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Trying to use Mupen64k on Ubuntu with Wine

151rby

New member
So, I'm a Ubuntu user and I want to start playing SSB64 online, and I'm having trouble getting Mupen64k to work correctly. I tried Project64k, and ran into problems there too, but I've heard the general consensus is that Mupen64k is better, so for now I'm going to focus on trying to use M64k, though if that ultimately fails then I'll try P64k again. I don't have a Windows OS, and I will get one if it turns out to be absolutely necessary, but that's my last resort. I want to do this with Ubuntu if at all possible.

I'm using version 0.8 of Mupen64k, and Ubuntu 11.04. The main problem I'm having is that the picture is messed up. I've tried the three video plugins that came with M64k, and none of them give good results, though they all give different results. I'll summarize them:
Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6: When I load the rom, I can hear the opening music of the game, but all that shows is a black screen. When I try to click any menu bar option, it freezes and I must force the program to quit.
Jabo's Direct3D7 1.40: What's weird about this one is that when I have it selected as my video plugin, I can't configure it. Clicking "Configure" or "Video options" has no effect. When I load the rom, the screen goes black for a moment, then the M64k window resizes and goes to the top-left corner of the screen, like this: (See first attachment). The M64k window becomes darker, then it returns to normal brightness as I hear the opening music of the game, but the window just shows a solid black screen, flickering to other solid colors like white and grey and reddish brown. I put it in fullscreen mode, and I can actually see the game, but the graphics are messed up; a lot of them are absent or just black where there should be color. Also, some of the moving graphics create weird tracers, and other stuff on my computer screen shows a little bit near the edges; it's hard to explain so here's a picture: (See second attachment (That was during the "How to Play" animation)). Problematically, the menu bar is now invisible and, as far as I can tell, inaccessible. Clicking, right clicking, and pressing Esc all have no effect. I pressed F1 and a window popped up saying that Mupen64k encountered a serious problem and needs to close. I clicked ok, and the rom closed, but M64k's fullscreen effect was still active, so that it was as if I was viewing my computer desktop TRHOUGH the emulator. Even weirder, a Mupen64k window (with no rom loaded) remained visible on my desktop. I right-clicked the Wine icon in the launcher, selected quit, and the M64k window closed and my screen went back to normal.
Jabo's Direct3D6 1.5.2: The configuration options for this one allow me to select either Direct3D HAL or Direct3D HEL as the rendering device, and I don't know the difference, so I tried both.
HAL: When I load the rom, I can hear the opening music, but the emulator window is just solid black, then flickers to some other solid colors like white, grey, and reddish brown. When I put it in fullscreen, I see bad graphics where, as with the Jabo's Direct3D7 plugin, many graphics are missing or just black. However it isn't as bad as the 3D7, because the moving graphics don't leave tracers, and no elements of the stuff in the background of my computer screen are visible. As with the 3D7, the menu bar is now invisible and, as far as I can tell, inaccessible. Clicking, right clicking, and pressing Esc all have no effect. I press F1 and it seemed that the emulation stopped, but the image of the game stayed on my screen. At first I thought my computer had frozen, but then I found that I could see the mouse cursor when it was at the left edge of the screen, and that I could use F-key shortcuts to restart my computer.
HEL: As with the HAL, when I load the rom, I can hear the opening music, but the emulator window is just solid black, then flickers to some other solid colors like white, grey, and reddish brown. However, when I put it into fullscreen, the solid colors just continue. As with the the HAL and the 3D7, I can't seem to access the menu bar. I press F1 and the emulation stops, there's a pause of 10 seconds or so, then the screen reverts to my desktop with a M64k window open on it, but the window border and menu bar are missing, like this: (See third attachment). I have to right-click the Wine icon in the launcher and select Quit.
I really wonder what is preventing this from working. Do I just need to change some other settings within M64k, do I need to download a different video plugin, or is some compatibility deficiency with Wine causing this? Or some combination thereof? By the way my video card is an Intel HD Graphics 4000.

There's also one other issue I happened to notice: The emulation was laggy at times. I didn't expect it to lag on my computer; my processor is a 3rd generation Intel Core i5-3210M (2.50 GHz 3MB L3 Cache - 2 cores plus hyperthreading), and I have 8GB of RAM. Is that not good enough to run M64k smoothly?
 

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F

Fanatic 64

Guest
I'm pretty sure it's a compatibility deficiency with Wine, sorry. You should either try a virtual machine or install Windows (preferably XP, Vista or 7).
 
OP
1

151rby

New member
Virtual machine, eh? I think I'll give that a shot. Any recommendations on which VM application would be best for my purposes? I'm not great with computers so something relatively simpleton-friendly would be nice.
 

smcd

Active member
VM don't tend to do well with accelerated graphics, just a heads up.

EDIT: It appears I'm a bit out of date. VirtualBox and other support it these days, not sure how well it works though :)
 
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