Wicked Flicker

Hi All,

I've been trying to get mupen64plus running smoothly on my own for a while, but I just can't seem to get it working right. What I have is very bad flicker on a few games. I'm running the latest 1.99 version which I built from source.

The flicker is very strong and makes the games unplayable. I've googled almost every combo of words I can think of to no avail. I've tried turning fog off, ensuring screen updating was set to 1 for the ROM as well. I dabbled with manipulating settings, but honestly I'm not confident in what I'm modifying.

Thinking it could be my ROMs, I installed PJ64 in WINE and the video runs very smoothly there with the same ROM. If it was perfect, I'd just stay with PJ64, but the constant flakiness there (problems loading audio plugins, problems switching between full and windowed) are enough to turn me off of that as well. I'd really just like to get the native emulator running and not have to worry about wine.

Anyway, I'm running Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic on a dual core AMD with integrated HD4200 graphics.

**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 0: ALC889A Analog [ALC889A Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: SB [HDA ATI SB], device 1: ALC889A Digital [ALC889A Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: HDMI [HDA ATI HDMI], device 3: ATI HDMI [ATI HDMI]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0



01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Device 9710



As far as I know, my graphics drivers are installed and working properly.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

No, I haven't tried any new plugins yet. I'll give those a shot next time I get a chance to debug. I'll also get a screenshot if I can.

Thanks for the reply. Will update soon.

Thanks Richard, I'll try that. I didn't realize there were values other than 0 or 1 for the screenupdate setting.

I'm not sure if you can access these, but give it a try:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/52655604@N06/4854903052/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/52655604@N06/4854268033/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/52655604@N06/4854887346/

It almost looks like macro blocking, but it happens so much and so fast it looks like flicker.

BTW Narann, I downloaded and compiled the glide64 video plugin, unfortunately something went wrong with the build and mupen doesn't recognize it:

__ __ __ _ _ ____ _
| \/ |_ _ _ __ ___ _ __ / /_ | || | | _ \| |_ _ ___
| |\/| | | | | '_ \ / _ \ '_ \| '_ \| || |_| |_) | | | | / __|
| | | | |_| | |_) | __/ | | | (_) |__ _| __/| | |_| \__ \
|_| |_|\__,_| .__/ \___|_| |_|\___/ |_| |_| |_|\__,_|___/
|_| http://code.google.com/p/mupen64plus/
Mupen64Plus Console User-Interface Version 1.99.3

UI-console: attached to core library 'Mupen64Plus Core' version 1.99.3
Includes support for Dynamic Recompiler.
Core: Goodname: Mario Kart 64 (U) [!]
Core: Name: MARIOKART64
Core: MD5: 3A67D9986F54EB282924FCA4CD5F6DFF
Core: CRC: 3e5055b6 2e92da52
Core: Imagetype: .z64 (native)
Core: Rom size: 12582912 bytes (or 12 Mb or 96 Megabits)
Core: Version: 1446
Core: Manufacturer: Nintendo
Core: Country: USA
UI-Console: Cheat codes disabled.
UI-console: using Video plugin: 'Glide64' v1.99.3
UI-console: using Audio plugin: 'Mupen64Plus SDL Audio Plugin' v1.99.3
UI-console: using Input plugin: 'Mupen64Plus SDL Input Plugin' v1.99.3
UI-console: using RSP plugin: 'Hacktarux/Azimer High-Level Emulation RSP Plugin' v1.99.3
Core Error: broken Video plugin; function(s) not found.
UI-Console: error from core while attaching Video plugin.
Core Status: Rom closed.

I'm going to attempt Richards suggestion with the update settings for the game before I go back and try and debug what happened with the plugin. Will report back soon.

Thanks.

Hmmm... I could have sworn I posted a reply about this a while ago, but I was able to get things working by playing around with the ScreenUpdateSetting values for the individual ROMs. It took a while because I had multiple locations with the .ini files and I just happened to be updating the wrong one.

After I got the flicker gone, there were still some sound and small video issues, however I tried a different ROM of the same game and everything ran perfectly. I've since got the ones I wanted working (almost) perfectly and even managed to get them launched from within XBMC and playable with my xbox360 wireless controllers.

Thanks everyone for your help on this one.