Nintendo 64

[magic girder]

Maybe they have… unpredictable memory latency

[lament escarp]

How consistently does mister grab the vine?

[worn delta]

It needs to be tested

It is assumed never in PAL

[digital remnant]

maybe its because it runs on 60hz instead 59.whateverhz

[magic girder]

We’ve known for ages that he doesn’t grab the vine on MiSTer, but it still doesn’t stop us having fun

[plush summit]

you might as well miss the vine, rather than bandaid fix it, and cause other problems

[chrome quest]

As a resident PAL 99.9% of the time player... I forget. I was also busy skipping the intro to play the game for the first time 😂

[magic girder]

My understanding of Robert’s posts related to this are that the core has to run faster on average than original hardware to reduce the chance that a memory fetch is slower and things break as a consequence. It’s the nature of the beast when pushing hardware way beyond what we all thought was possible

Missing the vine is the price we pay for the swearing squirrel

(I made that last bit up)

[slow silo]

It's not PAL only, happens on the US version too. The US and PAL versions desync differently but both show the problem on mister and just about every software emulator, even ares. Even the A3D it's random if it works or also misses each reboot

[plush summit]

its kinda why Im more concerned of having two different timings rather than doubling down on one

[slow silo]

Yeah, I noticed there was a very obvious desync in the intro that tended to happen in software emulators for years. It starts just as the camera pans down to Ebisumaru eating rice balls, and is very easy to tell later when the intro shows different character portraits to the beat.

Just tried this in the 12/15 unstable core, DK grabs the vine in the US version, misses it in the PAL version, and the DK rap is heavily desynced in the US version with this

[cerulean elk]

so I have to ask the hard questions...keep @wanton sun honest....one game playable by Christmas?

[slow silo]

I tried both in ares yesterday and both missed, it misses it differently than the mister in the US version but seemed to miss it in the same (much worse way) on PAL

In PAL DK seems to run into the tree directly and climb it a little

[slow silo]

Bandadid fixes are how we got ZSNES, we need to heavily avoid those even in software emulators when possible... ||even if the N64 mister core does it for a small handful of games||

[plush summit]

Sure, bandaid fixes can work wonders for predictable behavior, but when it comes to timings, good luck lol

[cerulean elk]

"DK drank that run. Dont worry about it"...there problem solved

[slow silo]

More like he falls in the drink

[iron wren]

I wouldn’t count on it, I don’t think the de10-nano could ever play an n64 game. We have to wait until the de10-macro or de11-nano

[slow silo]

Peach's Fury is still the same on the latest core, does not start at all unless I manually set it to PAL and turn Fast ROM access to On, though it's still laughably broken, but it runs then

[cerulean elk]

The DE69-Magnum comes out in 2026

[plush summit]

Im curious how many folk actually go out the way playing Kaze's games on real hardware vs Emulation

[cerulean elk]

that will change the game

[plush summit]

off the dome, I'd say 95-5 split

[slow silo]

Well, the ones he says are supposed to run on real hardware I can see why people would want to, especially if they are doing things that retail games did not

Huh, Peach's Fury feels slightly less broken on the 12/15 core. I mean, it still crashes to a black screen with random noise on default settings, but if I change settings to make it run while it's still a flickery mess it no longer has the level geometry keep snapping back and fourth like it used to

Let me try the stble to make sure I am not misremembering

Hmm, nevermind, about the same. Though I needed a few resets to get it to boot

[plush summit]

any known reason why it does that?

[slow silo]

I have no idea, I think FPGAzumSpass mentioned why months ago but I tried searching for it on discord and, well, it's searching on Discord...

[cerulean elk]

wasnt it unimplimented libdragon features? But I am going by memory and...maybe libultra? or something like that

[slow silo]

Also I am not 100% sure but I think setting it to PAL making it work is just a side effect of it managing to just barely not break at 50fps as opposed to 60

[plush summit]

isn't libultra a very big no no into touching?

[slow silo]

Isn't Libdragon for homebrew? Or is it used in romhacks too?

[plush summit]

wasn't the Portal 64 dude shut down because of it?

[slow silo]

Peach's Fury is a Mario64 romhack

[plush summit]

From what I remember, Portal 64 used the Libultra SDK and disclosed it to Valve, which Valve pulled its blessing because the toothpaste is out of the tube

[digital remnant]

it was a while back, like ares 133 or something
https://github.com/ares-emulator/ares/issues/1175#issuecomment-3349748616

[cerulean elk]

well I dont think Nintendo has a track record of bothering anyone FOR libultra

but most people just dont want to fuck with nintendo

[digital remnant]

I just tested with my 3D:
DK64 NTSC: 10/10 vine hits
DK64 PAL:
3/10 clear vine hits,
6/10 close vine hits (DK was too far on the left side and almost missed the vine while jumping),
1/10 miss and falling down into the water

[plush summit]

If keeping the MiSTer core means not fucking with Libultra, I say leave it out

[cerulean elk]

again someone would have to verify my memory because its info I remember from like a year ago so its fuzzy

[slow silo]

Anyway, you can try it if you want to see what I mean. Try to load Peach's Fury 1.1 and you will get a black screen with random noises, then go to "System Settings" and manually set it to PAL, and "Debug Settings" and manually set "Fast ROM access" to On and reset, it should run then, in a flickering state

[slow silo]

Is this with any default overclocks on or off?

[alpine lava]

N64 Linux is starting to boot with the new release.

[slow silo]

Poor init, attempted murder

[digital remnant]

force original hardware

didnt test overclocking

[slow silo]

Interesting, the other video had DK miss it half the time

BTW, does it make any difference if you let the DK RAP play or not?

I was asking for if anyone here knows that btw

Because I have been letting it play but man does that slow down testing

[zinc dew]

@cerulean elk futzed with some timings and was able to fix DK missing the vine on the core.

[slow silo]

... though it did let me see that the DK Rap heavily desynced in the US version if I enabled that DDR3 delay

[cerulean elk]

yeah you adjust to 56...or 57? My brain is filled with some many useless bits of data I forget now

[slow silo]

56, but it seemed to really desync the dk rap in the us version

was fine on pal.... except that he still missed the vine XD

On the 12/15 core at least

[zinc dew]

What adverse effects could setting that timing to 56/57 have?

[digital remnant]

i always skip it, one run would take so long with the rap lol 😄

[digital remnant]

if its not the default setting, its "wrong" for other things for sure

[zinc dew]

Dumb question, apologies, but do we know for sure the current timing value is the best default?

[digital remnant]

no, but i am sure somebody would have changed it as default value in the last years if it was fine

[slow silo]

Well like I said, it made teh DK rap desync very noticably for me in the US verson

When I set it to 56

[zinc dew]

Yeah that’s a good point

[digital remnant]

i mean it is pretty sure not a real fix for the vines thing, just a coincidence that it works out grabbing the vine in that setup

[zinc dew]

Very true

[digital remnant]

as I said it worked in ares a while back, but then they fixed some things to be more accurate to hardware and then it broke

it only seems to work fine if everything is 100% correct (or 99% + whatever the 3D is doing atm)

[cerulean elk]

its so odd A3D fails...sometimes

almost like every reset has some cycle variance and THATS why that boot fails

[zinc dew]

Ares is so cool

[plush summit]

could be the 3D doesn't know how to "flush" itself to retain timing

[zinc dew]

God I am so happy we moved past the plugin bullshit of the older N64 emulators lol

I mean those emulators were amazing so no shade, it’s just I love how simple it is now

[cerulean elk]

had any A3D test failed the first time on cold boot? or is it always in successive tests

[plush summit]

thats what Im wondering, people should retest the core on multiple boots/successions

if DK is failing the vine, there HAS to be something going on

[cerulean elk]

I haven't paid TOO much attention to the hardware of A3D outside the fpga chip...is the OS running on an ARM core? sounds like maybe on reset Analogue should have the core itself hard reboot vs soft reset

[plush summit]

I believe the FPGA does not have an ARM CPU

So, whatever the OS is, its running off a soft core implementation

[slow silo]

What about Knife Edge? Everyone talks about DK missing the vine in the intro but the entie game Knife Edge is unplayably broken and is patched to be playable on boot

[plush summit]

very possible that the communication between OS and Core dont match all the time

[cerulean elk]

like all problems if they come attached to an ass game nobody ever digs in

[slow silo]

But people are digging into DK64

[cerulean elk]

shots fired

[digital remnant]

Its running on some stm32 or something like PocketOS

[plush summit]

so its a soft core, my understanding, the pocket uses the FPGA

[slow silo]

In bursts

[cerulean elk]

so then they could use reset to hard reboot the core and if DK64 PAL catches the vine every time first time fix that problem just with a behaivior change to how it "resets"

[plush summit]

I assume its also why the OS freaks out with the initial update

[digital remnant]

Somebody here tested it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcsFDol49UY

[slow silo]

I meant about why it runs too fast

[digital remnant]

#1096015979055697940 message

[cerulean elk]

more like Knife Edge: Dump Runner

[digital remnant]

Emulators are doing something too fast for this game

[plush summit]

If people truly want an Analogue Experience with MiSTer's compatibility, get ready for shit to be broken 90+% of the time

[digital remnant]

I mean the vines are the same, the game is coded like wait 10 frames and go right then after 5 frames go left

But because timings do not match DK takes a bath

[slow silo]

Interestingly different emulators made DK go left or right past the tree....

[digital remnant]

I tested the Elmo hard difficulty crash which exists on every n64 emulator in existence and on 3D it just works

https://github.com/ares-emulator/ares/issues/2136

[slow silo]

"Something somewhere confuses the game, that then enters this debug code, which makes it freeze on retail hardware. Obviously, on real hardware, this doesn't happen" ... huh?

[cerulean elk]

yeahhhh lol

reading between the lines it sounds like "freezes retail spec machine but dev kit with extra ram it wont"...but I am guessing hard there

[wanton sun]

DK is just timing. If you set RAM delay to 56, it means that you slow down RDRAM to take at least 56 cycles @ 125MHz, which IS aproximatly the real RDRAM delay.
However, as this is only the new minimum delay and our DDR3 has random additional delay, you will get worse performance on average possibily and this is typically unwanted by most.
That is why i never used any of these.

[plush summit]

I guess I was right, rather have one consistent speed, than compensate and potentially ruining it for everything else

[vapid hawk]

could you like, do it dynamically? so detect when ddr3 random delays occur and then lower ram delay to "catch up"?

[plush summit]

now THAT'S a good question, I'm very curious

[vapid hawk]

speed would still be wrong but maybe only briefly enough that its not noticeable

[wanton sun]

In theory yes. It doesn't help in edge case situations, but in average it could.
But to be honest, I'm tired of spending weeks and months to optimize the best out of it, when the result is mediocre at best,
while with the proper hardware you get it "for free".

Eaiser solution would be to use RAM delay based on game together with database, if we really want that.
Everyone could test and modify it, no special core insights needed.

[sullen harbor]

I think that making it a database thing is probably best in the long run

[plush summit]

I mean, then we'd have to figure out all the delays per game...

[slow silo]

That's starting to sound a bit like the old days of per-game hacks

[sullen harbor]

Yeah well that's community driven emulators for you. There is a near full time testing channel for pcsx2 and dolphin for making per game fixes

And those platforms have way more games than n64

[magic girder]

Per game RAM delays sounds like a complete nightmare

One bad delay and things could potentially be screwed up

I’d rather DK miss the vine than for a game to crash at some random point because someone didn’t hit the same conditions as me

[plush summit]

@magic girder apes together, apes strong

[magic girder]

Yes…

[slow silo]

The internet has proven that false

Just look at reddit

[plush summit]

well, works in the jungle, not the mentally diseased 🤣

[mint shadow]

Or, the current days PS2 and Gamecube/Wii emulation

[plush summit]

whoa whoa whoa, you take that back about Dolphin

PCSX2 go right ahead

[magic girder]

Also remember the point about better hardware eliminating the need for this…

So “long run” is probably that, rather than dialling in every game’s optimal delay

[slow silo]

Yeah, if by the time all this is worked out the DE-50 Nano is out...

[sullen harbor]

All those apes, gone

[slow silo]

That's NFTs

[sullen harbor]

Stupidity is non fungible, token or not

[mint shadow]

No

[plush summit]

aight, I mean, I've had zero issues with Dolphin in forever

[magic girder]

Dolphin is amazing

It’s almost as good as the MiSTer

[plush summit]

maybe the tiny pixel in the UI is off and makes people go into a frenzy

[magic girder]

People in this thread about the damn vine

[plush summit]

The pre-rendered REmake scenes are slightly darker than a CRT and scenes changes are 0.3 seconds faster on Dolphin 😭

[slow silo]

Anyone else remember that one pixel that is incorrect in the overworld map of Chrono Trigger?

[cerulean elk]

I figure if people will complain in the comments I may as well have fun

[magic girder]

Remember when we were happy with this?

[slow silo]

Can't wait for Time Extension to see that video and say the Mister is now 110% accurate to real N64 hardware

[plush summit]

TE is amazing, you can just say anything to them and they will publish it

[slow silo]

https://tenor.com/view/telepromter-gif-9233793358211117859

[cerulean elk]

69% accurate. The best percent

[wanton sun]

Yes, when this booted up, it was probably my best moment in the whole time developing for mister.

[slow silo]

It was crazy to see after being told that Gen 5 was impossible on mister 🙂

[cerulean elk]

I have every core on one MiSTer that I tested with and I booted up this one recently just to get footage for "where it started"

[plush summit]

I assume we archive all cores?

That should be in a museum

of digital

like, an archive, on the internet

[cerulean elk]

honestly good question

I just throw every test core onto the same MiSTer and the SD card hasnt grenaded itself yet so

[mellow terrace]

And no eyed mario, and monster pikachu

[cerulean elk]

his name was "Three Mile Island Pikachu"

[chrome quest]

MiSTerian forme Pikachu

[oblique remnant]

stop vining 🙂

[quick arch]

1st game playable (screenshot from 9th of July 2023)

[plush summit]

hard af album cover

[glacial thistle]

Hey been trying to play custom robo on the 64 core but saving to the controller pak via snac doesnt seem to work. Is there something im missing? Works fine with other games

The game says it saves but it doesnt

Does it take up more than 29 pages?

Thats what i got left on my pak

[glacial thistle]

seemsto work on original hardware.

oddly enough the game doesnt show up when I use doom 64 to manage the pak

I assume the core doesnt support how that game saves or something? seems to be an odd duck

[mint shadow]

I'm not super familiar with the game, but are you sure it uses the controller pack? The core doesn't list the pack as supported, and it saves just fine without it. I also can't really find any info about it using the pack anywhere.

[vapid hawk]

yeah sounds like it might actually be saving to the cartridge?

[glacial thistle]

it doesnt save a file to the folder

other games do

my m key is sticky lol

[mint shadow]

When you load the game, under System Settings in the OSD, the Save Type should be EEPROM4

[vapid hawk]

you didn't just forget to open the OSD so the save gets peristed did you?

[glacial thistle]

lol

[glacial thistle]

https://tenor.com/view/peter-griffin-perhaps-family-guy-thinking-gif-13587558

[turbid warren]

i think if everyone in the server got a dollar every time someone saying they can't get saves working the solution was "open the OSD", everyone would be rich lol

[mint shadow]

At the very least everyone would probably have a dollar

[mossy vector]

@wanton sun Follow this sequence to duplicate what I'm seeing with the new delay. Set Rumble Pak, Save Settings. Then Reboot and re-open the N64 core. Notice how rumble is saved as a setting, even if no game is loaded yet.

Now start Penny Racers and immediately see this.

This game checks even before displaying the logo before the title screen. So yes internally the core went from rumble to controller pak. But since no game was loaded before, the assumption is that it would not trigger the swap delay and not cause display of this scary looking screen.

We could extend this thought into: Load the game, set the initial conditions from the n64 database (rumble, controller memory card, or neither), then start the game. The delay from rumble-mem or mem-rumble swap only triggers after the game has been running. When loading another different game, the delay trigger is blocked when the database changes it to something else.

[glacial thistle]

oh wait sorry. what do I do? I have it set to eeprom4 now but if I load a different game or reboot the save doesnt stay

ooooooooooooooooooohhhhhh

I think I figured it out. I'm playing the translation and its not in the database

[mint shadow]

Translation should be in the database, by game-id, not specifically by hash. It's saving no problem for me.

and it is, ID:NCX___ eeprom512 # Custom Robo

[glacial thistle]

mister says specifically its not in the rom list when I boot it.

[mint shadow]

You may have to update. Are other N64 games working properly? Do you have a file called N64-database.txt in /media/fat/games/N64?

[glacial thistle]

is there an easy to grab txt file somewhere?

[glacial thistle]

on my NAS but yes

[mint shadow]

I'm guessing it's having an issue finding it. You may have to put it on your SD card as well. You can just run update, or get it here
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/N64_ROM_Database/blob/main/N64-database.txt

It should be with your bios roms

[glacial thistle]

It is

I was manually adding stuff for viewpoint when that came out a few weeks ago so I might have screwd it up doing that

[mint shadow]

Viewpoint is added to that now, no need for manual edits

For custom stuff, you can manually add entries to N64-database_user.txt instead of editing the master database

[glacial thistle]

ooh didnt know that. I'll keep that in mind

It worked!

Thanks agian for the help

I made this whole ordeal way more complicated than it needed to be lol

[slow silo]

Do you still need to do that when using SNAC to use real physical memory cards?

[zenith orchid]

Yes, thats the sole reason I never ever touched N64 emulation. It was just so complicated and I couldnt figure out how to get a more accurate experience. I havent truly played any N64 games since selling my childhood console until this core.

[drowsy lantern]

I recently tortured myself with beating DK64 101%. I still don’t understand what Satan-fueled impulse compelled me to do this.

[vapid hawk]

did you at least use that romhack to switch characters anywhere

[drowsy lantern]

Oh hell no. Original roms only.

[vapid hawk]

get help

[mint shadow]

Congrats! You have completed one of the most unnecessarily painful experiences devised by man!

[magic girder]

But did you grab the vine?

[drowsy lantern]

I feel like it allows me to better understand and articulate everything that sucks about this game. And there’s a lot that sucks about this game.

[zenith orchid]

Especially when expectations are high after the dkc trilogy

Then again, I also feel sm64 fell short of the expectations set by smb3 and smw. as did yoshi story from smw2. N64 didnt just have too few games, it also had several disappoinments.

its only saving grace was about a dozen bangers.

SNES really set the bar way too high for the N64 in terms of quality of games, and since then Nintendo's been raising the bar only from where N64 set it. At least thats my perception

[scenic vapor]

I feel that sports games are a bit undervalued on the N64

[covert bough]

N64 was my first experience with madden and subsequently how I learned the rules to American football

[scenic vapor]

Griffin's Slugfest, All-Star Baseball 2000, Fifa 98, Madden 2002, NHL 99, Wayne Gretzky 98, int. Superstar Soccer 98,...

... NBA Hang Time, NBA Live 99, NHl Blitz 2001...

There was quite a lot of cool stuff. Stuff that doesn't need fancy FMV videos.

[worn delta]

Someone on the forum saying Manic Miner 64 isn't loading if someone fancies checking

https://misterfpga.org/viewtopic.php?t=9817

[zinc dew]

Missed this morning’s core update, pins updated with latest

what's the 5 tests is failing

[topaz otter]

your a masochist dude

there were times in that game collecting shit, that I honesly thought rare was taking the piss

the Beaver Bother race for one

no wait, it was the one where you race the beetle as tiny kong

but you can whack him before the race and get a few second head start

[weary palm]

Someone at Nintendo: Let's give 18,446,744,073,709,551,616 addresses to 8,388,608 9-bit words.

[turbid warren]

the races were the worst part of DK64. i'd rather do Beaver Bother 10 more times before i do a single race from that game lmao

[weary palm]

Nooo beaver bother.

https://youtube.com/shorts/xAT6ygjNya4

[topaz otter]

that same beaver was in the new naked gun movie

[weary palm]

Nothing's like an old stuffed beaver.

[slow silo]

Now 100% the US version of Space Station Silicon Valley 👿

That's not me being angry, I just could not find a good "evil" looking emote

[plush summit]

😈

[cerulean elk]

Propane pressure, hose tensile strength, boy ain’t right, narrow urethra and Buck Strickland

[wanton sun]

thank you, understand now what happens. I will revise the downtime and make it switch immidiatly on core reset

[weary palm]

That only works if you have "Auto Save" enabled!

He looks so damn weird without his overall buttons!

[weary palm]

I actually had the most trouble beating the owl in the jetpack race in Fungi Forrest.

[hidden wind]

I saw on YouTube yesterday that there’s supposed to be a new version of the N64 core. It seems like it's still in beta for now, if I understood everything correctly. Where can I download the current core on the Discord server?

[tepid shuttle]

check the pins

[hidden wind]

Thank you for the quick help!

[hard nimbus]

When should the new cores be pushed to mainline distribution?

[weary palm]

@wanton sun Not that it really matters or mean much, but man... You must have 150+ IQ... I'm really in awe. I hope you know how much your skills amazes me and probably most of us. WNW.

[hidden wind]

It should also be emphasized that Robert does all of this voluntarily. Essentially, he sacrifices his free time for the community and doesn't actually make any money from it. Sure, he does receive donations, but not on the same scale as, for example, Analogue. Respect!

[weary palm]

Absolutely. I couldn't take anything less for granted than people inventing for snd polishing the MiSTer project, let alone this core.

I can only do so much, but contributing to this is a great feeling. The community is pretty great, I would say.

Damn... I always feel so cringe snd fanboyish after saying things like this. Sorry. I'm on the spectrum or something. (hate that "excuse")😂

[lament escarp]

All the tests the mister core fails in benchmarks it passes in my heart.

[hidden wind]

With the N64 core, Robert has immortalized himself in the Hall of Fame of the FPGA League. I don’t know why, but that sentence just made me think of Pokémon 😂.

[magic girder]

Imagine all the kids today that will be having nostalgic memories of playing the MiSTer in 40 years time

[hidden wind]

The icing on the cake would be compatibility for the 2nd gen Pokémon Gameboy Roms with the virtual Transfer Pak. If Robert manages to pull that off, he’d be my absolute hero. No joke.

[hidden wind]

I’ll count myself among the kids with my 40 years, who will one day, at the age of 80, reminisce nostalgically about the good old times with the MiSTer 😂.

[cerulean elk]

No we pay him in memes and jokes mostly haha

[wanton sun]

Thank you all, very kind of you.

Hopefully the new changes don't break anything. Will test this afternoon, then upload 🙂

[worn delta]

Wow! I didn't think that was possible on the DE-10 Nano to pass everything

[chrome quest]

Congratulations! DK started celebrating early, can't even walk straight. The rest of us will FINALLY get to play 1 N64 game this Christmas 🎄

[worn delta]

Congratulations, you absolute legend!

[magic girder]

Congrats! That’s insane 🤯

[remote hatch]

congrats! ❤️

[lament escarp]

What does it even mean? 🫣 does dk get the vine now? I'm impressed nonetheless. 🤯

[neat sierra]

It means more ad revenue for youtube, the mister news cycle never stops

Sorry it means ‘mister wins again!’

[lament escarp]

I actually won a 25 euro coupon for the mall today. feels good to be a winner with a winner system and a winner core.

[magic girder]

I don’t know if the 1s and 0s at the top are which tests are enabled (I assume so), but if that’s the case then the timing tests aren’t running, only the base ones - so unless the timings have changed, I doubt it

That doesn’t undermine the achievement though. Any improvements without regressions when the core is so full and pushing at the limits of the DE10 are a huge achievement

[wanton sun]

The last tests are the MI repeat mode, a way for the CPU to overwrite large blocks of Memory in less time.

it doesn't mean the core is improved in timing accuracy, but rather in features that the original console has, but we didn't have before.

maybe @quaint abyss also has some example for the 9th bit access. Haven't found any easy test for it.

[magic girder]

Is the MI repeat mode used in any commercial games do you know?

I guess either no, or the precise aspects that the newly fixed tests are addressing weren’t, or games would have been broken?

[wanton sun]

no, unused, but possibly in current and future homebrew. There is typically a backfall solution, but i don't know the implications. Probably it just runs slower without support for it.

[magic girder]

Thanks for explaining 🙂

Maybe time to go through and test some of those Mario romhacks that were broken before but said they work on original hardware 🙂

[quaint abyss]

The snapper64 rom has 2 of those.
Both for RDP and CPU bit setting, where the test then reads and validates the bits via ebus in both cases

[digital remnant]

awesome how fast you could fix these! didnt your care that much about these tests before this?
i will order a m64 for sure, you are way faster than Analogue at fixing things! 😄

[violet tangle]

I’m playing DK64 for the first time (I never actually played Banjo either) without the romhack, and I kinda like the character switching? Plus I’m finding it more fun than Mario 64. I’ll see myself out.

[quaint abyss]

also getting the M64 once released, i don't have the biggest hope for A3D to fix things long term.
The accuracy in terms of RDP are certainly impressive.
But the omission of things like MI Repeat mode will lead to issues with homebrew sooner or later.
Well and the fact some of my demos run way slower than on console also annoys me 😄

[digital remnant]

i hope they will fix it - PAL DK64 vines disappoint me very much now.

@wanton sun can you do N64 savestates on M64?

[iron wren]

I don’t think it’s cringe or fanboyish, Robert is extremely talented and has done a great service by allowing us to play 1 n64 game by Christmas.

[zinc dew]

Oops I am so sorry, I’m adding you to the pinned post now

[wanton sun]

I have to admit that I have to cheat a little bit to make the 64 bit TLB regions work on mister, otherwise FPGA timing(clock speed) breaks completly.
That's why I didn't do them until now: i didn't want some known non-working edge case inside the CPU.
But probably it's better if it works in 99.99% of the cases than 0%.
On M64, it can be 100% as the FPGA is fast enough.

[digital remnant]

nice

is that why n64linux crashes on boot?

[zinc dew]

They ported Linux to the N64???

[digital remnant]

but that means the test is not good enough yet to not test these edge cases right?

[green epoch]

Of course they did.

[wanton sun]

I don't know why the linux crashes, but i doubt it is the new edge case. The only thing that doesn't work is using CPU immidate addresses for switching a region.
E.g. have an array that is partly in cache and partly not. Or parts of the Array TLB mapped and another part is not.

And yes, the systemtest doesn't do that. To be honest, it would probably be a nightmare to even craft that on purpose

[austere island]

thank you very much FPGAzumSpass, this update is a really nice christmas gift 🎅

[digital remnant]

https://github.com/clbr/n64bootloader/releases/tag/v1.0

you can run it with ares

[green epoch]

https://tenor.com/3xVE.gif

[lament escarp]

I'll play oot on the core for Christmas as is custom.

[zinc dew]

I hope we get one working N74 game by Christmas.

[hollow pebble]

Holy crap, well done mate! 😍

[zinc dew]

Oh shit I missed that lolol

[hollow pebble]

Robby too locked in on the memes to be in the amazing moment 😂

[zinc dew]

Ok so seriously, what does this all mean. Does Mario now make cycle accurate wahoos?

[cerulean elk]

I wont be impressed til its 201% passed like a Symphony of the Night run

[cerulean elk]

cycle accurate Conker drunken stagger

[wanton sun]

What does it mean? ChatGPT says:
Technical: when you write once, you may write up to 128 times
Philosophical: to run or not to run
Sentimental: every flaw tells a story of growth

[zinc dew]

I love this

[cerulean elk]

The technical answer: "It means the screen says Zero. Take that"!

[hollow pebble]

The wahoos are cycle accurate AND you can be smug about having 0 failed tests.

https://tenor.com/view/tom-cruise-shades-cool-smug-cool-shades-gif-18677159

[cerulean elk]

So that means if M64 isn't 101% passing we can complain now that it didnt improve things? lolol

[worn delta]

Just a note, if you haven't already it would be worth getting .sys updates for the next build, otherwise there will be an inevitable PR from Taki's employee who is making his way through all the cores doing .sys update PRs as the Super Station seems to need everything to be right up to date

[wanton sun]

can do that with the pak switch fix the next days

But thank you for reminding me

tested some games, seems fine so far

[rich warren]

Awesome work as always! Guessing the Monster Truck Madness 64 font issue will require a cart patch?

[mossy vector]

Please define the exact RDP modes and texture sizes that triggers the hardware bug that shifts the texels horizontally by one. Because whoever programmed that hit the jackpot. And nobody can explain it in clear English to ask Robert to be able to program it.

[zinc dew]

Pins updated. Do you want a full blast on this update to encourage people to heavily test it?

I was going to ping #general-banter and #fpga-platforms to tell people to test it.

[wanton sun]

there will be one more change for the pak switch delay and sys hopefully end of this week and when this is fine, we might use this build as new release.

[weary perch]

i've been going back through my sheet and re-testing everything

[zinc dew]

Freaking legend. Thank you for everything you do!

[wanton sun]

don't expect any official game to improve. Libdragon based games/homebrew, maybe.

[rich warren]

lol yeah - I'll refer to the pinned testing sheet and try more stuff there

[green epoch]

When you have a build you think may be ready to promote, let me know, and I will test it for the audio stuff

[weary perch]

comparing MiSTer today to Ares today, i still find quite a few things that have issues on Ares work perfectly on MiSTer

[wanton sun]

The whole purpose of the latest changes was the libdragon compatibility.

[cerulean elk]

I cant remember now what LibDragon items didn't work before that were games and not just demos.... @green epoch you remember that?

[wanton sun]

Libdragon introduced the use of 64 bit regions on 6th october. Anything build with this update or after would not boot on the core anymore.

[weary perch]

excluding games Ruleset patched as well

• Onegai Monsters still has graphical corruption on Ares, was solved on MiSTer.
• The Elmo games on Ares hardlock on medium difficulty after you talk to Ernie - not on MiSTer, though.
• Wipeout 64 (USA) and Gauntlet (all regions) randomly crash on Ares, but not on MiSTer
• Bass Rush - ECOGEAR PowerWorm Championship is unplayable on Ares due to a crash, works fine on MiSTer

i'm trying to get my friend to test Monster Truck Madness 64 on A3D to see the font textures

i haven't seen any footage of it running there yet

[zinc dew]

And Ares is the most accurate software emulator right?

[weary perch]

i don't know if anyone compared CEN64 to Ares. CEN64 doesn't get mentioned much anymore but before Ares it was considered the "accuracy emu" for N64. from what i understand it was hard to run and never finished

[zinc dew]

This push for 100% emulation accuracy will do wonders for the homebrew community. I hope we can push past the days of rom hacks and homebrew only working on inaccurate emulators.

[weary perch]

but yes, Ares is basically your go-to for accuracy in software at the moment

[zinc dew]

Ok awesome. I really like using it and it seemed great to me but what do I know, lol

[weary perch]

from a casual perspective it's pretty close to the most mature forks of mupen64-plus but under the hood Ares seems closest to hardware at the moment

it does homebrew better than anything else to my knowledge

[vapid hawk]

is it worth retesting some of those bugs on the latest build? maybe even some of rulesets patches are not needed now?

[weary perch]

i'm slowly re-testing everything, but i'd be very surprised if the patches weren't necessary for those games

very little has changed in testing results since March '24

[wanton sun]

the changes are not related to timing and almost all of the patches are due to timing

[weary perch]

pretty much just the stuff that's been explicitly fixed

Biohazard 2

1 entry i did remove, maybe prematurely, lol... but i tried RE2 PAL on the core yesterday and didn't see any slowdowns at all

seemed to be running just like hardware

the 50 vs 60 seems to be right on the line for allowing that game to perform properly in the most performance-intense scenarios

i'm mostly just testing screens 2 & 3 with Leon, gathering up all the zombies and running them around back between those two screens

on NTSC, you get half-speed slowdowns when everything gets packed onto the screen, but on testing yesterday i couldn't get any slowdowns to happen on PAL at all

does anyone know if there's any part of the game later that performs worse than those two screens with like 8+ zombies and all the fire textures

[zinc dew]

I still made posts asking people to test but I think @weary perch has it covered lmao

[weary perch]

for the record, on my N64 i don't see any slowdowns on NTSC at all, even if i get all the zombies in there

this is a known issue, but it's pretty subtle since the game mostly doesn't have this much going on at once

most screens run perfectly fine

anyway yeah i'm doubling back to check all the outstanding Ares bugs

[zinc dew]

i own most of the library so let me know if you want me to cross verify anything

[weary perch]

the people saying Ares is objectively better than MiSTer, like... idk. i think it's very close. i haven't dived as deep in terms of what works on Ares that doesn't work on the core, but i think it's mostly homebrew stuff and 64DD?

[zinc dew]

Also original unmodded N64 hooked up to a CRT

[zinc dew]

I think that’s great and I’m MiSTer cheerleader number one

I love Ares

God I’m so happy we finally have pitch perfect N64 emulation options

[weary perch]

you know, probably MiSTer has slightly more controller pak quirks and quibbles than Ares, i'd be willing to give it that perhaps

the Rush games are not happy with MiSTer's controller pak implementation, and 2 T&E Soft golf games can't save at all on MiSTer

[plush summit]

I don't get why people are hung up on MiSTer vs Ares

Like, is it really an insult being number 2 to Ares???

[weary perch]

personally, as a competition i don't care whatsoever. i care about accurate N64 emulation

e.g. i'm trying to find out if A3D has actually fixed the text bug in Monster Truck Madness 64 that i'm not sure has ever previously been fixed

(remains unfixed in both MiSTer and Ares)

[plush summit]

all in due time

[weary perch]

re: my statement above about people comparing Ares and MiSTer, there was a post in a thread about MiSTer's accuracy and someone basically posted just a list of all the games on my testing sheet with their like... IGN scores? or something... and was like. All these games don't work on MiSTer, Ares is objectively better

so in terms of just wanting to sort of push back a little against that, i do have some interest in "competition" lol

it's more like wanting to correct disinfo really

if people just say that people might think that's true lol

[cerulean elk]

people always want "their thing" to win. Its human nature

[zinc dew]

I fall for that too. I mean I did that a week or so ago championing the MiSTer from @cerulean elk’s initial testing video. But in my case it wasn’t that I wanted the other things to be worse but I wanted the MiSTer community to be celebrated.

[cerulean elk]

I say A3D has some issues in the most recent video...proved it with math...showed math on screen...said "in the end it affects nothing about the fun"...two emails saying how I should either eat a gun or they'd bring the gun to me themselves

[zinc dew]

If I weren’t such a cheap ass I’d buy the A3D lol.

[violet marlin]

showing 0 test failed on my end, good work!

[cerulean elk]

simple fact is some people are SO down the rabbit hole if you say anything they love isnt perfect they get fucking WEIRD with it

[zinc dew]

Do you have a flash cart and an original N64?

Also thank you very much for corroborating!

[weary perch]

Analogue's marketing definitely doesn't help the situation

[zinc dew]

Bomberman Hero isn’t good

[cerulean elk]

1 of 10 people won't even believe me when I show an issue. They say I edited it or made it up because "MiSTer shill"....so what can you do lol

[green epoch]

Can someone with a 9.2 board and analog audio out test the new core? I believe it has the audio bug if you set vga_mode=ypbpr. I hear crackles in the mario 64 attract mode

[cerulean elk]

what's your email? Gonna write a threat real quick!

[zinc dew]

That’s because Bomberman Hero is amazing!!!!!

https://tenor.com/view/kermit-gif-17172043193563962893

[cerulean elk]

Is it time for your next Discord break yet?

[violet marlin]

I just ran this on my mister
https://github.com/lemmy-64/n64-systemtest

[zinc dew]

Give it a year, I think I do this yearly now lol

Next time I try to pull this off, I need to talk to Kitrinx first lol

[plush summit]

Most well behaved Kaze fan

[cerulean elk]

You really cant win with comparisons haha

and nobody ever believes I really mean it when I say "I dont care how you play the games. Just play the games"

[plush summit]

I've noticed figureheads who speak with authority attract the most awful fanbase 😄

[cerulean elk]

gonna be VERY interesting when its M64 time. That's been a unique headache

[weary perch]

@spare meadow you were the one who originally alerted me to the RE2 slowdowns. could you try RE2 PAL on the newest core and let me know if you still see any? i still see them on NTSC but PAL seemed smooth to me

[zinc dew]

It’s going to be hilarious because you’re going to have the weird ass Palmer fanatics squadding up against the Analogue fanatics lolol

[plush summit]

I hope the M64 doesn't flop the landing with the cart and controller slots

[zinc dew]

And like usual, everyone ignoring the MiSTer lol

[cerulean elk]

Its the perfect storm of "the libs" vs "the far right" and also the "Analogue 3D fanboy" getting into a circular firing squad...and I am doing my little YT dance in the middle of the circle 🤣

[zinc dew]

Oh no, how so?

[plush summit]

Well the 3D can't do Carts and Controllers like real hardware

[zinc dew]

The Analogue 3D?

Whaaaaaat?

[plush summit]

they advertised its electronically in parity lol

[zinc dew]

But you plug in the cart and it reads it and plays, right?

[plush summit]

well not flashcarts

they don't behave the same way and can crash

[zinc dew]

Oh, that doesn’t bother me. Go ahead and ask me why.

[plush summit]

I think there's a mixed bag with BT adapters on the controller slot?

The BlueRetro one

[zinc dew]

BECAUSE I OWN OVER 200 N64 CARTS!!!!!

Half my personality is based on owning retro games!!!!

[plush summit]

Robubu

[green epoch]

I have a feeling that the m64 probably won't make the same....decisions...analogue did

[plush summit]

I have a good feeling that Save States are going to be a talking point soon

I won't ping Robert about it, I just know

Nobody bother him about it

[green epoch]

Just something to keep in mind for folks: Robert likely cannot talk about anything unannounced for the m64. We are lucky that he is here hanging out with us, but he is here as an n64 enjoyer (and core dev) - not a spokesperson for modretro or the m64. Announcements for that will come from official channels

[plush summit]

yeah, keep in mind that the only changes he can talk about is what currently exist in the core

[green epoch]

And now that the chat has cooled down, can someone confirm this for me: #1096015979055697940 message

[cerulean elk]

He told me everything. It comes with a chicken warmer

[green epoch]

Finally. Feature Complete™

[cerulean elk]

I think 20% of the internet probably expects M64 to come with menus only in German 🤣

[iron wren]

Finally, my whole rotisserie chicken can remain edible through my entire super Mario 64 speedrun!

[green epoch]

please make sure you use the correct power adapter

[cerulean elk]

it only runs on propane

[green epoch]

I have a guy for that

[spare meadow]

I tested all three versions (PAL, NTSC-USA, and NTSC-Japan) with the new build, and all of them show slowdown. I had the impression that the PAL version is actually running a bit smoother. The best place to check the game’s slowdowns is to start a new game with Leon and go to the third screen.

[weary perch]

that's where i've been testing. in the NTSC version, you can clearly see the slowdown because Leon starts running at half-speed. i couldn't make that happen on 20251215 at all using RE2 PAL, even with all the zombies on screen 3

haven't tried 20251216 yet, will try it on my lunch break in a few hours hopefully

[spare meadow]

sorry, I only teste it with today’s build. I will give a try with 20251215

[weary perch]

they should be basically the same, but just wanted to account for discrepancies

my test was just

loop the zombies around the 2nd and 3rd screens until you get them all lined up and then just run back and forth between the screens. in NTSC versions, you see slowdown even just running thru without letting them bunch up

on the PAL version, i collected them all on screen 3 but never saw Leon move at half-speed

i'll probably make a capture of the sequence today as well so we've got a video

[spare meadow]

I just tested the PAL version with yesterday’s build, and it does seem to be running much smoother. There is still some slowdown, but I’ve never played RE2 (PAL) on the original hardware to compare. Still, it appears that the game is indeed running better.

If you need new tests with RE 2, just let me know. I have saves in all the spots where the game has issues.

[magic girder]

Has a ruleset patch been removed? Is that what causes the slowdown?

[vague socket]

Hi
Can someone link me to the latest N64 core please - I’m struggling - and I’m hoping the turbo core is in the same place too?

[brisk drum]

Viewpoint 2064 performing just fine!

I’m focusing on testing hacks and translations as well as protos

[weary perch]

the NTSC version on hardware seems to have no slowdown even if you get all the zombies together. i don't have a PAL-compatible CRT to test RE2 PAL on unfortunately. maybe i can find some footage online

but presumably it doesn't slowdown at all on PAL in those screens

since it should be less intensive than the NTSC version in that same section

[green epoch]

the latest cores are in update all. If you’re looking for the latest test core, it’s in the pins - the turbo core won’t be updated with that until the changes are merged into the stable core

[vague socket]

Excellent - Thank you

[digital remnant]

are there workarounds / patches for these games applied for the mister core?

[latent dagger]

I'm thinking of replaying CV again

[weary perch]

no, that list excludes anything Ruleset patched

you can see all active patches in the N64-database.txt

https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/N64_ROM_Database/blob/194703143f97c9fdac3d9ebb16be1229b95cfffa/N64-database.txt#L857

[simple olive]

; N64 game patches to increase N64 Core compatibility

[latent dagger]

I didn't beat it the last time. I got to the "final" (not really) fight then I couldn't get past it cuz I didn't stock and prep items properly and wasn't keeping proper saves.

[digital remnant]

nice, thx!

[weary perch]

one more game where MiSTer lacks an issue Ares has: Magical Tetris Challenge has some graphical issues on Ares, but none on MiSTer.

[digital remnant]

did the elmo medium/hard crash always work on the mister core or was this fixed with one of the recent updates?

[weary perch]

i hadn't seen that issue before yesterday. my original testing for Elmo games was with default settings (Easy)

so... no idea!

[digital remnant]

i thought 3D was the first emulator where there was no crash

[weary perch]

i could test it on an earlier build

[digital remnant]

medium/hard crashes, easy works everywhere

[weary perch]

but not that much has changed since Feb '24, it's likely been working

[digital remnant]

you can find the details there

[weary perch]

yes, i tested Medium last night in both games

no crashing, no issues

[digital remnant]

cool thx!

[weary perch]

anything specific you'd like tested, let me know!

[digital remnant]

if my superstation was here yet i could test for myself, sorry! 😄

[weary perch]

no worries, i feel bad asking people to test things for me on A3D 😄

[digital remnant]

well i coud do that! 😄

[weary perch]

you have one?

[digital remnant]

gave my original misterpi away 🙁

because of SS

yes

[weary perch]

would love to know if the Monster Truck Madness text bug is fixed

[digital remnant]

cen64 is dead and nowadays less accurate than ares

[weary perch]

same issue on MiSTer

and one of the bugs that is not timing-related so surely can be fixed on DE-10 nano

[digital remnant]

do you have screenshots or some explaination what to do there?

[weary perch]

all text in the main font looks wrong

[digital remnant]

okay so no 3 hours of playing up to that point? 😄

[weary perch]

it's instantly evident yeah haha

[digital remnant]

i wonder if somebody did play blues brothers that far on 3D to check for the crocodile speed 😄

[weary perch]

lol

[digital remnant]

i can test in a couple of hours if that is alright

[weary perch]

we still have zero people who have played thru it on mister

not even to the second croc

Titus strikes again.

Ares does seem to avoid controller pak issues on Rush 1, 2 and 2049 (e.g. Rush 2049 NTSC crashes when more than one CPak are inserted on boot) and presumably Waialae Country Club saves normally on Ares as well. guess i can test that today since there's an "unverified" status flag on Waialae

the Rush 2049 issue is a bit troublesome. with all defaults set in the N64 core, the game will simply blackscreen on boot

[digital remnant]

not sure if you can insert more than one cpak at a time with ares though 😄

[weary perch]

that's because default settings are 4 pads + 4 cpaks

really? that's surprising if you can't in Ares

[vapid hawk]

my only beef with ares is there's no android port

its still the dark ages for n64 on there

[zinc dew]

there's been no Ares update since August

[digital remnant]

you can always download the nightlies

one gets auto-built with each commit

[cerulean elk]

nothing in nightlies?

[digital remnant]

it was a GUI thing, you can do it now and setup all 4 ports as you would like

changed in one of the recent releases, i forgot sorry!

[brisk drum]

Just beat rakuga kids ! Didnt notice any weirdness at all

[digital remnant]

last one last week

[zinc dew]

oh

uhhhh

that never occurred to me

[cerulean elk]

yeah Ares really leans into the nightlies and they dont really update the "main build" for some time in between

[zinc dew]

lol oops!

thank you though

let's all pretend this never happened

[cerulean elk]

"its never happened I swear"

[weary perch]

this is actually great, it means probably no one has actually tested Rush 2049 with the latest changes. the game always worked with 1 CPak, it's when you insert more than one that the MiSTer core balks

will be interesting to test that then

i did end up breaking out 4 pads and 4 cpaks for a sanity check on the Rush games to confirm none of them do anything like the MiSTer core on hardware

[iron wren]

Certified classicube moment. 1.3.7 for over a year despite rewriting the http stack and countless improvements…

[lean spruce]

Mario Kart 64 need patches to work?? That is news to me. What are the patches for?

[zinc dew]

I think for 4p multiplayer

[weary perch]

not to work, it's a fix for the slowdown compensation in multiplayer

[lean spruce]

huh

[weary perch]

Mario Kart 64 (for Turbo core):
In certain multiplayer modes the game speeds up the gameplay to compensate for low framerates. In the turbo core (and Project 64 where these changes are always enabled) the game can run full speed making the game run too fast, so these patches revert this speedup. In the regular core the game can also run a little too fast but not always, so these patches may not be appropriate in that case. I added them in a "Turbo Core" folder in the archive.

they only apply when using 80MHz core it seems

[lean spruce]

Right, that makes sense

[cerulean elk]

I love that another testing series has started haha

after like what...a year?

[brisk drum]

Cant wait for the 80MHz version

[cerulean elk]

rumor has it M64 will run it at a 5.25x multiplier

[weary perch]

the last major testing phase was early 2024, so it's been awhile

there've been enough little changes to start re-checking the old issues. also i just love the N64, i'll start playing something on the core to test it like RE2 and then get sucked into another playthru for awhile 🙂

[lean spruce]

I´ve been playing Conker since the new updates kept coming. I love the N64 and I love this core

Using the time I have as my C64 is on the way, so will be on a hiatus for a while when I get it 😂

[brisk drum]

No EEEEFFFFIN WAY BRO! I’m gonna pre order 2

[slow silo]

There there others than Peach's Fury? That's the only one I know that apparently works on real hardware but is broken on mister

[cerulean elk]

Only one I am aware of

[viscid gate]

Yes, I've checked and this seems to no longer work.

[cerulean elk]

Peach's Fury works on A3D but not properly compared to an actual N64

[slow silo]

Is CEN64 still being developed? I thought the last update was years ago when it was still barely playable in that state?

[weary perch]

apparently no

it seems fully obsolete now by Ares from what weltenbrand was saying

it was used to develop some N64 homebrew so it must've had some kind of functionality

was also referenced in an Ares Github comment about it working with Iggy's Reckin' Balls 9-2 which doesn't work on Ares or MiSTer

[slow silo]

Yeah, I remember testing it out back then and seeing the updates just stop

[worn delta]

Thanks for confirming. Would be good to get an issue raised on GitHub for that one, especially since it apparently worked on older builds

[cerulean elk]

I forget all the time the forum even exists

[viscid gate]

I happened to have old 20241109 and it worked on that

[worn delta]

It does seem like it's own little world some times

[slow silo]

Not always, I have a PSIO and I constantly recommend people to stay away and get an XStation instead. I would want mister to win because it's an open platform.

[slow silo]

That just makes me think of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMGK7-EAQgQ

[viscid gate]

@worn delta There might be something odd as its working on one of my units with Dual ram but not on another with single - will have to double check (that's todays build)

[worn delta]

Dual ram shouldn't have any impact as the core doesn't recognise anything in slot B, but that is interesting it isn't working in one of them but does in another

Any other differences in the set ups?

[cerulean elk]

Like Saroo and Saturn. I have two. I tell people meh it’s a bit messy

[slow silo]

... are you SURE you played Rakuga Kids if yo didn't see anything weird? 🤣

[slow silo]

PSIO is a bit more straight forward, the only advantage is you keep the disk drive and it works on a few more models than the XStation, it's inferior in just about every other way and the dev is kind of a dick

[viscid gate]

@worn delta So it seems to be the pad config - by default one of them seemed to have all the pads set to N64Pad. If you boot MM with 4 pads it locks up on the title screen.
This is the same on the old core too so might be a game bug

[worn delta]

Oh, interesting. Is that something that can be worked around with setting in the .XML I wonder

[viscid gate]

@worn delta I've confirmed MM behaves the same on A3d hardware (with 4 controllers) so may well be game bug

[worn delta]

Sounds like it, wonder if there is an easy way to flag with whoever made it

[slow silo]

Does having anything plugged into the pads do anything?

I recall having rumble paks or not plugged into the controllers effects timing in Beetle Adventure Racing

[brisk drum]

That game is so guuuud! A lot going on under the hood!

And yeah the final boss has that unblockable super that if it hits he puts you in a hamburger eats you and poops you out lol

[slow silo]

If I had a nickel for every time I have seen fighting game character have a move where they turn into food than eat you...

Which would only get me like 30 cents or so, but it's weird that it happens that often

[weary perch]

well, apparently the A3D team knows the fix for the Monster Truck Madness 64 text bug lol

@digital remnant no need to test this one, looks like they've got it fixed on their hardware

i think this is the first time i've seen it fixed on any emulator, but i dunno if i've tested it using the latest mupen64-plus stuff

[rugged nexus]

can somebody DM me a working n64-systemtest rom? I built it multiple times using the github instructions, and while the rom was created successfully, it is not working

[weak hill]

wtf.......................................firts ever!

[scenic vapor]

Do you know Bomberman - Second Attack?

[zinc dew]

Yeah, haven’t played it though. I even own it lol.

[slow silo]

Wait, wa there two or three bomberman games on n64?

I remember Bomberman 64 and Bomberman Hero

[turbid warren]

Bomberman 64 The Second Attack

[slow silo]

So that is the third one?

[turbid warren]

yup

[slow silo]

Think I never played that one

I know I played 64, and one with an annoying robot

[zinc dew]

There’s a fourth one

Japan exclusive

[slow silo]

And you could turn bomberman into a submarine or helicopter

[zinc dew]

Bomberman arcade

[scenic vapor]

Bomberman 64 - The Arcade game

Yeah

[slow silo]

Well, I definitely would not have rented that one from blockbuster

[scenic vapor]

Translated on certain sites

[magic girder]

You’re such a romantic

[slow silo]

Eh, romance is overrated

When it comes to romhacks and translations I would rather apply them myself

[magic girder]

Of course we all apply them ourselves to the dumps we create ourselves

[slow silo]

Funny that I know more Bomberman games on N64 than PSX

Only PSX one I am aware of is the racing game XD

[scenic vapor]

bomberman Arcade > Bomberman Second Attack > Bomberman Hero > Bomberman 64

[slow silo]

Funny thing, I DO try to apply them to my own dumps, I have dumped my CD games, and have a cart dumper XD

... but I had the wrong revision of OOT for most hacks 🙁

[scenic vapor]

Trust me. No other opinion can be true

[slow silo]

Bomberman Act Zero > bomberman Arcade > Bomberman Second Attack > Bomberman Hero > Bomberman 64

[brisk drum]

Batman beyond is running at the proper speed!

[rugged nexus]

ok, just built the n64-systemtest rom on a windows computer, and a mac computer. the crc sha are completely different and neither rom works lmao. can someone help me figure out where I've gone wrong or DM me the rom? I followed exact directions on the lemmy-64 github page

don't make me do this on linux too 🤣.. I blame rust

[digital remnant]

Very nice, thx!

[violet marlin]

It was a pain in the ass to build on Linux also lol

I can send the rom if you want.

[hasty musk]

what are the benefits implementing all features, better fps (closer to original n64)?

@wanton sun

[rugged nexus]

thank you @wanton sun just discovered the rom I generated worked on MiSTer but not on my OG n64. I am guessing it just won't work on a stock N64?

[wanton sun]

Newest version should work on a real n64 as the boot loader should be compatible. Some people here in on discord tried that. You can search for "systemtest" and you'll find the posts and screenshots.

[rugged nexus]

interesting. I tried it on both an Everdrive 64 x7 on 3.10 with updated bootloader and a fully up to date summercart64 and it doesn't work for me. I am on a stock n64 connected to a CRT with an S-video cable. very strange. I'll look at those older forum posts as you mentioned

[wanton sun]

well, they are only 2 weeks old and same version. Not sure what is different for you: #1096015979055697940 message

[rugged nexus]

I'll try your exact systemtest rom you just posted on both the everdrive and summercart and see if that makes a difference

[digital remnant]

They should add a docker to build that correctly more easy lol

[rugged nexus]

I tested on stock n64, analogue 3D, and on newest test N64 core. On both Everdrive and Summercart, nothing shows up on my stock n64. Both failed 7 tests on the Analogue 3d on forced original hardware and auto overclock. Newest mister core also failed 0 tests. Great work Robert!

[digital remnant]

i tested on my A3D and it looks fine too, but there is a big white line on the right side.
i have the same corrupted pixels like your screenshot left and right on A3D, also on real hardware, but there is no right white line on real hardware (my PVM can display overscan)

[chrome quest]

If you really want something obscure, I should check if any emulators show more of the screen real estate I noticed on PAL Pokémon Stadium that I've not seen anywhere else

(FYI Just thought to check the Pokémon websites and they have the "Earl's Pokémon Class" image with even more displayed than my analog capture from the N64. Butcher the display aspect ratio mind, but I guess some emulators were used to dump the larger images out of the game if nothing else)

[digital remnant]

did you check with ares by yourself or did you only check the ares compatibility db?

[weary perch]

haven't checked yet, still at work for another hour, but i've got the latest nightly to mess with later this evening

i've looked at all the N64 related commits in Ares, but there weren't any hints as to whether any logged issues were impacted

[main inlet]

Just curious ... is there a reason these latest builds aren't part of the unstable nightlies?

[mint shadow]

I don't believe the N64 core has ever been in the nightlies due to how hard it is to get a suitable build.

[weary perch]

no changes to anything i've tested in the latest nightly. onegai monsters still has graphics corruption, hybrid heaven (J) still crashes with expansion pak inserted, daikatana (J) crashes on boot, even found a new issue not reported (same as on MiSTer) with Fox Sports Hoops '99 intro running at warpspeed

the issue list still seems accurate to the latest nightly

Ares matches MiSTer in having the left and right sides very slightly cropped compared to your PAL hardware image

[digital remnant]

you should join the ares discord to report findings like that 🙂

[severe rock]

Same here. I wouldn't recommend my PSIO when there is the xstation out there

Plus people can always emulate the PS1

With the internal resolution in 4X,filters,etc

[tepid shuttle]

i like the PSIO but only the bootleg ones so the asshole creator doesn't make any profits

[zinc dew]

Reminder for the evening / night crowd!

[green epoch]

would love a second confirmation on this: #1096015979055697940 message

[severe rock]

I think bootlegs are the ONLY way to get one 🤣

[chrome quest]

Thanks very much for checking

[brisk drum]

I tested a ton of different games for like 4 hours

[plush summit]

big dog you check MK Trilogy?

[brisk drum]

Oh shit no I didn’t! But I checked Xena! That shit ran like a dream

[plush summit]

hell yeah brother

[finite ember]

Can someone help me troubleshoot the error I'm getting while compiling n64-systemtest? I'm getting this:
rust-lld: error: /home/syboxez/gitstuff/n64-systemtest/target/mips-nintendo64-none/release/deps/n64_systemtest-cc50a48b66b4c5d5.oxz4qqcwwlzv1js.rcgu.o:(.eh_frame): PC offset is too large: 0xfffffffefffd7538

[rugged nexus]

if you scroll up (or better yet use search), Robert posted the n64-systemtest.z64 rom earlier today

[zinc dew]

Imagine playing this core when you could be playing Tonic Trouble on your Switch. Couldn’t be me!

Which came out today.

[finite ember]

I'm getting crackling on this new core that I'm not getting on the stable core. Using the MiSTer Pi with analog audio out

I get it with some other unstable cores too. Seems to be a common issue with the newer analog IO boards

[teal citrus]

I wonder if the Turbo core also passes all tests.

Probably not.

[fallen valve]

Tested the latest unstable core with 9.2 board via ypbpr. Indeed, I am getting distorted audio in mario 64 with analog audio out as well.

[chilly ember]

Same deal here lol, Tried wave race

[fallen valve]

Audio doesn't distort when using s-video.

[brisk drum]

Any chance PWM can be added to the official core ?

[green epoch]

and it won't with rgb either. it's a weird bug.

its worth continuing to test the build for bugs in games. we will just have to build a few before we get one without sound distortion

[topaz otter]

what does he sound like?

[rugged nexus]

I have no audio glitches on ypbpr on mister pi analog 9.2 board (but have had the issue with certain core releases in the past). I am using the scaler with a custom 540p video mode to avoid any lag on my HD crt

[rugged nexus]

the latest turbo core fails 25 tests FYI

[fallen valve]

Kinda like if you record with the mic gain set too high or like the speakers are dying and are buzzing?

[zinc dew]

Yeah the turbo core hasn’t been updated yet.

[green epoch]

are you using the analog audio port on the io board?

[rugged nexus]

yes, with a 3.5mm to rca audio adapter

[green epoch]

interesting. I wonder if the modeline is doing it

[rugged nexus]

I'll have to try with the scaler disabled but it'll have to be tomorrow. in a past core I had audio glitches when using 540p but no problem on same core using any other video mode

[green epoch]

that would be interesting if you get it with vga_scaler disabled

[mental citrus]

ok all good, mister pi, bga ram, unstable core, test rom result

hdmi dv1 through retrotink

[finite ember]

I'm using a CRT with vga_scaler disabled. I tested using Portal 64 (The Still Alive fork)

I get a bunch of crackling in the main menu

[green epoch]

would be weeeeird if vga scaler "fixes" it

but another good data point

[mental citrus]

real hardware doesn't even load the test rom, fwiw (n64 using summercart with newest fw)

mister is more accurate than real hardware 🤡

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1193667333319819304/1450719114791489647/2025-12-17_00-13-55.mp4?ex=69438ef6&is=69423d76&hm=3d6aa5ad2a2b852883694e5006e21b83547c7d2cf9b36cbeafa78ae893a0ad0d&

[wanton sun]

You could try summercart in --direct mode

or @fast scarab tells us how it worked on their side.

[fast scarab]

there were multiple n64 systemtest builds I tried that didn't work on real hardware via SC64, only one of them did iirc

[mental citrus]

i wonder if everdrive is any better

[compact depot]

MiSTer wins again!

[onyx minnow]

this is like the NES core all over again 🙂

[worn delta]

Got to love test ROMs. Now if only someone cared about SMS test rom fails enough to update that core... 🙂

[lament escarp]

Only good games on sms are phantasy and ultima 4, innit?

[onyx minnow]

Wonderboy in Monster world 3 is totally the best sms game ever

the dragons trap

[worn delta]

There are lots of great games on the SMS. The Sonic games are unique and not down-ports of the MD ones, same with Streets of Rage. A lot of fun to be had exploring that back catalogue if you aren't as familiar with it.

The core also handles Game Gear, SG-1000 and some arcade boards as well.

Pound-for-pound, that core punches well above its weight for a strong library. Just wish it would get a bit of dev love to polish it up some more.

[magic girder]

SMS Sonic 1 > MD Sonic 1

[onyx minnow]

i'm old enough to remember sonic 1 advertising on TV 😛

SMS advertisements on TV was some guys dad playing r-type and shinobi

[junior pine]

Indeed. That game is a masterclass of good game design in every aspect.

[junior pine]

In no f'ing way, man. Not at all.

[cerulean elk]

can we submit speedrun times to the leaderboards?

fastest completion

[weary palm]

"You will need some kind of scaler. This holoscreen doesn't have... what did you call it? HDMI? Most screens don't even have a Vision WD40 connector anymore..."

[slow silo]

Man, I remember reading magazine ads for the then upcoming Sonic 1 game, and seeing Sonic 2 ads plastered all over this Burger King that was on the way home from school.... that got shut down due to health violations.... 🤢

[weary palm]

BK is the worst of the burger bunch.

[slow silo]

Eh, I like their burgers more than mcdonalds

[cunning cradle]

100% but I will say BK quality varies from restaurant to restaurant more than McDonald’s.

[weary palm]

McDonalds is pretty good here! I've heard it's shit in the 'Muricas though.

So I can't say which one is better in your location. But BK has always been shit no matter where I go. 😂

@wanton sun Your surname is pronounced more like "pipe" than "payp", right?

[broken creek]

Don’t shatter the illusion in my mind that it’s pronounced “PEEP”

[wanton sun]

Yes, sounds exactly like the english pipe in german

[broken creek]

Put that in your peep and smoke it.

[zenith orchid]

The best way I found to remember is whether it's ei/ie, to always focus on the second letter in its long vowel form, and essentially ignore the first letter.

[weary palm]

Don't be such an Ainschteen.

[slow silo]

Oh, I see, like how gif is pronounced jif

[weary palm]

Spelling is so dumb. Why have letters that can sound three different ways?

[zenith orchid]

The good thing about ei/ie is that they always make the same sound(at least they're supposed to.)

[weary palm]

That's not true with English.

[zenith orchid]

For German/Dutch loanwords it should be true

[weary palm]

But mostly, yeah. But that's NOT a good thing for someone who tries to spell in English.

[zenith orchid]

Yeah you can't stop English speakers from bastardizing even those

[weary palm]

Queue is one of my favorites. 😂

[zenith orchid]

English would have much more consistent spelling if we never started adopting words from romance languages

[weary palm]

We have too, but for many of them we've Swedified the pronunciation and spelling. Job > jobb. Email > mejl. Face > fejs. 😂

[zenith orchid]

Yeah that's smart. But it seems for some reason we changed "mein" to "mine", and we don't always apply that to other words like that.

[weary palm]

And the conjunction is completely different too. "To date someone". "Att dejta någon". Changing the spelling has become more rare as English has become more and more common in our daily life.

Very off topic. I'm a bad buoy.

[zenith orchid]

Yeah English can't be universally governed. Like you can't make british people spell "colour" as "color" even though the alternative quite obviously saves a letter. :D they would never agree even if it's for the sake of efficiency.

I wouldn't be against people spelling Frankenstein as Frankenstine just to make things more uniform. But at the same time I can see how it might lose its charm that way.

[weary palm]

And I can't hear the 'z' in apologize. I can't tell S and Z apart in spoken English at all. 😂

To me, they have two C's in their alphabet.

[zenith orchid]

Yeah I don't know why we changed apologise to apologize, I think that's the product of illiteracy catching on.

[zenith orchid]

Wait.. so "rise" and "rice" sound the same to you? 👀

[weary palm]

Yes

Unless i really pay attention

[zenith orchid]

The difference is really the buzzing sound, which if you can't hear, then you can definitely feel it when you pronounce it, as it literally makes your jaw vibrate

[weary palm]

Meh. It's dumb.

I don't have much for that bussing sound.

[zenith orchid]

Pronunciation between different languages has so much to do with hearing minute differences. Because you can't pronounce what you can't hear.

[weary palm]

But that's because that sound is completely absent from my mother tongue (tounge? 😂), I guess.

[zenith orchid]

I think part of the reason children have an easier time is that they are really good at mimicking sounds no matter how foreign or subtle

[weary palm]

It's pronounced "Ton-gew", right?

[zenith orchid]

Nope, just like 'tung'

Rhymes with dung

[weary palm]

Damn eat.

[zenith orchid]

English words you essentially treat like Chinese, the radicals might give you clues as to the meaning or pronunciation, but the right pronunciation is how people say it.

That's pretty much how I look at French 😂

So many letters are just there for show(seemingly)

[weary palm]

The Japanese got it right.

[jolly turret]

@remote hatch released a core version with a composite blend toggle feature. When enabled the image position shifts slightly, likely matching the hardware correctly then. I suggest to test this core version also. If you can't find it (it was posted in this channel some time ago), I can send it to you.

[rugged nexus]

Finally got time to test the 12/16/2025 N64 test core without the scaler enabled, and yup, my audio is garbled as well. So for whatever reason, having the scaler enabled (in my case i tested both 540p and 720p) on my HD-CRT fixes the analog audio

[green epoch]

eeeeenteresting

[weary perch]

i don't think it could match hardware with just a blending option, since the MiSTer image is actually lacking a few columns of pixels on the far left and right entirely

this is the same as Ares, which also lacks the far left and right of the image seen in the hardware capture

i need to do some more investigation on this but i don't think blending is the answer

unfortunately i don't have a PAL N64 which makes it tricky to get a proper capture

[zinc dew]

That’s fascinating, any guesses as to why?

[weary perch]

not sure, just know that PAL tends not to be a major focus in general haha

if i can get a really nice proper PAL capture for that game i can also inquire with remutro and the other ares N64 devs about it

[blissful plaza]

Sorry, S(E)CAM, everyone forgot you

[weary perch]

since the ares output matches MiSTer

i tried toggling Overscan and Pixel-Perfect options in ares but it still lacked the far left and right columns of pixels in Pokemon Stadium 2 versus Mark's PAL N64 hardware capture

i have also been researching Waialae Country Club to determine why saving doesn't work on the MiSTer core

it's a bit confusing... when you boot up the game, you get a message about Controller Pak saving. however, this is actually a fallback because the game shipped with an SRAM chip on the PCB which was the save type used for the game. for some reason MiSTer isn't handling the SRAM right for this game, so you get the fallback controller pak message. However, and this seems to have only been determined today by me and some folks in the ares discord, that Controller Pak save functionality seems unimplemented so you ultimately just can't save at all on the MiSTer version.

it's ironic that the one game that weirdly has an SRAM failure fallback save type is ALSO the lone SRAM game that doesn't save on MiSTer, BUT the fallback cpak save function... doesn't actually function 😄

there doesn't seem at a glance to be anything special about the saving in that game, and the database entry is correct for the game (matches ares, where saving works)

but... for some reason, you can't save the game on MiSTer.

[zinc dew]

Waialuigi Country Club

[weary perch]

@wanton sun re: Waialae Country Club not saving on MiSTer: just guessing, but this one is probably not hard to test in the slow software emulator since you can save at the beginning of the game in a few seconds. if you make any change to the Registered Players, the game automatically saves to SRAM. for some reason the MiSTer doesn't seem to pick this up. You don't get a Saving message in the OSD and a file is never written. remutro (ares dev) didn't see anything special about the SRAM function in Waialae as to why it wouldn't just work

[digital remnant]

i got a pal n64, pretty sure robert does too! 😄

[plush summit]

I'm pretty sure it was mentioned that NTSC and PAL N64 have no physical differences minus the video output

[spare meadow]

If it’s help, I got a PAL-M N64

[digital remnant]

i dont know, i get weird shadows when i play NTSC games on my PAL console

[plush summit]

could be whatever handles the video output causes it

[latent dagger]

There is indeed no hardware difference. That's why the "region lock" is literally the plastic that keeps one region cartridge from slotting into the other region system

Nintendo went cheap about it

[turbid warren]

you can just rip the plastic apart and boom no more region lock

[latent dagger]

Exactly

[plush summit]

yeah but then, you'd be open to god rays

[weary perch]

if you have a PAL N64 and a nice way to capture it, capture that Pokemon Stadium 2 screen we're comparing and see if you can see more of the image than is visible on Ares or MiSTer

NTSC consoles are entirely compatible by removing a plastic tab, but that's not exactly true for PAL<->NTSC. need something like an UltraPIF to accommodate differences between NTSC and PAL video clocks

definitely not good for reference capture

[plush summit]

that makes sense

[digital remnant]

which screen exactly?

[weary perch]

#1096015979055697940 message

[digital remnant]

thx! is that really more content or maybe a aspect ratio thing or something?
do you also have a ares screenshot?

[weary perch]

we're ideally looking for some kind of HDMI capture but a good analog capture should be helpful too

yes, one sec

there is more content in the hardware capture. the easiest place to tell is the white pokeball engraving on the left wall

on Ares, it cuts off on the edge, but the hardware capture has a little bit of the bare wall

it's not enough with that one image to say much conclusively though, especially with it being analog

need some more examples of good PAL N64 capture of that screen and see what we can see

i can make a screenshot of what the 20251216 MiSTer core does later today. based on Mark's earlier screenshot it looks like it is just like Ares

i think Mark was just asking in the context of getting MiSTer N64 analog output to look exactly like hardware, but i'm more interested in the apparent pixels that seem to be there on hardware that aren't showing up on ares or MiSTer haha

[digital remnant]

i took a quick photo from my PVM in display overscan mode

[weary perch]

interesting

that looks just like ares and MiSTer

[digital remnant]

really? i thought there was a bit more "content" on the right 😄

[weary perch]

at a glance at least, i'll need to finish what i'm doing to get pixel peeping

[digital remnant]

my analog capture sucks ass so not sure if that view would improve things

but i will test on A3D

[weary perch]

yeah you know looking at it closely i think you do have at least just a tiny bit more content on both sides than ares

[blissful plaza]

Counting pixels

[weary perch]

it is kind of eye-wrenching haha

the gap between the edge and the elbow on the right is bigger on your image

on ares it's like 1-2 pixels maybe

and i think Mark's image has more on the left than yours... somehow... but yours has more on the left than MiSTer/ares...

just a pixel or two in each case

[digital remnant]

A3D cant do screenshots yet unfortunately

[weary perch]

wild.

[digital remnant]

but that looks like definately more content than with ares - so another parallelrdp bug which A3D gets right?

[weary perch]

so that one is definitely missing a bit on the left. but it has more on the right than ares...

it lacks a bit on the left to ares, no?

the table leg is the giveaway

[digital remnant]

crazy yeah

[weary perch]

it's just a tiny slice down there on A3D

[digital remnant]

whats going on 😄

[weary perch]

this is PAL erasure!

[digital remnant]

maybe its random what area of the picture gets cropped out

[weary perch]

how is every single one of these images slightly different lmao

[digital remnant]

on NTSC it always displays the whole picture?

[weary perch]

i think Pokemon Stadium 2 is one of the fewer PAL games that actually uses the whole thing, the larger-than-NTSC resolution

so i'd think NTSC should show less

lemme check on ares at least since that's quick

honestly i've looked at this image too many times and now i don't even know what i'm looking at anymore 😄

This is NTSC-USA

and here's the internal screenshot tool output from ares

it also looks about the same to PAL ares to me

[digital remnant]

i mean you can save screenshots from pal and ntsc and then switch them fast in your favourite image viewer to confirm 😄

[weary perch]

haha that's my current task

[digital remnant]

or some image differences tool online

my ares looks like your ares so thats that - ares has a "display overscan" option, but that doesnt do much for n64 i think

[jolly turret]

Thank you for looking into this @weary perch! Getting even such small details right is why I love the core so much.

[digital remnant]

would be interesting what the whole background picture looks like - maybe some modder extracted that already?

[weary perch]

comparing the screenshots from PAL/NTSC in Ares, the only difference is aspect ratio. the content is identical

the music on this screen slaps, at least

kind of a baroque reimagination of the pokemon center tune

[digital remnant]

is there some 20 year old forum post about this same problem on project64 1.6 or something?

i guess every emulator which uses parallelrdp looks the same and i imagine Robert also learned the RDP stuff from it?

[weary perch]

i did a cursory search but couldn't find anything

but i do know that basically no one gives a shit about PAL so any failure for PAL to be perfect is never surprising to me lol

personally i am always interested in PAL differences, they are often surprising and strange

Wave Race Blue Storm is a favorite of mine, it's like they did a douple-dip in localizing the timer from 60 to 50Hz. They changed the timer to run at a different speed, but then also made you actually move faster. some kind of wild conversion error when going from MPH to KM/H? who knows lol

the goal was clearly something like Goldeneye 007 where the game itself more or less compensates for that

but it's not like that at all 🙂

[digital remnant]

especially strange when i imagine that the japanese version also used km/h 😄

[weary perch]

i think that one in particular was originally fully MPH-brained because it was developed (principally, anyway) in Redmond, Washington by Nintendo Software Technology

whoever did the PAL conversion... made some mistakes haha

but it's awesome because the PAL version is effectively an entirely different game. one that runs crazy fast

the speedrun routing is different haha

still kind of inexplicable, not something i've really seen elsewhere 🙂

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYot9fgUuE4

both the timer runs at a different speed and the watercraft speed is also actually faster in PAL than in NTSC

very strange

looking at the UI, i guess they used km/h for every region. even more strange haha

anyway digression over, just wanted to share that about Blue Storm because it always amuses me

[mossy vector]

The vi has errata related to cropping and offsetting. This came up the last time this pokemon screen was analyzed. Something about how the rambus fetches in bursts aligned to 8 or something way over my desire to want to intricately understand the nuances of the memory controller. Like it requests 1 to 8 but it gets 0 to 7 or something.

My condolences to the A3D guy who must have made all these tests to visually verify what the RCP chip actually does versus what documentation or sane reasoning says it should.

Hard to do if it's visual and literal edge cases. Like screen edges where most TVs would cut off or capture cards would fix.

[chrome quest]

Indeed thank you for looking into my post @weary perch . Not had much time lately to play or check other screens or games. That was just the single example I stumbled into.
The table leg makes a bit of a reference point at least. Very odd to see the A3D miss the left side if it gets a bit more on the right.
All a bit odd! I think even when I did raise it on the basis of analogue output, the real kicker is that it is missing in the HDMI too.
No idea of other PC emulators either. I wouldn't be surprised if those Pokémon websites passed around a single image. Could be a data dump? Some PC emulator that can know the extra real estate for the image is there? Wild 😄

[weary perch]

Haggarman's insight is very useful, seemingly a knowledge gap re: some undocumented / nonsensical RCP behavior

it doesn't appear anything exactly matches hardware currently. A3D has a different crop than MiSTer/ares but not the same crop as hardware

[vapid hawk]

didn't we already investigate this like a year ago

[chrome quest]

It does seem the PAL specific things are often missed until some oddball (eg me) that plays PAL games notices something is up

[vapid hawk]

not so much on roberts cores as he likes to play PAL

[chrome quest]

That is true of all cores! I'm completely wrong

[quaint abyss]

now that libdragon works again, could somebody test the repeater64 demo?
https://github.com/HailToDodongo/repeater64/releases/tag/v2
most of that stuff is now covered by the snapper64 RDP test rom,
however it has 2 demos using per-scanline VI effects.
Ares fails this, but it works on A3D (with a 1 scanline difference sometimes)

[last jackal]

He did a poll for that it was roughly 30% of the people that bothered answering the poll

[main inlet]

Is there a way to use FLA save files from an Everdrive on the N64 core?

[cerulean elk]

Man I’m starting to get suspicious (and I don’t care I’d have done it too) that A3D somehow auto patches Perfect Dark with the performance patch

Considering the diff in frame rates across hw

[vapid hawk]

DF tested it unpatched vs patched

it was way faster patched

[cerulean elk]

Tested A3D against itself patched and unpatched?

[main inlet]

Got my Everdrive save working, but now I'm trying to figure out why the analog stick on my NSO N64 controller doesn't register up or down on MiSTer.

Re-paired my controller and now it's all working. Very strange, but I'm not going to complain about it. This core is great!

[zinc dew]

If I were to guess, you might’ve not completed the entire controller config process in mister main.

If you exit out early you’ll kiss the final stick 1 calibration at the very end.

Miss

Maybe kiss, I don’t know, I don’t judge

[main inlet]

I didn't redo the setup, I only re-paired via BT

[zinc dew]

Oh that’s wacky tabacky

The magic of Bluetooth!!!!

[main inlet]

Yup, very strange. It's working now though.

[cerulean elk]

Bluetooth is one level above cans attached with strings tech wise

[rugged nexus]

Glad you got the controller sorted out. In most cases people have issues because for "Up, Down, Left, and Right" they map the analog stick. I can't for the life of me understand why that was never changed to "Dpad Up, Dpad Down, Dpad left, Dpad Right"

[neat sierra]

Robby translation:
“Oh that’s marijuana”
“I don’t understand Bluetooth”

[solar slate]

🤣

[wanton sun]

Shouldn't it already be the CPak message triggered when booting up? This would never come up when SRAM works?

[wanton sun]

It boots now. Most tests fail. MI-Repeat works but is slightly slower (compared to you video, e.g. 2.5ms instead of 2.2ms)
VI per line wobbles, but only the text, the "flag" is just not there.
VI pong also shows nothing.

Oh, and RDP Test mode crashes

[weary perch]

that boot message is a fallback in case of SRAM failure; is never normally seen and it seems to be a red herring as the functionality by all accounts does not work.

but it at least does indicate right on boot that SRAM is not detected, so it is helpful in that sense

[wanton sun]

So if the message comes up, the SRAM test already failed?

[weary perch]

yes

[wanton sun]

That seems very helpful

[weary perch]

thanks for looking at this!

[wanton sun]

Boots up fine in my emulator, no matter what initial content the SRAM has.

[weary perch]

someone in the Ares discord offered a potential insight into the Pokemon Stadium 2 cropping

[wanton sun]

I made a version a while ago that didn't crop at all and it showed too much. Would need something in between...

[zinc dew]

Ares Community

[wanton sun]

Game does write to SRAM and reads back to verify it worked. But the written value is not coming back.
Typical case of:

• this cannot happen, all other games work
• oh i see....
• how did this ever work with any game?

• fix SRAM write mask (Waialea and Shiren)
• pak switch: downtime is shorter (0.5s instead of 2s), reset will force switch and A+B+Start are inactive while PAK is switched
• update sys

Does that count as one more game working for Christmas? 😅

[weary palm]

I don't see it. It's pretty much identical to Ares.

Down to the pixel

[iron wren]

This is half of the bugs I’ve ever fixed in my career. What a classic!

Almost as consistent as “I’ve created a new energy source!” “It’s boil water to spin a wheel again”

[weary perch]

woo! Waialae fixed! That's definitely a win ❤️

the next thing i'm going to try digging into is the Rush games' controller pak quirkiness on MiSTer. did some testing on ares and determined they all work normally there, no issues with multiple CPaks inserted like we get on MiSTer

[wanton sun]

Does it work fine with SNAC or not? Would at least make sure if it's the emulated cpak or PIF/Timing/whatever

[weary perch]

good question. i don't have SNAC. would just need someone with the capability for at least 2 SNAC CPaks at once

Rush 2049 instantly crashes if you insert more than one Virtual CPak on boot, so it's a quick test

Rush 2049 (NTSC-USA)

i suspect it's a function of the relatively barebones cpak implementation since it works OK with one, but not with more than one. i believe there was an old issue in the original Mister64 repo with some comments from an emudev about cpak implementation. iirc our solution is efficient with logic resources and mostly works, but these games might not tolerate it

we just spoof one valid identifier for all CPaks, i think?

[wanton sun]

yes, there is some default init content

[weary perch]

that's the area i'm barking up at the moment

will try and find out what the minimum implementation needed for Rush games is

@zinc dew you got capability to use 2 real controller paks over SNAC on the MiSTer core?

or if anyone else does and has a minute, ping me or DM me, would love to just test Rush 2049 USA booting up with 2 SNAC CPaks active

[wanton sun]

where does it crash?

this seems to work fine

[weary perch]

oooh. i just tested that on 20251215 and it was still crashing

NTSC-U, right?

[wanton sun]

yes

[weary perch]

wow!

try with 4 inserted real quick if you don't mind

[wanton sun]

framerate drops in main menu

[weary perch]

just booting up the game with 4 inserted on 20251215 was blackscreen, no successful boot

which has been the case since at least February 2024, probably always

[wanton sun]

3+4+ works, but menu isn't reponsive anymore

[weary perch]

if you're already in game, rather than crashing, it will start automatically switching between them, which basically softlocks the game in a way

you can't really proceed until you get back to 1/0

[wanton sun]

yes, broken here

[weary perch]

yeah, it made me think that it is actually reading the init value to differentiate paks?

which maybe no other games do

definitely no other games than the Rush ones are quirky in this way that i've seen

interestingly PAL Rush 2049 seemed to work fine with multiple paks since forever

[wanton sun]

we can test this by using a constructed save file

my emulator starts with 0xFF as data for all paks. The game asks me to "repair" them on start. Then it works fine with multiple

i need more controllers to test, haha

[viscid gate]

Yes I have SNAC & 2 cpaks

[wanton sun]

yes, the initial data is the issue

if you put this 4 times for all 4 .cpk then repair on boot of the game it works

So what we need is a fix in mister main to make different init values for different pads

[weary perch]

this probably fixes all 3 Rush games once implemented

thanks again for looking at this stuff!

huge progress!

[wanton sun]

easiest would be to have a database entry for "init cpak to 0xFF"

Because generating different, but valid cpaks is difficult and the win is small. You would not get asked for repair, that's all

Maybe @weary palm can do that if we ask very kind 🙂

[hasty musk]

@wanton sun what are the benefits for the games if you implement all features? better fps closer to original fps?

i thought core was good enough

[wanton sun]

The recent changes for the systemtest do not directly affect the official games, but there are many many Libdragon based homebrew demos and games that didn't work anymore at all.

[magic girder]

Which is why “Nintendo 64 emulation is still a mess in 2025”

[digital remnant]

No, some more pixel next to the elbow on the right, like on real hardware

[blazing knot]

That’s all in the overscan area so could it just be different cropping?

[topaz otter]

bald bearded old man tells you why you should hate the thing you are currently enjoying

and how you can help yourself enjoy it less

[zinc dew]

Honestly, I think he was trying to be genuine in that video and for it to serve as both a PSA and call to action to spur devs for improvement.

He was uninformed about the MiSTer though and from my casual perspective, made Libdragon support seem like a big deal. And maybe it is? But the homebrew scene to a casual like me is almost nonexistent so it doesn’t matter to me.

But I think we’re almost a year out from that video and Ares is the software emulation GOAT for N64 and the MiSTer core now passes all tests so N64 emulation went from pretty awesome last year to incredibly awesome this year.

[lament escarp]

Yeah, leave the billion dollar youtuber alone!

[tepid shuttle]

the mister core isn't good...

It's great!

[iron wren]

N64 homebrew is not high on the list of strong homebrew communities.

[zinc dew]

It would be super cool if it was, I love N64

That Portal demake was pretty amazing

[upper pivot]

Which YouTube video are we talking about?

[spare meadow]

I know they’re not homebrews, but there are two hacks I’d like to see someday on N64:
1 - Super Mario 64 with all the levels, characters, and other extras from the DS version
2 - Mortal Kombat Trilogy with all the characters and animation frames from the PSX version

[zinc dew]

MVG made a video last year about the state of N64 emulation, sorry I’d find it for you but I’m a little loopy from my fever lol

[lament escarp]

Oh no! Hope you get well soon!
Unless it's dance fever, then I hope you never get well at all!

[zinc dew]

Ok I stopped being lazy, sorry - https://youtu.be/OmKjVpVdHDQ

[tepid shuttle]

with all the SM64 hacks these days, i'm really shocked that no one has backported all of the content from the DS port into the original version

[spare meadow]

Yeah, I feel the same way — it’s surprising no one has done that yet.

hope they do eventually

[lament escarp]

Best way of getting the hack you want is to make it yourself. Speaking from experience.

[mossy vector]

Google AI latched onto his video, so anytime I ask google about specifics like, what palleted indexed color mode is buggy on N64 resulting in an offset by 1 error, I get a response that includes emulation is a mess in 2025.

[spare meadow]

Haha, I wish! I have zero skills in ROM hacking or anything like that—I’m completely hopeless at it. Fingers crossed someone else with the talent picks it up someday!

[lament escarp]

Neither had I when I started! And I still got none! 😅

[chilly ember]

Super mario 64 ds sucks

That's why no one has cared to port it lol

Switching to wario to swim slowly just use the metal power up is garbage

[weary palm]

Do we have safety dance yet? We can't say it has passed all tests before that. j/k

[weary palm]

I thought I did that already? Perhaps the code is broken somehow...

[wanton sun]

You did? Maybe this is not enough for the Rush games.

I see, it seems the content is different for the 4 cpak init values. Don't know what the game is exactly looking for

We could start Ares and save 4 paks, then use these as init values 🤡

[weary palm]

ay ay ay

[weary palm]

i can't seem to be able to trigger a crash i San Fransisco Rush 2049

but it DO act very weird if i insert 4 identical paks to all 4 slots.