Beta Testing Has Begun!

[Brock]

I played around with Paper Mario and the new settings. It is no longer playable in Rice. After Mario and Luigi take the pipe in the very beginning the screen completely gets taken over by the background, it used to flash but now its solid background. I'll keep testing and let you know what I find.
I do actually get a much better frame rate in that game with the new settings for Rice in the playable part.
I'm using the latest test build.

[Epic_bubble]

I played around with Paper Mario and the new settings. It is no longer playable in Rice. After Mario and Luigi take the pipe in the very beginning the screen completely gets taken over by the background, it used to flash but now its solid background. I'll keep testing and let you know what I find.
I do actually get a much better frame rate in that game with the new settings for Rice in the playable part.
I'm using the latest test build.

That might be related to frame skip. If you disable that the game should look a bit better again but it will also be slower again.

The frame skip is what makes rice so much faster now.

[Brock]

I played around with Paper Mario and the new settings. It is no longer playable in Rice. After Mario and Luigi take the pipe in the very beginning the screen completely gets taken over by the background, it used to flash but now its solid background. I'll keep testing and let you know what I find.
I do actually get a much better frame rate in that game with the new settings for Rice in the playable part.
I'm using the latest test build.

That might be related to frame skip. If you disable that the game should look a bit better again but it will also be slower again.

The frame skip is what makes rice so much faster now.

Ya, that fixed it. I'm still excited to see that we are getting new features with the rice plugin. I hope it gets fixed, Paper Mario is my favorite game for the N64.

[Paul]

Yes, this is definitely caused by the skip frame option (disabling it fixed the problem right away).  The flashing in gles2n64 is not related to frameskip, though (using manual frameskip 0 still flickers).  I'll play around with the other settings available in the config file to see if any of them will fix the problem.  Looks like Rice isn't going to be a good fit for Paper Mario until it is much better optimized to run at a good speed without skip frame.

[Brock]

Yes, this is definitely caused by the skip frame option (disabling it fixed the problem right away).  The flashing in gles2n64 is not related to frameskip, though (using manual frameskip 0 still flickers).  I'll play around with the other settings available in the config file to see if any of them will fix the problem.  Looks like Rice isn't going to be a good fit for Paper Mario until it is much better optimized to run at a good speed without skip frame.

Thanks Paul. :-)
Hopefully some day that flickering problem will be fixed in gles2n64 and Rice will be better optimized for games like Paper Mario. I have very high hopes for this emulator. Great work so far Paul keep it up! ;-)

[MaXiMu]

Gles2n64 Black ground problem on Zelda

Solved in the new Option Z-Buffer fix Enabled                                                                                                                                                       

I think I understand what you are saying.  The app crashes or screen freezes if you manually set the frameskip to anything greater than zero.  Someone else recently reported this problem.  It is on my list of bugs to fix.

Yes I reference exactly this problem 

The flickering is happening for a lot of people in the Rice plug-in.  I haven't looked closely to see what is the cause (probably something similar to what was happening in gles2n64).  I'm assuming the Yinlips requires the same offset settings as the Tegra 2 (since it had the same tribuffer opt problem), so I used those.  Please run the latest version below, to see if it still has the flickering shadows with gles2n64.

Fixed in RC3 no flickering shadows/carpets on mario64.

[Paul]

I posted the update.  Android Market users may have to wait a few minutes for google to refresh the listings.

Next I will be focusing on adding multi-controller support and combining the source-code into a single project and setting up a git hub.  I'm hoping to have these done and post another small update this weekend or soon after.

Anyone who would like write access to the git hub once its in place, PM me to discuss it.  I will enforce some kind of quality control, so malicious people don't come along just to screw up the project (so don't feel like I'm discriminating if I don't grant you write access immediately upon requesting it).

[cuttler]

Nice job making the emu, but i have a problem with Donkey Kong 64, when i go to load it up, you'll hear "OKAY" from Donkey and the N64 emblem wont pop up like it should and then it crashes. Any help?

[Paul]

Yes, this is a known bug.  I'll get around to working on it soon.  I have a device-compatibility bug I want to fix first, as well as a big speed optimization.  Once those are done, I will begin working on game-specific bugs.  I'll take votes on which games to tackle first, but I expect Donkey Kong will end up pretty high on the list.

[cuttler]

Thanks Paul, i was worried my Android Optimus wasn't gunna be able to play it, even though Zalda OOT worked, and Pokemon Stadium partly worked. Donkey Kong was my favorite game for the N64 and i'd like to be able to play it in school in my free time

just on a off side question, is there a way to get the keys to stay up after you move the joystick?

[Paul]

That is another bug I'm going to look at soon (lots to do, haha).  For now there are a couple workarounds:

Option #1 (Easier, but slower on many devices)
- ENABLE Settings->Virtual Gamepad->Redraw All

Option #2 (Also easy, but a few extra steps.  Faster on many devices)
- DISABLE Settings->Virtual Gamepad->Redraw All
- DISABLE Settings->Virtual Gamepad->Display FPS
- Change Layout:  Settings->Virtual Gamepad->Change Layout->Mupen64Plus-AE-Touch
(if your device has a small or tiny screen resolution, choose the Touch layout for "Small" or "Tiny")

This bug came about because I created a workaround due to the Android API for redrawing graphics being uber-slow (redrawing the frame creates a noticeable lag on many devices).  Unfortunately the workaround doesn't work for every device (some devices it causes the rest of the frame to disappear, making the buttons invisible).  This problem will be fixed definitively when I implement the drawing in GLES2 rather than the Android API (been focused on other things, so haven't gotten around to this yet)

[cuttler]

lol okay, and this leads me to another question, the Gles2n64, is that a download plugin or is it preset when you install it and just have to change the settings?

[Paul]

Two video plugins come with the app, gles2n64 and gles2rice (the latter is Kris' port of Rice with a couple lines I threw in to make it run on Android).  The settings that come up when you go to Settings->Video->Configure depend in which of the two plugins you have selected.  To switch between them, go to Settings->Video->Change Plug-in.  The plugin import function doesn't work yet (nobody's written any other ones to import yet anyway).

[Epic_bubble]

I just had a small idea.

I know you have had a lot of trouble getting android market users to come to the website, how about trying to get them to come here through the app?

Maybe try and implement some sort of way for them to contact you even if it was just a link to the wap version of this site.

[Paul]

I'll look at how to interface the browser.  SMF should automatically default to WAP if the browser doesn't support to full version.  I should be able to add a HELP! option to the main menu, which pops up the browser and loads the FAQ thread.