Best plugins for accurate n64 emulation

[mothergoose729]

So n64 emulation kind of sucks.

I have project 64 and I am using the glide64 plugin and it works pretty well for a lot of games, but it is far from perfect. I am also using the virtual console in dolphin to get some of the really hard to work stuff working and it is acceptable.

I have done a lot of research online. I know that there are a lot of plugins out there for mupen64 and project 64, but all the information surrounding them is very outdated. Some of the have undergone regressions. Lot of forks and links to github. I am not much farther along then when I stared.

Does anybody know where to find the good stuff and how to get it working? Is near perfect emulation of n64 possible?

[thraxlol]

I'm not really picky about the 'perfect' emulation, and honestly haven't played with it enough... but I use the mupen64 core in Retroarch and thus far I haven't found anything I dislike.... but as I said, I don't play with it nearly enough.

[Lordmonkus]

The best results I have had come from using the Mupen64plus core in Retroarch which uses the GlideN64 plugin built into it. There is a bit of a weird history with this core. It was first called the Mupen64 core and was based off the stand alone version of Mupen. Then came the Glupen64 core but then for reasons which don't matter to us the end user they took the old Mupen64 core and rolled that into the Parallel core which was the Vulkan renderer core and renamed the Glupen64 to Mupen64plus.

Long story short, in the latest releases of Retroarch and cores the best is to use the Mupen64plus core.

There is no perfect or even anywhere near perfect N64 emulator yet so your results may vary depending on the game you are trying to play.

[mothergoose729]

I am messing around with the parrallel core, and its accuracy is really great. Digging around in the quick menu I found options to set the RSP core to cx4 and to use angrylions gfx for the plugin, which for me have been impossible to find as plugins for project 64. 

 

Unfortunately, retoach has improperly configured the analog on my real n64 controller. I am looking for ways to fix this. 

 

In terms of controller input, project 64 is the most accurate by far. If I have my druthers, I would really like to get something working with project 64 that is as close to what retoarch has as I can.

[SentaiBrad]

Yea, Mupen64plus in RetroArch has been the closest thing for a really long time. It's honestly surprising. It's enough to have ditched Project64 for a long time honestly. As for a real N64 pad, yea, my RetroLink had issues too. I actually went with my PS4 controller, and it honestly works much better. My character controlled much better and the C-Stick style play is totally fine by me since I loved the GameCube. RetroArch can not be beat. The Parrallel core is lagging behind surprisingly, and the GLupen core was rolled in to Mupen and getting their top attention now (at least that was the case for the last few months). It's still no where near perfect, but it's honestly the best solution I think.

[mothergoose729]

Ok, well I spent some time on this, and here is what I learned. 

Based on my experience, the Glide64 plugin for project 64 (2.2 version) has a lot less *noticeable problems then the mupen64 plugin used in retroarch (at least for the games I am most interested in). I attribute this to the project 64 teams willingness to insert more game specific hacks and tweaks. For example, the glide64 plugin for project 64 doesn't have the multiplayer speed problem in mario kart. This is a bug where multiplayer pass two players, or certain maps, will play twice as fast as they should, because of a hack nitendo introduced to compensate for input lag. Project 64 used a cheat force the game to run at correct speeds, while mupen64 in retroarch didn't.. The retroarch can play hard to emulate games like Pokemon Snap, because by default it comes with much stricter frame buffer emulation, but unfortunately it still has some very agridious rendering errors that make it far from perfect (the virtual console version is the best I have tried so far). Project 64 with glide 64 can't play it all, and I haven't been able to find a working plugin that fixes these problems. 

In terms of accuracy they are both pretty close, but the parrellel core is much more accurate. It uses as a base angrylions pixel-accurate plugin, with some vulkan to speed it up and some additional tweaks (although I am not sure what all of those are, it does fix some bugs in some hard to emulate games). It also let's you use cx4 RSP plugin, and I am not sure what is used for sound, but in my experience with a couple of games it sounds really, really good. You are forced to run it in native res and you get some of the graphical oddities of the n64 also, like 3 point bi linear filtering. So if you want fancy graphics for the well supported titles that run well with glide (like Zelda), the glide plugin has more features, if less accuracy. 

If you are intent on using a real n64  controller with a mayflash adapter, then unfortunately retroarch is totally out. The analog setup is  wrong for n64 and there is no way to fix it in the software, you have to rely on third party apps that set the stick globally. The problem with this is that retroarch is actually the odd man out. Between the mupen core and the parrellel core there are still games that don't work properly (like pokemon snap), which means to get good coverage you have to use the virtual console in dolphin and/or some combination of project 64 or mupen standalone with different plugins and settings not supported by retroarch. If you adjust the stick to work with retroarch, it will be totally off for these other programs. Not good. 

Even in the programs that do support the stick properly, there are differences in accuracy between them. For example, the virtual console in dolphin  doesn't register input directly along the axis correctly. In Yoshi's island, in order to do a butt stomp, I have to push down on the controller slightly off axis. Directly down doesn't input correctly. The input on the outer radius of the controller also feel a tad bit off... I think this is because the gamecube is calibrated for a circle radius on the analog, while the n64 is calibrated in a square. 

The input plugin for project 64 is much better though. Set the input range from default 66% to 100%, and make the the "real n64" check box is ticked, and it is off to the races.

For me, I have managed to get all the games I want to play working, with acceptable amounts of emulation error, using project 64 and the virtual console in dolphin. I think if I can tract down some high quality plugins, I could eventually replace all the dolphin titles with different configurations of project 64.

 

Edited March 27, 2017 by mothergoose729

[Tag365]

Angrylion RDP Plus at https://github.com/ata4/angrylion-rdp-plus is the peak of Nintendo 64 emulation as of now for Project64. It is incredibly accurate to the point that I believe that it rivals Mednafen in graphics accuracy, Angrylion RDP Plus is about as good at rendering N64 game graphics as Mednafen for PlayStation 1 games. It emulates Paper Mario's graphics with amazing accuracy, no more transition glitches and bugged HUD elements. Also, Kammy Koopa's lighting effects have an orange coloring in them like the original game on original hardware, unlike even the Nintendo Wii and Wii U Virtual Console releases of the game. It's impressive that a program not entirely made by Nintendo can emulate Nintendo 64 game graphics better than an emulator developed by Nintendo themselves. Pokémon Snap also works correctly and you can play the game, take photos, and be able to have Professor Oak correctly rate the pictures that you take. Overall, a shocking improvement in rendering quality that I thought would not happen for a few more years at the least, if not decades.

Unfortunately the plugin is CPU-bound for rendering the graphics. You need a lot of CPU power to run it at correct speed, and a fast GPU can't be used for this. If you have a modern desktop CPU in your computer, try it out, and see if the emulation speed is tolerable or correct when you run it.

[Lordmonkus]

When you say Mednafen I assume you mean Mupen ?

Yes, no question that the Angrylion rdp plus plugin is the most accurate N64 emulation we have and it's available in the Parallel core in Retroarch core as well but as you say it requires a very beefy system to run with all the accuracy settings without losing frames.