Im getting frame drops in certain N64 games, most run at 60fps consistently but in Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr, the audio will randomly stutter and cause a frame drop. Im using Mupen with glide64 video plugin as that is the only one that even remotely works properly for n64. I am excited for parallel to become more mature but for now it only runs a small handful of games and Griffey isnt one of them and I cant get goldeneye to run properly either, It crunches the screen and then puts random stuff on the bottom part.
At the moment there aren’t any N64 cores that are good enough. Glupen64 should be better than the regular Mupen core because it uses GlideN64 for graphics instead of the older Glide64. But again it’s not great because it still uses Mupen as the base core.
Basically, N64 emulation is far from great in RetroArch. You will only be able to play about 50% of games with good results. Your best bet is PJ64 2.2.9999 or 2.3 and the latest version of the GlideN64 plugin, not the default ones. This will allow you to play 95% of N64 games with very good results.
Btw, i also have the same problem with ParaLLEl and Goldeneye. Same with Banjo-Kazooie. This problem exists ever since the core was first released.
You are over exaggerating, PJ64 doesn’t have a 95% compatibility rate vs 50% for mupen. Besides, if the framerate is the person’s problem then the issue is likely with the graphics plugin, and mupen and PJ64 both support GLideN64.
I tested the complete US rom N64 set with PJ64 2.3 and i can say that it certainly has a 95%+ compatibility if not more (i only remember Indiana Jones and Battle for Naboo not working, maybe i’m forgetting a couple). There were also very few games that worked but had heavy glitches (Vigilante 8) but that was on the graphics plugin. Other than that, everything else worked with very few tweaks.
I’m not familiar with the compatibility of the standalone Mupen but the Retroarch cores don’t come close to that (from my testing). Haven’t tested all games yet but so far, even if i count all 3 RetroArch cores as one i still don’t get as good compatibility. You are maybe right about the 95% vs 50% difference, maybe it’s not that bad but there is a noticeable gap from what i have seen so far.
Ok so I tried glupen…worse results…but heres what I did find…it is the sound causing the issue not the video. Whenever the sound stutters the framerate drops…The joys of emulation lol. It isnt broken to the point of unplayable but I migrated here from pj64 due to the horrendous audio issues with it, no matter which plugin i used it cracks or speeds out of control. Anyone have any ideas on sound tweaking in mupen? Did pj64 fix sound plugin issues?
Just use version 2.3. First disable the nag screen by changing this line in the project64.ini
[Support Project64]
Run Count=-1
Then go here and download the latest version of the GlideN64 plugin. Newer versions are at the bottom of the page.
You should also search and download “Azimer’s XA2 Audio v0.70 WIP 6” and use that as your default audio plugin.
With these plugins you should be fine in most cases. Just don’t use the default video and audio plugins. Although the default audio should be fine.
One thing to note, as far as emulation goes, N64 emulation is the least user friendly. To have good results you need options and testing. Don’t expect to just load a ROM and play in many cases. So, from my experience, having PJ64 2.3 and a few plugins to swap (thankfully, it saves different plugins per game) is the most compatible option. You can also swap plugins with standalone Mupen but PJ64 is more compatible.
Thanks for all the advice in this thread, I know n64 emulation is coming along but far from perfect. I installed and ran pj64 but I am still having an issue with finding wip 6 azimer. Is there a github or main site for it?
I tried all these suggestions and I have to say that while the pj64 team did fix the audio issue…they completely broke the emulator. I get much smoother experience through mupen in retroarch then pj64 by far. Im not really sure what to do here. If I go pj64 the video is choppy in some cases to the point where it becomes tough to play, or if i go mupen in retroarch the audop becomes choppy because the core cant keep up. Oh what we go through to relive childhood lol.
My i5 2500k handles the Glupen core at fullspeed for all 19 games I care about. I haven’t noticed the audio being off in any game, but there are some minor graphics problems here and there. I have hard sync frames set to 1 to avoid audio crackles while still having much lower display lag with hard sync enabled.
I don’t know your specs or what you are doing wrong. PJ64 should run full speed with any computer that is more recent than 10 years old. It runs full speed on my second computer that has a Core 2 Duo @ 3.0 Ghz.
The thing is that it claims it running full speed but isnt…3rd gen core i7 16GB DDR3 GTX 680 4GB FTW edition…its irrelevant though because someone above mentioned about hard gpu sync for sound and now mupen is working properly through retroarch, and btw mupen throug hretroarch is the ONLY emulator that will play major league baseball featuring ken griffey jr properly. Thank you to above poster. I Love the libretro community.!!!
Some time ago I got better emulation results for the mupen64 core by changing the audio rate from 48000 to 44100.
Nowadays I am not sure if this makes a difference, it might help you.
I am currently using the GLupeN64 core, it used to work very well for some games, but after the last upgrade, I have framereate drops, and I am using it with 44100.
An open source N64 emulator without plugins would be so great.
The plugin system has proven that it is the worst emulator approach ever.
The idea is cool, but the implementation and long-term support is just awful.
