Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4

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.

retropieuser555

Not sure if this has been covered in this thread and apologies as it's slightly off the topic but one thing to consider, for the games that work fine with the libretro core, retroachievements seem to work for n64 now (I tried this a year or so ago and it didn't work).

So for games like Mario 64 or Banjo Kazooie that work fine on the mupen64plus-next core, it might be worth considering to use those if anyone is interested in completing retroachievements.

quicksilver

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

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

The camspy and several other effects won't work correctly iirc. Also I think the sky is just rendered as black.

George Spiggott

@dankcushions After some experimenting with Perfect Dark's graphics options I found the following:

Widescreen: The internal game widescreen settings can be set to 16:9 and full screen. To keep the FPS as high as possible select 320x240 and 4:3 in the emulator menus. I get some weird pauses and audio skips I wasn't able to eliminate so I'll keep working on it. MSAA can be used but is only worth it if you stop to look around.

Hi-Res: Don't use this. It is currently faIrly pointless under emulation as it puts the game into 480i but the emulator defines the screen resolution. This is why the title screens look so bad under emulation currently.

roslof

@Nakynaw, when we last spoke of Donkey Kong 64:

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?)

Roslof repsonded: 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.

Issue has been solved with this change: https://retropie.org.uk/forum/topic/22373/donkey-kong-64-question/7

I tested the change at it does indeed work.

It also shows that you can modify options on a per-game level. Not a bad thing.

Cheers,
Ros

ReadyPlayaWon

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

It also shows that you can modify options on a per-game level. Not a bad thing.

I can't figure out the correct code to increase the Gamma in Doom 64 (the game is really dark, even with the in game brightness level at Maximum) in the GLideN64.custom.ini

I can change the GammaCorrectionLevel = 1.000000 in the mupen64plus.cfg to a higher level and it works great ... but of course that effects every game.

the game is named DOOM64.n64 and have tried in the GLideN64.custom.ini

[DOOM64]
graphics2D\GammaCorrectionLevel=2.000000

[DOOM64]
generalEmulation\GammaCorrectionLevel=2.000000

and both of those don't work :(

Any chance you or anyone else know the correct syntax/code for changing gamma ?

retropieuser555

@ReadyPlayaWon This might sound odd but have you tried the PAL version of the game? As I remember finding one version (NTSC or PAL can't remember which) has much brighter settings.

roslof

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

I can't figure out the correct code to increase the Gamma in Doom 64 (the game is really dark, even with the in game brightness level at Maximum) in the GLideN64.custom.ini
I can change the GammaCorrectionLevel = 1.000000 in the mupen64plus.cfg to a higher level and it works great ... but of course that effects every game.
the game is named DOOM64.n64 and have tried in the GLideN64.custom.ini

From what I can tell by looking at the plug-in source, there isn't a way to set gamma at a custom level.

A few things, and I'm fairly junior here, so hope I'm getting this right (anybody with more experience, feel free to correct me and this post):

First off, I don't think the ROM filename matters. I think the code is looking inside the ROM for the name. For DOOM, it should be [Doom64] (case sensitive). If you use a hex editor and open the ROM image, you can see this exact string on the 3rd line:

But even with the correct ROM name in this case, it doesn't look like you can adjust gamma at a per-game level.

Link to Source File

Custom .ini code is between lines 233-387. Note that "gamma" doesn't appear in this area.

You could see all of the prefixes as:
video\
texture\
generalEmulation\
graphics2D\
frameBufferEmulation\
textureFilter\

Unfortunately, none of these include the two (2) gamma settings. The gamma settings appear in this same file, but it appears to be referencing the global gamma settings found in the mupen64plus.cfg.

It may be possible to expose gamma by editing this file and recompiling, but I'm probably not the person to figure this out. :) The plug-in is being actively worked on, so maybe we can nicely request the change? Then figure out how to inject it into the emulator. I believe we would just need to replace \opt\retropie\emulators\mupen64plus\lib\mupen64plus\mupen64plus-video-GLideN64.so with a new version?

ReadyPlayaWon

@retropieuser555 said in Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4:

This might sound odd but have you tried the PAL version of the game?

yes, i'm running the PAL version after reading it should be brighter ... it is, but not by much, even with the in game Brightness Level at the Maximum.

I'm using a old LCD in my Arcade Cabinet which doesen't have the best viewing angles i'll admit ... but every other N64 game is nice and bright.

I know Doom 64 is meant to be a "Dark" game ... but not that dark where it's difficult to see anything.

roslof

@ReadyPlayaWon, I just tested out an idea... It might work out for you:

For Doom 64, instead of the stand-alone emulator, use lr-mupen64plus-next. (the intro fly-over will be slower, but gameplay seems just fine)
Launch Doom 64
Select Shaders from the RetroArch Quick Menu
Load Shader Preset
Choose either the "Brighter-with_Contrast.glslp" shader preset or if you have the shaders_glsl shaders installed, better to install presets/retro-v2+image-adjustment.glslp (after selecting, you can tune this one with the Shader Parameters option)
Return to game

Note: There is a "Next" bug, where your game will probably run unthrottled and with no sound for a bit

Otherwise, like the brightness?

Return to Shaders Menu
Select "Save"
Save Game Preset (careful not to overwrite core or content directory, or all games will be affected, and you'll have to remove the shader later)
Quit the game
Relaunch the game

Still looks good? Win.

Cheers

ReadyPlayaWon

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

For Doom 64, instead of the stand-alone emulator, use lr-mupen64plus-next

Unfortunately, that is not an option for me.

Performance is terrible and the game runs slow even at 320x240 and the graphics are corrupted (guns missing half the graphics, health and ammo indicators half way up the screen instead of being at the bottom)

using the same ROM file ... with mupen64plus-GLideN64

Performance is great, the game runs fine even at 1280x1024 and the graphics are not corrupted ... every is perfect except for it being too dark.