[ssimplemind]

Hi guys, I also installed the video plugin as per gizmo98’s instructions and when I rebooted emulationstation it was there, so I guess everything worked in the installation.

However, when I choose videocore as the video mode, Mario Kart switches to 320×240 mode regardless of what CEA mode I choose. The speed is great, but there are also a few artefacts in the game. When choosing characters their backgrounds are not exactly right, and when playing the power-ups are very squished and also the drivers are completely black.

Is there any way to change the render resolution?

[ssimplemind]

Hi guys. I’m also trying to get Mario Kart 64 to work at full speed for multiplayer games. I have a 40′ FullHD TV as a display, but I don’t mind if I need a lower resolution for the game to work at full speed.

I’d love to play this game in 4 player multiplayer at full speed. However, right now I cant’t get it to workat full speed constantly even with two players. From what I understand, the N64 video emulators use the display’s default resolution to render the game, and I can see that in the game, because everything which is made out of polygons looks pretty crisp.

I tried using all the emulators (RICE dowsn’t work, GlideN64 is slower, glesN64 is the best but still a bit slow), changing to (CEA-1) 640×480 but apart from messing with my aspect ratio (it stretched the game to fit 16:9), the polygons looked just as crisp and the game feels slow in some areas. On the fisrt track, Luigi’s Raceway it’s stuttering ever so slightly everywhere, except in the tunnels. I get a boost in display speed every time I go through them. :)

My question, @dankcushions, is how did you manage to make the game playable at 1080p. Where are the settings that you changed, and what should I change if I value playability instead of resolution?

Thanks in advance.

[ssimplemind]

Hi pajen, thanks for the info.

I just got my usb Bluetooth dongle about 2 hours ago. It’s an ASUS USB-BT400. I disabled the internal bluetooth as per your instructions and restarted and then my controllers paired immediately with the new bluetooth adapter.

You can check to see which adapters are active using hciconfig.

I’ve been playing for about 2 hours and am glad to report that I had no freeze until now. It’s great to know that the problem was caused by the PI’s internal bluetooth, because at least with a USB dongle you can get around the problem, and I’m sure that the rPI foundation will eventually find a solution.

[ssimplemind]

Throttling is not an issue here. My Pi 3 keeps well below 60°C in any N64 game that I tested. I kept Donkey Kong 64 running for 8 hours straight without any issues and my temperature reading was 56.8°C (135°F) at the most.

The problem is definetly somewhere between the Bluetooth module and the PS3 drivers for Bluetooth.

[ssimplemind]

I’ve only used rPi3’s internal bluetooth module with pi-bluetooth installed. I’ll try and get an usb module tomorrow to check again.

[ssimplemind]

Hi. Memory split is 256M for vram. I used to have it at 384M but decided to scale back because I thought that the games might be running out of memory (I checked later and that wasn’t the case)

The freezes happen randomly. I played Ocarina of Time for 4 hours with no problem, but when changing games it happens more rapidly. Try playing a little of more. Usually, the first game I start is stable, but when I change game, the freezes occur faster. Even shutting down an emulator and starting it again makes the freeze occur more rapidly. I hope it helps.

If there’s anything else I can do to help you pinpoint the issue I’m happy to help. Just tell me what files to provide for debugging.

[ssimplemind]

I did an update about 8 hours ago. As far as I can tell, the problem’s getting worse. I connected my sixaxis controller via bluetooth and in 10 minutes I encountered two freezes while trying to play Mario Kart 64. One while the game was loading and another after restarting, and playing for about 3 minutes.

On a completely unrelated note, the mupen-rice emulator, which is default, doesn’t display any video anymore, but 64plus is ok.

[ssimplemind]

Hi guys, I second the opinion that the pi-bluetooth service or ps3 service are at fault. I connected one of the controllers through the USB cable and the emulators have run for 4 hours straight with no problems. I tested Mario Kart for n64, TOCA2, Final Fantasy VII, Tekken 3 and Carmageddon for PSX and there was no problem, even though in the past my system froze in each and every one of those games.

To finish the test I exited the emulators and tried to connect the second controller via Bluetooth. The controller didn´t even have time to pair and emulatorstation froze. I guess I´m stuck with wired controllers for now, but I´d still try to get to the root of the problem.

Could there be a communication problem between the PS3 wireless service and the bluetooth service? I have yet to find other posts on the internet complaining that bluetooth on the rPi froze the system.

[ssimplemind]

Hi samw, I thik there are a few points where your config could have gone wrong, so check them one by one.
1. After changing the es_systems.cfg file you have to do a restart, so that emulationstation loads the new paths.
2. Be carful, because MAME has more than one emulator and you should check that the file extension is correct (.zip).
3. It seems pretty odd that your path has MAME_0.151_ROMs twice. Please check it again. If the path points to a directory which doesn´t exist, you won´t see anything in emulationstation.

You could try another approach, instead of changing the path in es_systems.cfg you could just symlink to the network mounted directory from the original directory.

For this you´ll have to go to your mame emulator folder (ex. /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/mame-advmame) and
ln -s /media/consoles/MAME_0.151_ROMs/MAME_0.151_ROMs
if that is indeed your correct path.

[ssimplemind]

He guys, I was about to post the same problem for my Retropie configuration.

My config is:
– Raspberry Pi 3, initially with RetroPie 3.4, now upgraded to 3.6
– VRAM split is 256MB
– Sony, 16GB SDHC Class 10 SD Card
– official rPi 3 power source, 2.5A if I remember correctly
– one or two Playstation 3 controllers, connected by bluetooth
– I´ve had ROMs directly on my SD Card and also on my network storage

My problem is that the raspberry pi freezes in the middle of games. It happened to me in SNES, as well as N64 and PSX games. I specifically tested the SD Card before I bought it and it only has about a month of use, but the problems appeared on the first day.

My rPi freezes less frequently than @nonorius ´s. It can sometimes work for about 2-3 hours of playtime, while other times it works just for 5-10 minutes. I also kept it on for almost two days without any game running and nothing happened.

I´ve tried keeping an eye out for RAM usage (I had 512MB VRAM at first, 256MB now), keeping the top command running in an ssh session, but I had more than 100MB of RAM to spare when it happened.

I´m pretty new to linux and I´m not sure where to look, so I´d be grateful if you could point me to some application logs. Maybe I can find the error there. I tried running emulationstation --debug from the ssh session but I think it doesn´t work that way, because I can´t start any game.

Could it be because of the bluetooth controllers? Did anybody else experience this problem with them?

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