Crowdfunding: Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (N64) on GLideN64

Zigurana

@dankcushions would these improvements only affect this particular game, or also other N64 games?

lilbud

@Zigurana I feel like this is meant to fix only this one game. But I wish someone would step up and make a modern N64 emulator that can run games at full speed without an animal sacrifice.

dankcushions

@Zigurana i think only rogue squadron, as it's for this game-specific microcode only. i don't really care about the game, but i donated more to reward the project in general :)

dankcushions

@lilbud said in Crowdfunding: Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (N64) on GLideN64:

@Zigurana I feel like this is meant to fix only this one game. But I wish someone would step up and make a modern N64 emulator that can run games at full speed without an animal sacrifice.

i think GLideN64 is that emulator. well, it's an RDP (N64 graphics) emulator, as the rest of the N64 is (as i understand) fairly completely emulated now.

GLideN64 is attempting to be accurate, but that is necessary as the 'hack' approach has famously not worked with N64. however, N64 graphics are not very compatible with modern GPUs, so there are many functions that can only be well emulated with per-pixel shaders. this is quite demanding on your system's GPU, but it's definitely less demanding than pixel-perfect software plugins like angrylion which need a monster CPU (or monster GPU with the paraLLEl libretro fork).

Fruitybit

So it looks like it's now playable, I've been sent the link to the emulator. Is there a way to put that onto the pi and set it as the default emu for that game or is it windows only? Either way it's all good news!

dankcushions

@fruitybit the mupen64plus-gliden64 emulator in retropie is the same one, and it already is the default :) but you will need to update it by source to get this fix.

Fruitybit

@dankcushions Would I need to do a script update also? Excuse my beIng obtuse, I'm doing a back up now so I can do a full upgrade first (made that mistake too many times before!) I did update the mupen64plus, am I right in thinking that GLiden-64 is a part of that as a bundle? As I can't find it as a separate emulator. I've got five or six different rom versions of Rogue Squadron but cannot seem to get any of them working with any version of emulator. Saying that, not too many of my N64 roms work anyway!( any help/advice humbly received:)

dankcushions

@fruitybit said in Crowdfunding: Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (N64) on GLideN64:

@dankcushions Would I need to do a script update also?

shouldn't do, but it can't hurt.

Excuse my beIng obtuse, I'm doing a back up now so I can do a full upgrade first (made that mistake too many times before!) I did update the mupen64plus, am I right in thinking that GLiden-64 is a part of that as a bundle?

yes

Saying that, not too many of my N64 roms work anyway!( any help/advice humbly received:)

you'll need to start a new thread with all of the info available here: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/3/read-this-first for that kind of general help :)

twd

Is this the guy behind the ransomware n64 drama a few years back? Name sounds familiar, seems weird to fund this. Just wait until Disney gets wind of it

gizmo98

Rogue squadron will not start because it is on a blacklist. You can open /opt/retropie/configs/all/autoconf.cfg and set mupen64plus_compatibility = 0. The blacklist will be ignored then.

dankcushions

@twd said in Crowdfunding: Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (N64) on GLideN64:

Is the the guy behind the ransom ware n64 drama a few years back? Name sounds familiar, seems weird to fund this.

no, that's project64 / Zilmar.

Fruitybit

@gizmo98 Better than it was, now I get a black screen that doesn't return to the menu rather than a rapid return!!

Intruiged by the blacklist, gonna try some other n64 games and see if it makes a difference too. Are the games listed somewhere?

Thanks for the input, I'll keep mashing the keypad until I can get it to work...;) that's my speciality do'ncha know!

gizmo98

Try to use audio SDL. Audio OMX can produce black screens. Open /opt/retropie/configs/all/autoconf.cfg and set mupen64plus_audio = 0.

You can find the list here:
https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/blob/master/scriptmodules/emulators/mupen64plus/mupen64plus.sh#L176

The startup script is stored under /opt/retropie/emulators/mupen64plus/bin/mupen64plus.sh.

dankcushions

from reddit:

Assuming there are no major issues, Gonetz is planning on merging this into the public branch next week, and then libretro will port it to their fork.

so looks like it hasn't been merged into the normal branch yet, so no amount of updating will get you this fix. i'll update this thread when i hear that it has been!

Fruitybit

@gizmo98 Sadly no joy with the audio fix, thanks though, and thanks for the list too, will work my way through it:)

Fruitybit

@dankcushions Ha! That's good news too, in a way, and I was just about to report that I'm sure Star fox 64 is working better as well!! Thank you as well:)

twd

@dankcushions ahh I see I know n64 scene was flipping out about it , I been burnt twice by kickstarter type efforts. This one is strange to me as it asking for money to break open a game that they don't own the copyright too. It's just so specific, and the people who own said copyright are probably the most defensive companies on earth, Disney Lucas and Nintendo. Lucky he is Russian

BuZz

@twd reverse engineering a game to understand/re-implement some of the workings of it is not a breach of copyright.

twd

@buzz I never said it was. It's just a strange one its so specific to that game. Nintendo have been caught selling roms with a ines header, maybe they sit back and let the scene do more work for them

BuZz

@twd sorry - meant nothing. Just clarifying. In this case and it's outside of my knowledge really, they need to emulate custom code sent to the N64 GPU. It was programmable and Rare and some others maximised the performance by doing so. Something like that. Don't know if Nintendo would approve but I suspect they are more concerned with bulk piracy of their IP etc..