Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door

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Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
PaperMarioTheThousand-YearDoor.jpg
Developer(s) Intelligent Systems
Publisher(s) Nintendo
Series Paper Mario
Platform(s) GameCube
Release date(s) JP July 22, 2004
NA October 11, 2004
EU November 12, 2004
AUS November 18, 2004
Genre(s) Role-playing
Mode(s) Single-player
Input methods GameCube Controller
Compatibility 4Stars4.pngEdit rating: Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Playable
GameIDs
See also...

Dolphin Forum thread
Open Issues
Search Google
Search Wikipedia

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, released in Japan as Paper Mario RPG, is a console role-playing game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo GameCube. The Thousand-Year Door is the fourth Mario RPG and the second in the Paper Mario series.

Emulation Information

When Using Older Graphics Cards

This game uses a feature known as "Bounding Box", which Dolphin typically uses Shader Storage Buffer Objects (SSBO) to emulate. This requires a NVIDIA GeForce 400 series or newer, a AMD/ATI Radeon HD 5000 series or newer, or a Intel Broadwell Integrated GPU (Intel HD 5300+) or newer and an operating system that supports OpenGL 4.3, D3D11, GLES 3.1, or Vulkan. On macOS, MoltenVK can be used to attain Vulkan support on the latest builds. If Bounding Box is not emulated correctly, the game will show severe graphical glitches and won't be playable to finish.

Because Dolphin has gone through many variants of Bounding Box support throughout its history, it may be possible for older graphics cards to use less accurate versions of Bounding Box present in older builds. On Android, 5.0-9322 or newer is required for Bounding Box to function at all due to an unrelated bug. Please note that other driver issues can often cause issues with Bounding Box emulation, which can produce similar bugs to having no Bounding Box support whatsoever. In this case, updating drivers or using a different video backend may be your only recourse.

Riverside Station Sunset Effect

The sunset effect in Riverside Station has a defect where non-static objects in front of it have a trail of ghosts coming off. This is not a bug in Dolphin, but a defect inherent to the way the effect is achieved, as it appears on console too. The defect is very hard to see on console (it's right above the rock in the image below) due to the low resolution and analog quality loss, but the higher internal resolution and custom HD textures allowed by Dolphin make it very obvious.

Pixelated Paper Effects

Some paper effects can appear pixelated at higher-than-native resolutions. This is not a bug. The various paper effects utilize EFB copies, and some of these EFB copies are written from the CPU rather than the GPU, causing them to only render at native resolution. There is no way to work around this limitation, unfortunately.

Problems

PAL60 Reverting to 50Hz

If the PAL version of the game has been set to run at 60 Hz, it may change back to 50Hz under some circumstances. Turn off the dual core setting to avoid this issue.

Merluvee Next Path

When using the D3D backend, asking Merluvee to tell you the next path may freeze the game. This does not occur on OpenGL or Vulkan, so use them to avoid this issue. Fixed in revision 5.0-9638.

Bounding Box Slowdown on NVIDIA Cards

NVIDIA cards are abnormally slow during Bounding Box effects even at very low internal resolutions when using D3D11. They get dramatically slower as the internal resolution increase, even though comparable AMD graphics cards suffer no slowdown at all. This is due to Dolphin hitting a slow path on those graphics cards. It is recommended that supported NVIDIA users use other video backends when playing games that require Bounding Box emulation to avoid that. Resolved as of 5.0-14311.

Enhancements

HD Texture Pack

There is a work-in-progress high definition texture modification for The Thousand Year Door on the Dolphin forums.

16:9 Aspect Ratio Fix

The built-in Widescreen Hack causes clipping issues. The following codes work as a replacement, causing fewer issues. To avoid conflicts, make sure that Widescreen Hack is disabled while using these codes.

Normal HUD

This code does not speed up the game in the Shhwonk Fortress.

NTSC-J:
044195F8 3FE38E39
NTSC-U:
0441F6D8 3FE38E39
PAL:
0442C158 3FE38E39

Centered HUD

NTSC-J:
C202ECEC 00000003
3DC08042 3DE03FD8
91EE95F8 4E800020
60000000 00000000
C200F354 00000003
3DE08081 3DC0402B
61CE12A2 91CF65BC
387D015C 00000000
C200F35C 00000003
3DE08081 3DC04063
61CEE8D3 91CF65BC
7FC3F378 00000000
04193838 4E800020
NTSC-U:
C202F310 00000003
3DC08042 3DE03FD8
91EEF6D8 4E800020
60000000 00000000
C200F500 00000003
3DE08082 3DC0402B
61CE12A2 91CFA1BC
387D015C 00000000
C200F508 00000003
3DE08082 3DC04063
61CEE8D3 91CFA1BC
7FC3F378 00000000
04199598 4E800020
PAL:
C202F3F8 00000003
3DC08043 3DE03FD8
91EEC158 4E800020
60000000 00000000
C200F6C4 00000003
3DE08086 3DC0402B
61CE12A2 91CFB0DC
387D015C 00000000
C200F6CC 00000003
3DE08086 3DC04063
61CEE8D3 91CFB0DC
7FC3F378 00000000
0419B274 4E800020

Stretched HUD

This code also speeds up the emulator in the Shhwonk Fortress.

NTSC-J:
C202ECEC 00000003
3DC08042 3DE03FD8
91EE95F8 4E800020
60000000 00000000
04193838 4E800020
NTSC-U:
C202F310 00000003
3DC08042 3DE03FD8
91EEF6D8 4E800020
60000000 00000000
04199598 4E800020
PAL:
C202F3F8 00000003
3DC08043 3DE03FD8
91EEC158 4E800020
60000000 00000000
0419B274 4E800020

Centered HUD, some letterboxing

This code also speeds up the emulator in the Shhwonk Fortress.

NTSC-J:
04193838 4E800020
044195F8 3FE38E39
NTSC-U:
04199598 4E800020
0441F6D8 3FE38E39
PAL:
0419B274 4E800020
0442C158 3FE38E39

Configuration

Only configuration options for the best compatibility where they deviate from defaults are listed.

General

Config Setting Notes
Enable Dual Core Off Fixes 60Hz mode reverting to 50Hz in EU version

Version Compatibility

The graph below charts the compatibility with Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door since Dolphin's 2.0 release, listing revisions only where a compatibility change occurred.

Δ
5.0-21222 (current)
Δ
Δ
Δ
Δ
Δ
2.0 (r5384)
Compatibility can be assumed to align with the indicated revisions. However, compatibility may extend to prior revisions or compatibility gaps may exist within ranges indicated as compatible due to limited testing. Please update as appropriate.

Testing

This title has been tested on the environments listed below:

Test Entries
Revision OS CPU GPU Result Tester
r890 Windows Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 @ 4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GTX+ Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door on PC - Dolphin emulator 4y4u
r4341 Windows Vista Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 @ 2.2 GHz Intel GMA G35 Playable: 30-70FPS, some slowdowns in big areas.
r4598 Windows Vista Intel Core 2 Duo E4500 @ 2.2 GHz Intel GMA 945G Playable: 40-60FPS, minor glitches and slowdowns in big areas.
r6537 Windows 7 AMD Phenom II X2 @ 3.1 GHz ATI Radeon HD 4850 Playable: 60FPS with OpenGL plug-in, 4X AA and OpenCL Enabled
r6541 Windows 7 AMD Athlon II X2 @ 2.81 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GT 240 Crashes at random points: 60FPS with any plug-in
r7442 Windows 7 Intel Core i5 @ 2.8 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 470 Runs at 60FPS has some Sound and Graphical Issues Dario64
3.0 Windows 7 Intel Core i5 @ 2.5 GHz ATI Radeon HD 5770 Crashes at random points: 60FPS with any plug-in
r7719 Windows 7 Intel Core i3 @ 2.53 GHz Intel GMA X4500 Runs at 60FPS, slowdowns in big areas and minor graphical issues CoolKirby
3.0-188 Windows 7 Intel Core i5 @ 2.8 GHz AMD Radeon HD 6450 Very playable. The above graphical glitches have been dealt with (using the above configuration). 60FPS, but with very minor sound hiccups. Cynical
3.0-191 Windows 7 Intel Core i3 @ 2.53 GHz Intel GMA X4500 Almost perfect, crashes sometimes, sound is near perfect on LLE CoolKirby
3.0-235 Windows 7 Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9770 @ 3.2 GHz ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 60FPS constant but minor sound issue arcticmedia
3.0-371 Windows 7 AMD Phenom X4 955 @ 3.2 GHz NVIDIA GeForce 550 Ti 60FPS consistently on D3D11 with DSP HLE, occasional slowdowns to about 50FPS with accompanying sound hiccups, but completely playable
3.0-415 Windows 7 AMD Phenom X2 555 @ 3.4 GHz AMD Radeon HD 6870 50-60FPS consistently on D3D9, occasional slowdowns, sound issues and (rarely) major bugs like dialogues which don't come, but completely playable. Haykel
3.0-632 Windows 7 Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.3 GHz NVIDIA GeForce 560 Crashes at random points: 60FPS+ with any plug-in with both and. ragereaver
3.0-688 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-2600K @ 3.4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce 680 Constant random crashes. Performance wise it's perfectly playable. 60FPS+
3.0-688 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-2670QM @ 2.2 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GT 540M Good and playable. Used to be slow but I've changed some settings on my PC to fix. Occasional audio bugs, but not terribly bad.
3.0-801 Windows 7 Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 2.8 GHz NVIDIA GeForce 560 Ti Playable: full speed with minor drops, tons of audio glitches, LLE is too demanding for my system, enabling Accurate Vbeam Emulation seems to help with the sound. The music is also way too loud and makes it hard to hear some sound effects.
3.0-863 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-3770 @ 3.4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 Audio glitches with non-LLE, perfect with LLE. No slowdowns even at higher resolutions (720p). Water at Schwonk Fortress and Punies in the Great Tree still produce graphical errors. EFB to RAM reduces the graphical glitches of the punies to minor at best. Game is 100% playable in it's current state.
3.5 Windows 8 Intel Core i5-3570K @ 3.4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti Really smooth on Direct3D9, unlike many 3.5-x builds I tried which caused random slowdowns all over the place. Use LLE audio to fix various sound issues. To get LLE to work with this 3.0 build, I downloaded dsp_coef.bin and dsp_rom.bin from the Dolphin Source and placed it in ./User/GC/. Dolphin will display a warning when launching a ROM saying sound will be garbled because of a wrong hash, but it will be perfectly fine so just press No and play. You can download 3.0-936 from the Dolphin Old Builds. dani
3.5 Windows Vista Intel Pentium 4 @ 3.2 GHz Intel GMA 945G 12~15FPS outside, 20~25FPS in battle due to low-end system. Random crashes. Also when the little things that come at you at the beginning after the first battle they appear as EFB static on all EFB hacks. I was actually surprised to see battles at more FPS. Performance guide settings. Wiigeek336
3.5 Windows 7 AMD FX-4130 @ 4.2 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 550 Ti Runs at a smooth 60FPS in everything but transitions, and in some cutscenes with big effects.
3.5-79 Windows 7 Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 2.8 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti Game is playable but the music is broken, it cuts off, plays too loud or too quiet for no reason, disappears, etc. Sound effects seem to be right, but the music problem is annoying. Other than that it's fine. With LLE the music seems to be ok but it's too demanding for my system.
3.5-367 Windows 7 AMD Phenom II 1090T @ 3.8 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 Runs at 60FPS.
GFX Settings: OpenGL, 4xAA, EFB to RAM no Cache, Fog Disable, OpenCL Texture Decoder(EXPERIMENTAL).
Dolphin Configuration: Dual Core ON, Idle Skipping ON, Framelimit: AUDIO, Limit using FPS, DSP HLE emulation using XAudio2.
ColonelSeven
3.5-392 Windows 7 Intel Core i5-3570K @ 4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce 560 Ti 100% speed, need to use LLE or sound will be glitchy (too loud, too low, music cutting off). DSound seems to be more stable under LLE emulation, sound corruption may happen after a few hours of continuous play. Some minor graphical glitches, very noticeable graphical glitch in areas with reflective water (Shhwonk Fortress underground). Some really minor stuttering even with full FPS in some areas. All these problems are very minor, the game so far is 100% playable. Herpderpus
3.5-397 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-3820QM @ 2.7 GHz AMD FirePro M2000 Playable, constant 60FPS with Direct3D9 at 1600x900 resolution. Shirsakbc
3.5-402 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-3770 @ 3.4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680 Fully Playable without any graphical or Sound issues on 1080p! Played with Widescreen Hack on Direct3D 9 Plugin and DSP LLE Recompiler with DSound. StarDave
3.5-1159 Windows 7 Intel Pentium G860 @ 3 GHz AMD Radeon HD 7770 Playable at mostly full speed at 1.5x native, D3D9; and using the new DSP HLE emulation. Minor visual glitch with reflective water. No apparent audio problems that existed with HLE in older builds.
3.5-1558 Windows 7 Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 3.4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti Playable: 60FPS with OpenGL (1920x1080, 9x SSAA); 60FPS with DirectX 9. Enabling Vsync on D3D9 seems to cut the framerate down to 35-40FPS, and DirectX 11 exhibits the same behavior regardless of Vsync setting (driver bug). HLE audio gets distorted after playing for around two hours and CPU is too slow for LLE.
3.5-1558 Mac OS X 10.8.4 Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 @ 3.4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti Playable: 50-60FPS (1920x1080). HLE audio stutters since it's not constantly full speed.
3.5-1558 Windows 7 Intel Core i7-4650U @ 1.7 GHz Intel HD Graphics 5000 Playable: 55-60FPS with DirectX 9 or 11 (1440x900, without AA); 35-60FPS with OpenGL. LLE audio works well.
3.5-1558 Mac OS X 10.8.4 Intel Core i7-4650U @ 1.7 GHz Intel HD Graphics 5000 Not really playable; 30-45FPS.
4.0.2 Windows 7 Intel Celeron G1610 @ 2.6 GHz Intel HD Graphics Playable. Glitches even with BBox = true. 40FPS hivaoa
4.0-2109 Windows 7 AMD FX-4300 @ 4 GHz AMD Radeon R7 260X Very Playable. Constant 60FPS with all enhancements maxed. No problems using HLE. Period
4.0-4149 Windows 7 AMD Phenom II X4 965 BE @ 3.4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Playable. FPS drops to 50% when using Paper Mode and as well when the Boo Hoos enter invisible mode. Kenny
4.0-5124 Mac OS X 10.9.2 Intel Core i5 @ 1.4 GHz Intel HD Graphics 5000 Game runs near perfect, mostly at 60FPS however does slow down when using paper abilities. A couple of minor graphics errors throughout the game. However, game is not completable as it hangs indefinitely on the final boss fight. SirSpanky
4.0-5839 Windows 10 AMD Athlon II X4 650 @ 3.2 GHz ATI Radeon HD 4200 Game runs perfect at a constant 60FPS at all times using the Direct3D renderer. Using the OpenGL renderer causes a significant slowdown and is not recommended. No graphical errors at all on either graphics renderer. Byteandahalf
4.0-6153 Windows 8 Intel Core i7 @ 4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 Using Direct3D, game runs smoothly throughout, minor (non-consistent) glitches in paper transitions, small FPS drop during bridge over Petalburg river appearance. OpenGL NOT recommended. Canopenerdude
4.0-6454 Windows 8.1 AMD FX-8350 @ 4 GHz AMD Radeon HD 5870 Game nearly unplayable. Game runs at 60FPS @ 4x resolution, but lags down to 10 FPS on all backends/resolutions during transition scenes (Boat at the start flipping, going through pipes, ect.) Issue not present in 4.0-3610. Darklords
4.0-8070 Windows 8.1 Intel Core i5-3210M @ 2.5 GHz NVIDIA GeForce 610M Direct3D has a few minor graphical glitches. OpenGL no issues. wildgoosespeeder
4.0-9129 Windows 10 Intel Core i3-2120 @ 3.3 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti Game runs at a solid 60 FPS up to 2x native resolution using Direct3D11 and the other recommended configuration settings. Drops to 30-35 FPS occur when paper effects are being rendered, excluding Mario and Partners. SfaFreak
4.0-9144 Windows 7 Intel Core 2 Quad @ 2.5 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GT 610 Game runs very smoothly as 50 FPS. Have experienced almost no lag. Only frame drops come from paper transitions (e.g. Bridge in Petal Meadows) BlazingDiancie
4.0-9211 Windows 10 Intel Core i5-4570 @ 3.2 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 Using D3D11 with other recommended settings, game ran perfectly with no glitches and a only a few brief fps drops. Jesse
4.0-9399 Windows 10 Intel Core i3-3110M @ 2.4 GHz Intel HD Graphics 4000 Using the default graphics backend OpenGL with other recommended settings, FPS drops from 60 to 30 the exact moment that Goombella and Lord Crump finish their initial "conversation" which caused everything (walking, hammering, jumping, etc) to appear to be in slow motion. Using the graphics backend Direct3D 11 with other recommended settings, no problems thus far, although the laptop is making me sweat. mythofechelon
5.0-266 Windows 10 Intel Core i7-5820K @ 3.6 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 Ran perfectly at 4K 60FPS. Encountered a few crashes randomly in fights and buying items. Brimaster2000
5.0-310 Fedora 24 Intel Core i5-3570K @ 4 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Ti Ran very well at 1440p 60FPS with 4x MSAA and 16x AF. Camera on the rotating stairs in Hooktail's Castle doesn't transition upwards properly for me. Try pausing and unpausing if that happens. Favorablestream
5.0-321 Windows 10 Intel Core i7-3930K @ 3.8 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Runs perfectly at 1080p with 4x MSAA, using widescreen gecko code and HD texture pack. However, contrary to the information above, I get the bounding box slowdown when using OpenGL and have to use D3D11 to avoid it. Sound effects during battle randomly don't play, regardless of audio emulator engine. Techjar
5.0-666 Windows 10 Intel Core i7-3930K @ 3.8 GHz NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 Game does not boot with widescreen gecko code enabled, otherwise identical to above result. Techjar
5.0-8935 Windows 10 AMD Ryzen 5 2400G @ 3.6 GHz AMD Radeon RX Vega 11 Configuration: Dual core ON, 720p, 2xMSAA, 2x AF, LLE audio, game rom region JPN. Mostly 60FPS with D3D11 or Vulkan, OGL is slow. LLE audio works well, but some battle SEs like "Great!!" are dropped. All backends suffers a significant slowdown with BBox with my GPU being at a default energy-saving 400MHz clock. This can happen in many transitions, like the bridge appearing animation in Petal Meadows, which achieved an astonishing 8FPS. Turning Mario into Paper Mode or having Vivian hide you make it slower at any time. "Overclocking" GPU to the stock speed solves this and makes the game perfectly playable. amiboss
5.0-18219 Ubuntu 22.04 AMD Ryzen 7 5700G @ 3.8 GHz AMD Radeon RX Vega 8 Performance: constantly stable 60FPS without stuttering or frame drops (Perfectly Playable). Configuration: 1080p, 4xMSAA, Vsync: ON, Region: PAL, Graphics Backend: Vulkan, Dual core OFF, Gecko Widescreen Hack. PortalMario

Gameplay Videos