Pi4 N64 Bomberman 64 Blackscreen Workaround

Acidnine

I have found the strangest issue and am not sure where go with it. Retropie 4.6.

Most compatibility lists will list Bomberman 64 as black screen and unplayable...

However, it can be played and the black screen solved if you wait to press the start button until during the cut-scene of the player running from the minecart on red mountain (if you accidentally press the start button too early/late and get the black screen start screen, just back out with b and wait for the credits roll again and then press start at that specific cut-scene and it will resolve it though it's probably faster to just restart).

I spent a lot of time trying to figure out why GLideN64 would work but not Mupen64plus-Next, then go back to check and then GLideN64 was broken too. This fix works for both.

Is this just me or will someone else verify?

**edit: winged guardian boss forces a cut-scene that forces the blackscreen back on the player... :/

retropieuser555

I gave this game a quick go yesterday on lr-mupen64plus-next, I found the framerate drops when dialogue appears from the winged character that helps you, did you find this as well?

I'm debating looking back through those old pi2-pi3 compatibility lists on the docs and editing one with as much pi4 data as I can. As pi4 seems pretty solid as long as the user is happy to make lots of little adjustments (like pi3 did for certain games).

Edit :- nevermind I can see on Reddit retropie @dankcushions and @quicksilver already have alot of the info covered pretty well.

retropieuser555

@Acidnine Okay I had another go at this game and your glitch is also the same for me. If you wait for the mine cart bit the game will appear to be working. Until you get to another cutscene and then you're screwed and stuck on a black screen again.

It's also the same for Battle Mode, after a round the screen goes black and you have to reset.

quicksilver

Mupen64plus-next has a few default settings set to improve performance but can cause compatibility issues. Namely: Legacy blending = true (change to false), Copy color to rdram = off (change to async), Background mode = one piece (change to stripped). This may destroy performance on some games, so if you encounter issues with a certain game try changing these settings one at a time to see if fixes the issue for that game. For Bomberman I believe copy color to rdram needs to be set to async to not have the black screen issues.

retropieuser555

@quicksilver Awesome thank you! I still get a small part of the screen at the bottom that updates slower than the rest of the game. But that's a minor bug imo and the game is playable, cheers!

Domi

@quicksilver said in Pi4 N64 Bomberman 64 Blackscreen Workaround:

Mupen64plus-next has a few default settings set to improve performance but can cause compatibility issues. Namely: Legacy blending = true (change to false), Copy color to rdram = off (change to async), Background mode = one piece (change to stripped). This may destroy performance on some games, so if you encounter issues with a certain game try changing these settings one at a time to see if fixes the issue for that game. For Bomberman I believe copy color to rdram needs to be set to async to not have the black screen issues.

where exactly can i set these options?

I looked into the /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch folder, but cant find where to set these settings?

mitu

@domi https://retropie.org.uk/docs/RetroArch-Core-Options/

Domi

@mitu said in Pi4 N64 Bomberman 64 Blackscreen Workaround:

@domi https://retropie.org.uk/docs/RetroArch-Core-Options/

Thanks @mitu!

I am not so sure about the namings to be honest:

the .opt file for the rom named 'Bomberman 64 (U) [!].z64' will be 'Bomberman 64 (U) [!].z64.opt' and will be located under /opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch/config/mupen64plus-next, correct?

the retroarch-core-options.cfg has fields called e.g. mupen64plus-next-EnableLegacyBlending = "True". This translates to EnableLegacyBlending = "True" in the .opt file, right?

mitu

@domi Not sure about the file names, but why don't you use the menu to set the values ?

Domi

@mitu said in Pi4 N64 Bomberman 64 Blackscreen Workaround:

@domi Not sure about the file names, but why don't you use the menu to set the values ?

Unfortunately, as reported in another post, I do not have a working controller right now. Since the update to retroarch 1.9, the pro controller does not work anymore and the n64 controller does not have enought buttons for a hotkey button.

On top of that, you send me an article, that explains how to do it without a controller at hand, so I wanted to give it a try...

I guess ill reconfigure my n64 controller just for doing the settings now

mitu

@domi said in Pi4 N64 Bomberman 64 Blackscreen Workaround:

On top of that, you send me an article, that explains how to do it without a controller at hand, so I wanted to give it a try...

Plug in a keyboard and use F1 to open up the menu, you don't necessarily need a controller for configuration.

Domi

@mitu Alright, so I followed your advice, plugged in the keyboard, hit f1 for the menu and went to Edit custom RetroArch config for this ROM

In there, I added the three lines:

EnableLegacyBlening="False"
EnableCopyColorToRDRam="Async"
BackgroundMode="Stripped"

(case sensitive, exactly this white spacing)

But the game does still not seem to run. Am I doing this corectly?

Or do i need to prefix them the way it is done in the retroarch-core-options.cfg, so that it is

mupen64plus-next-EnableLegacyBlending="False"
mupen64plus-next-EnableCopyColorToRDRAM="Async"
mupen64plus-next-BackgroundMode="Stripped"

?

mitu

@domi said in Pi4 N64 Bomberman 64 Blackscreen Workaround:

But the game does still not seem to run. Am I doing this corectly?

No, the core options are not part of RetroArch's configuration file. Start the game, then open the RetroArch's menu (RGUI) with F1, go to Options, where you can change the settings as mentioned before. After that, choose the 'Create Game Options' entry to ensure they'll be automatically saved for that game.

retropieuser555

Apologies I'm reviving an old topic here but for the standalone mupen64plus emulator it's just legacy blending that's the issue I believe.

The other two settings here are set as default in mupen64plus.cfg, so they seem to work fine left alone:-

# Enable color buffer copy to RDRAM. (0=do not copy, 1=copy in sync mode, 2=Double Buffer, 3=Triple Buffer)
EnableCopyColorToRDRAM = 2
# Render backgrounds mode. (HLE only). (0=One piece (fast), 1=Stripped (precise))
BackgroundsMode = 1

To fix this in the standalone emulator I've added these versions of Bomberman 64 to the bottom of GLideN64.custom.ini as below:-

[BOMBERMAN64E]
Good_Name=Bomberman 64 (E) [!]
generalEmulation\enableLegacyBlending=0

[BOMBERMAN64U]
Good_Name=Bomberman 64 (U) [!]
generalEmulation\enableLegacyBlending=0

[BAKU-BOMBERMAN]
Good_Name=Baku Bomberman (J) [!]
generalEmulation\enableLegacyBlending=0

I'm not aware if there's any other regions I've missed out but the game seems to run fine using mupen64plus-GLideN64. FYI it runs slow in mupen64plus-GLideN64-highres.

I've also sent a change request on GitHub at GLideN64 so hopefully that will be approved, then it's just a case of updating via retropie-setup if you don't feel comfortable editing the GLideN64.custom.ini file.

retropieuser555

This has been accepted and merged on GlideN64 master branch, so the game should be fixed when updating from source on RetroPie setup.