Getting the best N64 experience on a Pi 4

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.

Zering

Would anybody have any suggestions on how to stop the sound from scratching and screeching in mupen64plus-GlideN64?
I'm attempting to play Sin and Punishment (great game), it runs full speed but the sound is an absolute mess. I've tested most of the N64 library and it seems to be one of the few games that is still affected in my experience.

Thanks guys.

AdamBeGood

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

Would anybody have any suggestions on how to stop the sound from scratching and screeching in mupen64plus-GlideN64?
I'm attempting to play Sin and Punishment (great game), it runs full speed but the sound is an absolute mess. I've tested most of the N64 library and it seems to be one of the few games that is still affected in my experience.

Thanks guys.

There is a setting that helps sound, I just can't remember what it is.

Sorry to bother you, @quicksilver - but you told me this setting if I remember, it sorted out my explosion sounds on SotE I believe, and Mario Kart I think. I've tried to go back through posts but I'm struggling to find it.

shavecat

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

sound

in your retrorach file in the n64 folder config
u have those
audio_resampler = "sinc"
audio_resampler_quality = "2"
change them too whatever u wanna , audio quality = 1/5 (1lowest 5 best).

Zering

@shavecat I'll try that, thanks.

Let's assume I pump up the audio resampler quality to 5, how is that going to affect my emulation speed wise?

shavecat

@Zering
Hope im right ;)
Just Try it and see ...

Zering

@shavecat Could you specify which path that file is supposed to be under? I can't seem to find the correct one.

shavecat

@Zering

Zering

@shavecat Thanks.
The sound still crackles despite a little bit of an improvement, but the change hasn't affected the speed in the least, so I'm putting that down as half a win. ^^
If anybody else has more suggestions I'm all ears!

PS. Has anybody managed to run Bangaii-O? It runs worse than any other game on my end.
Admittedly it works great on lr-flycast but I'd like to try the N64 version.