I had no issue emulating n64 games on my piece of shit machine almost 20 years ago. What even is this?
this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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The first time I played ocarina of time, it was on a k6-2/450 with a voodo3-3000. It ran well enough that I considered it on par with a real N64. Edit: this would have been 2002/2003.
i just didn't want to say 25 years ago and have someone 'um akshuly' me about when emulation started getting viable.
To be fair, I was using ultrahle, which was a very high level emulator targeting mario64 and specifically needing a GLIDE-supporting card. It did well enough on ocarina as (my understanding is that) it used the same graphics engine as Mario64 and therefore the same function calls... but there were many other games that wouldn't run at all.
Not sure if this is related but I’ve been using project 64 lately and the control stick seems way more difficult to use than the original hardware. Anyone know why this is? It makes it really tough to aim.
Input lag?
Yeah that’s part of it but also it’s just really tough to do fine adjustments and it seems to jump all over the place. That’s the bigger issue though the lag is a compounding factor.
Try shrinking the stick's deadzone maybe?
Tried that. The issue is that the it’s still too sensitive at the point the motion kicks in. Surprised p64 doesn’t have a sensitivity setting. Maybe another emulator would?
I thought P64 has a sensitivity curve editor? Hmm. One of the emulators has gotta have it
Last time I used project 64, I used a retrobrawler (the really plugs into a N64 one) and a raphnet adapter. It was great, and the stick control did feel better than an xb360 controller.
I respect MVG a lot but this is honestly clickbait. All you have to do is:
- Download RetroArch
- Install Mupen64Plus-Next core
- Enable ParaLLEl RDP and RSP plugins in core settings
and you can play every game without issues. Not a broken mess by any means.
If you have resources leftover, you can even go into the core settings and turn internal resolution to 4x for better 3D graphics
You didnt watch the video, did you?
Cause the whole needing plugins and hacks to run games was exactly the point he was making, on why emulation of n64 is still in a poor shape, despite consoles before and after being emulated just fine without issue.
Right, and on different platforms, too. Yes, your gaming PC can do it fine, but a PS Vita should have the horsepower to do it, too, and that's not where things are at.
And then there's homebrew stuff. Works fine on real hardware, but emulators often fail.
N64 stuff runs brilliant on MisterFpga tho.
FPGA mimics hardware 1:1 without overhead, which is why it works well. This is talking about software emulation, which has to use lots of shortcuts to make it fast enough (for most machines). The N64 has a weird architecture though that makes it difficult to find shortcuts that work well.
People tend to overstate FPGAs. They are designed as software in a funny programming language and then "burned in" to hardware. They can and do have inaccuracies and bugs.
In the long run, real hardware is going to disappear through the attrition of time, so we do need this stuff for the sake of preservation. But people tend to put it on a pedestal without really understanding it.
I did some FPGA programming in school, so I totally get it. The hardware is really amazing, but the janky proprietary development toolchains not so much. Plus, Verilog is kind of a pain in the ass.
FPGA emulation is another level. The video says that FPGA emulation is near flawless except homebrew.
An interesting video, but I don't really feel it got to answer the question posed. He also didn't, for me, answer why he wants to focus on LLE instead of HLE as it's been obvious that LLE is very resource intensive.
That was my issue with the video as well
Maybe is too soon for cycle accuracy N64 emulators. We will get it eventually.
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