Dolphin - Emulating Wii and Gamecube Games

The best part of building an 85% new rig:

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Amazing! I was always put off with the graphics of this game because I much prefer the sprites of DK1-3 on SNES. But this here looks really good, far better than the Wii version for sure.


Anyone know if a Wii U support for Dolphin is being worked on?
 
Yeah it's legit. The Dolphin team even did an in-depth review of it: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2014/08/23/dolphinbar-review/

Sold. My PC tower is right next to my TV so the length hopefully won't be an issue. Prime shipping is just icing on the cake.

I'm pretty excited to start playing Wii games in 1080p!

Two additional questions: can I hook up a GC controller to play games like Smash? I assume there is an add-on I can buy for those? Also I have an Xbox One controller for Windows - can I use that alongside Dolphin as a replacement for a GC controller?
 
Sold. My PC tower is right next to my TV so the length hopefully won't be an issue. Prime shipping is just icing on the cake.

I'm pretty excited to start playing Wii games in 1080p!

Two additional questions: can I hook up a GC controller to play games like Smash? I assume there is an add-on I can buy for those? Also I have an Xbox One controller for Windows - can I use that alongside Dolphin as a replacement for a GC controller?

Yes and yes.
 
It's not and probably never will be.
According to Fiora actually it's not even that different from the Wii in principle.
It would probably require some substantial rework in some areas and more powerful hardware to achieve decent performances, but there's definitely nothing intrinsecally non-emulable about it.
 
To clarify what I think PGamer is saying - I think they mean WiiU support will never be implemented into Dolphin. When (I do think it is a when) a WiiU emulator begins development it will likely be it's own separate emulator - not one worked into Dolphin.
 
Really? Every nintendo console so far has been emulated, is the Wii U different or is it because of the controller?

I mean emulated in Dolphin, not in general. Dolphin only emulates the GameCube and the Wii. You need different emulators to emulate any other Nintendo console.

According to Fiora actually it's not even that different from the Wii in principle.
It would probably require some substantial rework in some areas and more powerful hardware to achieve decent performances, but there's definitely nothing intrinsecally non-emulable about it.

Various Dolphin developers have stated in the past that there are no plans to add Wii U support to Dolphin. I do expect a Wii U emulator to be made at some point but I don't think it will be as a part of Dolphin unless the development team decides to make some major changes.
 
Will Dolphin eventually be able to support the Wii U GameCube controller adapter, or is completely reliant on someone developing custom drivers for Windows?
 
Will a Core i3 4360 be good enough to run most games full speed when paired with a GeForce 750 Ti, or should I spring for a Core i5 4690?
 
Thanks for keeping this thread updated! I really enjoy reading these :D

It's not and probably never will be.

According to Fiora actually it's not even that different from the Wii in principle.
It would probably require some substantial rework in some areas and more powerful hardware to achieve decent performances, but there's definitely nothing intrinsecally non-emulable about it.

To clarify what I think PGamer is saying - I think they mean WiiU support will never be implemented into Dolphin. When (I do think it is a when) a WiiU emulator begins development it will likely be it's own separate emulator - not one worked into Dolphin.

I've been interested in aspects of Wii U emulation on a strictly theoretical level for some time. To be specific, in the challenge of emulating a multi-core CPU when you already have good single core emulation, and how that would scale with the number of cores and what else needs to be taken into account (such as shared cache, etc)?

I imagine Wii U's GPU will be the bigger challenge to reverse engineer?
 
I've been interested in aspects of Wii U emulation on a strictly theoretical level for some time. To be specific, in the challenge of emulating a multi-core CPU when you already have good single core emulation, and how that would scale with the number of cores and what else needs to be taken into account (such as shared cache, etc)?

I imagine Wii U's GPU will be the bigger challenge to reverse engineer?

I think it'd be better for WiiU emulation to not to be integrated in Dolphin. Dolphin started with GC emulation and Wii got implemented as it was very much like GC.
WiiU however is much more different than the 2 before. BUT: Whoever wants to make a WiiU emulator should start with Dolphin as an emulator as the system itself seems quite stable and they have most of the PPC emulator done already.
 
I think it'd be better for WiiU emulation to not to be integrated in Dolphin. Dolphin started with GC emulation and Wii got implemented as it was very much like GC.
WiiU however is much more different than the 2 before. BUT: Whoever wants to make a WiiU emulator should start with Dolphin as an emulator as the system itself seems quite stable and they have most of the PPC emulator done already.

Yeah, I was thinking about how a separate project could benefit from the work done on dolphin, with regards to Wii U CPU emulation (and Wii U emulation in general).
For all I know such a project may even end up benefitting from some of the work done on GPU emulation, since Wii U's GPU uses at least part of Wii's GPU for its own work, if I understood the Iwata interviews correctly.

I find it interesting that if it were not for Nintendo's highly controversial decision to stick with identical hardware two generations in a row, we may not have had what is probably the best 3D console emulator in existence :D
 
Get the 4690K <-- notice the K.

Then get an aftermarket heatsink and overclock to 4.4Ghz.

If he plan to use the PC just for emulation better just get a Pentium G3258, Z97 board and overclock it.

4.5Ghz G3258 apparently give you performance as good as sandy/ivy i7 in Dolphin/PCSX2. Very popular CPU among people doing emulation HTPCs.

If he plan to play CPU heavy PC games he should go with something quad core though.
 
So I have a set of Gamecube games that I would like to play in dolphin but I have no way to get them on my PC all I have is a wiiU. Any suggestions on how to rip them?
 
So I have a set of Gamecube games that I would like to play in dolphin but I have no way to get them on my PC all I have is a wiiU. Any suggestions on how to rip them?

I think you should be able to use the Wii mode on your WiiU to rip the ISO's.
 
So I have a set of Gamecube games that I would like to play in dolphin but I have no way to get them on my PC all I have is a wiiU. Any suggestions on how to rip them?

I bought one of the compatible LG drives. You can get them fairly cheap on ebay.
 
I bought one of the compatible LG drives. You can get them fairly cheap on ebay.

I bought one off of Amazon. It didn't work I emailed the company that I got it from and got a response along the lines of "it's not the exact drive you ordered but it should be compatible with the PC" I ended up returning it and decided against trying again.
 
I bought one off of Amazon. It didn't work I emailed the company that I got it from and got a response along the lines of "it's not the exact drive you ordered but it should be compatible with the PC" I ended up returning it and decided against trying again.

You're giving up trying this method because a company pulled a bait-and-switch on you?

What you describe is why I was careful when I ordered on ebay. I made sure it was an individual sale with photos where I could double check that model numbers were correct before bidding for it. The only difficulty I had with this drive (GDR-8164B) was that I needed to find an IDE cable for it (my desktop is old enough to still have an IDE port.)

Compared with spending $40 on a Dreamcast SD card adapter a few months ago, this $3 DVD drive was a godsend for backing up my old console games.
 
You're giving up trying this method because a company pulled a bait-and-switch on you?

What you describe is why I was careful when I ordered on ebay. I made sure it was an individual sale with photos where I could double check that model numbers were correct before bidding for it. The only difficulty I had with this drive (GDR-8164B) was that I needed to find an IDE cable for it (my desktop is old enough to still have an IDE port.)

Compared with spending $40 on a Dreamcast SD card adapter a few months ago, this $3 DVD drive was a godsend for backing up my old console games.

Fool me once shame on you fool me twice shame on me etc. The listing had photos and it also had several reviews on it by several different people very directly stating "Yes this rips wii/GameCube games"
 
I set up Dolphin yesterday for the first time and played ~1 hour of Twilight Princess. Everything works flawlessly, which is pretty impressive! It took me around 30 minutes to figure out how to set up my DolphinBar since the manual that comes with it is less than useless, but to be fair I think the Wiimote sync'ed up immediately and it took me 20 minutes to realize that.

There is a slight delay between moving the Wiimote around and the cursor moving on the screen, but I think that existed in the Wii as well. I'll have to turn my Wii on and double check this. That being said, playing Wii games in HD is a game changer, and I can see myself putting a lot of time into this system.
 
I setup dolphin and have played Xenoblade and The Last Story, both look amazing. I've tried to play Skyward Sword but I cant past the point wiimote to the middle of the screen part.

I put on my Wii U to use for the sensor bar, but I see no cursor on the Dolphin emulator screen.
 
I setup dolphin and have played Xenoblade and The Last Story, both look amazing. I've tried to play Skyward Sword but I cant past the point wiimote to the middle of the screen part.

I put on my Wii U to use for the sensor bar, but I see no cursor on the Dolphin emulator screen.

The wiiU will not turn on the sensor bar unless a wii remote is connected to the system and the wiiU system is powered on.
 
Alright thanx I got it working. I turned on the Wii U with my other wiimote. Then used one to start the game.

The game looks soooooooooooo gooooood!!!! Starting my 6th playthrough now!
 
I believe if you boot straight into Wii mode, you won't need to have a Wiimote connected. That's what I used to do before I got the Dolphin Bar.
 
OK so I've been doing some reading and it turns out that I shouldn't be experiencing any input lag when using a Wiimote with Dolphin. Clearly my settings are messed up somehow because I had a noticeable amount of lag when I was playing Twilight Princess yesterday. Any tips on how to fix this?

Also I just learned that texture packs are a thing, specifically for Twilight Princess. How do I install these? Do I just copy them to the Dolphin folder?
 
OK so I've been doing some reading and it turns out that I shouldn't be experiencing any input lag when using a Wiimote with Dolphin. Clearly my settings are messed up somehow because I had a noticeable amount of lag when I was playing Twilight Princess yesterday. Any tips on how to fix this?

Also I just learned that texture packs are a thing, specifically for Twilight Princess. How do I install these? Do I just copy them to the Dolphin folder?

Twilight princess is notorious for running really bad. To install a texture pack download the pack put the files in dolphin's texture pack folder under the game's codename (it's a random assortment of numbers and characters) and then turn on "load custom textures" in the graphics settings.
 
Twilight princess is notorious for running really bad. To install a texture pack download the pack put the files in dolphin's texture pack folder under the game's codename (it's a random assortment of numbers and characters) and then turn on "load custom textures" in the graphics settings.

So should I just expect to always have input lag while playing Twilight Princess?

Also how do I find the game's codename?
 
Alright so I installed two texture packs for twilight princess but they have different code names... Should I drop them both into the folder with the code name of my version of the game?
 
So should I just expect to always have input lag while playing Twilight Princess?

Also how do I find the game's codename?

The Gamecube version is an option if you don't want to use the Wiimote. Just get the AR code for widescreen.

And there's a list somewhere of all Wii and GCN code names. I'm sure a quick Google search will find it.
 
Yes the other is probably for the GC version

Oh OK, cool. And is it normal for a texture folder to have named subfolders (e.g., Trees) within it? Will dolphin know to access textures within the subfolders? Or should I be copy/pasting all the images into the main folder for each game?
 
Star Wars: Rebel Strike

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Game isn't perfect yet, but that's great progress over what it was before, this being not being able to boot at all.
 
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