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N64 Config List v4

Bighead

Oversized Cranium
Hi everyone. It's been years since I was active in any emulation forums, but once upon a time I used to work on an emulation configuration list for N64 games because it was fun to test and share my experiences. The N64 was my all time favorite system, and seeing it emulated it is amazing to me. So to contribute to this great cause, I started this list to aid others by offering working configurations for games. Over time it has reached many, but sadly I did not update it in years and much work was needed. This year I picked up my long lost love of testing N64 games. I started over from scratch, and every game has been retested with the latest emulators and plugins that are currently available.

For those who have never heard of it, it is a complete list of N64 games with suggested emulator and plugin combinations. The goal of the list is to aid users when attempting to emulate N64 games, to get the best configuration with little hassle. Each configuration has a "Known Issues" section that states any errors with the configuration, and provides any known fixes to said errors.

It's easier to just to take a look for yourself here: Online Version - Mirror
And an offline version can be found on my downloads page: Downloads

Well, that was my big announcement. I hope some find it useful and enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it!

Edit: In case anyone stumbles on this post, the URL for my site is now: http://bhemuhelp.unaux.com/
 
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DETOMINE

New member
I remember that it took me so long to find a good configuration with only 3 or 4 games :). Great work man!
Have you considered testing some N64 games with dolphin? As far as I know, only Mario tennis 64 is worth testing (for now) on dolphin.

You know all the video plugins, right? Do you know if some of them are still in development?

Anyway, thanks for the list, it's an amazing job!
 
OP
Bighead

Bighead

Oversized Cranium
Thank you all for the kind words. Doing this list was a lot of fun, and it's definitely a huge upgrade from my old and outdated one from years ago. I figured we're probably still years away from HLE N64 emulation getting much better (if it even can) and LLE emulators to surface. N64 emulation seems behind most other systems in terms of active developers, advancement, and compatibility, so this was my way of contributing. Hopefully this list will come in handy to many for at least a few more years. I came to appreciate classic gaming again, and find myself playing older games over the newer ones lately.

I remember that it took me so long to find a good configuration with only 3 or 4 games :). Great work man!
Have you considered testing some N64 games with dolphin? As far as I know, only Mario tennis 64 is worth testing (for now) on dolphin.

Are you speaking of Virtual Console games? I doubt I'll ever test those. Dolphin is always actively being worked on, it's always getting better, and they have many active users on their forum. If a user finds that an N64 game runs better on Dolphin as Virtual Console as opposed to an N64 emulator in the future and informs me, I'll add a note to the list, but I'll probably never personally test the virtual console games. I will say Dolphin impresses me, it has a lot of good programmers behind it. I usually play games on it over my Wii for the 1920x1080 resolution. So it would not surprise me if eventually some of the N64 games "work better" in Dolphin than on today's N64 emulators.
 

DETOMINE

New member
Are you speaking of Virtual Console games? I doubt I'll ever test those. Dolphin is always actively being worked on, it's always getting better, and they have many active users on their forum. If a user finds that an N64 game runs better on Dolphin as Virtual Console as opposed to an N64 emulator in the future and informs me, I'll add a note to the list, but I'll probably never personally test the virtual console games. I will say Dolphin impresses me, it has a lot of good programmers behind it.[...] So it would not surprise me if eventually some of the N64 games "work better" in Dolphin than on today's N64 emulators.
Yes I am. I think you may add a note for Mario Tennis 64 (the emulation is near perfect, but you need a very powerful hardware).
As far as I know, the other virtual console N64 games are correctly emulated with project64/1964.

I usually play games on it over my Wii for the 1920x1080 resolution.
I play with the help of emulators because my (old) N64 doesn't work anymore. As long as my Wii works, I probably won't use Dolphin for Wii games.
Are you saying the graphics is better on Dolphin than on the original Wii?
 
OP
Bighead

Bighead

Oversized Cranium
Yes the graphics are much better.
Here's a good example. It's a pretty accurate interpretation of what it looks like on my Wii vs Dolphin. Change the youtube video quality to 1080p and full screen to see the difference.
Zelda Dolphin vs Wii - YouTube
That's 3x native resolution. With a beefy system you can do 4x. I occasionally lose a few FPS in 4x so that gives you an example of the required power.

Let's stay on topic though. I was surprised to find out that Mario Tennis works well in Dolphin, so I added a note. I did not test it myself but some have claimed slowdowns during power shots. Thanks for the heads up on this.
 

DETOMINE

New member
I ran across a problem with Rayman 2 : the Great Escape and Glide64 final. In the level "The Cave of bad dreams", the boss disappeared (well, jumped in the void may be a better description) and I was not able to continue further. It may not happen all the time with everyone but it does happen to me :p (project 64 1.6, Glide64 final from your website, "read every frame (slow!)" enabled).
Loading an old save state with jabo video plugin does solve the issue (the battle continue, I switched back to Glide at the end of the battle).
As Glide64 is the recommended plugin in your FAQ, I thought you may be interested to know that.
 
OP
Bighead

Bighead

Oversized Cranium
I have looked into this a bit, and I'm assuming the problem is the same as this guy?


Edit: After digging a little deeper, I have also stumbled on this 6 year old thread when Smiff was still around looking for input for the official RDB updates.
http://www.emutalk.net/threads/27562-RDB-WIP-download-improved-files-amp-help-test-PJ64-game-compatibility-please!?p=346690

Post #415, user "Thunderbird8" states: Not sure if this is all that helpful, but Rayman 2 seems to need a high Counter Factor in the Cave of Bad Dreams. If it's too low, the cave master will miss one of his jumps and fall into the pool of...stuff...below. A CF of 5 worked, but I skipped 4 when testing. I haven't seen any problems up to this point with a CF of 2 though, other than the aforementioned issue.

I am curious on how this change affects performance and stability in other parts of the game. If this is a viable fix and does not affect performance, it could very well be set once and never need modified again. Default PJ64 plugins were supposed to be used for these tests, I am guessing he experienced this issue with Jabo's. Since you got past this boss using a more recent version of the plugin, the question remains whether or not it's a timing issue with emulators or clipping issues with graphics plugins. It may be possible you got lucky and it happened to work the time you did use Jabo's. I am leaning more towards a timing issue. It would also be interesting to know how many emulators or plugins suffer this issue. This will require some experimentation.

This issue is also reported in the Mupen64plus compatibility list.
http://code.google.com/p/mupen64plus/wiki/GameCompatibility

If you happen to have a save state or SRAM before this boss, can you upload it please?
 
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DETOMINE

New member
Here is a savestate before the faulty jump. http://www.multiupload.nl/Q6M8NN7XKZ

But it's the second encounter (I do not have a savestate for the first encounter).

I am not able to reproduce the bug (I tried with the default project64 1.6 rdb, the unofficial 4.22 rdb, the glide64 plugin and the jabo plugin, everything works (CF=2)).

Maybe the bug can only be seen the first time?
 

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