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Download the Latest Version of Rice Video Plugin for N64 Emulation



It is the first N64 Video plugin that offered support for users to load in custom user-made textures to replace the originals shipped with the game, allowing texture artists to increase the resolution of textures or change the whole art-direction of the game.


It is one of the more popular choices in plugins when it comes to hires texture works but has been slowly losing popularity in face of more high performance plugins that offer better compatibility while still having high-res texture dumping and loading support such as GlideHQ.




rice video plugin download




Mupen64Plus is a cross-platform plugin-based N64 emulator which is capable of accurately playing many games. Included are four MIPS R4300 CPU emulators, with dynamic recompilers for 32-bit x86 and 64-bit amd64 systems, and necessary plugins for audio, graphical rendering (RDP), signal co-processor (RSP), and input. There is 1 included OpenGL video plugin, called RiceVideo. There are 3 other excellent video plugins being maintained by wahrhaft, called Arachnoid, Glide64, and Z64.


The N64 emulation scene had previously been described as a broken mess, the very definition of plugin hell. With recent developments in the scene, however, the situation has markedly improved, and it is no longer considered necessary to have multiple emulators and plugins on hand to get most games to work. This page will outline the best plugins currently available for the benefit of both the casual and enthusiast looking to get their N64 emulation fix.


To understand the current plugin situation, and why there are several competing emulators that all appear to use the same plugins but said plugins are not compatible across emulators, a bit of history is in order. As for the terms HLE and LLE, which will occur with frequency throughout this page, and the difference between them, it is recommended to read this page on High/Low level emulation beforehand.


Historically, the majority of N64 emulators all shared the same plugin spec (known as the zilmar spec, after the creator of Project64, the first emulator to use it), and could therefore all use the same plugins, meaning you could take a plugin DLL file, use it on one emulator, then take that DLL and use it on another, and it would also work there. Of these, the big three emulators were Project64, 1964 and Mupen64. Each had advantages and disadvantages, and some games worked well in one only to not work in another, even when using the same plugin configuration. This necessitated having all of these emulators and sometimes even older or modified versions of them, along with a great many plugins, to be able to play most of the N64 library with the least amount of issues possible - though admittedly a good amount of games (particularly the most popular ones) were playable with just the best few of them.


To illustrate the point, here is a site that, as late as 2012, was dedicated to documenting the exact emulator, plugin and settings combination necessary to get each and every game to at least a playable state, if at all possible. Unsurprisingly, this situation often led to a lot of confusion from users, who often wondered why there were so many plugins, and which ones were the best to use, only to find out it often depended on the game, and even then, some games would refuse to work as intended no matter what was tried. Hence the label "plugin hell" was coined, and stuck as a description of the travails of trying to emulate N64 games well into the 2010's.


However, as time went on, things began to change, though slowly at first. 1964's development eventually ceased, and it completely fell off the radar. Mupen64 was forked into Mupen64Plus and developed its own plugin spec that was incompatible with the older zilmar spec, making it unable to use existing plugins unless they were specifically ported to it. This left only Project64 as the only relevant and active emulator still using the zilmar spec. For some time, then, this left the fledgling Mupen64Plus missing out on most cutting-edge plugin development, as most people were still using Project64.


A semblance of parity began to come about as a result of several major developments: first, Mupen64Plus itself was forked by the libretro team, which made many changes and improvements to the core emulator, and integrated its plugins into the core itself. Second, gonetz, the developer of Glide64, unveiled his newest plugin, GLideN64, which would officially support both the zilmar and Mupen64Plus specs from the beginning. Third, the Angrylion plugin, which is the most accurate and compatible (and slowest) video plugin there is but was initially only available for the zilmar spec, was ported to Mupen64Plus and integrated into the libretro fork. Finally, Themaister, one of the creators of libretro and RetroArch, began developing a unique plugin initially exclusive to libretro known as ParaLLEl-RDP, essentially Angrylion running on the GPU through Vulkan compute shaders, enabling near-perfect N64 graphics emulation at actually playable speeds. Add to this the fact that most PCs and many mobile devices are now more than capable enough of running the most advanced plugins, and the plugin situation, once considered a labyrinth, has been greatly simplified to just needing a few for the vast majority of use cases.


*It should be noted that Project64 after version 2.x made some changes to the zilmar plugin spec, and while it remains backwards compatible with the older version of the spec (meaning most older plugins will still work with Project64), plugins targeting the newer version will not work on older versions of Project64 or other zilmar spec-based emulators.


**Funnily enough, Glide64 actually DOES have LLE code (much of it apparently comes from z64gl) and can technically run in LLE mode by using it alongside an LLE RSP plugin such as CXD4. However, it is not a complete implementation, and actually trying to run it in such a mode results in massive visual glitches, making it unusable. Practically speaking, then, Glide64 cannot be considered a true LLE plugin, and will not be designated as such, nor was it ever meant to be.


*These terms signify whether an RSP plugin can work alongside HLE and/or LLE audio and video plugins. As for the type of emulation employed by the RSP plugins themselves, all but the Mupen64/plus HLE RSP plugins are LLE in nature. The LLE RSP plugins that can work with HLE plugins do so by passing the N64 display and audio lists onto the plugins themselves.


An LLE video plugin inspired by and referenced against Angrylion's RDP plugin, made to run on the GPU through the use of the Vulkan API's compute shaders. It was introduced in the ParaLLEl-N64 libretro core, is also available in the newer Mupen64Plus-Next core, and is included in several forks of Mupen64Plus and Project64, such as simple64 and this build of Project64. This is currently considered the best video plugin by most measures. It is almost as accurate and compatible as Angrylion's RDP, but much faster. Like most Angrylion forks, it allows disabling of VI features such as anti-aliasing and blur. Unlike the software-rendered Angrylion, however, it also allows a number of enhancements, including hi-res upscaling, resulting in a sharp, high-definition picture while simultaneously retaining accuracy, essentially what the N64 output would look like if the original console could render in HD. It can also render at a high resolution and downsample back down to a lower one, should one wish to improve the 3D graphics without making them stick out from the often low-res 2D elements. Due to its LLE nature, it does not support widescreen hacks or high-res textures - try GLideN64 if you seek to use such features.


System requirements for ParaLLEl-RDP are higher than for the other plugins. It requires a GPU with Vulkan support and up-to-date drivers (most Nvidia and AMD GPUs made after 2012 should be covered, though Intel graphics requires Skylake or newer), and upscaling increases the GPU requirements even further, far more than GLideN64. It must also be used in conjunction with an LLE RSP plugin, preferably its sister plugin ParaLLEl-RSP, as it features a recompiler for added speed. At native resolution, however, a modest PC with Vulkan support can handle it without much issue, even on integrated graphics.


A hybrid HLE/LLE plugin developed by the maker of Glide64, though its code is actually originally based on gln64 (with combiner hacks from Glide64 and LLE code from z64gl and, to a lesser extent, angrylion). It is included with the latest versions of Project64, the Mupen64Plus-Next libretro core, and older versions of simple64. This is the best HLE plugin by far. The plugin currently supports mip-mapping, emulation of low-level triangles, microcode emulation of every game, gamma correction, flat and prim shading, VI emulation, and LLE graphics support. It is the only plugin that has implemented HLE support of microcodes for every N64 game (including the infamous Factor 5 and BOSS games) to enable fast performance and graphical enhancements. It currently fixes numerous long-standing issues in games and is capable of smoothly emulating advanced framebuffer effects in hardware that Glide64 and Jabo could not. It also supports several enhancements, such as hi-res custom texture support, MSAA and AF, a widescreen hack, and even some shaders. There is support for an "Overscan" feature that helps the users to remove black borders around a game's visual output.


GLideN64 requires at least OpenGL 3.3 in the latest versions to run, and OpenGL 4.x for some advanced functions, making this plugin more demanding than the plugins that came before it, though modern GPUs should be ok, even on mobile. It is not without its share of issues to this day, however. There are still several HLE bugs left to resolve, and its LLE mode, while much improved over z64gl's, is still not quite as developed as its HLE mode, and some of the plugin's enhancement features are disabled in this mode. Since it is hardware-rendered even in LLE, there are issues that may never be quite resolved due to inherent differences between the N64 hardware and the OpenGL API. It is advisable to use this over ParaLLEl-RDP only if you are unable to run the latter in HD at full speed or if further enhancements such as widescreen hacks and hi-res textures are desired. 2ff7e9595c


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