Dolphin - Emulating Wii and Gamecube Games

Oh dude, holy shit, how did no one post about this?!

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Both of the biggest issues of Super Mario Galaxy have been fixed!? So the game is playable with HLE now, and as such, WAY better performance!

Holy fucking shit 0_0
 
I'm asking if my CPU can handle it in Dolphin, obviously.

I'd also like to know this. I have a Retina MBP with a "2.6GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz" processor, I can run Gamecube games kinda alright but I haven't tried any Wii games for several reasons, but would it be sufficient to handle some Wii games? If yes, how complicated? I can run Xenoblade on my desktop but it's still kinda iffy framerate wise.
 
I'd also like to know this. I have a Retina MBP with a "2.6GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz" processor, I can run Gamecube games kinda alright but I haven't tried any Wii games for several reasons, but would it be sufficient to handle some Wii games? If yes, how complicated? I can run Xenoblade on my desktop but it's still kinda iffy framerate wise.

Probably not anything too demanding but I'm sure you'll be able to find some games that will run decently.
 
I'd also like to know this. I have a Retina MBP with a "2.6GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz" processor, I can run Gamecube games kinda alright but I haven't tried any Wii games for several reasons, but would it be sufficient to handle some Wii games? If yes, how complicated? I can run Xenoblade on my desktop but it's still kinda iffy framerate wise.

There are GCN games that are harder to emulate than wii and vise versa. Wii is generally harder to emulate than GCN obviously, but it's really more about how long it takes to translate commands to x86/x64 than their actual execution. Also some effects are harder to translate to equivalent PC ones than others.

For example: Hyrule Field in TP on the GCN version is going to give you problems just like it does to everyone. Skyward Sword, on the other hand, may run fairly well. Not sure the graphics hardware in your setup since that obviously plays a role too.
 
There are GCN games that are harder to emulate than wii and vise versa. Wii is generally harder to emulate than GCN obviously, but it's really more about how long it takes to translate commands to x86/x64 than their actual execution. Also some effects are harder to translate to equivalent PC ones than others.

For example: Hyrule Field in TP on the GCN version is going to give you problems just like it does to everyone. Skyward Sword, on the other hand, may run fairly well. Not sure the graphics hardware in your setup since that obviously plays a role too.

The GPU is "NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M with 2GB GDDR5 memory" and I have 16GB RAM
 
Did anyone read this huge piece on GameCube?

From January, 2014

A Dolphin’s Tale: The Story of GameCube

some choice paragraphs:

Inside of the Peacock Room in San Francisco’s Mark Hopkins hotel, Silicon Graphics chairman Jim Clark announced an agreement to create the technology for Nintendo’s next gen console, the Ultra 64. An animated 3-D image of Mario is projected onto a movie screen behind Clark. “Jeeeemy, I may be a big star, but I don’t let it go to my head,” said the CGI animated Mario. Jim Clark turned his head to the animated Mario and responded,”Mario, I’d like to be the first to welcome you to your new home at Silicon Graphics. I think you’re really going to have a nice, happy time here.” At one point, Silicon Graphics was considered to become the next Apple, and received praise for their state of the art technology used on films such as “Jurassic Park” and “Terminator 2″.

Edward McCracken, the president and CEO of Silicon Graphics, released a statement: “By pooling the best and brightest talent from both our companies, [Nintendo Ultra 64] will propel Silicon Graphics’ leading digital media technologies into homes everywhere. Nintendo’s financial and technical investment combined with Silicon Graphics’ engineering resources will enable our two companies to continue leading the visual computing and home entertainment industries in the ’90s.”

Unfortunately, those happy times at Silicon Graphics were about to come to an end. One year after Nintendo signed the Project Reality deal with Silicon Graphics, drama was gradually escalating behind the scenes causing analysts to question whether Jim Clark was slowly losing power over the company. Multiple reports detail a power struggle over the company with constant fighting back and forth between Jim Clark (Chairman) and Ed McCracken (Chief Executive).

“Fucking Ed McCracken,” shouted Jim Clark. “That fucking Ed McCracken”. Clark would call him “Fucking Ed McCracken” so many times that employees at Silicon Graphics started thinking that was his real name. That was according to the book, “The New, New Thing” written by author Michael Lewis. Clark would say, “he [McCracken] may have helped to stabilize the company, but now he’s destroying it. He can’t see what’s happening.”


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On May 4, 1999, the internet swirled with rumors from an IGN article describing Nintendo’s next gen console code-named Dolphin. The source told IGN that four companies (Rare, Retro Studios, EAD, and NST) already had development kits and were currently in the process of creating software for the Dolphin.”Management is claiming better graphics than the PSX2 (PlayStation 2),” a Nintendo insider told IGN64. “And supposedly it will run on DVD, but that’s still a big maybe at this point.” The article continues, “The buzz is that the system is a lot easier to program for than the Nintendo 64. And it appears Art-X [the system's graphics chip provider] managed to slap out a nasty chipset for pretty cheap.”

During Nintendo’s press conference at E3 1999, Nintendo of America Chairman Howard Lincoln took the stage to officially announce their next gen console. Lincoln told the press that Nintendo’s next gen console would be code-named “Dolphin,” and it would be “extremely powerful and not expensive”. He announced that the graphics chip would be developed by Art X, and they would be lead by Dr. Wei Yen who was responsible for the N64′s graphics chip.

Lincoln told the audience, “We are absolutely confident that Dolphin’s graphics will equal or exceed anything our friends at Sony can come up with for Playstation 2.”

The Dolphin would feature a 400 MHz CPU called the Gekko processor which would be created by IBM. In addition, Lincoln announced that Dolphin would not feature ROM cartridges which resulted in applause from the press. He remained quiet on what type of medium that Dolphin would use instead.

Lincoln wrapped up his speech, “We’ve lifted the curtain a little on Dolphin. But we aren’t going to lift it all the way. We’re going to continue to be very circumspect in revealing all of Dolphin’s specs… for a very simple reason — there are more technological surprises to come, and we’d like to keep them just that — surprises — for you and especially for our competitors. But as I stand here this afternoon, I think Nintendo is very well positioned to take on Sony and Sega.”
 
I'd also like to know this. I have a Retina MBP with a "2.6GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7, Turbo Boost up to 3.8GHz" processor, I can run Gamecube games kinda alright but I haven't tried any Wii games for several reasons, but would it be sufficient to handle some Wii games? If yes, how complicated? I can run Xenoblade on my desktop but it's still kinda iffy framerate wise.

Dolphin runs way better on my boot camp partition than on OSX
 
I decided to fire up Metroid Prime with this about two weeks ago now, having never tried GCN emulation before.

I now have over a gigabyte's worth of uncompressed 1080p screenshots of the game sittng here in a folder.

Tallon Overworld and Phendrana Drifts got me good. Damn stunning looking game even today.
 
Is that easy to set up and is it practical for playing?

If you already have the DS4 set up with something like DS4Tool or DS4Windows, then yeah it's easy to set up. In Dolphin it's a matter of just mapping the cursor to IR (Up/Down/Left/Right). The touchpad works fine for a game like Galaxy since you're not expected to use it all the time.
 
What kind of Dolphin performance can I expect from a Phenom II quad-core at 4GHz and a 1GB 4870? Any chance of playing Twilight Princess (Wii or GC) at full speed?
 
Just a heads-up to those wanting to play Twilight Princess (either the Gamecube or Wii version of the game) but held off due to the dreaded Hyrule Field; if you've got a decent rig, you can now run it at full speed. Yes the ZTP was removed (for good reason), but the devs have converted the hack to Dolphin patches and it's already in the gameconfig in the latest Dolphin builds.

I'd recommend you though to use this patch (newer version that will probably get merged to the master build at some point) instead of the one it comes with as it should increase the performance a bit more. Open the game config and replace the existing code with the pastie code. Pick the appropriate code for your system and region.

I've just tested it out and I get 30FPS mostly in end-game Hyrule Field with EFB Copy to RAM and LLE on a 2500K at 4.5GHz.
Does this provide better performance than using the ZTP hack on 4.0.2? My rig is a 2550k @ 4.5GHz, GTX 770 and end-game Hyrule field was usually around 25 fps when I played on 4.0.2 earlier this year.
 
What kind of Dolphin performance can I expect from a Phenom II quad-core at 4GHz and a 1GB 4870? Any chance of playing Twilight Princess (Wii or GC) at full speed?
Not too well (especially Hyrule Field). Your GPU is good enough but your CPU isn't.
Since Dolphin is very CPU intensive it performs best on CPUs with faster single threaded performance. AMD CPUs have terrible single threaded performance compared to Intel CPUs.

Does this provide better performance than using the ZTP hack on 4.0.2? My rig is a 2550k @ 4.5GHz, GTX 770 and end-game Hyrule field was usually around 25 fps when I played on 4.0.2 earlier this year.
Yes. I just did a quick test for you on 4.0.2 and with D3D9, HLE and the ZTP hack I got a steady 30FPS upon leaving the Castle Town Square through the east gate. With the patch hack I get over 40FPS.

I would recommend you to use the latest builds whenever possible though since it contains a lot of fixes and might potentially be even faster than 4.0.x.
Read the Dolphin report posts on the blog to see what's new etc.
 
Yes. I just did a quick test for you on 4.0.2 and with D3D9, HLE and the ZTP hack I got a steady 30FPS upon leaving the Castle Town Square through the east gate. With the patch hack I get over 40FPS.

I would recommend you to use the latest builds whenever possible though since it contains a lot of fixes and might potentially be even faster than 4.0.x.
Read the Dolphin report posts on the blog to see what's new etc.
I should have stated that my 25 fps average was with LLE, but those results bode well! I'll give it a shot.
 
Recently got a new PC(4670k+280X), tested some old games. I have to say I'm disappointed with how seemingly buggy this emu still is. Most everything runs at full framerate but I get totally random stuttering here and there, like just a couple frames worth at a time, so strange. Nothing to do with the graphical load, either. A completely smooth experience seems to be an impossibility, unless I'm missing something
 
Recently got a new PC(4670k+280X), tested some old games. I have to say I'm disappointed with how seemingly buggy this emu still is. Most everything runs at full framerate but I get totally random stuttering here and there, like just a couple frames worth at a time, so strange. Nothing to do with the graphical load, either. A completely smooth experience seems to be an impossibility, unless I'm missing something

Depends on the game and the settings you're using. Some games are just rougher than others.
 
Playing Galaxy 2 with the DS4 touchpad as the pointer. This is too good.

Whoa, I never even thought of that but that seems like a great input method, especially for that game.

Is the touchpad capable of outputting the absolute position of your finger inside the touchpad, or does your finger move the relative position like a laptop touchpad moves a mouse cursor?
 
I should have stated that my 25 fps average was with LLE, but those results bode well! I'll give it a shot.
HLE is not significantly faster than LLE like it used to be before the ax-hle merge. You should still be well over 30FPS with LLE (I've tested this on the previous page).

Recently got a new PC(4670k+280X), tested some old games. I have to say I'm disappointed with how seemingly buggy this emu still is. Most everything runs at full framerate but I get totally random stuttering here and there, like just a couple frames worth at a time, so strange. Nothing to do with the graphical load, either. A completely smooth experience seems to be an impossibility, unless I'm missing something
What build are you using and what games are you playing?
If you already aren't, grab the latest build and swap back and forth between the graphical backends to see what works best for you.

If you only experience these stutters once and then never again even when playing through the same 'level' again, then that's because of the shader caching. That's normal.
 
Depends on the game and the settings you're using. Some games are just rougher than others.

HLE is not significantly faster than LLE like it used to be before the ax-hle merge. You should still be well over 30FPS with LLE (I've tested this on the previous page).


What build are you using and what games are you playing?
If you already aren't, grab the latest build and swap back and forth between the graphical backends to see what works best for you.

If you only experience these stutters once and then never again even when playing through the same 'level' again, then that's because of the shader caching. That's normal.

I'm using the latest build, not the official stable release. Metroid Prime and F-Zero GX have the random stuttering, otherwise they run at 60fps, even during the areas where I experienced the stuttering.:P FZGX was a weird one were it seemed to stutter more frequently when a new sound effect was played (like going turbo or crashing). I changed something in the options and that went away, but I still get it randomly.
 
HLE is not significantly faster than LLE like it used to be before the ax-hle merge. You should still be well over 30FPS with LLE (I've tested this on the previous page).
I just tested it out. Amazing, I did a full lap around an end-game Hyrule Field and the framerate was almost always a consistent 30 fps. Thanks for bringing this patch to my attention!

What's typically faster for Nvidia GPUs these days? D3D or OpenGL?
 
I just tested it out. Amazing, I did a full lap around an end-game Hyrule Field and the framerate was almost always a consistent 30 fps. Thanks for bringing this patch to my attention!

What's typically faster for Nvidia GPUs these days? D3D or OpenGL?

Direct3D
 
Just a heads-up to those wanting to play Twilight Princess (either the Gamecube or Wii version of the game) but held off due to the dreaded Hyrule Field; if you've got a decent rig, you can now run it at full speed. Yes the ZTP was removed (for good reason), but the devs have converted the hack to Dolphin patches and it's already in the gameconfig in the latest Dolphin builds.

I'd recommend you though to use this patch (newer version that will probably get merged to the master build at some point) instead of the one it comes with as it should increase the performance a bit more. Open the game config and replace the existing code with the pastie code. Pick the appropriate code for your system and region.

I've just tested it out and I get 30FPS mostly in end-game Hyrule Field with EFB Copy to RAM and LLE on a 2500K at 4.5GHz.
Just tested this with the last dev build and it works far better than I expected.
I expected reports to be exaggerated and to gain few fps at most, but I went from averaging 15 fps to playing through Hyrule Field at 30 fps nailed down all the times.
Impressive.
 
Has anyone had any issues with Gecko codes not saving? I'm trying to use the Text Speed Modifier code for Skyward Sword, but whenever I open the ini file to change XXXX and save, my codes just get wiped and I have to download a brand new set of codes.

It's the same issue in these threads, but I can't seem to find a solution.

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-dolphin-not-saving-edited-gecko-codes
https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-using-codes-in-games-potential-bug

I'm using the most recent dev build, but I also have 4.0.2 installed. Could that be causing a conflict?

Also, what's the deal with half the map being a different color when playing Skyward Sword in D3D?
 
Has anyone else experienced a massive drop in performance from current stable build 4.0.2 to one of the latest dev builds? I’ve tried a couple of dev builds over the past week or so and they perform horribly with the same settings using either D3D or Open GL. We’re talking choppy framerates and audio issues on title screens, tanking framerates and stutter in game, tearing even when v-sync is enabled etc. Quite bizarre.

This is with a 3770k at 4.5ghz and a R9 290 with the latest 14.4 drivers on Win 8.1 so shouldn’t be my set-up…
 
Has anyone else experienced a massive drop in performance from current stable build 4.0.2 to one of the latest dev builds? I’ve tried a couple of dev builds over the past week or so and they perform horribly with the same settings using either D3D or Open GL. We’re talking choppy framerates and audio issues on title screens, tanking framerates and stutter in game, tearing even when v-sync is enabled etc. Quite bizarre.

This is with a 3770k at 4.5ghz and a R9 290 with the latest 14.4 drivers on Win 8.1 so shouldn’t be my set-up…
This would be expected from the non stable builds.
 
This would be expected from the non stable builds.

Ok, thanks. I'd gathered that it was still recommended to always use the latest build so I was a bit concerned that something fundamental had changed that might cause issues for me with the next stable build.

I'll just stick with 4.0.2 for now then.
 
Has anyone else experienced a massive drop in performance from current stable build 4.0.2 to one of the latest dev builds? I’ve tried a couple of dev builds over the past week or so and they perform horribly with the same settings using either D3D or Open GL. We’re talking choppy framerates and audio issues on title screens, tanking framerates and stutter in game, tearing even when v-sync is enabled etc. Quite bizarre.

This is with a 3770k at 4.5ghz and a R9 290 with the latest 14.4 drivers on Win 8.1 so shouldn’t be my set-up…

IIRC they've disabled some hacks since 4.0.2. That being said, it must be game dependent as I haven't noticed much difference in the games I play.
 
I'm trying to play New Super Mario Bros on 4.0.2. Using the settings suggested in the wiki except efb copies to texture, not ram (so coins aren't spinning.)

I'm experiencing an occasional stutter even though my cpu is nowhere near maxed out (i5 3750k, watching a performance monitor and it never hits 50%) and my fps never drop.

Any ideas?
 
I'm trying to play New Super Mario Bros on 4.0.2. Using the settings suggested in the wiki except efb copies to texture, not ram (so coins aren't spinning.)

I'm experiencing an occasional stutter even though my cpu is nowhere near maxed out (i5 3750k, watching a performance monitor and it never hits 50%) and my fps never drop.

Any ideas?

Remember that Dolphin only uses 2 cores (3 for LLE?) and it only takes a single core being bottle necked to cause slowdowns or stutters (and because of how windows handles thread splitting it makes it even harder to read).

That said, there is little reason this game should be causing stutters since I can play it just fine on a FX6300 at 4ghz.
 
Remember that Dolphin only uses 2 cores (3 for LLE?) and it only takes a single core being bottle necked to cause slowdowns or stutters (and because of how windows handles thread splitting it makes it even harder to read).

That said, there is little reason this game should be causing stutters since I can play it just fine on a FX6300 at 4ghz.

Thanks. I think for some reason it was the fact that I had a second monitor going. When I just went to one screen the stuttering went away.

I did not realize about only 2 cores though, so when I do play more performance demanding games I'll know to look at individual cores (I was not before.)
 
Dolphin has made amazing strides in the last year or so. I played through Xenoblade in Dolphin about a year and a half ago, and even with a heavily overclocked Core i7-2600K, the need to use LLE to get non-crappy sound meant that the game spent a lot of time running in the 20 fps range (with dips to 15, occasionally). Even then, I played and beat it. I tried a few of the 'special' builds that attempted to make Xenoblade run better, but I had bad results with all of them, and ended up sticking to trunk builds when I played.

The latest Dolphin builds (with all the work they've done in the audio subsystem, especially the HLE stuff) have made the game run far, far better. In over two hours played, the sound hasn't skipped or crackled even once, and the framerate has maintained a steady 30 fps. The current HLE implementation works even better than the LLE implementation did back in the 3.5 days. It's like playing a whole new game -- doubly so when you use the HD texture pack with it.

I'm so excited that I've actually decided to start the game over from scratch. It's a much better experience than it was the last time I played.
 
Dolphin has made amazing strides in the last year or so. I played through Xenoblade in Dolphin about a year and a half ago, and even with a heavily overclocked Core i7-2600K, the need to use LLE to get non-crappy sound meant that the game spent a lot of time running in the 20 fps range (with dips to 15, occasionally). Even then, I played and beat it. I tried a few of the 'special' builds that attempted to make Xenoblade run better, but I had bad results with all of them, and ended up sticking to trunk builds when I played.

The latest Dolphin builds (with all the work they've done in the audio subsystem, especially the HLE stuff) have made the game run far, far better. In over two hours played, the sound hasn't skipped or crackled even once, and the framerate has maintained a steady 30 fps. The current HLE implementation works even better than the LLE implementation did back in the 3.5 days. It's like playing a whole new game -- doubly so when you use the HD texture pack with it.

I'm so excited that I've actually decided to start the game over from scratch. It's a much better experience than it was the last time I played.

do you mind sharing your config? i have been tryingfor the last 2 hours to get this thing to work without issues and its a no go
 
I guess I should say what my PC specs are as that will probably help my request. I'm using a Intel I5-4670k @ 3.4GHz with a Nvidia GTX 660 2GB graphics card. Right now Prime 1 runs really damn good but I seem to be getting a bit worse performance on Prime 2. Is there a way to bump up the fps up to 60 is 45fps the best I can get for Prime 2? Haven't tried Prime 3 but I assume it might run even worse if I am having trouble with Prime 2 already.
 
I guess I should say what my PC specs are as that will probably help my request. I'm using a Intel I5-4670k @ 3.4GHz with a Nvidia GTX 660 2GB graphics card. Right now Prime 1 runs really damn good but I seem to be getting a bit worse performance on Prime 2. Is there a way to bump up the fps up to 60 is 45fps the best I can get for Prime 2? Haven't tried Prime 3 but I assume it might run even worse if I am having trouble with Prime 2 already.

The best way to improve your performance in Dolphin is to overclock your CPU. You might also want to try experimenting with the different graphics backends. Some run better than others.
 
It's too bad there are no alternatives to Dolphin. It works but it's glitchy and prone to random framerate issues. I understand these consoles are much more complex, but I wish emulation was as pain free as it is on older machines. :P

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It's too bad there are no alternatives to Dolphin. It works but it's glitchy and prone to random framerate issues
It's probably one of the most polished and reliable emulators around and it's pretty much unmatched when it comes to emulating hardware of similar complexity/power.

It's also improving constantly and it works pretty much flawlessly with a lot of games.
 
It's probably one of the most polished and reliable emulators around and it's pretty much unmatched when it comes to emulating hardware of similar complexity/power.

It's also improving constantly and it works pretty much flawlessly with a lot of games.

I don't know about it being "one of the most polished and reliable" emulators but it does work pretty well all things considered indeed. I was sort of enjoying re-playing Twilight Princess in HD but then I hit Faron Woods and my framerate tanked to 20fps on a 4670k. I miss the perfect 60fps of the real Metroid Prime which I can't achieve in Dolphin, where I suffer totally random framedrops from time to time(not that big of deal). I guess post 32/64bit the real thing is better for pretty much all hardware.
 
The best way to improve your performance in Dolphin is to overclock your CPU. You might also want to try experimenting with the different graphics backends. Some run better than others.
Haven't done overclocking since I don't know how to do it. Also, what do you mean by graphics backend?
 
I don't know about it being "one of the most polished and reliable" emulators but it does work pretty well all things considered indeed.

As far as sixth generation and up console emulators go it's probably the most polished overall.

I guess post 32/64bit the real thing is better for pretty much all hardware.

This all depends on what you're looking for. If you're willing to suffer through occasional bugginess for great image quality then emulation is often the better option. If you are mostly concerned about accuracy then the original hardware is going to be the better option for the time being. This is kind of the reality of modern console emulation. As complexity increases it takes more work to build a good emulator. The days of the one man emulation team building flawless software is largely over.

Haven't done overclocking since I don't know how to do it. Also, what do you mean by graphics backend?

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This. Which backend is fastest can depend on what build of Dolphin you are using and what graphics card you have. In general OpenGL is considered the most accurate for emulation but suffers in performance in some situations.
 
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