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Black lines and artifacts in Zelda 64, Other problems...

T

Tillin9

Mupen64Plus Dev.
First off, I want to thank the dev team for all their hard work. I was able to get mupen64 0.5 for Linux more or less working. However, I have a few problems. For some roms I get black lines and random white pixel artifacts. I saw the box in video options, so this doesn't appear to be a new problem. However, either on or off, nothing seemed to change.

I'm using X.org 7.0.22 with the ati proprietary driver 8.26.18 (the newest) all under Debian testing. I know the hardware is fine (I'm not overclocking), as my Radeon 9700 Pro is able to run Mupen64 and other N64 emulators on the same machine (it can dual boot) under Windows XP. Burn-in tests with 3DMark don't produce artifacts and I have a Zalman cooler on it so I doubt the card is overheating.

I get about 45-60 FPS on Zelda64 with Rice's plugin and fsaa cranked up, much slower speeds are detected with other plugins but the animation is very smooth so I'm not sure its reporting correctly. I tried with and without fsaa as well as the various aticonfig sync options, so I doubt the black lines or artifacts are a driver issue.

I'm using the Linux binaries provided. I have not yet tried to compile mupen myself, let me know if I should expect to have to do this.

One final item is that if I set any video plugin to a resolution above 800x600 the emulation will not start and mupen will crash. Also some video plugins will simply not work. Maybe there is a bigger issue here? Like I'm missing a library.

Any help or suggestions would be welcome. Thanks in advance.
 
OP
T

Tillin9

Mupen64Plus Dev.
I checked the thread you suggested, but it only showed how to enable an ati driver. I know my ati driver is installed and yes glxinfo shows direct rendering = yes. Also other 3D apps work, such as glxgears (at high speed indicating hardware acceleration) and ivview (an OpenInventor visualization tool I use for work). Mupen itself will load and display 3D. My primary issue are black lines and white pixel artifacts. I also have some screen size and stability issues, but I can live with playing in 800x600.

As for what this could be, it is possible it is a driver issue, as ATI's drivers are known to be a work in progress. However, since I have tried many configurations, they have options for texture sync problem and this doesn't effect what I see, I doubt my lines are due to a driver issue.

Anyway...Let me give a plugin rundown:

Rice's plugin - Works the best, 45-60 FPS, only issues are artifacts and 800x600 limit.
glN64 v0.4.1 - Works, but reports 12-20 FPS (feels smoother though), artifacts and 800x600 limit.
Glide64 v0.7 ME SP8 - crashes X, not surprising since I don't have a Voodoo or a glide wrapper.
TR64 OplenGL v0.7.8 - loads but doesn't display anything but black, mupen generally crashes soon after this.
Mupen64 software gfx - crashes, figures as it says very unstable beta.

Maybe this will shed some light on what might be the problem?

Finally, not to get into flame war here, but I am not a big fan of Nvidia. The cards they make are usually of poor quality. We bought around 50 systems with Nvidia 6800 cards for work less than a year ago. The machines were going to be used in many different tasks. Some were set aside as computational cluster machines, we were thinking about using the GPU as a DSP for vector computations but the plan fell through, and ended up only using the video card as a vga console. Others were used as Windows workstations, others run Linux mainly for ivview and other visualization programs. On three separate machines the video went. Two were cluster machines, i.e. the video card was not being used. One took the Nforce2 motherboard with it., another managed to ruin the Cosair RAM in it. Besides the old Trident PCI cards in the Pentium I days, no video card I know of has burnt out and taken other hardware with it. A friend in another division ordered some Dells and put Nvidia cards in them and had at least one card blow out on him. Though the system had Intel integrated video so he didn't need to buy more cards.

I'll be hard pressed to recommend an Nvidia card in anything with hardware failures like that.

I know the Linux support is supposed to be better, but from my experience the install process is more or less the same. I can download a .sh and run it as root to install either driver. The Nvidia install gave me a lot of problems due to its inability to compile its module. First off it could not pick which gcc version to use for compiling its module, I had to manually change the symlink. Second, even though I was using a custom kernel (i.e. I had a /usr/src/linux all ready to go) it could not compile a loadable module. I had to recompile my kernel with less strict version controls for modules, etc. This was a pain, though to be fair, rather well documented. While the ATI installed could pick the right gcc and compile without effort (a kernel module is also not technically needed for 3D acceleration though it helps get better speed), it needed me to manually update an X.org library path and rehash. This issue is not well documented and I had to spend some time looking into the solution. So for me at least, the install process was equally as painful.

Just for kicks I'll bring mupen and a copy of my Zelda64 rom to work tomorrow and see if our workstations can run it more easily.

EDIT: Spelling
 
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OP
T

Tillin9

Mupen64Plus Dev.
Tried the emulator at work, same issues with the lines. Right now I highly doubt its a driver issue and the problem manifests under both ATI and Nvidia proprietary drivers on seperate machines. I also downloaded the free roms for testing. They don't seem to have the problems (well, I haven't tested all of them yet) so I'm guessing its an emulator/ rom issue.

Anybody have Zelda64 working on their systems?
 
S

Sri Narayan

New member
yes i can play it with my geforce2 mx400.

one line you have written is wrong:

"Glide64 v0.7 ME SP8 - crashes X, not surprising since I don't have a Voodoo or a glide wrapper."

this driver is ported to opengl you don't need a wrapper or a voodoo.

ciu
 
OP
T

Tillin9

Mupen64Plus Dev.
Well, after some work I realized it was an FSAA problem. The ATI driver seems to have an issue with 9x00 series hardware running FSAA. The Nvidia boxes at work had drivers from three years ago with similar issues. I installed the most recent driver and the lines went away on the Nvidia machines. Turning off FSAA also made the problem vanish. This is not Mupen specific, its just that very few apps on the lab computers use 3D and FSAA, and I naively put FSAA on my Radeon machines before testing without.

I feel really dumb. Anyway... I'm actually working with ATI to get this problem fixed. Although since the Xx00 and X1x00 series cards don't have this issue, I might just buy a new card if all else fails.

Thanks again for all the help.
Sorry to revive an old thread.

To Mods: Please don't remove the attachments for a few days. (couldn't find another place to post some txt files for debugging Radeon driver issue, sorry)
 
M

marchin

New member
who can help me?? my rom is pokemon stadium 2 and when i try to enter in differents types of battle the screen becomes black. So why it happen??
 
Agozer

Agozer

16-bit Corpse | Moderator
marchin said:
who can help me?? my rom is pokemon stadium 2 and when i try to enter in differents types of battle the screen becomes black. So why it happen??
Click to expand...
We can't help you unless you post your computer specs.
 
C

cellstie

New member
marchin said:
The plugin is Glide 0.8 Wonder
Click to expand...

Do you know if there is a linux version of it?

or alternatively a linux version of the Glide Wonder Plus plugin wich is actually available in mupen64 0.5.1 (Windows version)?

The Wonder Plus handles Paper Mario better than the 0.7 SP8 veriion "available for linux"....

Cheers
c.
 
J

JoshTriplett

New member
cellstie said:
Do you know if there is a linux version of it?

or alternatively a linux version of the Glide Wonder Plus plugin wich is actually available in mupen64 0.5.1 (Windows version)?

The Wonder Plus handles Paper Mario better than the 0.7 SP8 veriion "available for linux"....
Click to expand...
Yes, please try my Linux port of Glide64 0.8 "Wonder Plus", available in the thread at http://www.emutalk.net/showthread.php?t=37658 . I posted source code patches and information early in the thread, and a binary Linux version later on if you have trouble compiling (though as always with binaries, you may have library version issues depending on how much your system differs from mine).
 
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