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

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

AdamBeGood

@retropieuser555 I am sure it could be made to work, but it really doesn't seem worth it. Agree on not going mad digging all the time - there are enough relevant problems to deal with, don't need to invent more.

I would be interested to know what that does also.... Does Pilotwings have it set? I wonder if other games don't have it set and would benefit? Trying to think which games I use Rice for...

retropieuser555

@AdamBeGood Silly question as I don't know the game that well (didn't have it as a kid), what's wrong with pilot wings on GlideN64? I seems to run okay to me as far as I can tell on the first level. Is there later stuff that breaks in game?

AdamBeGood

@retropieuser555 For me, it just wasn't running well... I haven't tried it for a while though and I have rebuilt my Mupen64Plus. Let me have a check.

Edit: the performance of both is pretty comparable now, and using GlideN64 you don't get the borders that you do with Rice so that might be my preference now. I may need to play it for a bit longer. Pilotwings definitely didn't work as well on GlideN64 previously, maybe it is because I've updated it or maybe I changed something, I'm not sure. But I am sure it didn't run as well at a previous point... Sorry that isn't more help.

I don't think the game gets at all any more graphically intensive, if it is smooth for you at the start then I think you should be good.

retropieuser555

Btw, for testing things out a little more I've done another play-through of the PAL rom of Mystical Ninja and it doesn't have any of the crashes I experienced during my run-through with that US rom I used. So I have a feeling that rom was faulty in some way. Right through to the credits, no issues at all except a few slowdowns in the final boss.

AdamBeGood

@retropieuser555 Superb - hopefully I've got a good one then!