Dolphin - Emulating Wii and Gamecube Games

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.

If you ever wonder why some emulator isn't improving as fast as you'd like and seems to have issues attracting enough manpower to thrive, devs not wanting to deal with exactly this is pretty high up on the list.
 
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.

Well the snobs and purist are right though...

Elegant solutions fix the problem while "stuff that work" may fix for one or two games but the problem is still there.
 
Does Dolphin work in Windows 10? Any problems? And how about the Toshiba Bluetooth stack? I have an unsupported BT adapter and forced the driver onto it, but I don't know if the same method will work on Win10.
 
Guess we might as well all be playing zsnes while we're at it! Having experienced the difference between accurate and "hacky" emulation very clearly now, I have a huge amount of respect for anyone aiming for accuracy in the long run, even though a late gen system like what Dolphin and PCSX2 emulate are pretty much impossible to reach 100% accuracy with.
 
4.0 is terribly outdated.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.

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.

I'm on a Mac, so all I can get is 4.0, at least I only found the windows version of 5.0 :(
 
I've been out of the loop on Dolphin development since 3.0, Can anyone update me on the viability of these certain games:

- Fortune street
- Tiger woods PGA 12': the masters
- Metriod Prime Trilogy
- The two rogue squadron games
- Super Mario Sunshine. (Are we at 100% yet?)
 
Does Dolphin work in Windows 10? Any problems? And how about the Toshiba Bluetooth stack? I have an unsupported BT adapter and forced the driver onto it, but I don't know if the same method will work on Win10.

Dolphin should work fine in Windows 10 as far as I know but I can't say anything as far as specific Bluetooth issues go.

I'm on a Mac, so all I can get is 4.0, at least I only found the windows version of 5.0 :(

The latest OS X version available right now looks to be 4.0-7135 from three days ago. Give that a shot. The OS X buildbot is apparently down right now so they're having issues gettting OS X builds released at the moment.

I've been out of the loop on Dolphin development since 3.0, Can anyone update me on the viability of these certain games:

- Fortune street
- Tiger woods PGA 12': the masters
- Metriod Prime Trilogy
- The two rogue squadron games
- Super Mario Sunshine. (Are we at 100% yet?)

Check the compatibility list:

- Fortune Street
- Metroid Prime: Trilogy
- Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader
- Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike
- Super Mario Sunshine
- Tiger Woods PGA Tour 12: The Masters
 
Fzero and Metroid are a horrible stutterfest in the 'official build' whilst a smooth 60fps in Ishiiruka.

I used the Ishiiruka build for the first time today, thanks for the heads up! I was tired of Mario Galaxy constantly chugging if there were any starbits on the screen when I have 16gb of ram, an i7-3700k, and a gtx 760!
 
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.

Thanks for bringing Ishiiruka to my attention, seems it can play the Prime games without the constant stuttering present in the vanilla Dolphin builds (something to do with shader caching). I wonder if the visor bug is present in that build?
 
Well the snobs and purist are right though...

Elegant solutions fix the problem while "stuff that work" may fix for one or two games but the problem is still there.

And how does that relate with ishiiruka?

Ishiiruka works the same that official version but without stuttering. Without stuttering in every game. Official version has stuttering in every game. But you can prefer the "elegant" solution because "moral reasons"?.


At the end, when someone download a version of an emulator, does he want to play in the most similar to the original game or does he want to have a program that respects the most of the internal logic of the original machine?

Real games don't stutter in a real Wii.

Why official version allows to improve wii games resolution then?
 
Mario Galaxy 2 is maybe my favourite game of all time. I already tried the game on Dolphin on my rig with 2560x1440P and some AA, and it's so beautiful it makes my heart hurt a little.

But, I'm having trouble with controller setups. I've been using an xbox 360 controller, with the right stick simulating the pointer in the wii mote. Which works fine. But I'm like 8 levels in now, and have to do one of the levels where Mario is running on top of a large ball. This requires relatively precise tilt controls, and I haven't been able to figure out how to make it work with my gamepad.

Is there any way to make it work? Or maybe skip the level and alter levels like it? (They're not my favourite anyway.
I suppose could buy a dolphin sensorbar, and use a Wiimote, but it seems kind of a waste for only one game. Especially since I live in Norway (Europe), and don't know of a reasonably priced way to get one to my country.

(And I only have non-motionplus Wiimotes, if that makes a difference)
 
Mario Galaxy 2 is maybe my favourite game of all time. I already tried the game on Dolphin on my rig with 2560x1440P and some AA, and it's so beautiful it makes my heart hurt a little.

But, I'm having trouble with controller setups. I've been using an xbox 360 controller, with the right stick simulating the pointer in the wii mote. Which works fine. But I'm like 8 levels in now, and have to do one of the levels where Mario is running on top of a large ball. This requires relatively precise tilt controls, and I haven't been able to figure out how to make it work with my gamepad.

Is there any way to make it work? Or maybe skip the level and alter levels like it? (They're not my favourite anyway.
I suppose could buy a dolphin sensorbar, and use a Wiimote, but it seems kind of a waste for only one game. Especially since I live in Norway (Europe), and don't know of a reasonably priced way to get one to my country.

(And I only have non-motionplus Wiimotes, if that makes a difference)

I'm only recalling this from memory, but I believe you want to set up a new wiimote profile and make use of the 'Upright Wiimote' option and assign one of the sticks' movements to the 'Tilt' directions. Then it should function like you'd imagine.

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.

Wat, that's like saying someone is more accurate because they can do a math problem quicker using rounding rather than taking their time to get an actual answer.
 
And how does that relate with ishiiruka?

Ishiiruka works the same that official version but without stuttering. Without stuttering in every game. Official version has stuttering in every game. But you can prefer the "elegant" solution because "moral reasons"?.


At the end, when someone download a version of an emulator, does he want to play in the most similar to the original game or does he want to have a program that respects the most of the internal logic of the original machine?

Real games don't stutter in a real Wii.

Why official version allows to improve wii games resolution then?

Because it breaks many stuff in other games, therefore it not being a helpful solution at all. Regarding that third paragraph, those two things you summed up are actually the same underlying mechanic.
 
Ishiiruka works the same that official version but without stuttering. Without stuttering in every game. Official version has stuttering in every game. But you can prefer the "elegant" solution because "moral reasons"?.

It's not because of "moral reasons". It's because they want to keep a good code base, free of nasty hacks (especially when there are non-hacky solutions), which creates an environment where devs actually want to contribute (which is extra important for open source projects). They don't want to become PCSX2.
 
So can someone give me a super basic summary of this "programmer drama" Im reading about and what stuttering has to do with official/nonofficial releases?

I was thinking about downloading this new 5.0 build and using it as the "definitive" edition of Dolphin and having tons of saved games and such. (Basically marrying myself to this update if I cant transfer saves). Should I wait?
 
So can someone give me a super basic summary of this "programmer drama" Im reading about and what stuttering has to do with official/nonofficial releases?

From what I understood someone took the official Dolphin release and tweaked it so it can run games with less stutter, however some say that there are some issues due to it not emulating accurately and that it might not be as useful as a general emulator like the original. At least, that's what I understood from skimming the last few pages.
 
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.
Generally, the people interested in the plumbing (those you call "snobs and purists") are the reason an emulator exists and works in the first place.

You don't get to the point where you can emulate a modern platform at all without carefully weighing the decisions you make not just in their immediate user-visible effect but also their long-term development impact.
 
So can someone give me a super basic summary of this "programmer drama" Im reading about and what stuttering has to do with official/nonofficial releases?

For a bit of a technical background, the stuttering comes from each time you use a new shader effect. Dolphin like it is now first has to cache it, which causes stuttering, and once it is cached and used again the stuttering disappears. You can see this effect for yourself each time you load up a game when using a fresh Dolphin version and each time you use a new attack in Xenoblade, for example. Some games are better adapted to this, so if you've played them a few hours to stuttering is almost non-existent. Other games make frequent use of new shaders and require precision control in which the stuttering is hindering the playability of the game.

I think there's a good chance someone will come up with an elegant solution if many people are really complaining about it. For now, they have focused on other things that seemed more important.
 
There really shouldn't be any arguing on the subject... The devs want to keep accuracy as the number 1 priority. If you want speed to be a higher priority, there are plenty of available versions that have these unsafe/inaccurate hacks available. That is the benefit to having an open source project like this... You don't have to agree with the original devs and you don't have to use their official version if it's not your preference.
 
There really shouldn't be any arguing on the subject... The devs want to keep accuracy as the number 1 priority. If you want speed to be a higher priority, there are plenty of available versions that have these unsafe/inaccurate hacks available. That is the benefit to having an open source project like this... You don't have to agree with the original devs and you don't have to use their official version if it's not your preference.

Exactly this. The official team concentrates on accuracy, it's open source so forks can do what they feel is more important.
 
What's the harm in throwing the speed hacks into the official build as an option? Put them into a separate section with a giant "Warning! While these hacks may not result in any emulation defects that are noticeable to the end user, they nonetheless defile the purity of our impeccably accurate emulation routines and we therefore do not recommend using them" message if you must.
 
For a bit of a technical background, the stuttering comes from each time you use a new shader effect. Dolphin like it is now first has to cache it, which causes stuttering, and once it is cached and used again the stuttering disappears. You can see this effect for yourself each time you load up a game when using a fresh Dolphin version and each time you use a new attack in Xenoblade, for example. Some games are better adapted to this, so if you've played them a few hours to stuttering is almost non-existent. Other games make frequent use of new shaders and require precision control in which the stuttering is hindering the playability of the game.

I think there's a good chance someone will come up with an elegant solution if many people are really complaining about it. For now, they have focused on other things that seemed more important.

I stopped using Dolphin because of this. I know I could have powered through it, and I did try, but it didn't go away after 40 mins of Mario Galaxy and I just couldn't take it any more. I'd rather play it on the Wii U with uninterrupted 60fps.
 
Damn, seeing that Android TV version of Dolphin up and running is pretty exciting. Definitely hoping to see some performance improvements there. And hopefully they can get Wiimote + android pairing working properly. Could make Android TV systems the ultimate emulation toys.
 
What's the harm in throwing the speed hacks into the official build as an option? Put them into a separate section with a giant "Warning! While these hacks may not result in any emulation defects that are noticeable to the end user, they nonetheless defile the purity of our impeccably accurate emulation routines and we therefore do not recommend using them" message if you must.

Takes time and effort to merge features in that could be spent elsewhere (especially unwise when they're working on finalizing their 5.0 version which is intended to be as stable as can be.)

Also, Async shader compilation can have larger impacts than people give it credit for. Like I said earlier in the thread, using it completely broke the color rendering on Samus's suit in Metroid prime for me. It's not simply a "fix games better" button.
 
Damn, seeing that Android TV version of Dolphin up and running is pretty exciting. Definitely hoping to see some performance improvements there. And hopefully they can get Wiimote + android pairing working properly. Could make Android TV systems the ultimate emulation toys.

There are some Nvidia Stream TV videos on YouTube that are somewhat encouraging. For how powerful it is, the games should run better, but hopefully there are huge improvements within the next year.
 
What's the harm in throwing the speed hacks into the official build as an option? Put them into a separate section with a giant "Warning! While these hacks may not result in any emulation defects that are noticeable to the end user, they nonetheless defile the purity of our impeccably accurate emulation routines and we therefore do not recommend using them" message if you must.

Because they want the code base to be as clean and accurate as possible. If there are good alternatives that are separate programs, nothing wrong with that. It's not hard to download two versions.
 
There are some Nvidia Stream TV videos on YouTube that are somewhat encouraging. For how powerful it is, the games should run better, but hopefully there are huge improvements within the next year.
Yeah, there'll definitely be some quirks they need to work out, despite its performance.

Makes me consider just turning one into my emulation station.
 
So can someone give me a super basic summary of this "programmer drama" Im reading about and what stuttering has to do with official/nonofficial releases?

There's no actual programmer drama. The official codebase has a design that currently causes stuttering in some games. A third-party fork implements an alternate design that is much less accurate but eliminates that stuttering. The primary devs are fine with it existing but won't merge it back in because they want to keep the primary code free from speed hacks and the like. Anyone who wants can use either version.

What's the harm in throwing the speed hacks into the official build as an option?

Makes the code harder to work with, produces support issues with trying to figure out what settings people are running into some given problem on, requires them to educate people on the meaning of the feature, reduces the likelihood of team members working on a permanent solution to the underlying issue, etc.
 
So I've been trying to play Monster Hunter Tri on Dolphin. The first thing I need to be able to do is turn off that excessive bloom though before I do some more tweaking. I know there is a fix for it out there (I saw some screens without the bloom in that emulator screenshot thread for example) but I can't seem to find it anywhere online. Anyone want to help me out there? I'd appreciate it!

edit: Nevermind I found it! I'm an idiot, didn't think it would be included in the emulator already. It's under Config > patches for anyone whose as blind as me. ;)
 
Is tastunoko working well on that stutter free branch? I couldn't play it much because each time you do a super/special for the first time after booting the game would hang half a second. Really annoying when playing with friends.
 
Is tastunoko working well on that stutter free branch? I couldn't play it much because each time you do a super/special for the first time after booting the game would hang half a second. Really annoying when playing with friends.

It works awesome for me. Don't really have too much problem with stuttering at all.
 
I wanted to play MGS:Twin Snakes but the audio crackling is driving me insane. Have tried all audio modes but nothing seems to help. Does somebody know if there is a fork or something that gets rid of it? Or a special settings combo? Google just suggested changing audio to LLE which didn't do anything for me at all.
 
I wanted to play MGS:Twin Snakes but the audio crackling is driving me insane. Have tried all audio modes but nothing seems to help. Does somebody know if there is a fork or something that gets rid of it? Or a special settings combo? Google just suggested changing audio to LLE which didn't do anything for me at all.
I was just struggling with this. Turns out the culprit was the "Enable CPU Clock Override" option that I had enabled for some other game. No audio crackling whatsoever after disabling it.

Also, make sure you are on the latest version (4.0-7159).
 
I was just struggling with this. Turns out the culprit was the "Enable CPU Clock Override" option that I had enabled for some other game. No audio crackling whatsoever after disabling it.

Also, make sure you are on the latest version (4.0-7159).
Hm, I use the latest build and don't even have the setting enabled :(
But thanks anyway. It's not too bad if I turn down the volume.
 
Are you using XAudio2 as the backend? Only thing I can think of right now.
DSound, 2 seconds latency. I tried playing around with the latency but it didn't help either. But I'll play around with the backend, though I doubt it'll help.

!
XAudio2 seems to have helped, cheers! :)
 
I wanted to play MGS:Twin Snakes but the audio crackling is driving me insane. Have tried all audio modes but nothing seems to help. Does somebody know if there is a fork or something that gets rid of it? Or a special settings combo? Google just suggested changing audio to LLE which didn't do anything for me at all.

If you change to LLE, be sure to make use of an original DSP dump from your Wii. Dolphin uses a dev made one by default, due to copyright issues, but it's not as good as the original one.
 
Are you mapping the buttons via the Classic Controller configuration?

untitled9hky6.png

"Extension" is missing here with 4.0-6928 (4.0.2. didn't let me play a specific game properly, can't remember which one it was) What am I doing wrong? Any other way to map Classic Controller controls to my 360 controller?

Should I just go for 4.0.2. again? Would my 4.0.-6928 safe files even be compatible?
 
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