How to use Rice's video plugin and to report problems

[Rice]

For Radeon users, make sure that Software T&L is turned on.

For DirectX, you should use "High End" combiner, may also try to use stage limited combiners

For OpenGL, you should use OGL 1.4, and also try OGL 1.2/1.3.


ASAIK, DirectX is working better than OGL for Radeon.


Please report other problems here, such as:

- system lockup.
- full screen mode problems: slowing down, .....
- Initialization error.
- others


A few things you should know before you want to report problems:
----------------------------------------------------------------
- Don't try to use Frame buffer features if you don't understand how it works and don't understand which option to use for a N64 game. DirectX frame buffer feature is added very late, not tested extensively. It works as it, for some N64 games, and won't work (or lock you PC up) for some other N64 games.
- Combiner problems are normal. Different video cards have different number of combining stages and combiner setting. Your video card may be not one of the best supported by this plugin.
Here is what you can do:
* Try to use different combiners
* Try OpenGL and DirectX
* DirectX is working better for most video cards
* The default setting should work fine (fairly good) for most video cards
* You may need to try different combiners for different games
* High end combiner should be the best choice for most recent video cards
- Conker is not fully supported
- Problems with DKR, Yoshi are known
- Frame buffer is supported in DirectX only, not under OpenGL.
- If you don't understand the options, don't want to change them

- Color buffer is different from depth buffer. Don't mix them.
- Color depth is not configurable in the plugin. You need to change it by selecting your window desktop color to 32bit true color
- You should always use 32bit color for your desktop. Frame buffer feature is supporting 32bit only for this moment
- 16bit depth buffer should work for everyone. Don't need to change it to 32bit depth buffer. Depth buffer setting is not very important, you can use anyone as far as it works for you.

Btw,
* this plugin works very good with geforce2 and TNT video card by using the TNT combiner
* Nvidia latest driver does not support TNT combiner for geforce2 video cards any more. The latest driver version that supported it is 41.19. If you have geforce2 MX or older video cards and want to use TNT combiner (which will give you the best results), you may want to degrade your video card driver.
* You may want to use the limited stage combiners if the default setting would work good enough for you.


* At last, there are plenty of other video plugins for you to try. Jabo's, Glide64 and N64GL, etc, are all very very good for many many games. You should be always able to get the best graphics with one of the available video plugins.



Rice

[neoak]

I can't get it to work in my card. Simply, if i load it default with the settings you said, BUT WITH FRAMEBUFFER SET TO "WITH EMULATOR", the game start but then the emu locks, and i can't stop the emulation without closing 1964.

If i change the Depth Buffer to 32 bits, It says "Can not initialize DX8, Check your DirectX Settings".

Simply, the plugin doesn't want to work with my card. I expected this, because 5.1.0 never worked with this Radeon, i don't know why.

Now, if i put the no framebuffer, as i ut down,the games work, to some extent, because Bomberman 64 crashed the emu.

Conker worked, but with the deffects you can see in the shots. I think the images speak for themselves. Oh, and i'm using the Omega Drivers based on Catalyst 3.10.

The settings used and the Screenshots are as atachments.

PD: If you gotta know, the backgroud is simply an image with Chii, that pattern, and Chobits written in English and Japanese :rolleyes:.

[neoak]

More screenshots.

[Hal]

Wow, I guess Im not alone when I experience these errors.(Using Radeon 9000)

[rcgamer]

More screenshots.

Its not just radeon cards, my geforce fx 5200 looks a lot like the screenshot shown and conkers is all green.

with all star baseball 2001 i got it working with the open gl setting but it freezes after a minute or so. usually when the camera view is about to switch. but it looks beautiful when it is working. with beetle adventure racing there are various errors and ive tried all the settings i could think of. the background for the most part looks good though especially the trees. errors in sky and water and bridges. I did get castevania looking good though with your plugin. anyways hope i didnt just waste your time. oh yeah and i have the newest drivers for my card.

[karth95]

Conker's does not work with Rice's 5.2.0 DLL. This is a known issue.

[Rice]

The first post is updated, please read it again before reporting your problem.

[revl8er]

I have found that the forceware 52.16 whql works the best with an fx5200, so you might want to try those drivers if you have that gfx card. I still get problems with oot and perfect dark, but it clears up problems in goldeneye and some other games.

[Rice]

And try to use 4-stage limited combiner instead of high-end combiner, because there are only 4 combiner stages in fx5200, and the driver reports to have 8 stages.

[Hexidecimal]

Playing mario tennis windowed with DirectX set to higher end cards, Software T&L enabled, i get 30 fps, windowed i get less then that, 25 playing, replays at 5 or 6 and hideously skipping.

Dr. Mario, is indeed playable, but, this is what i get with the following settings:

Software T&L Enabled, Direct X, Higher End Cards, Frambuffer Frame update to Default, n64 frame buffer set to with emulator, the pills fall and viruses visible, but the background is hideous. As seen here:

http://67.165.104.24/images/DR.MARIO%2064-0.jpg

(my screenshot, but upload isnt working for me)

Mario Kart 64 also works rather well with no frame buffer emulation, and the screen at the royal raceway works perfectly with complete framebuffer enabled, but the speed drop s to 30 fps.

(incase you havent noticed, im testing out frame buffer emulation, thankfully however, with the above settings i can at least see what i'm doing now. Brilliant work Rice.)

Recommended settings: Speedometer broken in Automobili Lamborghini

Recommended Settings: All Star Baseball 2001, no field detail, off green field, white stands, white bat, otherwise very playable.

Recommended Settings: F-Zero X, flickering City scape

Recommended Settings: Gauntlet Legends, no bottom bar, slight graphical flickering, no sound?

Recommended Settings: Goldeneye, hollow pistol graphics, long black screens before menu and levels

Recommended Settings: Bettle Adventure Racing, Car graphics half blocked by road, (Like the car is sitting half underground) sky errors, (i dont know if that was supposed to be fixed or not) and lack of road.

Recommended Settings: Perfect Dark: Bad textures on 3d letters, (multiple shades of supposed color, example, the RARE logo is golden, but several different sahdes shown in blocks. Bad textures.

Recommended Settings: Pilot Wings 64, ground and sky errors, texture repeat themselves.

[Rice]

Dr. Mario feature was broken before release.

[Hexidecimal]

Updated above post, where all my updates will be from now on

[Clements]

Many games work a lot better with 5.2.0 than 5.1.0d for me, but Ocarina of Time seems to not like any configuration I try. Here is a shot of the pause menu screen using Direct X with S/W T&L and everything else left at the defaults.

If I turn off S/W T&L the whole game is broken completely (this is odd because I don't need to use this setting in most other games I've tried). OpenGL also looks much worse with many artifacts everywhere, so I can't use that. Could be a Forceware-only problem, I don't know. I've tried both 52.16 WHQL and 53.03 WHQL and both give the exact same result.

In-game is quite good, although the Jpeg background in the market flickers with a large polygon thing obstucting the screen as I move round the market (I'm using PJ64's RSP.dll BTW) and the 'N' cube and 'Nintendo' in the intro are completely the wrong colours.

[jollyrancher]

Recommended Settings: All Star Baseball 2001, no field detail, off green field, white stands, white bat, otherwise very playable.

Haven't tried it yet with new 1964 and video plugin, but the graphics are close to 100% perfect with Rice's 5.1d on a gf3.

[yyyc186]

Using a Geforce 3 I can use the "middle card" combiner sucessfully but not the geforce combiner.

1. When using the Geforce combiner on NFL blitz I get the first picture attached.
2. The ground in NFL Blitz goes from green to grey (second picture)
3. Likewise on it draws the court and then overwrites it weird in NBA Hangtime 99 and 2001 (see the third picture attached).

Any ideas?
Thanks for all your effort!

[Hexidecimal]

I figured they be ok on a geforce, and i have a geforce 4 mx i could pop in if i was really worried about it right this second, but, I don't see the point in continually swapping out cards for PC and N64 emulation, because my geforce wont play prince of persia and NFS:U looks like shite on it, im just testing radeon settings on games in a feeble attempt to help out Rice with his plugin dev.

[Rice]

Geforce 3 is not meant to use TNT combiner. You might be able to give the TNT combiner a try if you degrade your driver to below 41.19.

Geforce FX 5200, 5600, 5700 should use 4-stage limited combiner instead of high-end combiner because they only have 4-stages instead of reported 8 stages.

I am not very sure about Ti4200/4400/4600, and geforce 3. They all have 2x4 texture units. If high-end combiner does not work very well, then please use the 4-stage combiners.

Try to use 2-stage combiner (I know it is very bad) for Geforce 4 MX440/460. I am not sure if 4-stage combiner works for them.

For geforce 2 MX, if you don't want to degrade your driver to 41.19, then you have to use 2-stage combiner. Or just use other plugins instead of mine.

[yyyc186]

in nfl blitz and nba i the floor issues go away if I use the opengl version of the plugin instead of the directx version (except for NBA the characters get 1/2 drawn cf. the floor)

The same is true in 1080 - opengl works fine, directx has large shards of colour in the snowboard selector screen and white lines around the boarder.

Rice - just to be 100% sure, what is your combiner recommendation for a geforce3?

[yyyc186]

just re-read your note. I tried:

All of:
1. The limited 4 stage
2. The middle
3. The high-end result

And all result in weird floor effects on geforce 3 in the various games mentioned (add madden to the list).

latest directx, latest nvidia (from their web site), amd 1800.

on the other hand swap to opengl and they look better (proper floors)

If you want me to test something/send a log etc. just yell

[Rice]

No, I am not sure which combiner to use for geforce3, because I don't have one.

OpenGL combiners (Nvidia, TNT, and Ogl 1.4) should works better because they support multiple textures in each stages.

That's all I can tell. Good luck to everyone.

I have tried to do my best, I am not god, I have not feeling what kind of graphics you have got on your video cards. Please don't report such combiner related problems, because I cannot solve them by using my video card. Go ahead to use other video plugins. And pray for new version of other plugins make games looking better on your video cards.

[Trotterwatch]

One problem with the framebuffer on Radeon cards, it's hellishly slow. From what I can gather even top end Radeon cards have a framebuffer capacity less than half of a GF4 MX.

Seems like this is one of those issues ATI can't be arsed fixing as they don't believe PC game developers would use it.

[gavinpoo]

When trying to use DirectX with 9800Pro get the error message "Can not initialize DX8, check your Direct setting. OpenGL works but with many problems - mainly missing backgrounds/textures. Fast and smooth though.

[Clements]

When trying to use DirectX with 9800Pro get the error message "Can not initialize DX8, check your Direct setting. OpenGL works but with many problems - mainly missing backgrounds/textures. Fast and smooth though.

Have you set your depth buffer to 16-Bit (def)? If not, then change it to that to fix the problem.

....

It's easy to forget that Rice's resources are limited, and he can only do the best with what he has. I personally think that Rice's plugin is the most sophisticated available and tries to have a combiner mode for every video card under the sun, but you must remember that it's tough for Rice to fix the problems with certain combiners, since he can't even test them on his own machine.

So far I've found Rice's plugin to work almost flawlessly with about half the games I've tried, with the others looking much better than the previous version like Mario Tennis. Direct X was completely broken for me before (5.1.0d), but now it works perfectly most of the time, and if it doesn't I use S/W T&L and it then works. So it's best to keep trying until it looks the best for your card, and stop bugging poor Rice about which is the best combiner for a certain card! :1964:

[Burnpro]

i don`t find rice plugin the best out there.. or maybe its the 1964 .99 the main prob? i cant get a game to work with that combo..

at least if its good but not for newbs like me..

[Trotterwatch]

I think the latest Forcewares have messed some things up.

In testing at one point I was using an 900mhz Athlon with GF3 and for the first time ever using that machine I was able to run games looking perfectly without 3D Analyze. Before the beta versions I always need to use 3D Ani to fix games.

Now unless something was broken in subsequent beta versions the GF3 should be fine using the 44.03 drivers (I think) and look perfect on pretty much all games.

Someone who is good with emulation (and can tweak settings etc) and who has a GF3 should try experimenting as I am sure it should work perfectly fine. Try forcing SW T&L anyways, see if that helps.

[TheBiscuit]

First off, I just want to congratulate Rice, on the massive amount of improvement in the new version of his plugin. It now produces the best results with the majority of the games I play.
There are two things I'd like to have clarified, mind you. First, why do I get such weird results in DirectX mode? I use a GForce FX5200, and quite often the colours are not what they should be; by this I mean that the grass is a pleasing shade of steely grey, and the sky is red! :happy:
I can get nice results using the OpenGL engine, but if I'm not mis-interpreting, the DirectX driver can do stuff that the OpenGL one can't. Is that right?
Second, do I have to use the older (41.xx/42.xx series) drivers for my card to get the best results. Opinions seem to vary... :unsure:
In a similar vein, will I get different results depending on which DirectX version I have installed?
I've been lurking on this forum for some time now, but seem unable to discern the answers, especially to the driver question.

Thanks in advance,

The Biscuit

[Nighty0]

I think the latest Forcewares have messed some things up.

In testing at one point I was using an 900mhz Athlon with GF3 and for the first time ever using that machine I was able to run games looking perfectly without 3D Analyze. Before the beta versions I always need to use 3D Ani to fix games.

Now unless something was broken in subsequent beta versions the GF3 should be fine using the 44.03 drivers (I think) and look perfect on pretty much all games.

Someone who is good with emulation (and can tweak settings etc) and who has a GF3 should try experimenting as I am sure it should work perfectly fine. Try forcing SW T&L anyways, see if that helps.

I think this too. I go to take off the dust my GF2MX400 64MB, since 41.09 drivers don't support my GFFX5600. I'll try to test when i have some time....
I have many problems with detonator 44.03 & 45.33, but less than FW53.03...see my screenshots (http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?threadid=17955)
SW T&L don't help me........
My computer totally locked 2 times with rice's plugins... :(

Test complete, see the screeshots http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?threadid=18004

[Clements]

First off, I just want to congratulate Rice, on the massive amount of improvement in the new version of his plugin. It now produces the best results with the majority of the games I play.
There are two things I'd like to have clarified, mind you. First, why do I get such weird results in DirectX mode? I use a GForce FX5200, and quite often the colours are not what they should be; by this I mean that the grass is a pleasing shade of steely grey, and the sky is red! :happy:
I can get nice results using the OpenGL engine, but if I'm not mis-interpreting, the DirectX driver can do stuff that the OpenGL one can't. Is that right?
Second, do I have to use the older (41.xx/42.xx series) drivers for my card to get the best results. Opinions seem to vary... :unsure:
In a similar vein, will I get different results depending on which DirectX version I have installed?
I've been lurking on this forum for some time now, but seem unable to discern the answers, especially to the driver question.

Thanks in advance,

The Biscuit

Certain games in Direct X have problems with FX cards, but the S/W T&L option really does help a lot in certain cases, so try using this option with either the Higher or 4-Stage limit combiner.

The OpenGL engine does not have a framebuffer yet, but not all games use it so it's a good alternative if Direct X doesn't work. OpenGL support is relatively new to Rice's plugin so don't expect it to match Direct X quite yet.

I suggest you stick to Forcewares - they are designed for the FX cards and 41.xx/42.xx offer poor support for them and degrades performance of your games generally, and changing to older drivers just to use Rice's plugin would be a nuisance. Eventually the Forcewares will be better hopefully anyway.

With Direct X, it doesn't matter since DX 9.0b is backwards compatible with earlier versions used by Rice's plugin.

[StAmAtIs]

Why do the graphics look different once you update to the latest nvidia drivers?
Things look different and some graphics look like they are missing. Should I go back to my previous drivers cuz everything looked 10 times better?

[ingonab]

The "Force Nearest Filter (faster, low quality)" option hasn't done what it should (force rendering without linear filtering) since the last version.

[Clements]

Why do the graphics look different once you update to the latest nvidia drivers?
Things look different and some graphics look like they are missing. Should I go back to my previous drivers cuz everything looked 10 times better?

Forceware drivers are really meant for FX cards so you'll be better off with an older driver that is suited to your card. I doubt that the Forceware drivers could do anything to improve a TNT2, since it's very old (relatively speaking here), and is actually more likely to slow performance and cause artifacts than provide any benefit. I think something like 10.xx/20.xx dets are better, but I'm not too sure as I've never owned one.

[Rice]

The "Force Nearest Filter (faster, low quality)" option hasn't done what it should (force rendering without linear filtering) since the last version.

I haven't paid attention to this feature for sometime. But, how can you tell if it work or not?

[ingonab]

Force Nearest Filter(I haven't paid attention to this feature for sometime. But, how can you tell if it work or not?
In the earlier version in which Force Nearest Filter worked, when it was used, every sprite[1] that was rendered was rendered with sharp jagged edges. (Instead of Linear Filtering which blurs the edges.)

Although jagged edges might seem visually inferior to Linear Filtering, it was good for one thing: For avoiding the bleeding edges artifacts from Linear Filtering. The idea was to combine Nearest Filter with a form of full-screen filtering (e.g. Display it through a TV[2]) to have a picture that is both smooth and without edge artifacts.

[1] For the lack of a better word.
[2] A nicer solution is if the plugin had its own full-screen filter.

[Rice]

Thanks, I will take a look.

[TheBiscuit]

Certain games in Direct X have problems with FX cards, but the S/W T&L option really does help a lot in certain cases, so try using this option with either the Higher or 4-Stage limit combiner.

The OpenGL engine does not have a framebuffer yet, but not all games use it so it's a good alternative if Direct X doesn't work. OpenGL support is relatively new to Rice's plugin so don't expect it to match Direct X quite yet.

I suggest you stick to Forcewares - they are designed for the FX cards and 41.xx/42.xx offer poor support for them and degrades performance of your games generally, and changing to older drivers just to use Rice's plugin would be a nuisance. Eventually the Forcewares will be better hopefully anyway.

With Direct X, it doesn't matter since DX 9.0b is backwards compatible with earlier versions used by Rice's plugin.

These were the lines of my thinking anyway, so thank you very much for the confirmation. I am fascinated to note that you say that things will get better with NEWER forceware drivers. I was under the (clearly mistaken) impression that if there was any difference between the new and old driver versions, it was something that they had decided for whatever reason to change, which Rice would have to alter his code to take into account...

[Gozu33]

It has been a while since i have checked(i hate sounding like i don't know about computers!!!) how do i find what video card i have?

[backgamon]

Hum....strange.
OpenGL work much good of DirectX with my radeon....
And many games doesn't want to start with DX(launch emu-game start...and emu exit-don't crash just exit)[kicked to windows]
---otherwise i think is the best plugin for some games(like offroad challenge-work perfectly on openGL 1.4)---
I just don't understand why DX don't work for me......

[and sorry-very average english] -_-

[Stop It]

Yey, finally with 1964 0.99 i can play my old n64 games again, with 0.85 and older plugins i could never get a stable fps, now its 50/60 fps all the way with cpu time to spare :D
anyway, there are a few Games with slight problems that ive noticed (i will post pics once i find somewhere to host them)
(btw the GFX plugin is default except the combiner (high end seems to work better than 4 stage)) and the res (1024 x 768 32bit)

Shadowman US : Has a few sky texture imperfections, and characters suffer from missing / transparent polygons
1080 Snowboarding US : Sky imperfections again
Legend of Zelda : Both OOT & MM : both have the sun drawn incorrectly, missing text in some menus, and slightly incorrect colours
Starfox 64 : Starts off good then half way into mission one decends into a mess of graphical mess and errors, and becomes unplayable

I will update this when I can be bothered to play some more games :P

[Troublemaker]

1964 0.9.9 works really buggy on my computer(look at the specification under signature, video plugin is rices 5.3.1 but with 5.2.0 is the same thing). First when I start any rom in Direct X mode,screen is black and I hear sound but that works only for a few seconds; after that 1964 closes down. In Open GL mode it works but graphic is bad and in many games it`s not even playable. When I switch from Open GL to Direct X mode sometimes roms start to work with Direct X(no black screen, no closing down) and sometimes not. Two times when I switched to full screen in Direct X mode, computer restarted. Sometimes this message(look at this message down) just pops up(or simmilar one) and I must restart computer to make it go away.
It looks like this: 1964.exe - Application Error
The instruction at "0x77f581bd" referenced memory at "0x00000100". The memory could not be "written".
Click on OK to terminate the program

Rice could you expain to me wtf is happenning and is there a way I could fix it?

[ultima528]

well, in the help file for 1964 0.99, it says the following:


Recommended Configuration for 1964 Basic Distribution

Processor: Intel Pentium III 600MHz or comparable processor. Some games will require much faster machines, while some others will work great on much slower machines. 1964 uses scalar SSE instructions when available. Any processor with full SSE1 fpu support will benefit from this.

Memory: 128MB RAM. 256MB or better is ideal

Video Card: NVidia GeForce 2 Series or newer

Audio Card: Unknown

Operating System: Microsoft WindowsXP

your specs seem to barely even be on par, so that may be the problem (?)

[Troublemaker]

Well I don`t have that problems with 1964 0.8.5, I tried 0.9.9 version with Rice`s 5.0.1 video plugin and it`s working, but it`s hella slow, when 0.9.9 version is working with 5.3.1 plugin it`s working fast(normal) but only problem is that in major cases it won`t work(it doesn`t have anything to do with what rom do I start). And to mention that 0.9.9 version is working fine with jabos 1.5.1 video plugin.

[DarkvaleN]

Here are a few shots of Rice´s video plugin.
All of them are various problems in the next games:

Hope this help people with radeon and Rice with develompent ;-)
Plugin Specs: DirectX, High end Combiner, Flip Color, SW T&L Enabled, Default Filters, Defaults in the ini for all games.
These Settings are that works best with my Graphic Card. An ATI Radeon 9800 XT with Catalist 3.10.

[-Shadow-]

1. Your Catalyst is out of date !
2. Try the Unofficial release of daedelus 5.2.0 that rotterwatch has posted. It is programmed for radeons.


3. Its off-topic , but : how the hell can you get to ikana canyon with 7 energy hearts ? On my Original n64 , i went to ikana with 12 hearts .And now on the emu , i just got the gilded sword and got already 8 hearts !

[DarkvaleN]

I´m going to test that release to see if it has any diffs.
Meanwhile i´ve taken some more shots with 5.3.1


Btw H3ad5h0tter, i have 7 hearts because i completed the other dungeons 2 times to rescue all the fairies and get the 1/2 damage. I´m planning get those extra hearts when i finish Ikana canyon, before the final dungeon.


My other Specs:
P4 3.2, Windows XP SP1 up to date,Shots taken using 1964 0.99

[Trotterwatch]

2. Try the Unofficial release of daedelus 5.2.0 that rotterwatch has posted. It is programmed for radeons.

This is worth doing, though it is worth noting that this isn't actually programmed for Radeons. It just happens to be a build that works better with Radeons (in so far that it is more stable).

[zargos]

I have got a Geforce4 MX 440 64MB TV (with Athlon XP 2400+ and 512MB RAM).

What is the best configuration for this graphic card, please?

Thank you.

[ryanraab]

I have got a Geforce4 MX 440 64MB TV (with Athlon XP 2400+ and 512MB RAM).

What is the best configuration for this graphic card, please?

Thank you.

I almost have the same card has you I picked defuelt settings and for the conbiner I picked To Fit Card. All games I play work perfect. Hope this helps. If have problems I'll see if I can help more. Still testing new version so I'll get back to you. Only test directx mode for now. I'm checking to see if opengl is better I'm guessing it should be.

[PsyMan]

All the plugins that I've tried seem to have a specific problem with Shadowgate 64 (E). When the game shows 2d moving graphics (this happens during the ingame videos) speed falls from 50fps to 0-20fps. Is it possible for Rice to fix this on a later version of his video plugin since he was able to fix similar problems? (ex: Lylat Wars, Minchief Makers)

[Keither_Crane]

See the staus bar glitching out? Other than that, this game runs perfectly. Could someone tell me how to fix this bug?

[Clements]

Enable 'Alternative texture size calculation' in the Current game options in Rice's Video settings to fix the hud.

[Keither_Crane]

Thanks for your help. I'm also not able to see the character sprites in Ogre Battle 64. Any ideas?

[raphsing]

the games when I put it in full screen don't stop to blink... why?

I have a g-force 6600 . driver nvidia 81.95 and the smoothing and the enhacement effects don't work the 2d - textures are still having bad appearence.

[Owen9456]

*cough* *cough*

http://img35.imageshack.us/img35/4411/greenstuff.png

Does dumping green textures instaid of normal ones count as a bug? :(

Ive been annoyed with this problem, and nomatter what rom i try to get textures off of, it still dumps slighty green textures.