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***Boring stuff first, skip this to get to the actual guide*** I wanted to make this guide because this is an emulator no one talks about, well no one around here it seems. Project 64 as an emulator isn't bad but the devs are shady with previous releases being packaged with ad-ware and now with 2.3 using the PJ64 UI you get a stupid nag screen which according to @SIMPLY AUSTINpeople are reporting it doesn't go away after a while. Now I have been using 2.3 through Launchbox bypassing the UI and I do not see the nag screen unless I need to load it up manually to tweak some stuff. I have also noticed that while Project 64 and the Mupen64 core in Retroarch are decent enough emulators neither of them can play one of my favourite N64 titles, Beetle Adventure Racing very well. Even the Vulkan powered Retroarch Mupen core does not run this game well. The stand alone Mupen64plus does run this game extremely well and it even has some texture pack support. Anyways, enough of my rambling lets get started. Step 1 Go to the Mupen64plus homepage http://mupen64plus.org/ or as of the time of this guide go straight to the 2.5 release page https://github.com/mupen64plus/mupen64plus-core/releases/tag/2.5. You will want to get the mupen64plus-bundle-win32-2.5.zip or if you are running on lower end hardware get the dynarec version. Edit: This version here has been released since this thread was posted, it has a simple but functional UI for easy setup and works great with Launchbox. https://m64p.github.io/ Step 2 Make a folder where you want this emulator to be and extract the contents of the download file into it. Step 3 In Launchbox add the mupen64plus-ui-console.exe as a new emulator and set it to be associated with your Nintendo 64 platform. Step 4 Launch a game either through Launchbox using this emulator or drag and drop a rom file on the exe file. This will generate a Mupen64plus folder and files in "C:\Users\user name\AppData\Roaming\". Step 5 Go to "C:\Users\user name\AppData\Roaming\Mupen64Plus" and find the mupen64plus.cfg, open this file in your favourite text editor and edit the lines as you see fit but here are some immediate recommendations to look for: # Draw on-screen display if True, otherwise don't draw OSD OnScreenDisplay = True Set this to False # Use Pure Interpreter if 0, Cached Interpreter if 1, or Dynamic Recompiler if 2 or more R4300Emulator = 2 Try this at 0 for better quality, more accurate emulation but may be slow on your system # Use fullscreen mode if True, or windowed mode if False Fullscreen = False Set this to True # Width of output window or fullscreen width ScreenWidth = 640 # Height of output window or fullscreen height ScreenHeight = 480 Set the width and height according to your monitor. On a 1080 display set to 1280 and 1024 if you want to maintain a 4:3 aspect ratio. # Use Mipmapping? 0=no, 1=nearest, 2=bilinear, 3=trilinear Mipmapping = 1 Set this to 3 if you use more graphical enhancement settings # Primary texture enhancement filter (0=None, 1=2X, 2=2XSAI, 3=HQ2X, 4=LQ2X, 5=HQ4X, 6=Sharpen, 7=Sharpen More, 8=External, 9=Mirrored) TextureEnhancement = 0 Set this to personal preference, I don't use any of them. # Enable/Disable MultiSampling (0=off, 2,4,8,16=quality) MultiSampling = 0 This is your Anti Aliasing to smooth out the edges of polygons. I set mine to 8 but 2, 4 or 16 is fine. # Enable/Disable Anisotropic Filtering for Mipmapping (0=no filtering, 2-16=quality). This is uneffective if Mipmapping is 0. If the given value is to high to be supported by your graphic card, the value will be the highest value your graphic card can support. Better result with Trilinear filtering AnisotropicFiltering = 0 Set this to 16 along with Mipmapping 3 above. # Enable hi-resolution texture file loading LoadHiResTextures = False If you plan on using High Resolution texture packs set this to true Now you are done and your games should load and play through Launchbox and look as good as they can without the use of texture packs. If you wish to use texture packs you will need to enable it with the last setting above by setting it to True. You will need to go to your "C:\Users\user name\AppData\Roaming\Mupen64Plus" folder and create a folder called "hires_texture". In this folder you will place your texture pack folders and files. The folders have to be named correctly like "super mario 64". I was only able to get loose file texture packs to work, .htc and .dat format packs I could not figure out how to get to work. If anyone has information on how to get these to work I would love to hear it. I know .htc is a GlideN64 plugin format and I tried using that plugin and different folder structures but I had no luck. From what I have read the Android version does support these formats but I do not know if the Windows version code is as up to date with that support or not. Like I said if anyone has any information on getting .htc and .dat format packs working please let me know.

Hi there, I've been following all of the tutorials for Retroarch and the only core that's giving me problems is Mupen64plus. I downloaded the core in Retroarch, but the core refuses to play my rom (Goldeneye 007) when I select it. Retroarch simply crashes. I am able to play Nintendo 64 roms with the core, ParaLLEl N64... It runs the same rom just fine, however, when I attempt to use Mupen, it says 'Retroarch has stopped working' and the program closes out. Any ideas? Thank you.

So I've been slowly making Launchbox/BigBox home, and I've been working more and more with retroarch, after getting things setup initially, it's just nice to have it be there and re-configure controls for whatever device I happen to be using. That being said, I'm not having much luck with getting N64 emulation rolling with the hi res texture pack I have for Zelda OOT. I can only find the "rice" plugin available within the "parallel_n64" core, but I don't know where to drop the textures. Another thing that's weird is that the game doesn't appear to be rendering correctly with the "parallel_N64" core. Everything looks fine in Mupen, but I still can't get high res textures in either way. I've seen some other posts that say they get it working, but I don't know where to actually put the files. In Project64, I put the files here: ~\LaunchBox\Emulators\Project64 2.1\Plugin\GFX\hires_texture, then each game had it's own folder.

***Boring stuff first, skip this to get to the actual guide*** I wanted to make this guide because this is an emulator no one talks about, well no one around here it seems. Project 64 as an emulator isn't bad but the devs are shady with previous releases being packaged with ad-ware and now with 2.3 using the PJ64 UI you get a stupid nag screen which according to @SIMPLY AUSTINpeople are reporting it doesn't go away after a while. Now I have been using 2.3 through Launchbox bypassing the UI and I do not see the nag screen unless I need to load it up manually to tweak some stuff. I have also noticed that while Project 64 and the Mupen64 core in Retroarch are decent enough emulators neither of them can play one of my favourite N64 titles, Beetle Adventure Racing very well. Even the Vulkan powered Retroarch Mupen core does not run this game well. The stand alone Mupen64plus does run this game extremely well and it even has some texture pack support. Anyways, enough of my rambling lets get started. This guide is only intended for people wanting to set it up and use this emulator on it's own. This setup will not work through Launchbox. For whatever reason after I set it all up this way and setup Mupen64plus as an emulator in Launchbox and pointed it at the mupen64plus-ui-console.exe it does not load with all the tweaks made using the UI. If someone has figured it out and can tell me what I did wrong I will make the appropriate edits. I will make a second Launchbox specific guide and it will be much shorter. Step 1 Go to the Mupen64plus homepage http://mupen64plus.org/ or as of the time of this guide go straight to the 2.5 release page https://github.com/mupen64plus/mupen64plus-core/releases/tag/2.5. You will want to get the mupen64plus-bundle-win32-2.5.zip or if you are running on lower end hardware get the dynarec version. Step 2 Because Mupen64plus is a command line you will probably want some sort of GUI to go with it. You don't need to have this but it makes setting it up and tweaking easier. There are several available but the one I like is mupen64plus-qt which is available here http://www.emutalk.net/threads/54976-Mupen64Plus-Qt or https://github.com/dh4/mupen64plus-qt/releases get the file mupen64plus-qt_win1.9.zip or newer if at the time of reading this there is a newer version. Step 3 Create a folder where ever you plan on keeping this emulator on your hard drive and extract the contents of both of these zip files. You should now have a bunch of files like the pic below Step 4 Run the mupen64plus-qt.exe and the first thing you should do is go to the settings tab at the top and then configure. The first tab you will see is Paths, you can leave everything as it is if you like. But at the bottom of this tab you can set your path to your roms directory. Step 5 Go to the Graphics tab and this is where you will turn on Fullscreen and set your Resolution. Set your resolution to match your monitors resolution to match your monitors if you want but if you use a 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ration monitor the game will be stretched. If you prefer a more natural 4:3 ratio set your resolution to something like 1280x1024 on a 1080 display or 1600x1200 on a 1440 display The rest of the tabs are all optional and up to you to learn about them all and tinker with. Click the Ok button and it will take a second to generate. Step 7 You can now do some further custom settings by getting into the mupen64plus.cfg file which will either be located in "C:\Users\user name\AppData\Roaming\Mupen64Plus". You can either edit the file with your favourite txt editor or click Settings > Edit mupen64plus.cfg in the GUI. A couple of settings I recommend are: Mipmapping = 3 MultiSampling = 4 (8 or 16 works too) AnisotropicFiltering = 16 You should now have the basics up and running to use Mupen64plus in a stand alone manner.