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Discussion Paper Mario coming to NSO Expansion Pak 12/10
- Thread starter totofogo
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Hylianhero777
Shriekbat
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Apparently if I understand correctly NERD put a game specific hack into Paper Mario on N64 NSO with the sole effect of making the framerate worse in menus. What is wrong with them lol I'm really losing confidence that they're going to be fixing the state of this emulator
Mekanos
おっす！
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I did notice that pause menus are a little sluggish, but honestly outside of that the game plays great, have had zero complaints really.
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To make it accurate most likely, pretty normal
Hylianhero777
Shriekbat
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If that's the case why does only the party menu run at full speed. Also accurate would be the menus running normally not with the lag and low framerate present on the NSO version.
That is not accurate my friend
As someone who's played this game almost exclusively on OG hardware, I noticed that slowdown immediately. It's not right.
Nabbit
Heading to Lorule? Rent your equipment here!
Is there some reason from a dev point of view that they might have implemented it? Genuinely asking as I'm not knowledgeable about this type of thing. Maybe something like...the menus running in sync with everything caused irrevocable problems with the emulator?
They probably didn't implement it for fun, but why it's there is anyone's guess. The only things that spring to mind are stability or power draw, but both feel like rather bizarre things to have been problems in the first place.
Hylianhero777
Shriekbat
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I don't want to assume this level of incompetence but it honestly kind of feels like something done for testing that was left in the final product by mistake (note I do not have much knowledge of emulation). Paper Mario is supposedly a tricky game to emulate correctly, so it's possible they were using it for testing of N64 NSO. Regardless... it's bad and more evidence that this whole service is rushed and not of very high quality! Super disappointing.
Hylianhero777
Shriekbat
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It seems there are 3-4 places in the original game where the menu gets that lag and they just didn’t include a trigger? I mean it’s a menu so it’s not a huge deal
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Have never played this before even though I'm a big fan of TTYD so I'm looking forward to starting this.
Little disappointed from what I've heard about some of the emulation issues but it doesn't seem too bad.
Little disappointed from what I've heard about some of the emulation issues but it doesn't seem too bad.
accidentally hit load save state instead of save save state 
this is the first game where I've really recognized nso doesn't handle sprites well. they need a crt filter
this is the first game where I've really recognized nso doesn't handle sprites well. they need a crt filter
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Yeah, I really want a crt filter function. I tried using my own adapter that I use for retro consoles, but because this game and StarFox do something where they smooth over the speech text for readability, the adapter makes the text look bad. 
Btw, I did notice one moment where the "speech text smoothing" thing didn't happen, when the Goompa character was instructing on how to search for the hammer. It's the only time I've noticed that so far.
On a different note. I haven't played this game in nearly 20 years and yet the Shooting Star Summit music hit me with such a huge wave of nostalgia. The sound effects and such are just ingrained somewhere deep in my brain.
Btw, I did notice one moment where the "speech text smoothing" thing didn't happen, when the Goompa character was instructing on how to search for the hammer. It's the only time I've noticed that so far.
On a different note. I haven't played this game in nearly 20 years and yet the Shooting Star Summit music hit me with such a huge wave of nostalgia. The sound effects and such are just ingrained somewhere deep in my brain.
Oscillator
Moblin
CRT/scanline overlays are too strong. I'd prefer the N64's original VI filtering, though casual users might not like it as that's where a lot of the system's notorious blurriness comes from. Adding another set of original hardware functions is probably out of the question anyway when the existing emulation is having struggles.
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I understand it takes time to solve emulation issues but like, does it cost too much to give an option to play without those ugly ass borders? It shouldn't have borders by default. A CRT filter is also something very simple and basically mandatory for retro games. The whole thing just feels like an afterthought for Nintendo.
Given that they've been including CRT filters as standard since the NES Classic in 2016, I'd hazard a guess that they felt it was at odds with 720p native rendering - and honestly, they're right. You'd do one or the other, not both.
The problem is that this game is heavily sprite-based, which doesn't benefit from the resolution uplift. However, I think I'll echo @Oscillator and say that's not what this game needs; I think some other blurring solution would go well with the relatively simple sprite work.
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Having such a good time with this. Nearly to the Dry Dry Ruins now. Just a phenomenal game with a fantastic localization. It’s been too long since I’ve played a Mario RPG. I forgot how good the writing is!
I haven't played Paper Mario in years, but it really is a highlight. I love how you have partners, but only one at a time and the game is basically Mario on his own. Shades of Dragon Quest.
Mekanos
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I've made this mistake on other games but not Paper Mario yet lolaccidentally hit load save state instead of save save state
this is the first game where I've really recognized nso doesn't handle sprites well. they need a crt filter
I'm on Chapter 3 and can't complain about the game's performance all in all. That said, getting the timing right for jumps on tall enemies (think Blooper) is still hard for me at times, but that's been the case since the N64.
As far as I'm concerned it's the most iconic track in the game, it always puts me at ease when I listen to it.
Nabbit
Heading to Lorule? Rent your equipment here!
Interesting, thanks for sharing.
Dcubed
Paratroopa
That's how the original game was on the original cartridge. It's supposed to have slowdown in the menu.
Hylianhero777
Shriekbat
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No it literally isn't. Paper Mario speedrunners are noticing this and flagging it as not normal behavior. While we're at it:
They added a Lua script to intentionally make the framerate worse in the Lava Piranha plant fight (again this is NOT how the original works to my understanding) but ONLY in the English version of the NSO N64 app. The Japanese one does not have this patch applied so it's not even consistent!!! People are really going to defend this?
Oscillator
Moblin
^ My guess is they're afraid of something desynching if it runs too fast.
Hylianhero777
Shriekbat
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Emulation woes continue. There are also other unexplained crashes with Paper Mario that some speedrunners are investigating. I beat the game on NSO and it was perfectly playable (except for the Lava Piranha fight where the low framerate "patch" genuinely did make attack timings way harder than they are supposed to be) but this emulator needs major fixes.
D
Deleted member 1141
Guest
Looking at the comments, this crash is actually much worse than it looks: It apparently has a chance to delete your SRAM in the process (Save States are safe, but your "physical" save for the game, on the other hand...):
Judging from the secondary comment too, it would appear other crashes could cause the issue as well, not just this specific one. Which means it might be only safe to play the game with save states...
Honestly, looking over this thread briefly both with the intentional LUA scripting added that causes some issues, the general fact N64 emulation has serious issues with transparencies and similar effects, as well as cases where some games are just experiencing random crashes that actually didn't exist originally, there's absolutely no defending this. None.
Yeah, you gotta do lots of save states (and be careful you don't load when you want to save).
N64 NSO is easily my GOTY and the best thing Nintendo has done in years, but they still have a lot of work to do.
N64 NSO is easily my GOTY and the best thing Nintendo has done in years, but they still have a lot of work to do.
Hylianhero777
Shriekbat
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Just an update on this for everyone: Paper Mario speedrunner JCog has figured out why the game seems to crash and delete hours of save data in certain instances:
I'm sorry but this investigation makes the emulation team look frankly incompetent. Crashing only happens because of a "fix" they implemented to make the game run worse, which then broke something else that they just completely missed properly fixing on the US version. The fact that community members have to dig through and reverse engineer their mess to figure out why these problems are happening, and are even able to fix them by commenting out the bad code the devs used is pretty embarrassing. I think the N64 emulation team needs to have more staff and more work put into the emulator itself at this point.
I'm sorry but this investigation makes the emulation team look frankly incompetent. Crashing only happens because of a "fix" they implemented to make the game run worse, which then broke something else that they just completely missed properly fixing on the US version. The fact that community members have to dig through and reverse engineer their mess to figure out why these problems are happening, and are even able to fix them by commenting out the bad code the devs used is pretty embarrassing. I think the N64 emulation team needs to have more staff and more work put into the emulator itself at this point.
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Lmao ffs
I'm seriously close to finally joining NSO EP too next week when they drop B-K and if they announce the February game, but having this kind of concern when otherwise I was only worried about their dripfed nonsense is just insulting.
Christ, I could have lived with missing fog in OoT and chalk it up to the usual emulation woes, but save data being corrupted because of a faulty hack from a first party studio that doesn't even do whatever it's supposed to do? Wack.
The Main Event
Cappy
Man what a mess. Was excited to play it for the first time but guess I'll hold off until I start a game.
my hours of progress got erased not due to a glitch but because I got cocky and fought a crayzee dayzee
still 2021 switch goty
still 2021 switch goty
I wouldn't go as far as to call this aspect of the situation embarrassing. There are some games where the collective knowledge of the speed running community regarding specific aspects of code is likely more detailed than the devs who wrote it. Paper Mario is one of those games; people didn't just stumble into that Stop N' Swap route with OoT, it was a pre-planned manipulation of specific memory addresses. It speaks more to the community's passion than the devs' competence - especially because this knowledge has been built up over actual decades. The NSO devs likely had some months that had to be shared with other games.
Additionally, unless Nintendo removes them, it's hard to definitively call the Lua hacks "bad code" except for the single glaring mistake. As JCog pointed out, it's true that no one's theorized a satisfying explanation. However, until someone tests the game without them as throughly as they've been tested with them (which, AFAIK, hasn't happened and likely never will), it's not fair to assume they're not accomplishing something. They're way too specific to not have some greater purpose to them. I personally expect the Watt game over crash to be fixed with the Banjo update; it's clear they were aware of it and just screwed up the implementation in the English version of the game, and there's already precedent to including Lua patches alongside updates to the library (in addition to adding Paper Mario, 1.1.0 brought a graphics fix to Star Fox 64).
The one thing I would call embarrassing is the carelessness with save data. These games have known crashes, both on hardware and previous official emulators. Assuming nothing will ever cause the app to exit in a bad state and relying on that assumption for something as sensitive as player data is just not a good move. As JCog said, a game over crash in Paper Mario should be less than a minute of inconvenience since by that point you're reloading data anyway. But it's worse due to the overarching app behavior, and fixing that would remedy most of the damage that's done by these bugs.
I'd also like to address this claim:
I don't believe this is true, as I cannot find evidence of it. That same account later tweeted this:
which is what I believe is actually going on (and, frustratingly, would imply the former tweet was worded in a way that sounded knowledgeable but was just speculative). JCog also makes no mention of the app deleting data in his video, only failing to save it. He further claimed that regularly closing the app should work as a countermeasure, which would indicate he doesn't believe it can delete the data. Many people don't close apps unless they're actually switching games, which would explain why some people have no data following a crash. If anyone does know for a fact the data can corrupt, I'd appreciate more info on the matter.
To be clear, I agree with the overall notion that the overall N64 emulation is rushed, and it's particularly egregious for a product that has no way for an individual to obtain for less than $50 (and only temporarily at that). While I believe calling out these flaws is important, I also think we should be doing so correctly. Misinformation doesn't help anyone.
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