N64 Question

[Bedwyr]

Integration continues and I'm getting more impressed with this software. Looking forward to integrating with Kodi. I'd like to beg and plead for help with a side question, though. For some reason I can't register on the Retroarch forum. Sadly I have to hope for some help here even though it's not quite on-topic. Please be kind. I'd like to make plugin and graphical changes to mupen64plus. That's easy to do in the standalone installation. However, I'm trying to unify to Retroarch as much as possible. I recall there being "core options" in RGUI in 1.0.x. In 1.2.x is there a similar place to make adjustments or change graphics plugins to, say, Rice?

[SentaiBrad]

Load up the N64 Mupen core (or any core for that matter) and load up your game. First Main Menu tab at the very top open Quick Menu. Scroll down a bit till you see Core Options and open that up. For your question specifically you are looking for GFX Plugin, but here is where you change the options for most cores. Some cores wont have anything here.

[Bedwyr]

Ah. Had forgotten that the game needed to be loaded. So Rice causes immediate crashes. Is that a known behavior? I found this but don't know what to make of it: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1128246 I also reproduced the settings (delete core options cfg->load core->load game->pause->change graphics core->close content->load game->crash) and wrote the results to a log file, but no real clues there I can suss out. Rice is mentioned twice at the end: "Environ GET_VARIABLE mupen64-gfxplugin: rice" but not other clues such as a segfault or other issue.

[Bedwyr]

Oh yes, I should add that after experimentation I've discovered that all versions of Project64 appear to have issues with Windows 10 or my drivers. Even if the display software didn't crap out the Xbox One controller appears to be super-finicky for the controller binding plugin. It keeps throwing out a left or right trigger output (z-) into every button assignment I try. Impossible to assign anything. Project64: es totalmente muerto. I'll keep my clean copy of 2.1 and 1.6 around, but I doubt it'll get installed again.

[DOS76]

If you run Project 64 in compatibility mode it fixes blue screen issues in 2.2 I'm unsure if that is the problem that you are having or not.

[SentaiBrad]

I have been using the Auto selection for the GFX Plugin and I've not had any crashes. I also have been using my PS4 and N64 USB Controller with it just fine. I wonder if you got some of your settings backwards. Set your controls for XInput back to default, save the config and see if that fixes the problem.

[SentaiBrad]

Oh, you're having controller issues in P64, not RA. Nevermind. I haven't been using Project 64, I traded it for the Mupen core in RA.

[Bedwyr]

SentaiBrad said Oh, you're having controller issues in P64, not RA. Nevermind. I haven't been using Project 64, I traded it for the Mupen core in RA.

Yep. As such I'm still inclined not to use P64. *However*, I've now apparently screwed things up for Retroarch. I can now load the mupen core and then the game, but not a newly created mupen cfg and then the game. I deleted as many cfg files as I could think of (usually core options did it???) and still get the latter behavior. Truly frustrating.

[SentaiBrad]

If you need to start over with the config just grab a copy of it from the rar it comes in. If a game specifically needs a setting you can set just that game to have its own config. Create a mupen config if needed that loads for everything. Then based from that config you can create a new one with the settings different and set it to load in the command line arguments for the individual game. Otherwise if its working don't mess with it. :P

[Bedwyr]

Fixed and working. Still wish I could use a high res texture render like Rice, though. Games like Dr. Mario 64 and Ogre Battle 64 have a lot of muddy textures using the gln64 plugin.

[Zombeaver]

Have you messed around with any of the shaders in RA? Some of them look quite good - typically I stick with CRT-Easymode for most systems (I started with CRT-Royale but visual quality could be a bit of a mixed bag depending on the system/game whereas Easymode is more consistent across the board) but for N64 I use Hq2x which looks quite good with it.

[SentaiBrad]

I usually pick the Pixellate or Retro-v2 Presets usually with the Linear Filter and 4x or 5x scale. For some of the 3D Games I am looking for a more suited one, but Pixellate works great. It doesn't actually pixellate the image, and for sprite based games it makes everything look super sharp. I do not like Rounded squares or the rounding that can happen with Filters like HQ2X, 3X etc. It just looks bad to me. For 3D though, it can look decent. I love in PCSX2 the ability to just increase the internal resolution. I usually have it set to x4 there. That doesn't quite exist in the same way on RA, but its what I try to replicate, sharp visuals. Since I am recording everything, the window for Retro Consoles for 4:3 stuff is 1280x960, so anything to get it to be sharp and great quality for that resolution is what I try and go for.

[Zombeaver]

SentaiBrad said I do not like Rounded squares or the rounding that can happen with Filters like HQ2X, 3X etc. It just looks bad to me. For 3D though, it can look decent.

Oh, I agree. I only use Hq2x on 3D games - it looks quite good with things like Mario 64. Everything outside of the mupen core I use CRT-Easymode though (including Mednafen). It just looks great with pretty much everything. It looks especially good with sprite-based games, but looks good on 3D as well (except for N64, in my opinion). I switched away from CRT-Royale because, while it can look better than Easymode in some cases (all instances of which are in sprite-based games) it tends to look quite terrible in a 3D setting. It also has a tendency to wash out colors in some cases which I don't like. Here are some decent overviews of some different CRT shaders: Filthypants / CRT Pixel Shader Filter For SNES, Filthypands / More CRT Shaders, and Shmups / Retroarch shader thread. I'm a big fan of scanline/aperture filters for everything from PS1 backwards. Upscaling looks great for PS2 onwards, but PS1 titles tend to just look...wrong...when upsaled. The low resolution had the effect of both hiding certain things that weren't meant to be seen and it adds its own character to the image that just gets swept away when you upscale which makes it look entirely too clean. A good scanline/CRT filter can have the effect of both increasing sharpness and obfuscating those unnaturally sharp pixels and they do a pretty good job of restoring them to the state that they appeared on non-high definition displays. The next thing I want to do is test out some NTSC filters. I've seen some impressive looking results with these in the right setting. Scroll down to the shot of FFVI on this. Obviously this is all subjective...

[Bedwyr]

I discovered the problem Project64 was having regarding controller setup. Microsoft changed how the controller triggers work. I only discovered this as Kodi is behaving exactly the same way: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=240570 This may be useful information in the future for others using the XBOne controller. And more information: http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=202869 It appears that the trouble (maybe all of the trouble?) stems from the wireless adapter for the controller and how it is interpreted by Windows (10?) as a wireless network device with an associated Xinput HID device.

[Bedwyr]

By the way, when you're talking about shader behavior, are you talking about texture mapping, 2D sprites, or both? I haven't loaded up Ocarina yet on RA. I need to do that to make sure I'm loading correct res textures and Zelda grassland texture is best for checking that. My main complaints were about 2D art assets displaying slightly wrong (as in Ogre Battle dialog bubbles) or just low-res muddy (like Peach's letter and text in Mario 64 or worse, everything in Dr. Mario). Or are they these issues related?

[SentaiBrad]

The CRT Filters don't change much in the way of internal resolutions they just make the game look like it was being played on a CRT and the ones I like to use change the internal resolutions. When you're scaling things in a game through an emulator if one thing looks better but another thing does not there could be a good reason for this. In Mario 64, there aren't that many textures. The textures you do see you notice because they wont scale the same way as say, Mario's model or the Castle. Look at Final Fantasy 7. Scale it to x3 or x4. The models will look great but the backgrounds still look a bit muddy. The backgrounds are pre-rendered and essentially one giant texture with the character models drawn on top. Peach's Letter, the Grass in OoT, Text Bubbles all are textures. When you get lines or blurriness while you are trying to scale it is probably because it doesn't know really what to do or the scaling is not set up great for a lot of textures. Different types of texture filtering or no texture filtering can help. It depends on the emulator you are using. I changed the texture filtering in Mupen the other day and it made lines in Mystical Ninja go away (I cant remember if I turned it on or off.). Play around with your scalers, shaders and filters. Some work great for some emulators and some not for others. Creating a new config for each platform then having LaunchBox load them when you load that core will make it easier. You can save the configs and have them auto-load.