Nintendo 64 Emulation Documentation

[Iconoclast]

The old version of this thread was deleted. This new version contains my CHM help file, explaining how to emulate all supported N64 games optimally (with minimal issues).

I admit, I will also be copying Project64's GameFAQ and BigHead's configuration list, but I am not saying I will just copy and paste information from these resources into my CHM and call it 'my' work. I double-check these things. For example, BigHead's list says that the best emulator for Quest 64 is either Project64 or 1964, and that the best plugins are Jabo's and Rice's. I spent about one hour of time configuring this game, and I found that using Project64 v1.4, or an older version of Project64, will fix the pausing core issue for this game, and that you should really use glN64 as your graphics plugin. (I hear glN64 doesn't work on Project64...could someone tell me about this?)

Post in this thread if you have any questions, comments, or especially corrections (preferrably those that would be helpful) on my work. If you can find any mistakes I made in emulation advice, your name goes on the credits list.

NOTE: All links to the file "N64EmuDoc.zip" lead to the same version. I am not keeping multiple attachments on different versions.

 

[mudlord]

I made some informational fixes and additions to the framebuffer emulation section. I noticed that it didn't discuss hardware framebuffer emulation & the plugins that support it, there was several errors (like to discuss what exactly is the framebuffer, RDRAM and that graphics plugins use what is known as "APIs" & the rendering engines use these, the cause of framebuffer emulation being slow, etc.).

 

[Iconoclast]

I made some informational fixes and additions to the framebuffer emulation section. I noticed that it didn't discuss hardware framebuffer emulation & the plugins that support it, there was several errors (like to discuss what exactly is the framebuffer, RDRAM and that graphics plugins use what is known as "APIs" & the rendering engines use these, the cause of framebuffer emulation being slow, etc.).

Thank you for your contribution. I'll update the framebuffer page in the next version of the CHM I release, as well as mention your name in the credits page. Keep in mind I only release a new version for every five games I add to the CHM. If anyone thinks this number should be changed, let me know.

 

[Iconoclast]

I decided to take Bighead's advice and release a new version "when I feel like it." For example, I only added three games to this next version, but I added a lot of miscellaneous pages and the missing emulator help pages, which I recommend you all taking a look at. The additional miscellaneous pages should be especially interesting for some of you.

This is the download link for the new version:
http://www.emutalk.net/attachments/...endo-64-emulation-documentation-n64emudoc.zip

Changes:

• Added page: Emulators/1964
• Added page: Emulators/Mupen64
• Added page: Emulators/Other Emulators
• Added page: Emulators/Project64
• Added page: Miscellaneous/Dumping Textures
• Added page: Miscellaneous/Recording GIF Animations
• Added page: Miscellaneous/Ripped Video Game Music
• Added page: Getting Optimal Nintendo 64 Emulation/Legend of Zelda, The: Majora's Mask
• Added page: Getting Optimal Nintendo 64 Emulation/Legend of Zelda, The: Ocarina of Time
• Added page: Getting Optimal Nintendo 64 Emulation/Mario Party
• Updated page: Miscellaneous/Frame Buffer Emulation

 

[Bighead]

I decided to take Bighead's advice and release a new version "when I feel like it."

Well I didn't mean it in that sense... Everyone releases their work when they feel like it sure, but more when you feel it's ready for the public eye.

 

[Iconoclast]

I would appreciate some form of skepticism on my CHM by now....

Since this is my last day out of school, I'll stop adding games here. I will continue testing games and updating the CHM, but my version updates will be less frequent. This is the third release of my CHM:
http://www.emutalk.net/attachments/...endo-64-emulation-documentation-n64emudoc.zip

These are the improvements since the previous version:

• Added Page: Getting Optimal Nintendo 64 Emulation/AI Shougi 3.htm
• Added Page: Getting Optimal Nintendo 64 Emulation/Banjo-Kazooie.htm
• Added Page: Getting Optimal Nintendo 64 Emulation/Banjo-Tooie.htm
• Added Page: Getting Optimal Nintendo 64 Emulation/Bomberman 64.htm
• Added Page: Getting Optimal Nintendo 64 Emulation/Conker's Bad Fur Day.htm
• Added Page: Getting Optimal Nintendo 64 Emulation/Donkey Kong 64.htm
• Added Page: Getting Optimal Nintendo 64 Emulation/GoldenEye 007.htm
• Added Page: Getting Optimal Nintendo 64 Emulation/Vigilante 8.htm
• Added Page: Getting Optimal Nintendo 64 Emulation/Virtual Chess 64.htm
• Added Page: Getting Optimal Nintendo 64 Emulation/Yoshi's Story.htm
• Edited Page: Emulators/Project64.htm
• Edited Page: Getting Optimal Nintendo 64 Emulation/Gauntlet Legends.htm

 

[mudlord]

I noticed a error with the "Super Mario 64" entry.

The "dissolve" effect is actually the use of dithered alpha rendering/testing. Glide64 and glN64 both support this, not just Direct64. In glN64, "Dithered Alpha Testing" needs to be ticked, while with Glide64, its a automatic feature, if "disable dithered alpha" is not ticked (however, it does use fragment shaders to emulate the effect in the wrapper). Glide64 runs Super Mario 64 to about the same fidelity as Direct64, so it might be worth noting that in the documentation.

 

[Iconoclast]

I noticed a error with the "Super Mario 64" entry.

The "dissolve" effect is actually the use of dithered alpha rendering/testing. Glide64 and glN64 both support this, not just Direct64. In glN64, "Dithered Alpha Testing" needs to be ticked, while with Glide64, its a automatic feature, if "disable dithered alpha" is not ticked (however, it does use fragment shaders to emulate the effect in the wrapper). Glide64 runs Super Mario 64 to about the same fidelity as Direct64, so it might be worth noting that in the documentation.

Lol...you know, to be honest, I can't even get Glide64 working on this thing. It works for games like Zelda MM and OOT, but when I run almost any other game, I hear sound but get a black screen. If I switch between the menus fast enough, I can get it to flicker on and off, but you know...all of those documentations I have written and mentioned that Glide64 could be used to emulate...I have been doing a little bit of "blind testing." Since I can't see anything using Glide64 other than black (not to be racist), I just try to flicker it on and off by switching between the PJ64 menus so I can roughly see a couple of frames on how it's doing. With Super Mario 64, I can't even get it to at least flicker past the File Select.

glN64...I know glN64 also supports the missing dissolve effect, but it looks different than when Direct64 processes it. Of course, I can't speak for Glide64...so are you sure Glide64 makes it look the exact same (or better, if possible) as Direct64? If it is, then I will note that and include the note I forgot about glN64 having partial support for the missing dissolve effect.

 

[mudlord]

Yep, I can very easily give proof for Glide64...

In the screenshot, it clearly renders the dissolve effect perfectly. As for the extended border, thats due to a scaling error that the wrapper possesses while being used under any version of PJ64 (1964 and Mupen64 don't have this problem)

 

[Iconoclast]

Yep, I can very easily give proof for Glide64...

In the screenshot, it clearly renders the dissolve effect perfectly. As for the extended border, thats due to a scaling error that the wrapper possesses while being used under any version of PJ64 (1964 and Mupen64 don't have this problem)

I know, that happens with Direct64 on Super Mario 64, too, or something like that. That's why I said to try out different emulators and see which ones have that scaling problem...I wasn't sure if it was my PC or the emulator and plugin, but I'll note that it's Project64.

So, I'll add that Glide64 could also be used to emulate this game.

 

[Bighead]

Sometimes redownloading and installing helps. I suggest doing a search for glide3x.dll on your computer and deleting all instances of it. Delete all Glide64 plugins you have, and redownload.

Glide64 - Downloads

Throw Glide64 back into the plugin folders, and put glide3x.dll into the emulator folder outside of plugins.

On my computer it sometimes worked in the plugins folder, sometimes in the windows/system32, and one time I had it in all folders. Doing this almost always gave me some sort of problem, like the black screen you mentioned.

You also may want to try the latest drivers for your card, I use omega drivers.
OmegaDrivers.net - Home of the Omega Drivers for ATI & NVIDIA desktop/laptop cards. By: Omegadrive
Also if you have a via chipset and an AGP card try downloading the latest 4 in 1 drivers (possibly pro drivers).
http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageID=420&OSID=1&CatID=1070

 

[Iconoclast]

It didn't work. I did I search on my entire hard drive, deleted the only Glide3x.dll there was, deleted both Glide64.dll and Glide64.ini from the Plugin folder, and replaced them all with the files from that link you gave me, but it still didn't work.

Glide64 used to not work at ALL on this thing, until I found that I had an NVidia GeForce FX 5200 (Microsoft Corporation) card, so then I installed the latest NVidia drivers from NVidia.com to get rid of the (Microsoft Corporation) part, and then Glide64 worked, but it only gave me sound, no graphics, except in the Zelda games and one other game I forgot, and also during flickering issues, the graphics would automatically flicker on and off. I wonder if I installed the wrong driver....

 

[Bighead]

Download this driver: nVidia Omega Driver 1.6693
Here's the link.

Before you ever install another driver, you MUST uninstall the old one. So go to your add/remove programs, and uninstall anything nvidia. If it asks you to restart say no, until you get to the last one, then restart.

Edit: After uninstalling and restarting I also browse the C:/ drive and Program Files folders and delete anything Nvidia just to make sure its all removed.

When you install you can choose either quality or performance. I suggest installing with performance because quality can be altered later. After the driver package is installed, restart again.

I myself have an ATI card, but I've installed these for many of my friends who have Nvidia cards, and glide64 works great.

 

[Iconoclast]

Okay, I uninstalled all traces of NVidia's software and drivers, and I restarted my PC. And then...my PC crashed in the middle of the restart. I wait, it asked me about Safe Mode, I said no, it gave me a blue screen and restarted. Then, I tried Safe Mode, and it still restarted while loading Windows. Now, I'm stuck using my brother"s slow PC, wondering how I'm going to explain this to my Dad without him getting all angry at me. This is the worst time for this to have happened...in the middle of fixing a driver issue, right before school, which I have really good and mostly really bad days at. This really sucks.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking my anger out on your or anything, just so you know. I'll see what I can do, try to get my Dad to fix that thing up, and I'll reply to this thread again when (hopefully if) I do. I wish I lived under my own roof so bad...it sucks living in this house and with these people.

 

[Bighead]

I'm sorry if what I told you somehow messed things up.. Usually blue screen of death is related to a hardware issue when an unexpected failure happens in your operating systems kernal (or core). The kernal is responsible for how the operating system identifies and handles cpu and memory usage, as well as identify and access any external input or output devices. A theory of what's happening could be that when the kernal attempts to identify your video display, the software leading to it could be corrupt or not found, the kernal itself is corrupt, or the device itself could be corrupt. I'm not too fluent with exactly how it works so bear with me.

One thing I would suggest is try to at least get into safe mode, get to the run command, and type msconfig. Go to the startups tab and uncheck everything, it should not be a problem. It could possibly be a program causing the BSoD, I've seen it happen. Check your services tab also, and uncheck any services not by microsoft. You can always go back and change anything needed. Then try to restart in normal mode and see if it lets you in error free.

I'm pretty sure you cannot install drivers in safe mode because it loads fail safe drivers (untested). Sometimes safe mode can take a looong time to load on some computers depending on how fast the computer is or how clean you kept your hard drive, so when you see the black screen where it loads driver files, let it go for about 5 minutes and see if it lets you in.

Do not attempt this paragraph if you are uncertain about opening up your computer. If you aren't nervous of opening it up, try making sure all your computers power cables are snug together and making a solid connection. I once kept getting a BSoD because a power cable to my secondary hard drive was loose. Clean out any dust in your tower, maybe pull out the graphics card and make sure you are getting a clean connection to the pins. Do not touch the graphics card unless you have an exposed part of your body touching the metal of the tower case. And try not to touch it anything on the board, but rather grab it along the edges. I'm sure you know this much.

I've seen a few BSoD's after graphics card driver uninstalls and usually after a few trial and error attempts at getting windows to load, and you get the new driver installed, you won't see it anymore. If all else fails, a repair or fresh install of Windows XP does the trick, but if it's not your computer and you haven't had any experience setting up an operating system I would not suggest trying that.

 

[Doomulation]

Before you ever install another driver, you MUST uninstall the old one. So go to your add/remove programs, and uninstall anything nvidia. If it asks you to restart say no, until you get to the last one, then restart.

First I'd like to emphasize that this is not REQUIRED. Many suggest that you do this, but myself, I sometimes install things over old or do delete and install anyway without reboot. And it works fine. This goes to say that it is not a MUST, but many do recommend it.

About the BSOD, usually these are solved with using Safe Mode, or failing that, Latest Known Good Configuration. It should probably show you this option if Windows fails to start.
It is always a good idea to create a system restore backup point before messing with drivers (and installing software). A backup of your OS is also a good idea to do at certain points.

 

[Bighead]

First I'd like to emphasize that this is not REQUIRED. Many suggest that you do this, but myself, I sometimes install things over old or do delete and install anyway without reboot. And it works fine. This goes to say that it is not a MUST, but many do recommend it.

I'm just going by personal experience. I used to never remove old graphics card drivers, but after installing about 5 versions over one another, I had all kinds of problems. All problem cards were ATi, both my radeon 9000 and 9800xt. I experimented with overlapping drivers, both original ati and omega.

It caused some strange bugs. The directx test cube would be shattered spinning fast, tearing in some games, crashes in games like Max Payne and WoW. Affected my emulators too; zSNES would have problems going full screen. N64 emulators... Mario 64 would have no textures in certain points in the game, and 1964 would often became unstable. When I installed a version over another on my brother's Radeon 9600 Pro, everytime he would load a direct3d application it would crash and give the windows "this program...illegal operation...has to close".

It may be suggested, but because of the bad luck I have with installing drivers it has become a requirement to me. Maybe it's just ATi cards have these issues. Uninstalling old, installing new always seemed more fail/safe to me, its not too much added work, and cleans out a few MB of wasted hard drive space. One time my computer kept having the BSoD on boot after uninstalling drivers, but recovered after entering safe mode and turning everything off. It took me maybe 3 attempts to get into safe mode without restarting. My card at the time was on the verge of death, so I figured it was a physical defect and that this would never happen to anyone else. It had to have factory or omega drivers installed or it would become very unstable.

I forgot about system restore because I don't use it, but it would probably of been the best suggestion of all. You may still be able to use it to load in safe mode and restore to the latest auto-save point before you made the changes. Norton Ghost is what I use for backup because system restore is just wasted space, but only if you have an alternative.

 

[Iconoclast]

It wasn't a software problem of any kind, I don't think, but the only reason I am able to reply to this thread today is because my dad used some CD to fix a hard drive issue.

Let me explain. This problem happened once before, about a month or less ago, when I tried to crack the password of the administrator account on this machine on my third attempt. (I am really running a limited XP account, not an administrator account.) While my PC was reading a floppy disk I was installing software to that would let me copy the SAM hash file in DOS mode, my PC just crashed right in the middle of reading the disk. I rebooted, as this is not the first time my PC has crashed when reading a floppy disk or the first time I have risked it, but that did become the first time this exact problem I just now got out of happened.

The problem was that, while Windows XP was loading, that usual WinXP logo you get when it's loading, after about seven seconds of loading, it gave me a quick instant blue screen message of some sort that lasted about a tenth of a second and the PC just automatically rebooted. It did this indefinitely, even if I entered Safe Mode or selected the "Use Last Known Working Configuration" setting that Doomulation suggested. My only choice was to shut it down and never turn it back on again until I could get someone else to fix it.

Of course, my dad fixed it the second time (this time) this problem happened, using some sort of bootable CD with hard-disk scanning software...he predicted that the problem was that my BIOS could not detect my hard disk and that my hard disk was corrupt and unreadible. The only part of Windows XP that was loading was the part that was stored on the BIOS until it started loading from a corrupt and unreadible hard disk drive, blue screen, then rebooted. I don't know any more details, but this time, it happened when I Restarted my computer using the Start Menu. Every other time, the way my PC would shut down is because of this parental restriction software that shuts this PC down at 10 PM, being why I can't be online too many hours a day. After uninstalling the NVidia driver, I tried shutting down, and that's when the problem came back.

As for whether it worked, I have not yet installed the driver you linked me to. I will test it now and edit this post by 5:15 PM (on my time zone), unless things go wrong again.

*Edit: It worked, but I got a Windows warning while installing the Omega driver and when I restarted safely, I was stuck in 640x480 pixel resolution, 4 bit color depth. It really sucked, and Project64 gave me errors on start, so I had to reinstall my old NVidia GeForce FX 5200 card back, and I'm back at where I started: Glide64 only somtimes shows graphics for some games. I feel sure I installed the right driver, so wth could be the problem?

 

[mudlord]

Found the cause to that NVIDIA Omega Driver set/Glide64 crash.

The Omega Drivers on NVIDIA cards dont expose GL_EXT_framebuffer_object to the video cards and wrapper. Thus, causing a crash whenever HWFBE is enabled, due to the lack of driver support for OpenGL framebuffer objects.

 

[Doomulation]

I'm just going by personal experience. I used to never remove old graphics card drivers, but after installing about 5 versions over one another, I had all kinds of problems. All problem cards were ATi, both my radeon 9000 and 9800xt. I experimented with overlapping drivers, both original ati and omega.

It caused some strange bugs. The directx test cube would be shattered spinning fast, tearing in some games, crashes in games like Max Payne and WoW. Affected my emulators too; zSNES would have problems going full screen. N64 emulators... Mario 64 would have no textures in certain points in the game, and 1964 would often became unstable. When I installed a version over another on my brother's Radeon 9600 Pro, everytime he would load a direct3d application it would crash and give the windows "this program...illegal operation...has to close".

It may be suggested, but because of the bad luck I have with installing drivers it has become a requirement to me. Maybe it's just ATi cards have these issues. Uninstalling old, installing new always seemed more fail/safe to me, its not too much added work, and cleans out a few MB of wasted hard drive space. One time my computer kept having the BSoD on boot after uninstalling drivers, but recovered after entering safe mode and turning everything off. It took me maybe 3 attempts to get into safe mode without restarting. My card at the time was on the verge of death, so I figured it was a physical defect and that this would never happen to anyone else. It had to have factory or omega drivers installed or it would become very unstable.

I forgot about system restore because I don't use it, but it would probably of been the best suggestion of all. You may still be able to use it to load in safe mode and restore to the latest auto-save point before you made the changes. Norton Ghost is what I use for backup because system restore is just wasted space, but only if you have an alternative.

I guess it's a shame that it happened. But computers seems to have their own way of doing things to everyone. I never had a problem with overwriting drivers without uninstalling them. Heck, pretty much none of the Tweak XP system tweak guide really helped at all. The system is running pretty fast, as it always have been. Not a bit difference.
Anyway, system restore is a little bastard that sucks up space, this is true. It is not perfect, but it really helps if you install some bad driver, for example. And system restore doesn't always work in Safe Mode. Well, it never works for me.
I tend to use Arconis Disk Image program to make backup of the system OS now and then.