Best Bang For My N64 Buck?
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@roslof This is a setting in my ROM config that causes audio glitches when playing Bust-A-Move '99 with lr-mupen64plus-next:
input_overlay_enable = "true"changing it to
input_overlay_enable = "false"Seems to always avoid the audio clicks during startup. The bezel is just a simple overlay from the BezelProject.
Is this surprising?
As I said before, -next had fewer audio clicks than lr-mupen64plus when both have the overlay displayed.
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@busywait said in Best Bang For My N64 Buck?:
Core option for 640x480 resolution
Just a heads up that running n64 at 640x480 resolution is extremely taxing for the pi. I know it looks better, but most games are going to have trouble running at full speed.
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@quicksilver Thx - noted. In this case it is hard to read the text on some screens without bumping up to 640x480 - the 4-player screen has very small play areas.
It's a 2D puzzle game with mainly 320x240 assets inside, as far as I can tell. The 4-player game seems to use the extra resolution. I guess there could be activity being sent through 3D code and video processing.
But it runs fine with shaders on or off, threaded video on or off, stretched aspect ratios or integer scaled... but the audio glitches if I add an overlay! Very odd.
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@busywait said in Best Bang For My N64 Buck?:
@quicksilver Thx - noted. In this case it is hard to read the text on some screens without bumping up to 640x480 - the 4-player screen has very small play areas.
note that adjusting the resolution is suboptimal - better to leave at default and adjust the native resolution scale factor. the reason for this is that not all n64 games are 320x240, so by setting to a resolution, rather than a factor of the native resolution, you incur scaling artefacts and possibly a performance penalty.
But it runs fine with shaders on or off, threaded video on or off, stretched aspect ratios or integer scaled... but the audio glitches if I add an overlay! Very odd.
yes, overlays drain performance quite a bit, for whatever reason.
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@dankcushions could you give an example for the alternative ways (high and low overhead) to set resolution?
Are you describing libretro core options or Mupen64Plus .ini settings? Currently I've used only libretro options and retroarch settings.
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could you give an example for the alternative ways (high and low overhead) to set resolution?
didn't I just do that? :) low overhead - setting via native resolution factor. high overhead - setting resolution directly.
Are you describing libretro core options or Mupen64Plus .ini settings? Currently I've used only libretro options and retroarch settings.
you were talking about lr-mupen64plus-next (standalone uses the mupen64plus.cfg but doesn't have core options), so am i.
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@dankcushions - sorry, I just don't know the name of the options that you're comparing against each other.
Currently, I've set these core options for lr-mupen64plus-next:
mupen64plus-169screensize = "640x360" mupen64plus-43screensize = "640x480"Are those what you were talking about?
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@busywait yes, those are the ones you shouldn't change from whatever they were at by default.
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@dankcushions Thx again :)
That's not my experience with Bust-A-Move (maybe because it has no 3D rendering to do?)
I tried 4:3 Screen Size from 320x240 up to 1080x1440, with 4x Native Resolution Scaling, and they all performed about as good as it gets (except that the 4 player part of the game looks terrible with less than 480 lines).
And, the audio glitched in all cases with a bezel overlay đŸ™„
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OP here, just following up. From what I'm reading above, is seems much of the issues with N64 emulation on a pie has to do with the limitations of the smaller hardware. But let me pose this scenario. Since this is all built on a Linux system, could you install the Linux OS on a more powerful desktop, then image Retropie onto that (just like you would an SD card) and run everything the same as you would from a raspberry pie? But being able to utilize more power that come with desktop components? If so, that seems like it would open up advantage for lots of other resource heavy emulators as well (like Saturn for example).
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@alphabetapie said in Best Bang For My N64 Buck?:
Since this is all built on a Linux system, could you install the Linux OS on a more powerful desktop ...
Yes.
RetroPie allows you to turn your Raspberry Pi or PC into a retro-gaming machine. It builds upon Raspbian, EmulationStation, RetroArch and many other projects to enable you to play your favourite Arcade, home-console, and classic PC games with the minimum set-up. For power users it also provides a large variety of configuration tools to customise the system as you want.
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@roslof said in Best Bang For My N64 Buck?:
@busywait said in Best Bang For My N64 Buck?:
but the audio during the initial logo and character sequences is quite broken
I'm not seeing this issue with lr-mupen64plus. I only have audio issues/sluggishness with -next. Feel free to post settings/options if you've found a way to gain performance with next.
-next used to be the best performing option for me for Bust-A-Move - until yesterday, when I updated RetroPie to 4.7.11. (I think I was on 4.7.8 before).
Edit: Fixed after reverting my n64 core options to defaults.Now Bust-A-Move runs very slowly / jerky, and with very low CPU overhead. Bizare. Maybe the lack of change is a good reason to stick with the oldest core that mostly works :(
Edit: Not actually a problem -
@mitu said yes.
So what would you recommend? For example, I know I can build a decent budget media PC for my entertainment center. Then, I could install Linux on a blank hard drive partition. But then how would I image Retropie onto that? I suppose I could convert it to an external USB temporarily and image that way, then put it back in the desktop? I think there is a way to expand Retropie to take up the entire 1TB hard drive after the fact right?
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@alphabetapie the retropie images are for pi systems only. there’s no image for pc. the installation process is here: https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Debian/
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UPDATE:
After some experimentation of different cores, I've made a discovery that seems a bit strange.
I was completely unable to get ANY of my games on N64 to run using lr-mupen64plus-next, which is the the default option and what most people recommend. They all were super slow and laggy (getting maybe 15-20 frames per second). BUT, when I changed the default emulator to just regular lr-mupen64plus, it instantly worked on most games. They were playable at a relatively normal speed, with only minor audio hiccups here and there.
Why is my system different than what most recommend? I don't feel it should be. I'm running the latest image of Retropie on a Pie 4 with all default settings (not overclocked).
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@alphabetapie
i would actually recommend mupen64plus-gliden64, which is essentially the same thing but should be faster, as it’s standalone. that said, there are a number of non-default options that can cause further slowdown with next, but as always we need info from your system to diagnose. including:verbose log
/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-core-options.cfg
/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg
/opt/retropie/configs/n64/retroarch.cfgnote that lr-mupen64plus may still be sometimes faster because it’s old, inaccurate and so on. but that’s not enough to recommend it as it’s broken in a lot of ways, including crashing after ~30 mins use, if i remember right.
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@dankcushions said in Best Bang For My N64 Buck?:
@alphabetapie
i would actually recommend mupen64plus-gliden64, which is essentially the same thing but should be faster, as it’s standalone. that said, there are a number of non-default options that can cause further slowdown with next, but as always we need info from your system to diagnose. including:verbose log
/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch-core-options.cfg
/opt/retropie/configs/all/retroarch.cfg
/opt/retropie/configs/n64/retroarch.cfgnote that lr-mupen64plus may still be sometimes faster because it’s old, inaccurate and so on. but that’s not enough to recommend it as it’s broken in a lot of ways, including crashing after ~30 mins use, if i remember right.
Sure, I will work on getting those logs when I get home later.
In the meantime, question about mupen64plus-gliden64. I have actually tried setting that as the default emulator (when I was experimenting last night), but the games just crash back to the select screen. Like it does when no emulator is found. This only happens with that version. As far as I remember, I didn't install this after the fact, so I believe it came with the Retropie image. Is the one that is already include the standalone version you mean? Or did you want me to try and find a git version I can install manually?
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@alphabetapie i believe it's installed by default, yes, but obviously that will only be as up to date as your last install/update.
it doesn't run .zip files as per https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Nintendo-64/ - other than that I can't investigate any crashes without a log.
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@dankcushions said in Best Bang For My N64 Buck?:
@alphabetapie i believe it's installed by default, yes, but obviously that will only be as up to date as your last install/update.
it doesn't run .zip files as per https://retropie.org.uk/docs/Nintendo-64/ - other than that I can't investigate any crashes without a log.
OK, so I just got in and pulled these. However, I'm not sure I'm giving you what you need. I went into Retroarch and turned on verbose logging. I had several options of what to log, which were info, warnings and errors. So I set it to debug, because I figured that would give you all three of those. I can change this if you need me to.
I pulled the config files and attached them. I also ran Super Mario 64 with mupen64plus-gliden64 so it would crash and hopefully log the issue. Let me know if I need to repost something else.
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OK, so I just got in and pulled these. However, I'm not sure I'm giving you what you need. I went into Retroarch and turned on verbose logging. I had several options of what to log, which were info, warnings and errors. So I set it to debug, because I figured that would give you all three of those. I can change this if you need me to.
that's not really the right method. short memory? :) instructions to get a verbose log are in the sticked read this first link, and you've been linked to them several times
what you've done has probably turned verbose logging on permanently, which could have performance implications.
@alphabetapie said in Best Bang For My N64 Buck?:
retroarch config
this one is not default (which is much smaller) and looks like you've been in retroarch menu and saving settings. i wouldn't recommend this unless you have specific reason to, and it's too big for me to find if there's anything wrong.
i doubt it's your issue, but if you want to reset, update retroarch and replace it with the default backup file
retroarch.cfg.rp-dist. obviously that will replace any custom settings you put in there.core config
this is the same link as above. this is not
retroarch-core-options.cfg
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