Hello everyone,
I tried pokemon puzzle league on steam deck using retroarch mupen64plus next but the intro of the game has only audio without video! I tried the standalone rosalie mupen gui and the opening here does work fine. so what’s the problem with the core? I don’t want to use the standalone emulator because I tried star fox on it and has graphical issues. by the way, I’m playing with original n64 settings with no improvements whatsoever.
Hi. So first off, I have audio, but its choppy. I tested this on my Linux PC and on the Steam Deck too. Both have different configurations. The very first short logo in the beginning saying Nintendo and the ball coming in already has this issue. Then later when starting a new game, the animated intro sequence with spoken dialogue has this issue too.
It is probably an issue with some video codec. It plays at lower “FPS” around 34 or so. After the video sequence ends, the game jumps back to normal. I have versions of the game here “Pokemon Puzzle League (USA)” and “Pokemon Puzzle League (USA) (Wii Virtual Console)”. Interestingly the Virtual Console version on the Wii does not have both video intro sequences. Maybe Nintendo had some trouble to emulate and removed them? Just some speculation.
As I have the Steam Deck, and some choppy sound, you can try my emulator settings. I have RetroArch installed through the Steam store, version 1.21.0 right now. My RetroArch Settings > Audio > Output > Audio is set to “pulse”. Running the Mupen64Plus-Next core, the Core Options are RDP Plugin set to GLideN64, generally settings tried to be close as original hardware, CPU Core set to Dynarec, RSP Plugin to HLE.
So it’s a common issue.
aside from the opening, the game runs without any problems with both the core and the standalonde emulator.
In general, Nintendo 64 emulation is a mess without ParaLLEl or some other modern solution. If your system can handle it, changing both the RDP and RSP plugins to ParaLLEl will fix most issues that GlideN64 have. On the other hand, it will demand more processing power, especially with Rareware games.
Edit: whenever you change plugins, the core needs to be restarted (close and reopen any content).
I want to say, that on my gaming PC with PraLLEl I can play basically any N64 game without struggle (original resolution). Yet, these video sequences in this game struggle. I can even emulate PS3 on my system (just to give an idea its fairly strong enough PC). It should not struggle with video sequences in N64, there must be some codec issues there.
Absolutely. Even with ParaLLEl, there are plenty of situations in which stuttering happens when the game seems far from pushing the system. Nintendo 64 emulation, as a whole, is kind of abandoned. There’s some improvement coming from Ares, though coy and demanding even more processing power. When emulation reaches the “good enough” status, development always get stuck, and edge cases suffer because they’re too minor of an issue to care. To make matters worse, most of the famous N64 games are already fine, so there’s even less interest to fix whatever is lacking.
It’s annoying honestly when emulators have a problem with just a few games.