Nintendo 64

[slow silo]

I was shocked that Mario in the Multiverse seemed to be running... well, ok, maybe not full speed, but more than fast enough to be playable while it was a crashy slideshow in the standard and 80MHz cores

[static echo]

and it doesn't come back (if I reset and continue the game it works normally)

[slow silo]

Considering that romhack says that it's NOT made to run on real hardware, and in fact is evne picky about what emulator you run it on, basically requiring you to use parallelli in overclocked mode

... that being said though, after I got past the intro area the framerate tanked in teh hub world XD

But yeah, seemed playable

Return to Yoshi Island already ran fine in the standard core, feels like it's definitely running smoother in the 94mhz core though

(I definitely recommend people check out that hack btw, even if it's only a 1-world demo for now)

[dim kiln]

Would be interesting to know if it happens to others as well.
Do you have problems with other games too or just dk64?
(I assume you have just the stock version?)

[static echo]

jet force gemini used to hang after a while playing. but randomly.

and yeah, stock dk64

[jolly turret]

@zinc dew by the way, remember I said I would make the pull request for my N64 audio filter? I'm sorry about that. I decided before doing that, to run some more tests to gain more understanding on how the aliasing issue in the framework potentially scewed my measurements and affected the audio filter accuracy. I have more free time again and will be able to invest some of it into developing for the Mister again.

It's just my combination of perfectionism and OCD that really makes me feel anxious about releasing something incomplete or not fully accurate,. Also if I can figure this out, I can hopefully just continue with developing more audio filters instead of using my time to troubleshoot complex issues that potentially can not be solved anyways.

[dim kiln]

I would have expected that you would have fared way better with this version since it seems to have helped for the few that had issues previously

[static echo]

I haven't tested more jfg, I may come back to it when I have the patience to pass the freaking moving platforms.
I'm playing a few other games though, so I may come back for more 🙂

[kind solar]

raspberry peen

[zinc dew]

Going to be real honest with you; you're going to be the only person that would notice anything inaccurate. Additionally, even if incomplete, that doesn't mean you can't keep working on it. I personally think you provide such an astute and valuable contribution that not sharing your hard work, even a its current state, is a shame.

But I dont want you to be uncomfortable.

I only say all that because I too am a perfectionist and we are our own worst roadblock and critic.

Sometimes you just need to share what you've got and the praise of others gets you over that hump.

[jolly turret]

I absolute agree on all counts and I'm aware of it to some extent. Good food for thought, I appreciate it.

[weak hill]

what thas GE means?

[zinc dew]

Golden Eggs

[dim kiln]

Golden Eye, I think its in the works and not to far away but then someone needs to actually work on the recomp as well

[zinc dew]

I have an expansion pack mod

everyone please clap

[weak hill]

i have the 480i mod for golden eggs, but the explosions, like the granade launcher, has graphical glitches

[strange helm]

I also tried dk64 and ran into the same issue as @static echo It crashes during the intro. I tested it with the stock dk64 and the tag anywhere romhack. Same result using 20260131 build

[dim kiln]

I'll give it try to see if its a general thing in a little while. It is possible that the RCP OC actually introduce a race condition in the game code its self. Perhaps Robbert have an idea. DK64 seems to very finicky on its own

[mossy vector]

I sent Robert down a rabbit hole back when the core was incomplete and in active development. The core would also crash during that DK64 opening cutscene. Deleting the .cfg file solved it for me. There was one redefined bit set that caused a freeze. I'm not saying this is the solution, but that Robert is... familiar with that annoying cutscene.

Yeah it stays at a black screen when the V formation of parrots fly at the screen.

But the cool part about the crash, is that when you reset, the game starts at the treehouse.

It's a time saver.

[dim kiln]

lol, nice find
But then its probably some race condition in the DK64 code that causes it...
I guess it simply is not compatible with DK64 running the OC like this

[dim kiln]

I can also confirm that it hangs in the starting cut scene with 94MHz but not with 80MHz after a reset it will simply start at the DK bungalow I am not very familiar with DK64 but in game it seem to be ok so far...

[slow silo]

Clearly we need to 100% DK64 on that core to make sure there are no other problems. I'm sure that is not at all hard or would take a while

[wanton sun]

this was done recently: #1096015979055697940 message

I wouldn't recommend a game that is so picky about timing with non-standard core.

[cinder pagoda]

Tested DK and found the same thing. Once it pans into the mountain, black screen, music continues.

Thought I would add the findings to the others posted.

[marble cargo]

Wouldn't recommend playing Donkey Kong 64 with faster timings regardless. The game was optimized to expect lag and compensate for it, so removing that lag creates problems. It's why the Wii U Virtual Console release is infamous for accidently making the minigames a lot harder.

[blazing knot]

Wouldn't recommend playing Donkey Kong 64 with faster timings regardless. The game was optimized to expect lag and compensate for it, so removing that lag creates problems. It's why the Wii U Virtual Console release is infamous for accidently making the minigames a lot harder.

jk jk it’s not that bad

[covert bough]

Beaver bother is a pain no matter what lol

[mental citrus]

I was testing the (earlier rev of the) 94mhz core on resident evil 2, and tried clean hdmi since someone mentioned in here it was a way to get around the resolution changes when you introduce a ram expansion cart

it ran well, and looked good, and worked pretty well in terms of the res changes

I cant say whether or not the game felt more or less stable, because my experience with the game was on the psx version mostly, but I think it was just fine either way and didnt notice anything game breaking at all. I even recorded a vod/uploaded it to youtube when I was streaming it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IqcSir3EF4

[dim kiln]

Thanks for testing
I have not researched how much that game benefits in terms of FPS from running on 94MHz core to the other cores (on RE2)

[waxen lodge]

N64brew Jam just ended, Phazer 64 looks cool, haven't tried any yet on the core https://itch.io/jam/n64brew-game-jam-6/entries

[quaint abyss]

here are all entries from this years jam: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/16O90QHfmrCzl_heo2B8A__8Brx70I_On
probably gonna be some extra more official post soon i imagine

[junior pine]

https://tenor.com/view/chernobyl-not-great-not-terrible-its-okay-gif-24540363

It's no good at all...

[bright lotus]

Donkey Kong 64 is the JRPG of the collectathon genre

[quick light]

There’s a way around this?

I haven’t been able to take advantage of the “clean hdmi” due to the resolution changes. Even without the expansion pack enabled

[mental citrus]

You have to disable dv1, turn on clean hdmi, and that should be it

I have a "default" profile which dv1 disabled on my mister

my main profile has dv1 enabled with all the caveats for the cores that dont work with it

but otherwise, once you enable clean hdmi (with DV1 off), it works as you expect

[mental citrus]

The vod shows it working pretty well, imo

[frosty zealot]

Best controller for this core?

[paper crescent]

I would say an unlocked version would be worth playing, but arcade DK and Jetpac can be played elsewhere on MiSTer.

[zinc dew]

The one you like the most. As long as it has an analog stick.

[frosty zealot]

Looking something for more authentic feel of real N64

[zinc dew]

The N64 NSO controller is my favorite for feel but the wireless input lag was a bit too much for me. I use a Saffun clone controller which I love. Loads of companies make the same clone controller.

[topaz otter]

have they decompiled this stupid game yet

I'm not booting the N64 up to play it

same with banjo tooie

[zinc dew]

You’re missing out

Ok like two thousand collectibles

[frosty zealot]

Ill check it out, thanks

[zinc dew]

Make sure to buy form a retailer with hassle free returns. Controllers are subjective so I’d hate for you to not be happy with it and be out money.

[frosty zealot]

i was thinking 8bitdo 64

but ill check Saffun one

[tepid shuttle]

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/4961/ something to take the edge off

alternatively you could use https://dk64randomizer.com/ to generate a "vanilla plus" patch. that looks pretty good too

[topaz otter]

my n64 is old

I'm old

we both won't survive

[zinc dew]

you will survivor because you are strong and wise

strise

[topaz otter]

i showed my n64 turok 2 and it went and hid in a corner

its on the second power supply

i think the gameshark may have killed the first one, I was using it to dump roms over the parallel port to help out the game preservation discord

redump and all that jazz, I contributed quite a few

[hasty musk]

maybe stupid question: if i switch from 1920x1080 to 1280x720
do i get a Performance boost a little?

@wanton sun

[hushed nova]

no, the output resolution is just the scaler. the 'core' renders at original resolution no matter what

[slow silo]

Well, can't get much more authentic than a SNAC adapter and original N64 controller then

[hasty musk]

so that is linux part arm cpu?

[quartz wedge]

The scaler is built into each core on the FPGA side so it's near-zero latency.

[wanton sun]

yes, scaler reads same amount of data, no matter what output solution.
As it's in FPGA and running in parallel, it will not consume more of the memory bandwidth.
There might be a theoretical difference in timing, because read time could be slightly different due to different output timing, but this would not be in favor for either, just random.

[chilly ember]

I like how it appears to be running at 20 fps

[topaz otter]

just like rare intended

i dont know what that is, but I'm sure if you wish hard enough someone in the community will make it

probably someone named after a food product

[topaz otter]

oh yeah I saw this in a movie

you put the helmet on and then shoot pterodactyls in 3d

[solar slate]

wow look at that performance.

[weary palm]

AA doesn't come with any performance penalty on the MiSTer, if I remember correctly

Do you play Banjo Kazooie like that too?

[vapid hawk]

banjo doesn't really have that kind of character switching

[slow silo]

Yeah, it's more like depending which move you do either Banjo or Kazooie does it, there's no switching between them

[chilly ember]

Banjo Tooie has parts where you have to seperate banjo and kazooie but it's not to the extent of DK64

[vapid hawk]

yeah its not really a chore in that game

[weary palm]

I thought you could play as an ant and stuff.

[blazing knot]

Those are transformations that are specific to worlds

They integrate into the puzzles and exploration pretty naturally too

DK64 would have been a lot more reasonable if only golden bananas were exclusive to each character and all of the other collectables could have been collected by anyone

And even at that, not every banana would have needed to be locked to one Kong

[young willow]

Hey gang. I'm just wondering how close the N64 core is to emulating OEM hardware on the level of the current SNES core and other 4th gen consoles. Ik this console along with other 5th gens have been very difficult to emulate on the Cyclone

Super Metroid allows Mister emulation in its speedrun.com submissions, but SM64 is very much against it

[plush summit]

Yeah don't expect the core on the DE-10 to match real hardware

even the 3D is having trouble being 1:1 to a real N64

[weary perch]

"SM64 is very much against it" needs context. they use a specific version of Project64 as their emulator of choice and changing that would upset many years of parity

MiSTer runs SM64 more accurately than that version of PJ64. it's about competitive parity in that case.

as far as the general question, it's extremely case-by-case

some games are effectively indistinguishable from hardware

others not so much

[tepid shuttle]

in my opinion, it's better than real hardware in some ways, but worse in others. almost the entire retail library works, the video options are great, and the turbo core helps tremendously with a lot of games, but some titles still freeze (wonder project J2), and others run faster or slower than they do on a real N64. there's also no RTC or 64DD support

[blazing knot]

Definitely not “cycle accurate” but it’s effectively indistinguishable in real time in most cases

[plush summit]

oh yah, this core replaces any N64 in my book

[rose scroll]

I still keep thinking whether I should buy an analogue3d - but I'm kinda happy with my mister

[worn delta]

At this point I would wait and see how the M64 compares to the A3D, if you are in the market for a dedicated N64 to plug into your 4K telly.

It is also possible that with the extra resources M64 supports the features that the MiSTer (and A3D) don't like native 64DD, RTCs, all the Gameboy mappers for virtual transfer Pak.

We will have to wait and see there

[slow silo]

PJ64? What? Isn't that infamously inaccurate?

[weary perch]

people have been speedrunning sm64 for a long time

[cunning mantle]

ARES is probably the only N64 emulator that is somewhat accurate.

[tepid shuttle]

has anyone here tried gopher64 at all

[weary perch]

gopher64 is great. if ares is too heavy for your machine it is one of the next ones to try.

along with Rosalie's Mupen GUI (RMG)

[slow silo]

Yeah but I would have assumed that software n64 emulators would just have not been allowed

Atleast until an accurate one appears

[weary perch]

gopher64 is basically a rewrite of Simple64 by the same author (both based on mupen64plus) and RMG is a good alternative (also based on mupen64plus). I do not recommend upstream mupen, the aforementioned are better.

[slow silo]

I have, it's nice, only tried it because the dev of mupen plus dropped it to start gopher. Had a VERY rough start at first but it's a lot better now

Still though, I will likely use ares... even if it can being my freaking 11700K to it's knees if I set it too high

[weary perch]

upstream is very stagnant, gopher and RMG have many bespoke fixes

[slow silo]

I can emulate a switch at 4k yet....

[weary palm]

Is the M64 FPGA confirmed to be an AMD Artix UltraScale+ XCAU15P?

[young willow]

Thanks for the info gang

[magic girder]

This is exactly why I use MiSTer. Getting better accuracy for N64 using a software emulator requires some relatively beefy hardware

[silent roost]

i am unsure i did something wrong.... i have NSO N64 controller under rumblepack ... played SM64 no issues, with golden eye ... when i move forward with stick it moves forward and looks down at same time

oh i think i know what it is, going to remap

[hushed nova]

when the core map asks you for up/down/left/right, it is the dpad, not the analog stick

you are not the first person that may have done that

[silent roost]

yup

thats was it

thanks

do any of you change the video settings for the n64 core?

i guess its blurrier thani remember haha

ps1 core is much sharper

[topaz otter]

they way overdid it in that game

and made it so that only certain characters could pick up certain collectibles

and they did it because they wanted to sell strategy guides

[weary palm]

I enjoyed it like that and wouldn't have it any other way.

[kind solar]

are the ports of the banjo games to xbox meaningfully better?

[zinc dew]

I thought they were

[languid dune]

Yeah, the biggest benefit of the Xbox versions is that the game saves the notes you've collected in each area. In the N64 versions, if you die or leave the area you have to start collecting them all over again.

[wanton sun]

No emulator for n64(software or FPGA) is even close to be comparable to SNES emulation at the current day and I doubt that changes much in the next 10 years.
To much missing knowledge, to high requirements on software side to make that possible. To few FPGA developers to reach it. Way to few researched to find the tiny details.

[young willow]

Are all fifth Gen consoles like that, or just the N64? If just the N64, why does it stand out compared to the others?

[wanton sun]

PSX is somewhat better, except for the CD subsystem. Probably because more popular and needs way less computing power to emulate.
Systems with real coprocessor like n64 or Saturn is always a mess to emulate on software and creates plenty of addtional edge cases.

[slow silo]

EVERY collectable was color coded to only be able to be picked up by a specific Kong, you could run into areas where there were two collectables of different colors side-by-side, or an area where you need one Kong to open the access to it but then another to collect what's beyond that point. I don't think it was made to sell guides though. It's not tricky, in fact it's very obvious, just extremely tedius to do, and also the internet and online fan guides were becoming very prominant by this point.

[slow silo]

Version, IIRC Tooie 2 did save your notes, just 1 did not. And I think there is a chance of a softlock due to that, since apparently you are expected to have to re-collect something if you do it in a certain way? I don't recall.

But yeah, note saving was one of the biggest complaints from 1 and it was added to the xbox360 port. The recomp has it too

[slow silo]

I would honestly not be surprised if Saturn is much worse, Saturn emulation was IMO well behind the N64 for a long time. and the hardware is a mess of half a dozen processors that have to be timed to sync with each other and unorthadox stuff like quad rendering

[young willow]

SNES has at least 2 coprocessors and seems accurate enough. Is that just due to the 16bit bus being more simple than the 32bit on 5th gens? (Ik N64 had some limited 64bit capabilities, but from what I know it ran 98% of stuff in 32bit)

[topaz otter]

the banjo pc port does this now

also has a load of other QOL options

also I'm playing it right now, I want to strangle the asshole who figured out that it takes ten seconds to hit a switch, run across a rail thin bridge, then jump at the end to grab a jiggy

then they reduced the timer to 9

[topaz otter]

I don't know, if you want to complete that game the guide is essential, theres no way you could figure out a lot of it on your own, it would be impossible

also rare was padding out banjo tooie and DK64 with collectathon shit to push the number of hours you spent in the game

both because they were trying to push out rental mainstays(people renting games for the weekend) and because IGN in those days was reviewing games based on number of hours of gameplay

games with like 20 hours of gameplay were considered blockbuster rental fare, mainly games with big multiplayer like mario kart, diddy kong racing, smash bros, beetle racing, battletanx

they were games with little to no single player and you only rented them to play with friends for the weekend and then took them back

a long game like DK64 you couldn't beat in one weekend, and it required the ram expander, so you were more likely to go buy it

[wanton sun]

The issue is not the amount of bits, it's more the overall structure.
Like coprocessor for TLB, FPU, 5 stage pipeline, much higher clock.
A fully accurate emulation of the n64 CPU is impossible on even the fastest PCs today.

There was an old article from Byuu/Near about accurate SNES emulation that required a 2-3GHz CPU.
N64 CPU runs at roughly 20 times the speed of the SNES and is (probably) more complex.

Of course, if you know your PC will not be fast enough for fully accurate emulation, the motivation for researching this is very low.
A lot has happened in the last years, especially thanks to people that both research and implement into Ares.
But we are still many years away from SNES level of understanding and maybe will never reach it.

[young willow]

Nice, thanks for the insight. Are there any resources on how the SNES core was developed and how the console was reverse engineered? I find that stuff fascinating

[blazing knot]

SNES hardware is very throughly documented so I would imagine that was a huge contribution https://wiki.superfamicom.org

And really that information was just gathered over the decades of the hardware existing, there wasn’t really one singular effort to reverse engineer it. And the instruction set of the CPU for example was an enhancement of an already very widely used and well understood one (6502)

[covert bough]

You guys see the new analogue 3D colors? lol

[magic girder]

Atomic purple!

Still won’t be as good as the MiSTer, but nice try Analogue

[covert bough]

It’s the transparent blue for me if I was buying one but I already have 2 real N64s, one mister, a steamdeck and now a SS1 lol

[lament escarp]

My mister is already purple.

[magic girder]

Not translucent purple though

[lament escarp]

Depends on what wavelength you refer to.

[weak hill]

what would need to happen, to get a snes emulation level on fpga, like the snes? is it possible to reverse engineer it 100%, or not even with the hardware tools used for rever engeneering cant happen?

[young willow]

I think we arrived there a little while ago

Several SNES speedrun.com games allow FPGA emulation for legal runs because of how accurate it is. Seems to me the only cores that need real work are 5th consoles

[bright lotus]

SNES core gave my OSSC trouble with its freaky sync so its very accurate

[vapid hawk]

didn't the snes core get developed by srg320 without him having ever seen or played a snes

i'm pretty sure he got one eventually but initially it was all just based on documentation

[worn delta]

Yeah, that is accurate

[lament escarp]

That's insane. The man is a saint. To bad I'll have to slap a pair of potara earrings on him and Robert to get a ds core. 🙁

[vapid hawk]

there's some part of the legend where he didn't know what zelda was called and kept calling it fairy boy game or something. its awesome

[languid ore]

DS can come after PSP...

[weary palm]

https://youtu.be/eyYawriH1cQ

My 7 year old comments on that video right there. (My youtube alias is "mirabilis")

[young willow]

I would KILL for a DS core

[young willow]

Patapon would be fun to play again

[lament escarp]

I'll come back to you when that proofs necessary.

[dim kiln]

PSP runs with 333MHz and not to far away from PS2 in specs it will not run well at all on this FPGA and has also DX6-7 class graphics...

[young willow]

Why wouldn't it be necessary now?

[blazing knot]

Handling the touch functionality would be a significant challenge on something without a touchscreen

[lament escarp]

Omfg this should be pinned in all channels.

[young willow]

You forgot this one

[magic girder]

Next version needs that and Gerbert (RIP)

[lament escarp]

Quiet before I touch YOU. We all know strange journey doesn't require this feature.

[blazing knot]

That’s true actually

That’s really the only game the core needs

[young willow]

ssshhhhhhh.......

[lament escarp]

Appearently infinite space is also really good according to a friend. Not that I would know, I was busy listening to the strange journey ost that came with my imported version. We didn't have strange journey in europe. 🤯

[blazing knot]

I’ve been meaning to play Infinite Space since it was contemporary

[lament escarp]

The original version of radiant historia and devil survivor would also he awesome to have on mister.

[blazing knot]

Was the 3DS port bad or something? I only have the DS version

[lament escarp]

No but a 3ds core would probably be really impossible, even with potaras.

So... original versions on mister it is. At least we won't have to squint at tiny screens.

[magic girder]

DS on MiST3r would be pretty great

[lament escarp]

DS in de10. It's possible. If you dare to dream.

[blazing knot]

Well I have a DSi XL so

[lament escarp]

Do you have the courage to dream, sir?

[magic girder]

Unless Robert or srg320 say this, it’s impossible

[lament escarp]

Hence the potaras.

[magic girder]

So far, all we know is that the DE10 isn’t even powerful enough for the virtual boy

[lament escarp]

https://tenor.com/view/blu-super-vegito-blu-vegito-blu-vegeta-and-goku-super-vegito-vegito-gif-985323735208060532

[weary palm]

Pissfingers?

[bright lotus]

piss - oh what, the bot won't do that?

[magic girder]

🖖

[weary palm]

You made that up.

[magic girder]

Prove me wrong

[slow silo]

Reminds me of a clip I saw of someone on YouTube playing TotK as their first Zelda game... and was confused when Zelda was introduced as Zelda, she thought Link was Zelda 🤣

[weary palm]

Prove me right.

[blazing knot]

Virtual Boy is too powerful, not in hardware, but in vibes

Plus we need sorg to make a $150 headset for the stereoscopic 3D or else it’s pointless

[weary palm]

It wasn't released here, and for that reason alone, I'm out.

[lament escarp]

Gerbert had pissfingers replaced by a way more powerful poopfingers, but Robby fought him for control and now we have nothing.

[zinc dew]

What’s your favorite N64 game and why is it Quest 64?

[slow silo]

Quest63 was better

[stone pilot]

My favorite N64 game is Super Mario 64. Super Mario 64 is Quest 64 because the game title is one or more five-letter words, followed by "64".

[magic girder]

Yoshi’s story because I love the soundtrack

https://youtu.be/nghTrcPBp3s

[slow silo]

I always preferred https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4X7opDapyE

[magic girder]

https://youtu.be/1gpbwXH1Avo

[magic girder]

This is my favourite

[zinc dew]

Brilliant!

[slow silo]

Just... don't listen to the music from the newer one that was on the DS...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAtd6NBvVA0

Yes that's real

[magic girder]

https://youtu.be/iJYvCHm3Ov4

vibes

[slow silo]

Ah yes, the fabled "Butt Trumpets" music

[zinc dew]

You know the guy made that to make his fake deaf claim more believable

[slow silo]

I don't know what to believe anymore

[zinc dew]

He got busted, you didn’t hear about that?

[slow silo]

I don't know anything about the composer

[zinc dew]

wow, imagine not knowing anything about 佐村河内 守. Couldn’t be me!

[topaz otter]

the bsnes guy conquered accurate snes emulation a long time ago

[topaz otter]

he was a super famous japanese composer, deaf guy, lauded for his talents despite his handicap

the dude was never deaf at all, also he had another guy writing the music for him

the only thing he actually verfiably did himself was the resident evil basement theme

[slow silo]

So Tommy except he also faked being deaf?

[topaz otter]

yeah, but tommy was a pinball wizard

[weary palm]

I prefer Holy Magic Century

[topaz otter]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamoru_Samuragochi

[slow silo]

Tommy was good at pinball? Huh...

[topaz otter]

https://tenor.com/view/tommy-the-who-roger-daltrey-elton-john-pinball-wizard-gif-10834737

the deaf guy got busted because a reporter was interviewing him at his apartment

and he got up to answer the doorbell

[slow silo]

I mean, there can be ways to tell the bell as rung without being able to hear it, but that depends on the bell

[topaz otter]

true, but the dude wrote a signed statement saying that he lied and apologized, it was a whole thing

the guy who actually ghost wrote all his compositions said he was never deaf to begin with

[slow silo]

Oh I am not doubting he lied, just saynig that's an odd gotcha

[topaz otter]

read that wikipedia article I linked

its a wild ride

[slow silo]

"but noticed a number of inconsistencies in Samuragochi's deafness statements, including his ability to respond to questions before the sign-language interpreter had finished, and standing up to answer a doorbell when it rang." so it wasn't just the doorbell alone

[topaz otter]

yeah apparently a lot of reporting on him faking it was shot down

cause his advertisers were covering his ass

[weak hill]

yes, i have heard about the bsnes guy. Awesome stuff.

[slow silo]

I am not even surprised by this kind of news anymore

[topaz otter]

buyung i think is his name

yeah, anyway thats why that dude is only known for the resident evil basement theme

a song that sounds like clowns farting in a basement

[slow silo]

What a legacy to be reduced to 🤣

[topaz otter]

whats crazy is some dude on youtubed changed one midi instrument

and it sounds great, spooky even

[slow silo]

I am guessing the trumpets were changed? They kinda clash with everything else

[topaz otter]

https://youtu.be/9oByTUQjCFg

listen at this

[slow silo]

Still sounds bad, but it's a little better

dosen't sound like it would fit in a RE game though, more like a game about ghosts

Also reminds me of when I would see keyboards being demoed at electronics stores that let you make them play a song then change the instrument XD

I think even my Miracle Piano let me do that

Sure, let's sing Ode to Joy... with dogs barking

[topaz otter]

the basement is kind of spooky

first thing you run across is two zombies eating some guys corpse

i heard @zinc dew couldn't make it past that part, his mom made him turn it off and go to bed

https://tenor.com/view/resident-evil-remake-i-wanna-kms-melterz-smiley-face-gif-25666062

[zinc dew]

Yeah that was shocking

[bright lotus]

the corncore gave a really good performance to gcc recompiled Perfect Dark

there was only one dip and that's when more than 10 enemies were on screen at the first floor in Mission 1

[lean spruce]

I´d like to test the new Corn core. Is there a high performance patch available for Perfect Dark or is the performance greatly increased on base rom?

[bright lotus]

I only played the gcc recompiled rom

[lean spruce]

what is that? Isnt that for PC??

[bright lotus]

there's recompiled rom for N64 that has better performance gains

[lean spruce]

oh, so its not a patch. I´ll try to find it

[dim kiln]

I tried to make a patch out of it but no matter what the patch ends up the same size as the ROM... but yeah it really flies with turbo core + recomp

[lean spruce]

I got it working and the intro stage is silky smooth!

the analytics says bottleneck is RDP

but its still 60fps

very cool indeed. I will complete perfect dark for the first time in my life hehe

[topaz otter]

why is robby gerbert now

he went into witness protection or something?

[kind solar]

nintendo got to him

[magic girder]

They’re like Jekyll and Hyde

[vapid hawk]

er, bad news that recomp isn't completable

at some point the scripting will break, i think its in the carrington istitute level

[bright lotus]

ouch

that far, near the end, damn

[vapid hawk]

unless its been updated, but last time i checked it hasn't been for a couple of years

[dim kiln]

if the saves are compatible one can play with stock PD at that point?

[vapid hawk]

you can yeah

if you really just want to play perfect dark with good quality of life though, just play the pc version

its got everything you want, they did a great job on it

i do still hope someone comes around and does more work on the n64 recomp though, its very cool

[jolly turret]

Would you expect any meaningful differences in terms of gameplay with a fully accurate emulation? I already can't tell the core apart in gameplay from the real console, expect for some slowdowns being shorter and less severe in the core.

[bright lotus]

for stock Goldeneye and Perfect Dark there's slightly worse perfomance (with dips retained a bit longer)

... then there's Knife Edge, which is a timing nightmare

[weary palm]

Nope.

[zenith notch]

Mario Tennis is another with noticeably worse performance than real hardware, I believe that GE and PD are all TLB related issues.

[teal citrus]

https://youtu.be/x2VaagrAjhk

[weary palm]

How come Tennis sucks on FPGA? Whats the bottleneck?

[zenith notch]

Like I said, think it's because of TLB like the other games with slower than real hardware performance. It's very noticeable in doubles but I also got really poor performance in a few of the single player tournaments too, the game drops to 15fps and goes into slow motion. Turbo core helps greatly with that one but it still isn't a locked FPS, perhaps the new "corn core" will be better, need to give that a go sometime.

[weary palm]

Ok i didnt understand that you thought tlb was the issue with that game as well.

[covert bough]

Why is it called corn core? Isn’t it still the 80mhz N64?

[iron dove]

Corn released a modified turbo core #1096015979055697940 message

use the latest version from the pins, but that's the original post with explanation of the difference

[iron wren]

It makes the fpga hot enough to pop corn

[wanton sun]

Yes TLB page switches can be up to 32 times slower than real hardware.
However, as this is only the page switch, it shouldn't happen more then 0.1% of the time or so.
But maybe the game has some edge case where it uses more pages than the micro-buffer has and switches more often.
Would have to check in simulation at a spot in the game where it is slow to see if that is really the reason.
Maybe it's also some completly different issue.

[lean spruce]

Thanks for letting me know! Too bad the HP mod is not completable, maybe will try the PC version

[zinc dew]

Yeah, honestly. Like I get wanting to improve the frames on Perfect Dark, etc., but that’s not accurate to the original game and if you’re going to do that, might as well go end game and play the recompilation which is unequivocally the absolute best way to play that game.

Not yucking anyone’s yum. I think that stuff is super cool. I’m just saying there are better ways to play that game if you’re after an enhanced experience.

[bright lotus]

I appreciate injecting 3DO M2 fantasies into completely unrelated hardware

I also really appreciate Duke Nukem Zero Hour being actually passably playable on corncore in 480i without the game breaking down

[cyan dome]

you cant have some improvements or slightly better framerates, you can only have the most extreme version possible

only the most extreme opinion is worth anything!

[zinc dew]

EXACTLY

[dim kiln]

Well I don't mind the graphics of the original and how it looks on CRT but if I can avoid playing it as a slideshow I am all for it.
Long live the choice!

[solar slate]

I look forward to play it in VR

[bright lotus]

Duke Nukem Zero Hour holds steady 30 fps with barely any dips in 480i

[dim kiln]

thats what we want to see 😄

[zinc dew]

You people changing the framerate are sitting on a throne of LIES

Thank to YOU PEOPLE, kids in 5 years are going to start asking why the framerate is so laid back, like the kids today asking why the sprites flicker on NES!!!

[dim kiln]

Are there any kids in here?

[zinc dew]

Listen, I can’t be held back by facts or logic here

Also the term is “laid back framerate” not low or poor. That’s implying that frames their taking their time is inherently bad. They’re just trying to live their lives one step at a time.

[bright lotus]

About steady 15 fps in Turok 3's cutscenes at 480i?

It's capped to 15 fps in cutscenes

[zinc dew]

Yes very laid back and serene

[dim kiln]

try indiana jones the infernal machine and see how that works

[zinc dew]

Relaxing and laid back

[bright lotus]

Turok 3 in-game is not as smooth as Perfect Dark or DNZH

It tries to go up to 30 fps but quickly dips into 20-15 fps very fast

But this sure is better than 5-7 fps

It beats Perfect Dark in framerate dippage on original N64

[bright lotus]

In four hours, sure

I also tried Knife Edge for kicks and yeah it's running in almost Benny Hill-speed

However I thought Batman Beyond was the game that gets broken on overclocks?

It seemed to play fine at capped 30 fps with no bennyhilling??

(I always have expansion pak on if anything)

[zenith notch]

Think Batman is patched to lo lock at 30fps.

[dim kiln]

I figure that some games actually take note of the available timer on the CPU and then behave as they should but some games simply rely on the fact that the original hardware can only render this much and completely goes bananas if you have uncapped FPS
In beatle adventure the cut scenes goes bananas while the game works very well

I am not sure in if rayman 2 is capped properly

[zinc dew]

Turok 3 good?

Genuine question

Like most people, I stopped at Turok 2 lol

[chilly ember]

It's alright, I feel like the levels get weaker and less memorable the farther in you play

Without the turbo core, the frame rate for some of the bosses is atrocious

[topaz otter]

it was very inspired by half life in 1998

the guns are a mix of scifi and real world guns

and most of the levels are like, a blade runner type city, a military base, a submarine, etc

in my opinion it lost the turok feel from the first and second game

[chilly ember]

It's also alot more linear compared to turok 2, don't have search for a bunch keys

[topaz otter]

correct

and you play as three different people, each one takes a different path through the levels

on the other hand, the graphics are great and the framerate is also good

on the downside the story is worse, its a bad followup to the much anticipated coming of oblivion

which was hyped up for two games

the end boss fight is weak as hell

[bright lotus]

It's plently playable in 94MHz but you might wanna check out the Night Dive remaster

-# aside from Rage Wars

[dim kiln]

is there a test cart that can be used to test the N64?
I've tried the testcart_runtime_v2 but was not impressed is there any thing else ?

[zinc dew]

I have good news, you can’t be worse than zero

well, I’d take no story over a confusing one

Nevermind!!!!

[weary perch]

there's this https://github.com/lemmy-64/n64-systemtest

at the bottom of the readme Peter Lemon's tests are linked as well https://github.com/PeterLemon/N64/

[topaz otter]

the important thing is

I am Turok!

(jungle drums intensify)

[wanton sun]

Anyone wants to test the keyboard pull request?
https://github.com/MiSTer-devel/N64_MiSTer/pull/93
Any ideas where it's helpful?
I really appreciate the work, but I'm a bit concerned about the logic usage of the FPGA to have it in every build in case no one would use it.

[upper pivot]

How does PD run in unleashed mode on the A3D in comparison? Is it still choppy?

[worn delta]

Oh wow, someone actually implemented keyboard support. I think the only way to test without native 64DD support is the keyboard test rom currently (unless someone has made some homebrew utilising it since I last checked)

[alpine lava]

That would be me.

[worn delta]

Good effort mate

Was it hard to implement?

[alpine lava]

Maybe it sits around for a future platform. I just used it as a learning exercise.

[alpine lava]

Not bad.

[zinc dew]

What’s keyboard support for

[worn delta]

From what I saw a couple of months ago is the libdragon people are looking at pushing the limits into getting the modem understood and implemented as a means to doing online stuff, so expect mad N64 online homebrew stuff in the future and presumably off the back of that we will see more things utilising the Randnet keyboard, and it will presumably become more supported across emulators and find it's way into homebrew

[zinc dew]

Ohhhh randnet

[worn delta]

Yeah. It seems we were in a situation where nobody bothered supporting it in emulators becomes no games used it, and nobody made any games use it as emulators didn't support it. So wider support will hopefully lead to people doing creative things with it

Maybe one day games that require typing text like Animal Crossing will let you have keyboard set as controller 2 and you can just type on your keyboard instead of having to move cursor around and select characters

Maybe someone will get a version of Wordle that uses it

[alpine lava]

If anyone wants to try it. Caps and Num Lock LEDs should work as well.

[worn delta]

Will try get some time to have a look. Is best way to rest to load up the test rom and type keys and check the correct one prints?

[alpine lava]

https://sites.google.com/site/consoleprotocols/home/nintendo-joy-bus-documentation/n64-specific/randnet-keyboard

[slow silo]

IIRC whether you have a rumble pack connected or not, and on which controllers, also effects the timing of the intro cutscenes even on real hardware

[dim kiln]

doesnt sound ideal even for the initial development on real HW then. Must have been messy to sync things up and bunch of tuning to get it run in all situations...

[bright lotus]

I was retesting Turok 3 with normal core to make sure

The game never manages to reach 30 fps and during firefights it dips into 5-7 fps

Also whoops

I wasn't supposed to survive that fall

Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine reports 0 fps in the main menu

Amazing

[slow silo]

I meant effected the intro cutscenes in just that game, not the entire N64 in general. Bettle Adventure Racing is really REALLY sensative on real hardware or not on any change effecting it, even something as simple as having a rumble pak connected or not

[slow silo]

Wasn't that one of the hardest games to get running on software emulators back in the day? IIRC because it relied on a lot of microcode

[dim kiln]

the ucode was rewritten and for this game (and possibly RE2?) so it had to be reverse engineered to figure out the display list calls

I think GLIDE made a lot of that work if I am not mistaken

[bright lotus]

Really good 30 fps, very smooth and persists in cutscenes; only dipped to below 20 at the bottom of the waterfall in the intro stage

Also I DID NOT expect the tom brady Indy game to actually have full analog controls but it works great

This makes me really regret there's no Ultra Descent on N64

...lemme try Forsaken

Okay, bad pick, the game has super solid 30 fps on regular core

[slow silo]

There is a romhack I tried that was running decently on the Corn core (at least until I got to the hub world) that is actually known to NOT be compatible on real hardware and in fact even on most emulators other than a specific one set to be overclocked. It ran super-slow and crashed a lot on the standard and 80Mhz core, but was running fine in the first world for me on the Corn core

You could try testing that out if it interests you, called Mario in the Multiverse

[bright lotus]

Quake runs fantastic and doesn't dip much at all

But also the framerate counter somehow stops working underwater and reports 0 fps

[slow silo]

I guess it's not rated for underwater use

[bright lotus]

The "building" (loading) time is the same

Okay, how about.. Hybrid Heaven

Huh

Stable capped 15 fps in the main menu in high res normal mode

Cutscenes jump between stable 15 to 30 fps in an instant

Okay yeah, the game is actually playable

On actual N64 the high res mode is a joke at 7-10 fps, here it's average 20 fps

But also feels like the game was retimed for that mode and kinda animates too fast?

Okay, now Rayman 2 real quick

40 eff pee ess!

Runs great but without capping the framerate it wildly dips from 60 into 20 real fast

[dim kiln]

yeah thats what I though too

[bright lotus]

Also I can't help but feel the cutscenes were retimed a bit and they were playing a little too fast

[dim kiln]

but if the game relies on the hardware to cap the FPS there isnt much that can be done other than run it at stock speed or have a recomp that actually implements a proper FPS cap...

[topaz otter]

first thing factor 5 did when they started making n64 games was they threw all of nintendo's tools in the trash

then wrote everything from scratch

[dim kiln]

usually they extended the number of triangles that could be transformed in one go sometimes using different format and also how accurate the calculations needed to be. I am not sure what exactly they did in this case but likely improving/speed up TnL even further

[bright lotus]

Will check out Rogue Squadron and Shadows of the Empire next

[weary perch]

@alpine lava thanks for working on this, i'll try and give it a test!

[waxen oyster]

Custom dithering, too I think.

[wanton sun]

Hey, thank you! Didn't know you are here.
Can you share the difference in ressource usage with it compared to before?
All the latching of PS2 looks like it's taking quite a bit, but having numbers would make the decision easier.

[bright lotus]

Okay, Star Wars

Slight boosts on 94MHz core

Rogue Squadron - on normal core in hi res mode runs at mostly choppy 15 fps, it's boosted to 20 fps with better frame pacing

Shadows of the Empire - uncapped framerate but varies wildly between 20 and 40 fps and never reaches 60; Hoth battle got jumping from 30-40 fps but on foot section was mostly averaging 25 fps

Episode I Racer - again very slight boost with uncapped framerate averaging 30 fps, the highest it got was 45 fps in certain tracks

[bright lotus]

I am gonna do a funni test

Perfect Dark (og ROM), hi res mode

4 player splitscreen

With max bots

On a big map

...can I output temperature readings, somewhere?

[alpine lava]

Will do, I'll gather the usage information.

[bright lotus]

OH YEAH BABY

8 FPS AVERAGE ON NORMAL CORE

[chilly ember]

8 frames baby

[slow silo]

Keep pushing it until you end up measuring SPF

[bright lotus]

Same setups with rocket launcher and four crazy sims during the same exact kind of firefight on 94MHz

It's a bit better

Didn't dip bellow 10 fps much

[magic girder]

More time to enjoy each frame, as Miyamoto intended

[vapid hawk]

i feel like me and my friends used to regularly get the framerate below 1 in goldeneye deathmatch

usually in some kind of crazy high-health rocket launcher slugfest

[cedar sun]

So I know Perfect Dark supported dual analog with two n64 controllers, is there some way to do that on one controller?

[alpine lava]

I've added the before-and-after usage in the PR. Thanks for reviewing.

[wanton sun]

Thank you! 150 ALM is acceptable, thought it was more. Merged it.

[worn delta]

Congrats kconger!

[weary perch]

amazing stuff! now to make a lil piece of N64 homebrew that uses the keyboard 🙂

working on a little N64 audio interface test ROM, maybe I can have it let you enter values directly for tests...

😄

have not linked it here because MiSTer already implements the ramping behavior the ROM was originally designed to test for, but in case anyone is interested: https://github.com/meauxdal/N64-AI-Test-ROM

eventually there will be more interesting tests in there but this one is good enough to fix snap-to-0 audio pops on ares and that's the goal

[vapid hawk]

yes this is a cool feature the core has

[cedar sun]

Oh it does?

[vapid hawk]

yeah sorry i cant remember what its labelled

might be something like 1P2C

[iron dove]

#settings-workshop message

[languid ore]

What’s a good quality low latency USB adapter for original N64 controllers? Any recommendations?

[lean sable]

I use one of these I bought off Etsy a while back. I think they sell them on eBay if they don't have them there still. https://github.com/blue212/SNAC-N64

[bright lotus]

I can plug that to my pee cee?

It's cross compatible with serial port that's shaped weirdly like USB and USB?

[iron wren]

If you’re not opposed to using snac, I’ve found that a snac adapter + usb 3 extension cable is significantly better than the 3 different adapters i bought and returned due to various issues with their quality.

[languid ore]

Well, my goal is to use them on PC and mister. I want to be able to use the same controller with some recomps. I could have sworn I had a raphnet adapter laying around from 10yrs ago or more but I can’t find it if I do

[blazing knot]

Reflex Adapt is an option. Maybe a bit overkill if you only want N64 and nothing else

[tepid shuttle]

there's also the 4dapter and the various raphnet converters

[languid ore]

A 4dapter would be legit. Like the GCN one for WiiU but for N64

I’ll look at reflex as well. Above all I want something that’ll just work and have lot latency. I don’t mind spendy a little extra for something robust and quality

Ahhh I see the 4dapter now. Not what I was picturing but still makes sense naming wise ha

[tepid shuttle]

yeah, you could get four of them i guess lol. the only 4-player N64 adapter i know of is the SNAC one, which won't work on PC

could also get a 4-play advanced and four N64 dongles to go with it. some people seem to dislike bliss-box due to past drama, but their adapters are fine

[languid ore]

Yeah, I think 95% of the time it'd be single player, 4.9% 2 player, and maybe .1% of the time I'd want 3-4 players. I'm leaning heavily towards the raphnet 2 player adapter. Seems to fit what I need and not super expensive. I assume the Mayflash/Hyperkin ones on Amazon aren't that great?

[tepid shuttle]

i'd skip them and go straight to raphnet honestly https://www.raphnet-tech.com/products/dual_n64_to_usb_adapter/index.php

[drowsy lantern]

Has anyone here ever had any trouble with their USB hub board dying? For a few days my MiSTer would not power on (only flashing lights), and after taking it apart I’m noticing it powers on just fine when the USB hub is not connected. As soon as I reattach the USB board, it does the same problem again. Is it safe to assume the USB board is the problem? It there anything else I could try to revive it?

This was a prebuilt setup that worked perfectly for at least 4 years without issue beforehand, and I didn’t touch anything. The problem just started happening overnight.

[drowsy lantern]

I’m no hardware expert but that doesn’t look very good:

[green epoch]

I am sorry for your loss, Shroom, but you don't need to post in multiple channels. One place to mourn is enough

[dim kiln]

You don't need the USB PCB to run MIster, see if it work without it
if all is ok you can order a new USB hub...

[drowsy lantern]

Yea it works fine without it. The maker has a lifetime warranty on their USB boards so I’ll be using that.

[twin sail]

Sorry for the late response! I did finish it a while ago and I did get the occasional crash here or there. I believe it was when using the 80MHz core, but I can’t remember 100%

[slow silo]

Yeah, I finished too, forgot what core. Was trying it again on the corn core and it seemed to work better there

[twin sail]

I think Kazu uses quite a lot of tricks that are fine on a real console, but might behave differently on the cores. I might give it another run through this weekend and see how frequently it crashes. Not sure if he’s updated the demo in anyway since releasing either

[floral mulch]

Is there a good Mario 64 hack that's focused on QoL improvements?

[tepid shuttle]

https://github.com/Admentus64/Patcher64Plus-Tool this patcher has most of the improvements you can find for vanilla SM64. download the tool and pick which features you want

[floral mulch]

Thank you. If only this version didn't make you choose between most of the QoL tweaks and the Rumble support

[languid ore]

Daaaamn, shipping + tariffs from Raphnet are spendy! About 75 dollars to get a N64 USB adapter to the states

[remote nexus]

Try Ebay. I was interested in the Dreamcast adapter and found a seller selling one for way less than direct.

[languid ore]

Solid idea!

[cinder pagoda]

I have had one go bad previously. Also had a seller that replaced mine as well. ✌️

[dim kiln]

Another day another core...
This is an even faster turbo core (which I call 94MHz+) that in addition to the previously already 50% faster RCP also adds 33% faster CPU (125MHz).
It start to get really close to what the FPGA can handle but I hope most will be able to run this just fine and give an additional boost to games that also benefits running with a faster CPU (like GE for example).
Due to the mismatch of the RCP/CPU clock rates not being 1.5 some it is possible some things might not work. One example is the initial cut scene when you start from a blank save in DK64. After a reset the game seems to still run just fine.
I like to thank @cinder pagoda for helping to do final tests and of course @wanton sun for making the N64 a reality on Mister in the first place.
Enjoy!

[bright lotus]

dammit, I was gonna play Saturn games today!

thanks!

[zenith orchid]

You mean I can play Turok 3 at 60fps? 👀

Guess I could settle for a solid 50fps

[wanton sun]

Let me remind you that timing closure for n64 cpu is at 60-70MHz. So we have nearly 100% overclock here from what Altera says the fabric can do.
Pushing RCP asynchronous further than normal turbo core (80/120MHz -> 93.75/125MHz) will make CPU routing even worse.
Great work from Corn to bring it that far. Just be aware that random crashes can happen any time. So please send all bug reports to Corn 😛

[quick light]

I wonder how conker performs?

[magic girder]

Just fine on the stock core

Exactly as Miyamoto intended

[quick light]

As in framerate when it comes to this turbo turbo 2 core.

[iron wren]

THE CORN64 core

[static tinsel]

May be an ignorant question, but is the Corn core based on the final fully featured core (auto patching, etc...)?

[green epoch]

Yes

And not a dumb question 🙂

[static tinsel]

And, what are the possibilities of making a core that one could manually turn on/off the individual overclockings (RDP, CPU) independently?

Similar (in ways) to the ao486 core

?

I saw earlier comments that state that some games do better with a CPU overclock, and others do better with RDP, and perhaps maybe some do better with both.

[static tinsel]

Awesome, and thank you (as always) 🙂

[magic girder]

Yep, and I meant the framerate was acceptable on the stock core

So if higher numbers makes you happy, it will be fine on the turbo core or the turbo turbo core

[static tinsel]

Not sure anyone saw my question a couple up?

[zinc dew]

Is it possible? Sure. Will someone do it? Probably not.

The overclock stuff isn't officially distributed and it's outside the scope of MiSTer which is hardware accuracy. That stuff is best left up to the end-user anyways.

[topaz otter]

if mister users want to blow up their machine and burn heir house down, they won't be able to blame us

(proceed at your own risk)

[topaz otter]

cant you do this on the analogue?

if not it would actually be really cool but most end users probably wouldn't find a use for it

[zenith notch]

From their manual:

Enhanced
Enhances RAM.

Enhanced+
Enhances RAM and overclocks video.

Unleashed
Enhances RAM, overclocks video, and overclocks the CPU.

[topaz otter]

but as I understand you can literally turn it on for any game right

whether or not that game benefits from it or not

[zenith notch]

Yep

[topaz otter]

and some it messes it up

[zenith notch]

Reading the we are 100% over what Altera says the fabric can do with this new core core has me worried for my DE-10's lifespan lol

[topaz otter]

sounds like the exact situation that we're trying to avoid here

overclocking is a neat feature for people that want to tweak, but if falls outside the scope of accurate emulation, like robbie said

you would have to have a core that intelligently overclocks or not depending on the checksum of the rom being played

[zenith notch]

I like the option for TLB games where they can be slower than real hardware, I don't use it for anything else.

[topaz otter]

in effect it would become a super N64 or not depending if the game benefits from it

sounds like a waste of time when most want to just play it like they did when they were kids

part of the charm of most third party n64 games is that they look and run like ugly trash

[zenith notch]

I would be interested to know how many people use overclock modes all the time with the A3D, I bet it would be quite a high percentage, like half.

All that effort into getting slowdown right etc and people just press the turbo button!

[topaz otter]

this is sony's fault for not giving me a real tv to plug it into

and forcing me to use a giant flat plastic slab

I don't wanna use it!

you made me overclock the mister!

[quick light]

When I tried it last on the stock core (aswell as the turbo and turbo turbo). The framerate isn’t smooth. It jumps around a lot/all the time resulting in stuttering and just not a nice experience

Maybe I’m more susceptible to non smooth framerate

[wanton sun]

No reason to worry about lifespan. We don't increase voltage and even heat isn't significantly higher.
Imagine catching a ball: Someone says they can catch it at a certain speed. (data arriving for flipflop storage in time)
Now we throw at the double speed and they can barely catch it. (data arriving just picoseconds before the rising clock edge)
If they fail to catch it, it will not hit a window behind, just fall into the grass and the game is over. (data arriving slightly after rising clock, not stored -> random behavior, maybe game crashing or other bugs)

Not to compare with typical overclocking of PC components which often comes with voltage increase and components close to a heat boundary even when not overclocked.
Your typical mister build should be at least 20-30°C away from thermal max. Even mine in housing without fan is.

[outer condor]

I think N64 is a unique case where native performance can be so poor (and worse than folk may remember) that there’s interest in getting games simply in a state where they don’t feel bad to play. The only other similar case I can think of is PS3

Contemporary PS1 and Saturn games didn’t tend to run as poorly

[dim kiln]

I think I know what you mean and it could be related to that if the game for example is able to run at 30FPS but not 60FPS (and does not have a frame cap @30FPS), once you OC it make it possible to run 60FPS most of the time but every now and then a frame takes a bit longer to render and you will drop a frame resulting in a stutter. I suppose that OC works best when a game is capped at for example 30FPS but actually runs between 20 and 30 FPS. The OC will then make sure it says locked at 30FPS. One example might be Banjo. In any case, its a matter of choice and now you have it 😄

[primal cobalt]

how does the n64 core compare to current software emulation options?

[quick light]

Yep you summed it up really well. I have the same experience with a couple games on the PSX core

Take Duke Nukem time to kill. Default core, the game doesn’t hit 30 and the framerate is very unsteady.

But if you use the 2xcpu core, the game runs over 30. (Then you can improve it further with the turbo). If the game was locked 30. It would run smooth

But il always say. To me, the N64 and PSX turbo/2xcpu cores are amazing. My favourite cores

[bright lotus]

It's very solid aside from freak edge cases like Knife Edge
The general performance on stock core is a little worse than the actual N64 but it's only visible to freaks like me who count frames per second in Goldeneye and Perfect Dark

Very clean RGB or HDMI output nonetheless

Shame there's no N64DD support, yet

I also like the ability to doctor crimes and making fake evidence by messing with VI

I don't know any other software emu where I can do that

The corncore first and foremost makes hires 480i modes in games actually playable

[magic girder]

Isn’t the stock core sometimes better and sometimes worse performing than original N64?

(In all cases by a small amount)

[zenith notch]

Thanks for taking the time to give such a great explanation.

[static tinsel]

Many thanks, I used to be an FPGA dev myself (not emulation stuff sadly). I was just thinking a switch to be able to live turn them on and off would be neat. It could also allow for quicker switching between on and off when in a scene that slows

or for testing games that do or don't benefit from.

many thanks 🙂

[wanton sun]

A switch is possible in theory. However:

• it costs ressources for the PLL reconfig
• timing analysis is for either stock clock or turbo -> each would be bad for the other one
• changing the clock rate would either require a core reset(which makes it kind of pointless) or adding a core pause

[static tinsel]

Ahhhhhhh

How many PLLs are in the DE-10 nano chip?

[neat sierra]

Love this analogy, thanks

Sadly Robby has never managed to catch a ball so he can’t quite grasp it

[lament escarp]

Is that with a heatsink or completely nakey? I remember being TERRIFIED when my fan broke down.

[neat sierra]

DE10 doesn’t even come with a heatsink

People do elaborate cooling for mister sometimes without considering that little tidbit

We probably only create situations where it needs it with our cases

Except for Porkchops passive cooling aluminum case of course, histories greatest mister case

[static tinsel]

Thats the one I have, and I have expanded it also LOL

[lament escarp]

I loooooove my porkchop aluminum case! It's so sleek and pretty! Everyone should get one!

Disclaimer: I don't know porkchop personally and paid through the ass for mine thinks to customs and international shipping.

[slow silo]

From what I heard the PSX and N64 cores can really push the FPGA to the point where at least a heatsink is advised

[neat sierra]

Heard from who? Renowned thermal expert and victim of gravity voultar? 😉

[bright lotus]

Can you output temp reading somewhere?

[lament escarp]

Afaik porkchop tested the aluminum case with a thermal cam. There were comparison pics on the page when I ordered.

[magic girder]

I guess there’s an argument that for the cores which don’t reach timing closure, keeping as much thermal headroom as possible leads to a lower probability of random crashes

[vapid hawk]

i've been here since forever and can't recall a single issue ever resolved by adding a heatsink or fan

[lament escarp]

I solved one by removing a fan when it sounded like a shaving machine.

[magic girder]

Doesn’t mean it doesn’t lower the probability though

[vapid hawk]

so if anything you want a negative amount of fans

[magic girder]

There’s also a longevity argument for a fan/heatsink. Whether it makes a practical measurable difference is another question, but keeping electronics cooler and at more stable temperatures isn’t a bad idea

[wanton sun]

Most of the heat comes from the ARM CPU, not the FPGA fabric.
In this (very basic) quartus simulation the dynamic core part is only 0.9 W out of 3 W for the total power consumption.
That means on the turbo core, you might have +25% or so(not the whole FPGA fabric is clocked higher) on that part, everything else stays the same.
So that would be 3.3W against 3W or so.

[magic girder]

Insane how power efficient the MiSTer is

[wanton sun]

About cooling:
with 25°C ambient, you get 72°C FPGA temperature. That is with setting "no heat sink with still air". (100°C is allowed by Altera for many years in 24/7 usage)

Of course, if you want to get the most stable results with cores running far out of spec, additional cooling might help.

[lament escarp]

Aluminum case wins again!

[neat sierra]

What if my mister case is an oven set at 550F?

[lament escarp]

Then you should anticipate me putting my chicken nuggets in your mister for a few minutes.

[magic girder]

What’s 550F in real units?

[zinc dew]

don’t want to reduce the lifespan on my de10-10 nano while I just run update all on it and never play games

[lament escarp]

I think my de10 was already dead at delivery. It plays games just fine but it doesn't breath. 😭

[slow silo]

Isn't the cpu and fpga on the same chip? Or are they seperate chips?

[zenith orchid]

I guess one heats up the other

[lament escarp]

So they basically snuggle? That's really cute. 🥰

[young willow]

Yo don't knock our Freedom Units 🦅 🇺🇸 🦅

[wanton sun]

Yes, but ARM CPU always consumes about the same amount of power, no matter which core.
This was mostly to say that it doesn't really matter which core you run in terms of heat.

[hushed nova]

the arm side has no power/frequency scaling so it is constant

[weary palm]

561K.

[weary palm]

Have you tried watering it?

[bright lotus]

Quake II has garbage on the "map" screen before the level starts

Stock core

Also, I don't know what is happening

But in Portal64 Chell drank Red Bull

And is just floating upwards

Noclipping through the ceiling

Also stock

[dim kiln]

see if you can replicate it with older stock cores in case its a regression

It would help hugely to know if it was ok at some point back in time

[bright lotus]

I have unstable core from August (25.08.04) and both happening there

Gonna dig for something older

It's actually uncanny seeing source engine's hall of mirrors on N64

Garbage map is happening on 2022 build, so I'll check the rom

Okay, yeah, I had a bad Quake II rom

[zinc dew]

Mister wins again!!!

[bright lotus]

I am not sure what went wrong because I copied all the roms from my Everdrive v3

And Portal64 is not doing the float there

I am gonna redo the set I guess

Okay yeah, Portal 64 was also a bad rom

Gonna nuke my whole folder and redo it

[kind solar]

https://tenor.com/view/hecantkeepgettingaway-breakingbad-hecant-gif-7456207

[primal cobalt]

I know im asking in the mister fpga discord but im use to people being honest: what's best accuracy rn for n64, mister or software emulation?

[blissful plaza]

Tie-in between Ares and the MiSTer core.

[green epoch]

probably Ares > A3D > MiSTer

nobody is perfect, though, so it's kind of more about what trade offs you want to make

[primal cobalt]

thanks

[tepid shuttle]

i would rank the mister core above the A3D on principle alone lol

[green epoch]

yeah, I think those two are probably interchangeable. they just updated the firmware so who knows if it's better

All that to say, they are all very close

[cyan dome]

Project 64 on a Intel Celeron CPU laptop from 2006 is how i fell in love with the nintendo 64 and thus is the most accurate

[chilly ember]

Did a complete playthrough of Conker's Bad Fur day on the 94 Mhz+ corn core and didn't have any issues

https://youtu.be/nAw8W0zAeU0?si=ov_Y6_c_j5Ny7JX5

[dim kiln]

Basically there are some necessary shortcuts/deviations made in the N64 core. Without those you would need more accurate hardware memory layout to fully match the original system. Still many parts are matches the original pretty well and as systems get more complex (NES->SNES->N64) they also do not really need to match clock perfect to really perform just like the original.
You can think of it like on PC you can have AMD or Intel CPUs with very different solutions and they tend to run pretty much the same.

[topaz otter]

software emulation is probably the least accurate way to play it

but it has the widest compatibility and the most platforms since N64 emulators have been around since 1998

you can literally emulate n64 games on everything from a Pentium II to a modern AMD processor to an ARM smart phone to the original Xbox

[weak hill]

i thought either A3D or MISTER, would be more accurate than Ares!, thats new for me

[green epoch]

It’s a trade off tho, right? like Ares may be “more accurate” but it will be higher latency than either of the fpga options

[weak hill]

i heard in the ares discord channel, that in indiana jones, the A3D replicates the crash that the original hardware does, when moving some boxes in the game. In ares it doesnt crash, and in mister i dont know if anyone has tried that. Its just a couriosity though.

[green epoch]

people go crazy for DK64 PAL Vines

[dim kiln]

One thing that also matters is how the video is set in the .ini
I think most play with one or two frame buffering while if you have it set to zero buffering the delay should be like the original on CRT

on HDMI you might get some tearing when set to 0 delay and the video will usually completely fail if the refresh rate deviates from 60Hz which happens on some arcade games like bubble bobble for example that has 57Hz(?) refresh rate

[jolly turret]

Ares is definitely the best N64 experience I ever had with an emulator. I'm still finding some issues and bugs here and there. The N64 core feels more polished to me and the lower latency is noticeable also.

[hushed nova]

the video failing with vsync 2 is very dependent on the display. for more modern panels it is worth trying vrr

[primal cobalt]

ive grown really crazy about latency since buying a mister

like, i use to not care now it matters a lot to me

[jolly turret]

I don't think that it's only latency by itself, but if I recall correctly it's also video and audio being in perfect sync, where as emulators would have additional audio delay in addition to the base latency of an emulator. To me FGPA gaming just feels right, even if a core might have less accuracy in some cases.

[zinc dew]

Whichever is easiest for you to use TBH

[primal cobalt]

honestly, at this point probably mister and my native hardware

its why i ask a lot about TVs because i know eventually im going to have to replace my CRT and know latency will be a bit worse

[dim kiln]

I think you can still get zero lag if I am not wrong even on HDMI but you have to have the right panel/setting but I let the expert here chime in

[upper pivot]

I wonder if the ROM decompilations can be aided with help from the recent coding AI/LLMs

In terms of making progress faster on decompiling them

[weak hill]

if a game is decompiled, does it help in anyway to get to know better the n64 console? so you can do it more accurate? or no.

[topaz otter]

I'm pretty sure those decomps are hand optimized to run on x86 hardware

which is why they take so long to do

but I could be wrong

and even when the decomp is done, someone has to still compile it into something you can play

[dim kiln]

Without actually having studied these recomps I think lots of work goes into find/name functions and variables so its clear what they do and then port calls normally done to the RCP on the N64 to do the same thing but on PC graphics and then the same for audio, controls and so on.
Fortunately they are getting the hang of it now and since calls to the rendering and such are pretty similar even between games, a lot of cross benefits can be had.

[floral mulch]

The decompilation process is different from the porting process. The goal of a compilation project is to create C code which can compile bit-for-bit to the original console's binary

[dim kiln]

@zinc dew could you please pin the new updated 94MHz+ core (with boosted CPU speed to 125MHz)
It seem to work for many it seems

[zinc dew]

This?

Also thank you for being so considerate and nice

Ok yes it was. Pins updated! Sorry about missing that.

[chilly ember]

I got through all the perfect dark story missions a couple days ago too with the performance patch on the core so seems pretty good to me

I did have some weird glitchiness on one level with the sky line but i'm not sure if that's just an issue with the patch

[dim kiln]

yeah someone said that the HP patch have issues at the end but since saves are compatible one can finish it with the stock version of PD. At least most of the game can be played in 40-60FPS 😄

[upper pivot]

This. It’s hard because they need the C code to compile to the same assembly code as the original ROM

[chilly ember]

This also can happen where an enemy never stops firing xD, assuming that's an issue with the patch too

[chilly ember]

I didn't have to swap to the stock core to finish it, I know the old patch has a glitch where the skedar wouldn't plant the bomb but the newer one that didn't happen

This only glitchy thing i noticed where like everything is jittery when the skyline is rendered

Occasionally

[vapid hawk]

there's a newer patch with that fixed? awesome

[chilly ember]

Yea its archived

[vapid hawk]

nice thanks i hadn't heard

[chilly ember]

Half the reason I did another play through was because I was curious

[outer condor]

Does anyone know how the ‘quick save access’ cheat works in Resident Evil 2? How does the cheat let you quick save?

[hushed nova]

With this code, 1) Anytime, anywhere, press Z and B at the same time. You'll get the standard typewriter text: "It's an old typewriter. You can save your progress with this." Note that you must, of course, have an ink ribbon to save. 2) Choose "Yes" and you'll be able to save normally. Instead of the location name, your save file will say "Scenario 1st" or "Scenario 2nd." 3) When you load your save file, you'll have to skip through the intro, but when the game loads up you'll be exactly where you saved!

[chilly ember]

Tried it, didn't work

Maybe cheats are somewhat broken on the core? I don't know

The room I tested had a typewriter and so I moved to another room just to be sure

My footage is trying every button combination just fyi 😛

[upper pivot]

How does PD compare to GE? I never played PD back in the day

[chilly ember]

GE is more iconic simply because it's james bond and has better level design but perfect dark is more advanced gameplay wise

Guns have secondary fire, you can shoot guns out of enemies hands/punch them to disarm them and if you're a pro gamer, you can use bodies/falling corpses as human shields where as in goldeneye they'll just fire through them

[chilly ember]

Perfect dark also has cutscenes vs the very primitive end of the level cutscenes you get from goldeneye

[floral mulch]

Although that didn't save later James Bond games from obscurity even though a lot of them had fun multiplayer

[solid cypress]

Yes, for matched decompilation. It’s really difficult because you often get functionally equivalent compiler optimised machine code but it doesn’t quite match 1:1 because it uses different registers or does operations within a function in a slightly different order, and you end up having to make functionally inconsequential tweaks to the source and fight the compiler until it gives you an exact match.

[outer condor]

I guess with the infinite ink ribbon cheat it works as de facto quick save

[slow silo]

Wasn't Perfect Dark originally going to be a James Bond game but they couldn't get approval or something?

[primal cobalt]

Does RE2 on N64 need dualram or specific settings?

[bright lotus]

they had plans to do TWINE but immediately started planning a cyberpunk shooter of their own using GE's mechanics

The World is Not Enough is a pretty cool game from Eurocom, now

[zinc dew]

You know why it’s called the N64? Because N stands for NERD!!!

Nerds!!!!

[kind solar]

https://tenor.com/view/dog-crying-meme-doggo-crys-megan-soo-crying-dog-gif-5276199764143986284

[zinc dew]

ok I’m sorry, it means Noice

Not just “nice” but so nice it’s NOICE

[slow silo]

The N clearly stands for Famicom

[outer condor]

No it just works

[slow silo]

There isn't even a dualram version of the N64 core

[kind solar]

That you know of

[slow silo]

https://tenor.com/view/surprised-pikachu-pokemon-shock-surprised-pikachu-gif-15357817

[kind solar]

Release the dual ram core @zinc dew!

[zinc dew]

Grabauahayagauau no dual ram gurhurhurhurhur not needed!!!!

[kind solar]

https://tenor.com/view/jennifer-lawrence-the-mocking-jay-the-hunger-games-hunger-games-mocking-jay-gif-5701115

[primal cobalt]

haha i feel dumb now but good im a single ram scrub

[zinc dew]

Single ram is the priority! You’re first class, we just give hand outs to the dual ram riff raff to keep them at bay.

[slow silo]

Spoken like someone who dosen't understand how to play NiGHTS

[primal cobalt]

Thank you, I feel loved now. Do I get a special sippy cup too?

[magic girder]

DUAL RAM!!!

[primal cobalt]

one day ill buy a dualram set, i own a multisystem 2 because im poor but i think the actual mister stack looks way cooler. RN im saving for a better monitor and other stuff

[magic girder]

Multisystem is a fine way to enjoy MiSTer 🙂

And it’s only a small handful of Saturn games and the Jaguar core where single ram lags behind. You can have a great time with single ram 🙂

[outer condor]

It’s like saying ‘only a handful of PS1 games don’t work’ but that handful happens to be MGS, Gran Turismo 2, Tekken 3 etc

[slow silo]

The "small handful" of games are rather significant ones, just trying to dismiss it as "a small handful" is being a bit disingenuous

[magic girder]

Oh man, I can’t win

[slow silo]

Probably because you're lagging too much 😛

[magic girder]

Okay, it’s basically some fighting games and some niche Japanese games that I’d never even heard of that can’t be played without lag with single ram plus fast timings

So unless you love 3D fighters or games nobody has heard of, you’re golden

[slow silo]

Also NiGHTS and Burnin Rangers...

[magic girder]

Fast timings

Until proven otherwise

[slow silo]

ZSNES mode 😛

[outer condor]

Robby does it to troll tbh lol, I think folk just get annoyed that people try to brush issues under the rug rather than be honest about them

[magic girder]

I wrote a shit load of essays the other week about why I personally went for dual ram

So yeah, I’m brushing it under the rug

[kind solar]

After 9 years the mister community finally imploded not over anything meaningful but over single vs dual ram…

RIP

[magic girder]

MiSTer community recently:

[slow silo]

So about that Neo Geo Pocket Color core....

[kind solar]

Gimme that

[magic girder]

No

[kind solar]

I thought we were friends

You know what would be based?

[magic girder]

Not using the word based?

But what?

[kind solar]

https://shop.insidegadgets.com/product/gba-bluetooth-tx-cart/

This but for the Neo geo pocket

So we could play games on our TVs with a good controller

Disregarding the latency

[magic girder]

So you’d use the NGP as a controller?

[kind solar]

For a Neo geo pocket core yes

It would be the ideal controller

[magic girder]

Of course 🏅

[kind solar]

Besides this one

[magic girder]

But I reckon the 8bitdo Neo Geo controller wouldn’t be too far off

[kind solar]

https://tenor.com/view/quiet-silence-thomas-and-friends-sir-topham-hatt-thomas-and-friends-sir-topham-hatt-gif-3555844301641947548

[magic girder]

That would be phat

[kind solar]

I have one but I don’t love it

[magic girder]

When did you become so negative?
Did Robby get to you?!

[kind solar]

I’m trying to have less controllers I need to charge also it’s become a problem

[blissful plaza]

Welcome to MiSTer.

[magic girder]

Yeah, I have way too many controllers now 😅

[kind solar]

I don’t mind if they are wired or take batteries

[magic girder]

When I first got my XSX I was surprised it didn’t come with a rechargeable battery - now I’m happy it didn’t

Rechargeable AAs are the way forward

[kind solar]

Yea I thought that was bad too but now I see the light

[slow silo]

Easy solution: Use wired controllers. That's what I do 🙂

[primal cobalt]

I care about latency and only use wired controllers as well

[slow silo]

For me it's not just latency, but also not having to worry about interference or charging the batteries

[primal cobalt]

is there a definite list of saturn titles that need dualram or that i can get by with by using fast timings?

[slow silo]

Most of my systems are within wired range anyway

IIRC Grandia cannot be fixed even with fast timings

[primal cobalt]

i remember hearing that

is the psx version bad?

[slow silo]

It's lacking compared to the Saturn version

[primal cobalt]

Is Nights ok with fast timings?

im less concerned about 3d fighters, mainly 2d stuff

[slow silo]

Seemed ok, but I only played it a little, was having a lot of issues with the controls

[primal cobalt]

what controller were you using?

[hushed nova]

grandia gets better possibly even 'fixed' if you oc the ram, but it has been a while since I checked

[slow silo]

I tried several

[primal cobalt]

were they normal usb controllers or saturn oem + snac?

[slow silo]

normal usb

[zinc dew]

Grandia is better on PS1 anyways

Tekken is better than Virtua Fightet anyways

Pandemonium is better than NiGHTs anyways

[zinc dew]

Yeah, I had to triple down to make it obvious I was joking lol

[topaz otter]

timesplitters?

[zinc dew]

Perfect Dark

[topaz otter]

no you ludicrous fool, I mean that timesplitters was made by ex rare devs

[zinc dew]

lol “ludicrous fool”

[topaz otter]

i need a gif of dr. smith going

YOU NEODINYIUM NINNY

but yes, I'm pretty sure that the ideas they had for perfect darks followup made it into timesplitters

which I'll be honest with you, is not a game that I like at all

timesplitters 2 and future perfect were much better

[bright lotus]

TimeSplitters 1 is a raw prototype mostly composed of multiplayer content

[random bloom]

For real, TS1 is the prototype, TS2 feels like the peak of the Goldeneye formula and Future Perfect starts to feel more like modern shooters.

[green epoch]

https://tenor.com/6Ch7.gif

[kind solar]

https://www.kkinstagram.com/reel/DUuNOMFimC1/

[lament escarp]

Waiting for @zinc dew to ask where he can get this mod so he can finally enjoy oot. 😅

[weary palm]

https://youtu.be/4BCmKnN5eGA

[weary palm]

Yes they are. /guy who implemented the cheats

The biggest problem is the cheat files. They're converted to a format that corrupts some of the more complicated codes. So you would have to start at that end. I'm not the one who creates the files.

I was in contact with them for a short while but for some reason I gave up. I just felt like I was bothering, that I had to "prove" that the format was broken.

[chilly ember]

Ahh yea i suspected something like that because some basic cheats work but some others don't seem to do anything, made sure to confirm with super mario 64

[slow silo]

Focus L

[zinc dew]

Aren’t cheats user submitted with zero vetting process anyways?

[weary palm]

probably. there are many that doesn't work on emulators either in that set

[zinc dew]

The whole cheat thing is kinda foobar’d but i think it’s better like this than not having it at all lol

[kind solar]

Does anyone actually use it

[bright lotus]

I was gonna use it to unlock Excitebike NES in Excitebike 64 but gave up trying

[kind solar]

It’s good it’s there but does it take up space that could be used for something better?

[hushed nova]

most of it isn't implemented in the core, so no!

[kind solar]

Cool

[zinc dew]

It takes up some non-insignificant amount of tensor bit space.

[weary palm]

Actually seems like the cheat files has been corrected since i checked last time. 2 years ago? xD
It was worse before...

Doesn't mean the hacky implemenation or that the cheats inside the file works 100% though

[dim kiln]

aren't the cheats just patching the ROM image?

[hushed nova]

no

live patching console memory

[slow silo]

I TRIED to use it to select extra/hidden characters in Marvel vs Street Fighter on PSX... it just glitched the hell out of the game

[kind solar]

Seems like it’s accurate to how action replay and such devices worked

Or didn’t work

[placid ferry]

On another post of his regarding the M64 someone commented something along the lines of "it would be cool if you could plug your chromatic into this and play GBC games on your tv" and he replied in a way that implied that might be a thing.

[zinc dew]

Weird!

[tepid shuttle]

stupidpenisx

nice to finally see an update on the M64 (even though idk who this dude is lol). wish we got to see a bit more though

[green epoch]

fun fact, that dude is one of the reasons I'm here. I had always known about the mister, but it seemed like a headache to get into it. He was selling ODE modded saturns, and I saw his ad on tiktok. I messaged him and asked if the saturn had HDMI out to which he said I could get something like a retrotink for that. I watched linus tech tips' tink4k video, which finally convinced me to get a mister. Bought both that day. And now all of you have to put up with me

you're welcome

[tepid shuttle]

i hate him now, thanks (jk)

[green epoch]

https://tenor.com/bevdW.gif

[tepid shuttle]

though, to be frank, i'd rather modretro have sent units to mlig or game sack or something, as i feel they're a lot more qualified to talk about this sort of thing

[hushed nova]

more things to blame LTT for

[green epoch]

i blame him for linux only

[green epoch]

oh yeah, I don't know this dude from adam - it's just funny

[zinc dew]

I have no clue who that guy is

Looks like he eats chilaquiles

[tepid shuttle]

he's the owner of stupidpenisx.com

[zinc dew]

Yes

[outer condor]

Just a quick fyi, I've completed Resident Evil 2 using the 94MHz+ core and did not encounter a single issue

[blissful plaza]

The 94MHz+ core freezes on Diddy Kong Racing - Performance Patch after some seconds, black screen after the first company logo.

Works on regular or 80MHz core tough.

[tacit merlin]

Hey folks, out of curiosity what differences are you seeing with the 80MHz core vs 94MHz? Noticeably less lag in some situations?

[karmic bough]

I had a freeze earlier with Beetle Adventure Racing on the 94MHz+ core. I was on the last course of the Professional championship when it happened 😭 . 80MHz core works fine with the game.

[outer condor]

The recompiled Perfect Dark is one to try, huge leap in performance

[latent dagger]

@dim kiln a good test for frame rate in hires is Castlevania Legacy of Darkness. Even on the normal turbo core the fps tanks to the teens

[cedar sun]

No offense this video feels like a parody of every boomer retro gaming YouTube channel

The room, the meta glasses, it's just too much 😭

The tattoos

[tepid shuttle]

type of guy to have a mancave filled with arcade1up machines

i don't know why modretro sent this guy a review unit. send it to someone who knows what they're talking about

[green epoch]

it seems like they sent review units to the fringes

[cedar sun]

I figure they're trying to find the sweet spot of "people who will be enthusiastic about this product and willing to cover it"

Which requires ||not knowing who Palmer Luckey is, or knowing but not caring|| and caring enough about the N64 and FPGA emulation

If I look up "M64" on YouTube it mostly seems to be the depths, yeah

[slow silo]

Is there a reason to have both the old and new 94 mhz cores, or does the 94+ fully replace the old 94?

[dim kiln]

I'll check it out later today.
Did you try with the regular 94MHz (not the 94MHz+)?

[dim kiln]

I only tried the first course.
Hard to test this is you need to get that far tho 🙁

[dim kiln]

The regular 94 only OC the RCP by 50% while the 94+ also OC the CPU with 33%
In most games there is not much difference but for some like GE it seems that CPU OC makes quite a difference

[blissful plaza]

I didn't had the chance to test the regular 94MHz, sorry.

[outer condor]

Oh I didn’t realise we should keep around both. I need to redownload the 94MHz one

[plush summit]

people are mad uppity about the knob, its just a knob?

I think it makes sense if you have an option to bypass all menus and just boot up the console, have an outside method to access the menu

[zinc dew]

Why are they uppity

[plush summit]

because its a knob lol

I guess people expect an N64 clone to be exactly the same as the real system?

[tepid shuttle]

i have to imagine most people complaining about the knob just find it unsightly

[plush summit]

sure, but its a console, you don't even look at it 😄

[tepid shuttle]

let's be real, most people who are this vocal about it probably aren't going to buy it anyway

[simple current]

talk for yourself buddy, when i game my eyes are glued to the system itself and not on the screen...

[plush summit]

I am a false gamer

[zinc dew]

yeah if they wanna get SUED

knobs are cool

[plush summit]

I'm not buying one, but all things being equal, if someone designed a clone console, I think it makes sense that having an onboard OSD control would give an option to folks to just want a turn key system

if you know you won't touch the OSD, you can ignore everything else and just play

and yes, I'm aware you can do all of this with a controller 😄

[tepid shuttle]

all this said, i'm sure modretro could've put something with a lower profile

[plush summit]

oh yah, the system does look goofy, but we all own MiSTers 😛

[simple current]

my mister has googly eyes on it

https://tenor.com/view/boois-rags-cat-eyes-emoji-gif-7704442463942354243

[cyan dome]

i love the m64 knob

i think it adds to the 90s consumer aesthetical charms that the nintendo 64 represents

what i don't like is the m64 of course, palmer luckey is a pile of moose dishes

[tepid shuttle]

every product can be tied back to some unlikeable asshole, luckey is just closer to this than usual

[cyan dome]

the closer to the asshole, the smellier the product to be fair

[cedar sun]

The aluminum brick is inoffensive and doesn't look like a gamer toy (at least with nothing plugged into it)

[plush summit]

I stan the Brick

[cedar sun]

Honestly the knob is fine, it's like an extra way to navigate menus that's independent of the controllers, but the rest of the console is just horrendous

I really can't stand that gamery rgb lights aesthetic

[iron wren]

knobheads unite!

[cedar sun]

And tbh the original N64 is probably also the ugliest Nintendo console anyway (this is to say nothing about the system itself, or it's library)

Honestly the Analogue 3D is kind of sleek looking, but I kind of hate that I like how it looks

[iron wren]

I like how most analogue devices look, personally, but I find the prices to be not worth the aesthetics

[cedar sun]

They're also just fairly limited compared to the mister

[tepid shuttle]

"fairly" is hugely underselling it

[cedar sun]

Like big whoop the ability to play cartridges I guess

[iron wren]

yea the only reason I would entertain the m64 is because it has the potential to have third party cores loaded onto it in a supported manner (at least, that seems to be the long term intent according to Palmer interviews)

[cedar sun]

I feel like the only draw is for people who already have an existing library and are somehow ideologically opposed to dumps (even their own)

[cyan dome]

i hate aluminum yuppie bricks!! give me 90s memphis-derived fisher price consoles

but NOT from luckey palmer

[tepid shuttle]

something in-between is best imo

[cedar sun]

The M64 does have the selling point of a bit more horse power and technically Robert is working on it so he'd probably find a way to squeeze every last drop

[cyan dome]

if luckey palmer sent me a free m64 i would send it back with UPS!! that will show him!!!

[cedar sun]

It'd be interesting if DD stuff is supported on it but I wouldn't want to give ModRetro money personally

[tepid shuttle]

it should be supported if the summercart works with it

[cedar sun]

Oh right I guess yeah

Doesn't the Analogue 3D have issues with flash carts still or has that been resolved?

[tepid shuttle]

it did at launch. i dunno if it's been resolved

[cedar sun]

Iirc Summer Cart works but has issues

[tepid shuttle]

my interest in the A3D starts and ends with the lack of analog video out and being locked to 60hz

[cedar sun]

Reminds me, I have an analog IO board and never used analog out much at all, kind of wish I went digital

That's something I thought I would use but I grew to kind of see CRTs as a necessity for certain consoles due to not having a good scaler

[outer condor]

Yeah it’s a shame but I could never buy this

[zinc dew]

It’s a shame, but very understandable, that the discourse about the owner of ModRetro overshadows the amazing product they put together.

Can’t be avoided. 🤷‍♂️

[tepid shuttle]

i don't care who's in charge of or funding a product. all i care about is if it's good or not

[zinc dew]

that is also a valid position to take

it is also unfortunate that most CEOs are terrible human beings and a lot of the goods and services we purchase today enables genuine monsters to be monstrous

[dim kiln]

Besides I could definitely imagine that Altera/Intel does not only sell FPGAs to be used only for consoles if you know what I mean 😛

[lament escarp]

I think the main issue with Palmer Lucky is that he is so visible. He is no more or less disgusting than any of the other billionaires, but they at least have the decency to keep their horrible mouths shut.

[placid ferry]

And just visit Epstein Island 🏝️

[sullen harbor]

Its also the fact that he will stick his nose into shit he doesnt have to and act all proud about it.
Do I want a fucking gameboy made from the same alloy he makes to build his killer drones. The fuck I don't!

I think my problem with modretro is that despite the people there being clearly decent folk, lucky doesnt get out of the way and has to be involved and I have to look at his rat face

[tepid shuttle]

the reason i don't understand that argument is because, by that logic, you wouldn't be using at least half of the electronics and appliances you do now if it applied to everything. samsung makes military equipment for south korea, but millions of people still buy their smartphones

[chilly ember]

Samsung also builds hospitals

[sullen harbor]

Yep.
It's the brazenness
Does samsung actively talk about how awesome it is to make death machines.
Is that to a man who tried to reinvent himself with a soul patch and a hawaiian shirt and made himself look like the Klansman played by Michael Shannon in Bad boys 2

Also Lucky is on social media, saying awful shit on the reg

[lament escarp]

It's also a bit naive to take the government's out of the equation when talking about military production and exports.
Companies will always go where the money is, but the government decides what can be built and sold to where.

[tepid shuttle]

i just feel like it's gotten to a point where it doesn't matter what one person decides to buy or not. literally almost every product can be traced back to some horrible person or event

[sullen harbor]

Yeah

And I resent basically the only company dont feel about that is costco

[tepid shuttle]

it's just "what's the lesser of these evils"

[sullen harbor]

Who cares

I dont like him

and that counts for something

He is repulsive

[tepid shuttle]

so is bill gates lol

[sullen harbor]

Yeah and If I didn't have to use windows I wouldnt

I fucking hate adobe but need their tools

The problem is they killed viable competition

so I'm stuck with it

[lament escarp]

I think it's totally valid to not buy modretro products because you think Palmer Lucky (or Lucky Palmer? Idk) is a pos and that's your prerogative, but I'm tired by people screeching every time a modretro product is discussed or somebody even owns one.

[sullen harbor]

And that is fair

I don't resent people for buying modretro. Most people dont know this shit

But I do resent the fatalistic "Oh what's the point in even getting mad, the world is terrible"

I feel like that's just admitting defeat

[tepid shuttle]

recognizing that a solution is flawed isn't admitting defeat

[lament escarp]

This will be the last thing I say about the matter since it really doesn't belong in the n64 thread: if you don't like how your country does things go out and vote. If every option is horrible vote the least bad. That's the most meaningful thing you can do, trying to go alone against billion dollar companies is as meaningless as it sounds.

[sullen harbor]

Fair. But also

I'm Canadian

[lament escarp]

Hello Canadian, I'm dad.

[sullen harbor]

lmao

[tepid shuttle]

not now son. dad's busy trying to get all 100 coins in rainbow ride

[dim kiln]

I tried with this patch -> https://github.com/FazanaJ/Diddy-Kong-Racing/releases/tag/1.1
and while it worked for me on 94MHz+ I had other cores hang after logo...
I saw that there was complains on previous versions of the diddy kong patch being unstable but hard to tell if it actual crash or the fact that ratio between RCP/CPU is not the stock one (which it is in the 80MHz core)

[topaz otter]

The knob fills me with rage

[plush summit]

i am rat in cage

[topaz otter]

There was a time back on the mstb3d.com days

When this dude could do no wrong

Them days is over lol

[weary palm]

He has a video of it running on a iQue Player. The RCP runs at 1.5x (93.75Mhz) on that machine.

[dim kiln]

ok but the 94MHz+ also OC the CPU by 33%

[versed cairn]

https://github.com/FazanaJ/Diddy-Kong-Racing/releases/tag/1.2 there's a 1.2 version that's even MORE stable. I've had the 1.0 version even freeze on my stock N64

[slow silo]

Not true! .. it's also a button!