Mystical Ninja Starring Goeman on N64 - has anyone had any joy with this on Pi4?

quicksilver

@AdamBeGood said in Mystical Ninja Starring Goeman on N64 - has anyone had any joy with this on Pi4?:

Edit: The ROM couldn't be a difference could it? I think I tried Euro and US back when I first started trying to get this to work, but that could be different.

I suppose it's possible. I'll see if I can get the md5 checksum.

AdamBeGood

@quicksilver That is the issue!

I was using the European ROM as that is what I always played, but the US version works absolutely perfectly.

I had tried that before to see if it made any difference but I didn't have the Rice Plugin set up with screenupdate 7, so neither version worked back then...

Thanks so much for your help! At least I have made some marginal gains probably - like the performance option on the CPU, and turning the Frameskip off.

retropieuser555

@AdamBeGood @quicksilver Yeah I just found the same thing you had, changing to the USA rom is night and day. I can't believe there's such an issue with the PAL version of the game!

Are you getting things like crackles when you hit enemies? On the original console it creates an explosion type sound, whereas here it doesn't seem to handle that sound effect well.

But other than that and the slight issues with the 2d graphics in the interface, this is totally playable. Out of curiosity I'm going to give it a try on my older pi 3b+ and see if this change actually fixes the game on that machine too. Or if this only works on pi 4.

Edit: I changed the screen update setting and audio to trivial on my older pi3b+ and used the US rom rather than the Pal rom, it definitely gave a speed boost. it's still choppy on the pi3. But it's on the pi4 the framerate and sound is pretty much bang on.

AdamBeGood

@retropieuser555 Glad to hear it! It's a different title screen to what I'm used to but I can cope with that! :p

I am not getting the crackling sound - have you made the "trivial" change in the mupen64plus config? Change RESAMPLE to "trivial" in the [AUDIO-SDL] section. That fixes crackling noises with explosions in other games.

quicksilver

@AdamBeGood don't forget that mupen64plusaudio setting needs to be 0 in the autoconf.cfg as well for that setting to work

AdamBeGood

@quicksilver Thank you, I don't remember that at all but good to know! I don't think I changed that so maybe mine was already set to 0.

retropieuser555

So having a play through of this game, I got to the first Impact fight and that worked, the only issue is when I used the multipunch move the sound got all messed up and it gave a few crackles for the rest of the battle. But once I beat the boss and the game went back into the normal Goemon mode the sound went back to normal.

Oh few glitches I've found so far: In Yamato when you go to the Turtle Rock and push the rock so it teleports you to the island, then to another island and then onto a boat. I tried this 3 times and it consistently causes a crash and sends you back to emulationstation. Oddly it doesn't do this when you pick the option to teleport outside of the shrine.

And the controller pac doesn't work, if you choose it the game hangs. But I'm just using save states to circumvent that, so it's not a big deal.

One thing I'm curious about is apparently there's a room in the Ghost Dungeon that used to cause emulators to crash, I'll play further and report back if that bug is there.

AdamBeGood

@retropieuser555 I'm only just at Oedo Castle so will have to report back on most of this!

My Controller Pak works fine, I can say that much. I'm not using save states.

retropieuser555

@AdamBeGood really? Interesting, did you change any settings to get the controller Pak to work? Maybe I need to edit something to enable it, I might try a different game that I know uses the controller pak and test that

AdamBeGood

@retropieuser555 No, I haven't changed anything to get the Pak to work... I guess I am just lucky! It's not a big miss if you have Save States anyway.

retropieuser555

@AdamBeGood Okay apparently the controller pak does work now. I think maybe when I was testing the PAL rom was when I was finding it didn't work.

Also found the first big bug, so I dunno how well you know the game and apologies for spoilers, but the Blue Dragon that is the fast travel function. When you try and call that it crashes back to Emulationstation. Which given when you first get the flute you're stuck in the folk village & you can't physically walk back to the earlier towns, that's a big problem imo.

But I've found a workaround, I saved before playing the flute, exited, changed the plugin to GlideN64, played the flute, then saved, exited and changed the plugin back to Rice.

Not looking forward to doing that everytime I want to fast travel ha! But at least it lets you progress further.

Edit:- Just beat the second dungeon, So unless something else comes up it seems the game will be beatable.

AdamBeGood

@retropieuser555 Wow, you're really ripping through it! I have a 18 month old, she cuts into my playing time a bit.

Great shout on the workaround for the Dragon crash, I'll let you know if that occurs when I get there. Workaround sounds annoying but not so annoying that it makes playing the game pointless.

retropieuser555

Okay so finished the game just now. Nothing really slows it down much, you just encounter a few crashes during gameplay. But it's doable with a couple of other tricks:-

The Blue Dragon Fast Travel causes a crash. So save state, switch to another plugin, use it then save and go back to Rice.

Also I discovered loading the World Map at any time will crash (Start then Z Button)

The second Impact boss (the big Fish Robot). Right before the fight starts Rice crashes back to emulationstation. So save there and switch to GLideN64 for the fight. It works ok in this Impact battle compared to normal gameplay.

For the final boss the sound gets a bit messed up but it is fine in Rice, you don't need to switch to GlideN64 (it seems to play terribly in that plugin)

Oh and the credits crashed in Rice ha! Typical, you get right to the end of the game and the emulator crashes! But again, just make a save state and switch to GLideN64 if you want to see all the credits.

I didn't collect all the Fortune Cats so no idea if the Boss Rush mode works or whatever.

All in, for a big fan of the game it's worth playing; you don't encounter these crashes for a fair bit of gameplay anyway. Good Luck!

AdamBeGood

@retropieuser555 I'll let you know when I get to the points you mention. My World Map doesn't crash though, I've at least got that far!

Well done for finishing it!

retropieuser555

@AdamBeGood That's interesting the World map doesn't cause a crash for you?

https://pastebin.com/12zW6DkD - That's my run command log after that crash, although honestly no idea what that means.

what's in your [video-rice] config, maybe there's something different aside from the screen update. and sound fix.

As I even deleted moved the config file and let the emulator give me a fresh one, but it still crashes when you try and call the world map.

AdamBeGood

@retropieuser555 I'm not by my computer now, but my settings for Rice are the same as Quicksilver's, and he posted his config in an earlier message. Have a check against that!

Here it is: https://pastebin.com/2CY08bU8

quicksilver

@retropieuser555 said in Mystical Ninja Starring Goeman on N64 - has anyone had any joy with this on Pi4?:

I changed the screen update setting and audio to trivial on my older pi3b+

Gles2rice screen update setting doesn't need to be changed on older model Pi's. Just the pi 4. Otherwise you might cause issues rather than fix them.

retropieuser555

@quicksilver It's odd but on my older pi3b+ changing that setting screen update getting for Rice did give a small framerate increase for this game. But you're right, doing so may have messed up some other games using Gles2rice on my pi3b+. I don't really use my older pi for gaming now and this does seem to be the only game I use this video plugin for, every other game I find myself using GlideN64.

@AdamBeGood I found out how to get the European Rom working by the way if you're interested, and oddly enough for me, this EU Rom doesn't crash at the Blue Dragon or when viewing the world map. Maybe I just have a bad NTSC/USA rom. Bu the game is totally working as far as I can tell.

To get the PAL/Europe version working, in /opt/retropie/configs/n64 in the file RiceVideoLinux.ini, add the following in:-

{be0f36f51d69f12b-50}
Name=Mystical Ninja
FastLoadTile
FrameBufferEmulation=0

It seems the .ini file only had exceptions for the US Rom, so once you add this in, the FastLoadTile function will work on the Europe Rom too.

Edit: Also if you want the JPN rom to work add the following:-

{8b162c83aecda256-4a}
Name=Ganbare Goemon
FastLoadTile
FrameBufferEmulation=0

Not too sure of the differences, the cutscene at the start has voice acting though. But in case anyone tries to get this game working and hits the problems we have here, any version of the game should work with these lines added into the Rice ini file.

AdamBeGood

@retropieuser555 Great work! How did you figure that out?

As my US version is working now, I think I'll leave it at that. I think EU and US are the same apart from the title screen. I might have a look at the Japanese version though.

Edit: I ended up going back to the European version and your fix worked. It didn't for the Japanese version, but I probably did something incorrect and I am not minded to look into it as it really isn't important. Good to have the version I played back in the day up and running, thanks for the help!

retropieuser555

@AdamBeGood interesting, I guess it's different versions of the ROM. In the rice.ini file I don't know how to generate the CRC numbers for them, I think you need to use some windows specific programs. Mupen64plus.ini file seems to use a CRC number too but it's not the same as the ones in Rice oddly. But given we are using Rice just for this one Goemon game, I don't wanna go digging that much further ha. What's surprising to me, I'd love to know what the FastLoadTile function does and if there's an equivalent on GlideN64