Plugins

[SamoanWolf]

So I'm reading through the forums and I see a lot about these "plugins." So I have a few questions.

1) What are plugins?

2) What are they used for?

3) Where can I get them?

4) My games seem to run fine with the occasional drop to about 59.7 FPS. I've only seen 40 FPS once and that lasted less than half of a half of a half of a.... You get it. So do I need plugins?

 

[Agozer]

1) Think of them as addon parts that add a certain functionality to the emulator. These parts can be more or less freely switched.

2). See 1. In Nintendo64 emulation (and why not in general) these add graphics rendering (graphics plugins), audio (audio plugins), input (controller/input plugins). In Nintendo64 emulation, there's also the RSP plugin (Reality Signal Processor, a part of the N64 hardware)

3) A set of standard plugins are usually included with emulator that use plugins to begin with. MAny emulation sites that archive emulators and various emulator-related utilities also carry plugins. This board, along with the Emulation64 network is one of such sites.

No, you do not need plugins, unless you want to experiment with different plugins. Quick drops in FPS are actually quite common during certain scenes in certain games, if the game otherwise runs at the intended speed, and these drops aren't constant. Graphics plugins especially