Dolphin - Emulating Wii and Gamecube Games

Hello, I currently have an AMD Athlon 4450e and my dolphin runs at 10-20 fps, so I'm looking for a cheap CPU for dolphin and epsxe2 (I don't want to play recent games). Which one do you recommend ?

The Intel Pentium G3258 was a good choice for Dolphin. It has a decent Instructions Per Cycle and a high clock speed which is favorable for Dolphin as it relies heavily on clock speeds to properly emulate sound and stuff. It's only a dual core, but Dolphin doesn't need more than two cores. I don't know if there's a strictly better version on the market now though, but it should do the job fine anyway.
 
No disrespect to Tomoya's hard work, but I'm not a fan of this at all, especially when compared to the original version.

z4nI2aj.png


The colors are completely different, none of the textures even attempt to stay faithful to the original art, the font changes on the HUD are unnecessary.

I'm happy that people are enjoying this texture pack, but it's not for me. I really hope that one day someone tackles Twilight Princess with the same level of respect for the original art as the Resident Evil 4 HD Project.

There is another HD texture pack for Twilight Princess on the Dolphin forums that's just an hd textures while preserving the artsyle.

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-gc-zelda-twilight-princess-hd-texture-pack-update-pag-7

Video demonstration

Some pictures with SweetFX enabled:
 
The Intel Pentium G3258 was a good choice for Dolphin. It has a decent Instructions Per Cycle and a high clock speed which is favorable for Dolphin as it relies heavily on clock speeds to properly emulate sound and stuff. It's only a dual core, but Dolphin doesn't need more than two cores. I don't know if there's a strictly better version on the market now though, but it should do the job fine anyway.
Thanks, is it also a good choice for epsxe2 ? I heard it needed a quadcore at least.
 
There is another HD texture pack for Twilight Princess on the Dolphin forums that's just an hd textures while preserving the artsyle.

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-gc-zelda-twilight-princess-hd-texture-pack-update-pag-7

Video demonstration

Some pictures with SweetFX enabled:

I really don't like being hateful, but the sharpening in those screenshots is really, really not good. In motion that has to be incredibly shimmery and can't be too appealing.
 
Anyone playing Metroid Prime Trilogy with a kb/m, how are you configuring your settings? I feel like prime 1 and 2 'should' be able to play amazing with a mouse but the sensitivity seems really out of whack.

Woah, this is cool. I may actually be able to play these games now. Wiimote is too uncomfortable for me to use.

Also: https://www.reddit.com/r/Metroid/comments/2i4cqf/who_has_played_the_prime_trilogy_on_dolphin_with/

There's some settings a couple posts down.

Damn I was all excited that the TP texture project was finished. How far along is it?

32%. Personally I think those textures look hot.
 
I really don't like being hateful, but the sharpening in those screenshots is really, really not good. In motion that has to be incredibly shimmery and can't be too appealing.

In my experience, the texture pack is pretty nice when playing compared to the pictures I found.
 
I was reading the various compatibility lists for Dolphin and I had a question. Why do the N64 virtual console games require high system requirements? Surely the N64 emulator that was being used on the virtual console was nowhere near cycle accurate. I have probably misunderstood the software mechanisms so please correct me if I have.
 
It's an emulator running an emulator. This means the Wii CPU was being pushed hard running N64 emulated games. So then you have to emulate the Wii CPU being pushed hard which means your CPU will be pushed much harder then usual.
 
It's an emulator running an emulator. This means the Wii CPU was being pushed hard running N64 emulated games. So then you have to emulate the Wii CPU being pushed hard which means your CPU will be pushed much harder then usual.
yo dawg! i heard you like emulation so....

you know the drill.
 
Booted up Baten Kaitos the other day and had no sound whatsoever. From doing a little searching it looks like this might be either a ROM problem or a compatibility issue. Has anyone played Baten Kaitos on Dolphin with sound?
 

Emulator really matured over the last year, not too many changes to performance over the past months. Then again, they are mostly concentrating on 5.0. But I doubt we'll see major breakthroughs like the JIT compiler accuracy boosts and speed up this year. Wondering if they have investigated the possibility of Wii U emulator, it would be glorious to play MK8 and others in full 4K in 2019.
 
I recently played some Wind Waker with the Oculus DK2. Even with the inherent jank, it's pretty incredible.

I walked around Greatfish Isle, the destroyed island that has a swirling thundercloud above it.

I hope the Vive is supported by Dolphin eventually, because it's a pretty amazing way to experience even old games.
 
Wondering if they have investigated the possibility of Wii U emulator, it would be glorious to play MK8 and others in full 4K in 2019.

I believe word on this is that whoever decides to do a WiiU emulator won't be through Dolphin. They're far too different to try and mash em into one emulator.
 
Booted up Baten Kaitos the other day and had no sound whatsoever. From doing a little searching it looks like this might be either a ROM problem or a compatibility issue. Has anyone played Baten Kaitos on Dolphin with sound?

I'm currently playing Baten Kaitos and I have sound. I'm using Dolphin 4.0.2.
 
I believe word on this is that whoever decides to do a WiiU emulator won't be through Dolphin. They're far too different to try and mash em into one emulator.

Oh, really? I thought that since the Wii was simply two Gamecube duct-taped together and the Wii U three Wii's duct-taped together it would be relatively simple. Well, it's the same architecture at least, and they still have quite some similarities, so I don't see why I can't be a new branch from Dolphin. Not that I don't believe there won't be many rewrites necessary, but I see the potential emulator using a lot of code from Dolphin to start with.
 
Oh, really? I thought that since the Wii was simply two Gamecube duct-taped together and the Wii U three Wii's duct-taped together it would be relatively simple. Well, it's the same architecture at least, and they still have quite some similarities, so I don't see why I can't be a new branch from Dolphin. Not that I don't believe there won't be many rewrites necessary, but I see the potential emulator using a lot of code from Dolphin to start with.

I mean, I imagine the emulator developers know significantly more than any of us about it, so if they say it's different enough I'm inclined to believe them.
 
Oh, really? I thought that since the Wii was simply two Gamecube duct-taped together and the Wii U three Wii's duct-taped together it would be relatively simple. Well, it's the same architecture at least, and they still have quite some similarities, so I don't see why I can't be a new branch from Dolphin. Not that I don't believe there won't be many rewrites necessary, but I see the potential emulator using a lot of code from Dolphin to start with.

The CPU in the WiiU are three PPC 750 cores, based on the Wii CPU, but the Wii has only one core.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espresso_(microprocessor)

The GPUs between the consoles are also different. Both AMD/ATI but very different architecturally.
 
So GAF, I'm completely new to the Wii emulation scene, but since I've sold my Wii but still want to play my games, I've installed Dolphin. Here's the thing, when I start a game it runs at 100%, but after a while it just starts going slow like this:

Captura_de_ecr_2015_08_1_s_23_51_38.png


I have an 2,4GHz i7 and a HD 6770M, not the best, but I thought it could handle this well.
 
So I just tried the latest 'release candidate 5' that they have for download and the official build STILL has the horrible 'cache stuttering' issues that have been addressed in the custom 'Ishiiruka' version.

Why won't they put it in the official version?, because without it, its pretty much useless.
 
I mean, I imagine the emulator developers know significantly more than any of us about it, so if they say it's different enough I'm inclined to believe them.

It's likely more an issue on the software/firmware angle and the ARM chip that acts as a hypervisor (I think that's the correct term)... The Wii U has much tighter security than GCN and Wii did.

The Dolphin Devs don't have any greater access to Wii U hardware than anyone else, and without direct access they'd never be able to analyze and reverse engineer any part of it any ways.
 
Hum, the latest stable release, 4.0.

4.0 is terribly outdated. It's completely worthless nowadays. I don't know why they still offer it... You should either get the latest dev version available at the moment or, if you want to go with a "safer"* route, get the 5.0 RC.

*
Not necessarily safer.
 
Hum, the latest stable release, 4.0.

Use the development versions. They are faster, more accurate, more reliable, have greater compatability and offer better support for texture packs and controllers. That's why the big button on the frontpage of the site tells you to do download the dev version.
 
So I just tried the latest 'release candidate 5' that they have for download and the official build STILL has the horrible 'cache stuttering' issues that have been addressed in the custom 'Ishiiruka' version.

Why won't they put it in the official version?, because without it, its pretty much useless.

From one person on the Dolphin team:

delroth said:
No, it's not "Ishiiruka likes speed" and "Dolphin devs like slow things". In fact I hope you realize that's extremely offensive to people who have worked for years on improving Dolphin's performance. The real issue is that async shader compilation is a horrible hack that partially breaks rendering for an undefined amount of time at undefined time in the execution. As it is it probably is the most broken hack in the history of Dolphin. It's PCSX2 level of hacky.

There are more elegant solutions to this problem (delaying shader compilation and using a slower macroshader as an alternative until shaders are compiled, for example). Nobody seems interested enough in the problem to implement that solution.
 
From one person on the Dolphin team:

Great, so the usual 'emulator politics' at work..the ever ongoing battle between those that just want stuff that works and aren't too interested in the plumbing against the snobs and purists who only want elegant solutions.

Dolphin has turned into Mame and in the meantime classic games like Fzero and Metroid are a horrible stutterfest in the 'official build' whilst a smooth 60fps in Ishiiruka.
 
Great, so the usual 'emulator politics' at work..the ever ongoing battle between those that just want stuff that works and aren't too interested in the plumbing against the snobs and purists who only want elegant solutions.

Dolphin has turned into Mame and in the meantime classic games like Fzero are a stutterfest.

If you want a messy hack Ishuruuka is still available. If their goal is accuracy, and there are alternatives for those who are willing to play a less accurate experience, then no real reason to give them friction.
 
Great, so the usual 'emulator politics' at work..the ever ongoing battle between those that just want stuff that works and aren't too interested in the plumbing against the snobs and purists who only want elegant solutions.

Dolphin has turned into Mame.

The "snobs and purists" are the people responsible for there being a GC/Wii emulator to begin with. Dolphin has been moving away from ugly hacks for years and the emulator is all the better for it.

Dolphin is also open source so feel free to open a pull request and contribute. Or you can just continue to use the unofficial builds.
 
If you want a messy hack Ishuruuka is still available. If their goal is accuracy, and there are alternatives for those who are willing to play a less accurate experience, then no real reason to give them friction.

I had this same discussion in dolphin forums. In my opinion if a game is stutter fest is not accurate, no matter how it works internally.
 
Great, so the usual 'emulator politics' at work..the ever ongoing battle between those that just want stuff that works and aren't too interested in the plumbing against the snobs and purists who only want elegant solutions.

Dolphin has turned into Mame and in the meantime classic games like Fzero and Metroid are a horrible stutterfest in the 'official build' whilst a smooth 60fps in Ishiiruka.

It entirely depends on what you mean by "stuff that just works". I imagine it'll always be technically possible to achieve higher performance with custom builds tailored to a specific game, but unless you want literally hundreds of custom builds then it makes much more sense to develop an accurate emulator that "just works" independent of your choice of game.
 
Great, so the usual 'emulator politics' at work..the ever ongoing battle between those that just want stuff that works and aren't too interested in the plumbing against the snobs and purists who only want elegant solutions.

Dolphin has turned into Mame and in the meantime classic games like Fzero and Metroid are a horrible stutterfest in the 'official build' whilst a smooth 60fps in Ishiiruka.

They want things fixed correctly. Whenever someone puts a hack in it removes any motivation to actually fix a problem. The async shader genration actually breaks the rendering as the game will just render the scene without any shaders that haven't compiled yet. So you get missing effects and other anomolies. Ideally someone would fix shader generation without using such a hacky method and it would be better for everyone.

People wouldn't be enjoying the Rogue Squadron games right now without this stance. They removed aome hacks and it motivated people to fix the real problem which brought us these games in a playable form. If the hack was still in place the games woild still be broken and unplayable.
 
I had this same discussion in dolphin forums. In my opinion if a game is stutter fest is not accurate, no matter how it works internally.

Dolphin is a perpetual work in progress, and the end goal is accuracy. At its current state, of course stutter isn't accurate to how its supposed to be played, but behind the scenes its a compiled puzzle getting closer to perfect accuracy. For those who aren't willing to go along with the in-progress ride, there is Ishuruuka. I could understand the complaint if there was no way to play the games sans-stutter (on first shader compilation) but if someones goals for Dolphin clash with the development team then they can fork it and make it work as they please, they can use the alternative version, or they can even do everyone else a favor and try to implement the proposed solution they already have in mind:
There are more elegant solutions to this problem (delaying shader compilation and using a slower macroshader as an alternative until shaders are compiled, for example). Nobody seems interested enough in the problem to implement that solution.
 
I could understand the complaint if there was no way to play the games sans-stutter (on first shader compilation)

For some games that is not practical though..fighting games for instance where there are hundreds of possible special move combinations, each one of which will stutter until its been performed at least once.

..try Tatsunoko vs Capcom to see what I mean.
 
Dolphin is a perpetual work in progress, and the end goal is accuracy. At its current state, of course stutter isn't accurate to how its supposed to be played, but behind the scenes its a compiled puzzle getting closer to perfect accuracy. For those who aren't willing to go along with the in-progress ride, there is Ishuruuka. I could understand the complaint if there was no way to play the games sans-stutter (on first shader compilation) but if someones goals for Dolphin clash with the development team then they can fork it and make it work as they please, they can use the alternative version, or they can even do everyone else a favor and try to implement the proposed solution they already have in mind:

Async shader compilation is not accurate because there is a milisecond where maybe the effect is not on screen. Synced shader generation is not accurate because wii doesn't need to compile shaders like a pc gpu and because it creates a stutter in framerate that affects gameplay.

Every player will prefer the former taking account I never noticed a missing effect with async shaders generation but I can't enjoy games with regular stuttering. In my opinion, async shaders must be an option in dolphin. There are hacks to play games at doubled framerate and devs support them in some way but I don't know how Ishiruka produces this hate for a version that kills stuttering.
 
Async shader compilation is not accurate because there is a milisecond where maybe the effect is not on screen. Synced shader generation is not accurate because wii doesn't need to compile shaders like a pc gpu and because it creates a stutter in framerate that affects gameplay.

Every player will prefer the former taking account I never noticed a missing effect with async shaders generation but I can't enjoy games with regular stuttering. In my opinion, async shaders must be an option in dolphin. There are hacks to play games at doubled framerate and devs support them in some way but I don't know how Ishiruka produces this hate for a version that kills stuttering.

I played Metroid Prime with Async Shader generation, and every single time it showed the Samus model her suit was a completely different color. It would be all white. Then next time a garbled mess of purples and blues. Then next time half green half red. Etc etc. It was the only game I've tested with Async shader gen, but it was a short time spent and some very noticeable graphical bugs. I don't think the impact is only that there may be a millisecond where the effect is not on screen, and there may be wider reaching stuff.

The game was still playable of course, and thankfully without stutter, but its not as perfect as you make it out to be and I can understand why the developers of Dolphin wouldn't want to use it as a crutch. I'm a believer in more options basically universally being better so it would be great if it was at least an option for people, but if the devs want to spend their time elsewhere I completely understand.
 
Async shader compilation is not accurate because there is a milisecond where maybe the effect is not on screen. Synced shader generation is not accurate because wii doesn't need to compile shaders like a pc gpu and because it creates a stutter in framerate that affects gameplay.

Every player will prefer the former taking account I never noticed a missing effect with async shaders generation but I can't enjoy games with regular stuttering. In my opinion, async shaders must be an option in dolphin. There are hacks to play games at doubled framerate and devs support them in some way but I don't know how Ishiruka produces this hate for a version that kills stuttering.

There's no hate. There's only a desire to have things working correctly. If you leave in a nasty hack like async shaders then no one will want to actually fix the real problem. I already pointed out how this policy brought us working Rogue Leader games this year. It's a positive policy for the end users as it eventually leads to all around improvements instead of bandaids on individual games.
 
Every player will prefer the former taking account I never noticed a missing effect with async shaders generation but I can't enjoy games with regular stuttering. In my opinion, async shaders must be an option in dolphin. There are hacks to play games at doubled framerate and devs support them in some way but I don't know how Ishiruka produces this hate for a version that kills stuttering.

I've never seen any hate for the Ishiiruka build. The Dolphin devs often participate in the forum thread for the unofficial build, there is no schism.

Including the async shader hack into master would be detrimental to motivate people to code a real solution, and the code base would be worse off it they did. People who want async shader generation can use the Ishiiruka build. I don't really see the problem.
 
Snob and purist talk? C'mon, what's wrong with the people who bust their ass to make a great emulator wanting to do things cleanly and correctly? Especially when there is an alternative?
 
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