Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4

George Spiggott

I'm continuing to get good results with Plus Next with MSAA on and Overscan off. It even improved the graphics of Worms Arnageddon slightly though the name bubbles continue to be badly distorted.

Also I used to be able to run Diddy Kong Racing in 640x480 but it seems much slower now, especially on the menus.

Ka

I've been trying out some of the recommended settings on the compatibility list. Some results:

The World is Not Enough: this is down as being too slow to play on 640x480, but I found that the game seems to run perfectly well at 640x480 with the recommended emulator - at least as fast as it does on original hardware (although my memory might be fooling me there).

1080 Snowboarding: this was unplayable for me in lr-mupen64plus-next. The game appears to load up fine, but the title screen and gameplay just show a black screen, with a band of visual noise across the top (although you can hear the game running in the background). Everything seemed to display properly in mupen64plus-GLideN64-highres worked (apart from some black lines across 2d images).

Doom 64: this worked OK on the recommended settings, right up until you die - the blur / fadeout effect seems to absolutely kill the frame rate, and appeared to freeze the game.

Excitebike 64: not really playable for me in mupen64plus-gles2rice. The front end seems to work OK, but in-game the screen flickered so much that it was unpleasant to play.

roslof

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

I've been trying out some of the recommended settings on the compatibility list. Some results

Thank you @Ka

Are these all NTSC ROMs? Sounds like at least some are PAL.

Nakynaw

@George-Spiggott that's the problem for me : when I tweak the Pi to run a specific game, it always seems to screw up another game that was running alright.

By example, I had decent results with Smash Bros, Mario Kart and 1080, but then I worked hard to be able to play Excite Bike. When I succeeded, all the games I previously named were not playable anymore...

I got so mixed up between the many changes I did to .cfg files, that I decided to restore my Retropie to the 4.6 official image and start anew.

That's why I am looking for setting ideas that are good overall, not like "skipframe=true" nor "fbemulation=false".

It seems like an high v3d freq is useful and hybridfilter=false does not seems to have bad repercussions.

You guys have any others ideas that are not a double-sided tweaks?

I have been reading about augmenting audio latency from 64 to 512, but I do not understand why it would help.

thx!

Ka

@roslof As far as I'm aware, they're all NTSC.

AdamBeGood

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

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

Edit: Emulation Station wouldn't load with that in the config, so I've taken it out now.

weird in that other thread i see a lot of people having a better emulation station performance with that config. On my system emulation station also works fine

Might be that you have omx player enabled in your settings (omx player does not work with kms driver)

Nah, it isn't OMX Player - that is set to "Off" in my Emulation Station settings (I guess you were talking about the Emulation Station settings - Main Menu->Other Settings).

Any other thoughts on what it might be?

Edit: I hadn't done Sudo rpi-update. Once I'd done that, KMS line in config worked.

Another Edit: Now my Xbox One Elite controller R-Trigger doesn't work. The lord giveth and he taketh away.

George Spiggott

@Nakynaw You can set individual settings for each game, It's worth doing if you have 'perfected' a game's settings.

I found changing Audio Latency useful when games appeared to run at full speed but the audio stuttered. SotE was a great example of this before KMS. I don't find it so useful any more.

Ka

What does the audio latency setting actually do? What’s the difference between having it at 64 and having it at 512?

quicksilver

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

1080 Snowboarding: this was unplayable for me in lr-mupen64plus-next. The game appears to load up fine, but the title screen and gameplay just show a black screen, with a band of visual noise across the top (although you can hear the game running in the background). Everything seemed to display properly in mupen64plus-GLideN64-highres worked (apart from some black lines across 2d images).

Color copy to rdram needs to be set to async otherwise you will have this issue. This is an accuracy setting and should always be checked if you are having some type of glitch in game.

Ka

@quicksilver Thanks - that’s sorted it out.

AdamBeGood

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

I'm continuing to get good results with Plus Next with MSAA on and Overscan off. It even improved the graphics of Worms Arnageddon slightly though the name bubbles continue to be badly distorted.

Also I used to be able to run Diddy Kong Racing in 640x480 but it seems much slower now, especially on the menus.

As I've got this working now (and now that I've dug out my Regular Xbox One pad as the R-Trigger on the Elite pad has decided it doesn't want to be configured at the moment - I guess something changed with sudo rpi-update when I ran that), what other games have you seen an improvement in with KMS?

Perfect Dark definitely does look better on Next with MSAA than it does on Mupen64-GlideN64. I've only experimented briefly though.

George Spiggott

@Ka It increases the delay before audio is played. 64 is the default 512 is the maximum.

@AdamBeGood I haven't got anything else to run at higher resolution with MSAA but everything I have that runs at 320x240 runs fine with it.

Nakynaw

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

@Nakynaw You can set individual settings for each game, It's worth doing if you have 'perfected' a game's settings.

Just to be sure, you mean with retroarch emulators right? Or can we set the standalone emulator per games too? If so, I'd love some info about that.

Thanks to you guys, after a full day of tweakings and being helped by @roslof 's spreadsheet, I was able to play 52 of my 62 N64 games.

Some poor resultats are not surprising, as it seems you guys can't either play those : Quake II, Vigilante8, Rayman 2, Dunkey Kong (unless someone knows how to end the camera stuttering?)

Some are bad but playable, and it seems normal : Star wars SotE, Excite Bike, Cruise'n USA.

But some games have no notes on the spreadsheet and are unplayable for me : NBA Hang Time, Monster Truck Madness by example, are SUPER slow, almost frozen... Anyone can share their setting specifically if they got them working?

Lastly, I have big black part of the frames (usually bottoms) in Mario Kart and Rampage 2 with GlideN64. Is it because I need to re-enable FBemulation for those game only?

It's fun to progress in the playability of those games. N64 was my favorite console (KI, Zelda, Mario, so many excellent games when I was a teen... :P ) Thx for sharing guys, it's really appreciated.

roslof

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

Thanks to you guys, after a full day of tweakings and being helped by @roslof 's spreadsheet, I was able to play 52 of my 62 N64 games.

Yay!

Some poor resultats are not surprising, as it seems you guys can't either play those : Quake II, Vigilante8, Rayman 2, Dunkey Kong (unless someone knows how to end the camera stuttering?)

Ugh. I totally remember seeing the Donkey Kong stuttering, but thought it was because of a change that I made... Forgot to go back and verify. I'll see if any other emulators can handle. In the meantime, noted in the compatibility list.

Some are bad but playable, and it seems normal : Star wars SotE, Excite Bike, Cruise'n USA.

Agreed. So close, and yet so far...

But some games have no notes on the spreadsheet and are unplayable for me : NBA Hang Time, Monster Truck Madness by example, are SUPER slow, almost frozen... Anyone can share their setting specifically if they got them working?

NBA Hangtime: Again, you are correct. Somehow, this was missed during testing. I tried all Pi4 emulators and had the same results. Boo. Updated chart to reflect "Unplayable".

Monster Truck Madness Works fine for me with the max (3 opponent) trucks in the race. Ensure NTSC and Framebuffer Emulation is off if using Next. If you're still having problems, would you share the track and conditions with me? Might be issues with a specific game setting (or settings)

Lastly, I have big black part of the frames (usually bottoms) in Mario Kart and Rampage 2 with GlideN64. Is it because I need to re-enable FBemulation for those game only?

It seems best that FB Emulation should be on with GlideN64/GlideN64-hires. It doesn't work well with "Next" right now (fix pending) but I think it's good to try keep it on for Glide/Glide-hires.

It's fun to progress in the playability of those games. N64 was my favorite console (KI, Zelda, Mario, so many excellent games when I was a teen... :P ) Thx for sharing guys, it's really appreciated.

I know what you mean. It's great! Sorry for the misses there. Thank you for helping make the Compatibility Chart better!

roslof

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

The World is Not Enough: this is down as being too slow to play on 640x480, but I found that the game seems to run perfectly well at 640x480 with the recommended emulator - at least as fast as it does on original hardware (although my memory might be fooling me there).

You are correct about this one. Updated the Compatibility List with the correction. Thank you!

roslof

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

Perfect Dark definitely does look better on Next with MSAA than it does on Mupen64-GlideN64. I've only experimented briefly though.

EDIT: For me, Framebuffer Emulation must be on, in order for MSAA to render. But as soon as I enable Framebuffer to True, frame rate tanks. Even at 320x240.

Confirming: Are you guys @AdamBeGood and @George-Spiggott running Perfect Dark with Next at 16:9 640x360 with MSAA Level 2 and Overscan off -- and still having solid framerate?

roslof

Hmm. I'm playing Perfect Dark w/ mupen64plus-gles2rice... Seems kind of great.

I know that I tested this before and found it lacking for some reason -- but I just watched the intros, went through the UI, ran through the whole institute and played through the first part of Mission 1 (Gain Entrance to Laboratory)...

Some graphic issues here and there, but has really nice edges and otherwise seems solid. Not sure why this wasn't recommended, so asking:

Has anybody had a negative experience w/Rice?

AdamBeGood

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

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

Perfect Dark definitely does look better on Next with MSAA than it does on Mupen64-GlideN64. I've only experimented briefly though.

EDIT: For me, Framebuffer Emulation must be on, in order for MSAA to render. But as soon as I enable Framebuffer to True, frame rate tanks. Even at 320x240.

Confirming: Are you guys @AdamBeGood and @George-Spiggott running Perfect Dark with Next at 16:9 640x360 with MSAA Level 2 and Overscan off -- and still having solid framerate?

Yep, I can confirm that is the case. I have FrameBuffer to True as well, it's all fine. Runs well.

Edit: Although I've just got to the end of the Villa level and the ending sequence to that level runs really awfully. So no emulator is perfect (dark)!

Has anybody had a negative experience w/Rice?

My standalone mupen64plus is opening in a tiny window in the bottom left since I ran "sudo rpi-update" in order to get KMS working. I guess I need to change something in the config..... Argggg. Once I get that sorted I'll test this out.

Edit: Sorted that now. Rice does work pretty amazingly in gameplay. I found the intro video to Area 51:Infiltration didn't work, and the night vision in 1-3 didn't work either.

Another Edit: my splash screens have stopped working. That'll be due to the rpi-update to get KMS driver working won't it? Curses!

George Spiggott

@Nakynaw Yes my individual settings saves are with Mupen64 Plus Next.

I have been getting reasonable results From Quake II. The explosions slow things down, a lot, but I found the biggest barrier to play is the awful controls which are fixable in Mupen64 Plus Next. I ran it in 320x240 with and without MSAA.

I'm running Perfect Dark in 640x320 with 16:9 adjusted. Just last night I discovered the game has internal 16:9 mode and hi-res modes. I can't get either to function properly yet. internal 16:9 seems to give me double widescreen and hi res drops my FPS to about 40. I also can't work out how to save these settings.

dankcushions

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

I'm running Perfect Dark in 640x320 with 16:9 adjusted. Just last night I discovered the game has internal 16:9 mode and hi-res modes. I can't get either to function properly yet. internal 16:9 seems to give me double widescreen and hi res drops my FPS to about 40. I also can't work out how to save these settings.

i forget now, but most CRT-era games with widescreen modes would be anamorphic widescreen. ie, you'd have to turn the game's widscreen mode on, then stretch the image on your widescreen tv to get the correct aspect ratio.

so, you need to be careful what options you turn on in the emulator itself. some widescreen options are trying to turn non-widescreen games into widescreen games, when you just want to stretch the aspect.