Pi4 N64 Bomberman 64 Blackscreen Workaround

[retropieuser555]

@Acidnine Okay I had another go at this game and your glitch is also the same for me. If you wait for the mine cart bit the game will appear to be working. Until you get to another cutscene and then you're screwed and stuck on a black screen again.

It's also the same for Battle Mode, after a round the screen goes black and you have to reset.

[quicksilver]

Mupen64plus-next has a few default settings set to improve performance but can cause compatibility issues. Namely: Legacy blending = true (change to false), Copy color to rdram = off (change to async), Background mode = one piece (change to stripped). This may destroy performance on some games, so if you encounter issues with a certain game try changing these settings one at a time to see if fixes the issue for that game. For Bomberman I believe copy color to rdram needs to be set to async to not have the black screen issues.

[retropieuser555]

@quicksilver Awesome thank you! I still get a small part of the screen at the bottom that updates slower than the rest of the game. But that's a minor bug imo and the game is playable, cheers!

[Domi]

@quicksilver said in Pi4 N64 Bomberman 64 Blackscreen Workaround:

Mupen64plus-next has a few default settings set to improve performance but can cause compatibility issues. Namely: Legacy blending = true (change to false), Copy color to rdram = off (change to async), Background mode = one piece (change to stripped). This may destroy performance on some games, so if you encounter issues with a certain game try changing these settings one at a time to see if fixes the issue for that game. For Bomberman I believe copy color to rdram needs to be set to async to not have the black screen issues.

where exactly can i set these options?

I looked into the /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch folder, but cant find where to set these settings?

[mitu]

@domi https://retropie.org.uk/docs/RetroArch-Core-Options/

[Domi]

@mitu said in Pi4 N64 Bomberman 64 Blackscreen Workaround:

@domi https://retropie.org.uk/docs/RetroArch-Core-Options/

Thanks @mitu!

I am not so sure about the namings to be honest:

the .opt file for the rom named 'Bomberman 64 (U) [!].z64' will be 'Bomberman 64 (U) [!].z64.opt' and will be located under /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/config/mupen64plus-next, correct?

the retroarch-core-options.cfg has fields called e.g. mupen64plus-next-EnableLegacyBlending = "True". This translates to EnableLegacyBlending = "True" in the .opt file, right?

[mitu]

@domi Not sure about the file names, but why don't you use the menu to set the values ?

[Domi]

@mitu said in Pi4 N64 Bomberman 64 Blackscreen Workaround:

@domi Not sure about the file names, but why don't you use the menu to set the values ?

Unfortunately, as reported in another post, I do not have a working controller right now. Since the update to retroarch 1.9, the pro controller does not work anymore and the n64 controller does not have enought buttons for a hotkey button.

On top of that, you send me an article, that explains how to do it without a controller at hand, so I wanted to give it a try...

I guess ill reconfigure my n64 controller just for doing the settings now

[mitu]

@domi said in Pi4 N64 Bomberman 64 Blackscreen Workaround:

On top of that, you send me an article, that explains how to do it without a controller at hand, so I wanted to give it a try...

Plug in a keyboard and use F1 to open up the menu, you don't necessarily need a controller for configuration.

[Domi]

@mitu Alright, so I followed your advice, plugged in the keyboard, hit f1 for the menu and went to Edit custom RetroArch config for this ROM

In there, I added the three lines:

EnableLegacyBlening="False"
EnableCopyColorToRDRam="Async"
BackgroundMode="Stripped"

(case sensitive, exactly this white spacing)

But the game does still not seem to run. Am I doing this corectly?

Or do i need to prefix them the way it is done in the retroarch-core-options.cfg, so that it is

mupen64plus-next-EnableLegacyBlending="False"
mupen64plus-next-EnableCopyColorToRDRAM="Async"
mupen64plus-next-BackgroundMode="Stripped"

?

[mitu]

@domi said in Pi4 N64 Bomberman 64 Blackscreen Workaround:

But the game does still not seem to run. Am I doing this corectly?

No, the core options are not part of RetroArch's configuration file. Start the game, then open the RetroArch's menu (RGUI) with F1, go to Options, where you can change the settings as mentioned before. After that, choose the 'Create Game Options' entry to ensure they'll be automatically saved for that game.

[retropieuser555]

Apologies I'm reviving an old topic here but for the standalone mupen64plus emulator it's just legacy blending that's the issue I believe.

The other two settings here are set as default in mupen64plus.cfg, so they seem to work fine left alone:-

# Enable color buffer copy to RDRAM. (0=do not copy, 1=copy in sync mode, 2=Double Buffer, 3=Triple Buffer)
EnableCopyColorToRDRAM = 2
# Render backgrounds mode. (HLE only). (0=One piece (fast), 1=Stripped (precise))
BackgroundsMode = 1

To fix this in the standalone emulator I've added these versions of Bomberman 64 to the bottom of GLideN64.custom.ini as below:-

[BOMBERMAN64E]
Good_Name=Bomberman 64 (E) [!]
generalEmulation\enableLegacyBlending=0

[BOMBERMAN64U]
Good_Name=Bomberman 64 (U) [!]
generalEmulation\enableLegacyBlending=0

[BAKU-BOMBERMAN]
Good_Name=Baku Bomberman (J) [!]
generalEmulation\enableLegacyBlending=0

I'm not aware if there's any other regions I've missed out but the game seems to run fine using mupen64plus-GLideN64. FYI it runs slow in mupen64plus-GLideN64-highres.

I've also sent a change request on GitHub at GLideN64 so hopefully that will be approved, then it's just a case of updating via retropie-setup if you don't feel comfortable editing the GLideN64.custom.ini file.

[retropieuser555]

This has been accepted and merged on GlideN64 master branch, so the game should be fixed when updating from source on RetroPie setup.