N64 Emulators and graphics cards / plugin question

[Lighty]

Since n64 emulation uses all sorts of plugins where some games work properly and others don't, will buying a good graphics card fix all that? here are my current specs:

amd phenom 2 quad core 2.6 ghz
8gb ddr3 ram
windows 7
ati radeon hd 4200 integrated

[PMJPlay]

I think you are better off playing on Dolphin (Gamecube/Wii) since N64 Emulation is the worse of the bunch of Nintendo emulation.
Though if you are hard set for N64 gaming, Project 64 is your best bet but in my honest opinion I wouldn't bother with it.

Plugin wise, they are pretty much all the same except for Glide Plugin which is no longer developed. The Glide plugin is best used with an actual 3DFX card though it does come with a glide wrapper.

[SE7EN]

I have to disagree with the previous statement. n64 emulation is pretty darn good if you have the hardware, and yes, a dedicated gpu will help; but it may not be necessary. there are a few games that are not going to work, and a few with high system requirements (but I have played them on a mediocre laptop with no problem, so you should be ok) but all in all, most run great. project 64 with Jabo's d3d8 (any version, but I'd try 1.7+ first) plugin should suit you well, you can also try mupen64, it is (IMO) almost as good as pj64, I believe they both have > 90% compatibility with games. and if you play it on an emulator, you can (if your hardware will run it) add some AA and higher AF and texture resolution, in addition to some post-process effects as well as custom texture packs (which can look AMAZING) where the dolphin option will probably only do the former.. and probably at a lower framerate, as you will running an emulator inside an emulator.

[Lighty]

Well, for the hell of it, I decided to pick up a card and power supply. (600w) the card is a radeon r7 series 260x with 2gb ddr5 memory. If anything, it makes the working roms look better than the console versions! nice! But as for the roms that dont work, I found it unusual that goldeneye works on project64 1.7 but is missing layers on version 2.1.0.1... I figured the newer version would be better. plus star wars shadows of the empire only works to a certain extent. I wonder if I can find that rom elsewhere and maybe that copy will work better? plus a few roms are very slow on full screen. mupen helps on a few roms. im sure n64 emulation isnt perfect. just looking for as many suggestions as I can. Also, what is AA and AF? not familiar with those terms.

[SE7EN]

goldeneye has high system requirements, and I believe it had issues with the sky on some levels. maybe they fixed that in newer revision but messed something else up. as far as the star war games, I think those are mostly broken due to the system used in the cartridges, and I know that there are a few of those that are not playable in any emulator, no matter the revision. I don't know if they would work on a dolphin - n64 emulator or not.
as far as the terms..
AA means antialiasing and it is a means of blurring the edges of an image to get rid of 'jaggies' and make it appear as a solid, non-straight line.

AF means anisotropic filtering is the quality of textures that are oblique to the camera's viewing angle, including far-away objects. the higher you turn up this settings, the better off-to-the-side and far-away objects will look.

you can take a look at this thread viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4002&p=18862#p18862 of mine that touches upon some of these effects and has some screenshots you can click on to see the differences. although it is for a ps2 emulator, a lof of the info is valid for 64 also.

[Lighty]

Thanks. That was quite informative. What is a Dolphin-N64? Isn't that a gamecube emulator? Those PS2 texture improvements were incredible! Where can I get texture packs? Any packs for Project64? Would the packs be for the emulator, or for my card? As far as PS2, PS1, or Gamecube emulators (maybe even saturn), do they have to run the actual game in the cd-rom drive? Or do they run a rom? or an image iso that has to be burned to disc? Are any of the cd based system emulators worth looking into, depending on how many games they can run? I know I'm bombarding with questions lol, but I've stuck with only classic gaming emulation (nes, super nes, genesis) for many years, and I want to finally expand my horizons, as well as the possibilities and capabilities, now that I have a good graphics card. I didn't have much video memory beforehand.

[SE7EN]

alright, Dolphin - N64 is running a N64 game on the Virtual Console from Dolphin. You are correct that Dolphin is a GameCube emulator, but it is also able to emulate the Wii (you may be able to run Wii games on your computer, but I think the cpu may hold you back on a lot of games). As far as I know, you cannot add any quality enhancements this way, except for increasing resolution and AA/AF from Dolphin, and by running an emulator inside an emulator, it may have a performance cost.
As for the texture packs, there are not a huge assortment of them. The most common ones will be for the Zelda games, and depending on the pack, you will need to use a specific graphics plugin. Most require Rice's while others require Jabo's.

Code: Select all

http://textures.emulation64.com/index.php?id=downloads

This has a good assortment of packs, others can be found all over the internet. They do require some changes in the plugin settings to load the textures instead of the defaults, but they are pretty simple to find.
Disc-based systems can run the games from a few different sources. Almost all games can be run from a disc image, but can be burned to disc if you so choose. A few of the less-used formats may have to be either converted to a more common format, or can be mounted to a virtual drive the emulator can run it from.
My recommendations: GameCube/Wii-Dolphin, PSX-ePSXe, PS2-PCSX2. You can take a look here viewtopic.php?f=10&t=4001 for some of the other PlayStation (PSX) emulators. As for a Saturn emulator, I am not familiar with these, so I cannot recommend one to you. You can also try some DreamCast games if you want to try them out, I hear Chankast and NullDC are pretty good. These all should be available on this site's emulator section.

[GozmitJosh]

Hello

Im currently trying different n64 plugins using project 64 and mupen64.

When playing Rush, as im racing when the cars get a certain distance away instead of being more pixelated they become a very very low resolution "brick".

Same problem when i try mario art 64 and the rest of the rush game.

[SE7EN]

you could try increasing the AF filtering, which increases the resolution of textures that are at angles (and further away) from you.