Problems with N64 and PSX cores (crashes, bugs)

Libretro Cores
#1

Hello…

I am having crashing problems using the N64 and PSX cores. Using RetroArch 1.3.6 and latest core in Online Updater.

  1. All the N64 cores crash on boot if rewind is enabled, regardless of video driver.

  2. GLupeN64 and Mupen64Plus appear to crash if the video driver is “vulkan”. ParaLLEl doesn’t have this problem. My card has vulkan support.

  3. Mednafen PSX HW crashes if video driver is “gl” (unless core is explicitly set to “opengl” in core settings - the default core setting in cfg is “vulkan”)

  4. The fast forward feature (spacebar) in Mednafen PSX HW doesn’t work until changing resolution in core settings (using “vulkan” renderer). Doesn’t happen in Mednafen PSX core, or software mode of HW version.

No other cores seem to have these problems… is there any solution or am I doomed to use “gl” video driver and software mode in Mednafen PSX, missing out on all the nice features in HW version like PGXP etc.

#2

[QUOTE=massrefuse;52492]Hello…

I am having crashing problems using the N64 and PSX cores. Using RetroArch 1.3.6 and latest core in Online Updater.

  1. All the N64 cores crash on boot if rewind is enabled, regardless of video driver.

  2. GLupeN64 and Mupen64Plus appear to crash if the video driver is “vulkan”. ParaLLEl doesn’t have this problem. My card has vulkan support.

  3. Mednafen PSX HW crashes if video driver is “gl” (unless core is explicitly set to “opengl” in core settings - the default core setting in cfg is “vulkan”)

  4. The fast forward feature (spacebar) in Mednafen PSX HW doesn’t work until changing resolution in core settings (using “vulkan” renderer). Doesn’t happen in Mednafen PSX core, or software mode of HW version.

No other cores seem to have these problems… is there any solution or am I doomed to use “gl” video driver and software mode in Mednafen PSX, missing out on all the nice features in HW version like PGXP etc.[/QUOTE]

use latest nightly of retroarch or compile it yourself from latest sources(since buildbot seems to be not working) and retest.

#3

1.3.6 is the stable release and I am wary of nightlies for stability reasons. plus, compilation often fails and requires massive Visual Studio when I barely can code C

Testing using these nightly builds:

Retroarch.7z - 2016-12-08 glupen64_libretro.dll.zip - 2016-12-05 parallel_libretro.dll.zip - 2016-12-05 mednafen_psx_hw_libretro.dll.zip - 2016-12-05

With no settings changed, but the above cores installed (video driver = gl):

  1. Mednafen PSX HW appears to boot correctly even with vulkan renderer set using gl video driver. Seems like it ignores the vulkan core setting and uses either opengl or software mode of the core. Fast forward works.

  2. ParaLLEl crashes unless vulkan video driver is used.

  3. GLupeN64 works fine.

Now changing video driver to vulkan:

  1. Mednafen PSX HW boots into vulkan mode and the fast-forward bug remains (enable and disable fullscreen hack mode gets fast forward working again).

  2. ParaLLEl works correctly now.

  3. GLupeN64 doesn’t crash but fails to start, going back to menu.

#4

That’s all expected behavior, actually. libretro-gl cores require a GL context, libretro-vulkan cores require a vulkan context. beetle-psx-hw is supposed to fall back to GL mode when the context is GL but reports on the forum suggest that doesn’t always work. ParaLLEl will not work at all with a GL context.

Fast-forward usually doesn’t work at all with vulkan because there is a known bug that prevents removing vsync altogether. That’s interesting that you’re able to fast-forward with vulkan after changing some options.

We would like to have some more graceful fallback behavior across the board but we’re not there yet.

#5

Thanks for the insight. I kind of figured to something liek that - though no other 2d core (mGBA, gambatte, nestopia, snes9x etc) I have tried has problems with vulkan vs gl video driver. For them it does not seem to matter what video driver is selected.

This is bad news for those who want to use setups with GLupeN64 and Beetle-PSX-HW because of the vulkan/opengl conflict :frowning: Plus RE must be closed and reopen when changing video driver. On the second test (nightlies) I tried switching vulkan->gl video driver and running GLupeN64 which then crashed instead of doing nothing like before.

Hopefully a solution can be found or at least crashes prevented - maybe a fallback video driver (like vulkan is priority 1, opengl is priority 2 etc) could make a more graceful fallback. I don’t like to mess with settings too much so I would stick with gl driver and use software renderer of of beetle psx.

Another question: what is the main difference of beetle psx and beetle psx hw? assuming one uses software renderer on PSX HW plugin, is it the same? one runs better?

#6

2D cores are all software rendered, so they can run on any context.

Yeah, the different contexts are certainly a complication. :frowning:

Using software rendering, there is no difference between the two.