on Snow Job and Killing Time.

trapexit

SWI HLE will help a bit with Killing Time (and any game listed as having matrix multiplication usage https://3dodev.com/documentation/games/game_technical_information).

trapexit

Regarding VDLP options. Assuming 16bit mode is supported on the Pi4 then setting it to that will likely improve performance as Opera is mostly a low level emulator and the pixel translation is all done in a simple, brute force way on a single thread. You'll have half the work to render the frame buffer with 16bpp vs 32bpp. The CLUT option similarly bypasses extra work that on most games makes no difference. It's just on the rendering pipeline though and that isn't the bulk of the cpu requirements (that's mostly CPU and DSP emulation). But every little bit should help.

AdamBeGood

@trapexit This is all interesting stuff - and that list you attached will be useful so far as trying out other games is concerned, so thanks for that. It's all about marginal gains, most games seem to run fairly well but could be a bit better.

I can't see a 16bit mode as an option within the Emulator, but I might not be looking in the right place!