Dolphin - Emulating Wii and Gamecube Games

Jintor said:
Hah, got it working a bit back, just needed to rip using a different program (of course that required an hour or two of pre-installation but whatevs). Now i just need a solution to the sound issue and I'll be golden.

so i guess does anybody have a fix for the sound issues yet? Do I ned to upgrade my build?
There isn't so much a complete fix as there is a reduction. It has to do with the build as well as how good your computer is.
 
Jesus, I've never been so conflicted in a game in such a long time. Got Fatal Frame 4 working and it is such a stunner to look at, too bad it is beyond frightfully boring, the gameplay has nothing to offer after the first hour, and the story is really bad. The story part is most like due in part to the Google Translate quality fan translation, don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the effort that went into this, but it's still pretty bad and just droll to read. That said, the core story is boring and so done to death if you've played any previous FF's before this.
That and the 'running' animation is slower than most walking animations it does not encourage any sort of exploration at all, which is what I loved about the previous games, nor does the game itself either because everything that does not further the story is locked anyway.
I have no urge to go further at all in this game, the pretty graphics aren't worth it at all. Terribly disappointed by this game. Made me want to replay the others though, so to the people that missed out on this, don't worry about it. You missed nothing, and I miss the money I had before buying it.
 
The translate wasn't google translate from what I played. It's normally like that afaik.

I should be doing hw said:
Jesus, I've never been so conflicted in a game in such a long time. Got Fatal Frame 4 working and it is such a stunner to look at, too bad it is beyond frightfully boring, the gameplay has nothing to offer after the first hour, and the story is really bad. The story part is most like due in part to the Google Translate quality fan translation, don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the effort that went into this, but it's still pretty bad and just droll to read. That said, the core story is boring and so done to death if you've played any previous FF's before this.
That and the 'running' animation is slower than most walking animations it does not encourage any sort of exploration at all, which is what I loved about the previous games, nor does the game itself either because everything that does not further the story is locked anyway.
I have no urge to go further at all in this game, the pretty graphics aren't worth it at all. Terribly disappointed by this game. Made me want to replay the others though, so to the people that missed out on this, don't worry about it. You missed nothing, and I miss the money I had before buying it.
I agree with every other statement made here though. It's a bad game.
 
I should be doing hw said:
Jesus, I've never been so conflicted in a game in such a long time. Got Fatal Frame 4 working and it is such a stunner to look at, too bad it is beyond frightfully boring, the gameplay has nothing to offer after the first hour, and the story is really bad. The story part is most like due in part to the Google Translate quality fan translation, don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the effort that went into this, but it's still pretty bad and just droll to read. That said, the core story is boring and so done to death if you've played any previous FF's before this.
That and the 'running' animation is slower than most walking animations it does not encourage any sort of exploration at all, which is what I loved about the previous games, nor does the game itself either because everything that does not further the story is locked anyway.
I have no urge to go further at all in this game, the pretty graphics aren't worth it at all. Terribly disappointed by this game. Made me want to replay the others though, so to the people that missed out on this, don't worry about it. You missed nothing, and I miss the money I had before buying it.

Game is by Grasshopper, you should have known better.
 
Really? So the Japanese text actually reads that clunkily? Perhaps the translation was too literal, that's what it seemed like to me, hence Google Translate.
But yeah, I blame Grasshopper, the whole game reeks of their gameplay design choices. 'Let's make this the slowest and most tedious game possible', that doesn't build tension when there is none to begin with. The PS2 games where legitimately frightening at some points, I didn't want to go further. This game I just sat there holding the trigger on my controller, lazily waiting for an actual game to show up at some point.
It really reminded me of FFXIII, except without the benefit of some enjoyment in the battle system.

Time to move on to Rune Factory Oceans, might post some pics if I get time to. Frontier was a personal favourite of mine, its a high bar to reach and I don't know if I will respond well to all the streamlining.

(Gotta finish Xenoblade too... fuck.)

Edit:
Yeah, above post nailed it. I wasn't sure how involved in the game they were though. Was it the whole thing? Or a collaboration of sorts?
 
BlackBeetleKing said:
Starfox Adventures
For a first generation Gamecube game (and an up-port of an N64 game), it is still rather good looking. And it ran at (a rather inconsistant, to be fair) 60fps. The volumetric grass/fur doesn't quite hold up as well in HD, though. It's too bad Rare never got to really flex their tech muscle on the Gamecube.
 
drspeedy said:
Thanks for posting those- I think SFA looks pretty impressive, for it's time anyway, but up res'd is great. How does it run?
For its time?!?! Anyway, it runs well if you use HLE audio, but if you do that the audio sounds like garbage. And with LLE audio it persistently runs at less than full speed on my OC'd 2600k (like 45-50 fps on average)
 
I should be doing hw said:
Jesus, I've never been so conflicted in a game in such a long time. Got Fatal Frame 4 working and it is such a stunner to look at, too bad it is beyond frightfully boring, the gameplay has nothing to offer after the first hour, and the story is really bad. The story part is most like due in part to the Google Translate quality fan translation, don't get me wrong, I really appreciate the effort that went into this, but it's still pretty bad and just droll to read. That said, the core story is boring and so done to death if you've played any previous FF's before this.
That and the 'running' animation is slower than most walking animations it does not encourage any sort of exploration at all, which is what I loved about the previous games, nor does the game itself either because everything that does not further the story is locked anyway.
I have no urge to go further at all in this game, the pretty graphics aren't worth it at all. Terribly disappointed by this game. Made me want to replay the others though, so to the people that missed out on this, don't worry about it. You missed nothing, and I miss the money I had before buying it.
Oh, really? I haven't played previous FF games, but I really liked this one. You're saying this is a big downgrade in comparison?
 
Dascu said:
Oh, really? I haven't played previous FF games, but I really liked this one. You're saying this is a big downgrade in comparison?
I played Fatal Frame 3 And couldn't end it while with Zero Tsukihami no Kamen I was the whole time OHMYGOD Best game in the series =L
 
ya'll are harsh on poor Grasshopper.
4 definitely has a sloooooow moving protagonist, but (its been forever since i played 2), wasn't that true in the earlier games? ive never liked the "running" speed.
 
Thing is with FF though, is that they kinda already exhausted the possibilities by the first two games; they have never broken from the core concept of the original game since, which is basically photographing enemies and exploring a creepy location. Beyond that there isn't really any more actual gameplay elements to speak of.
Four seemed like a further step back by adding monotony to an already stale idea, making it basically unplayable to me. Had that game contained worse graphics and art I wouldn't have played it for the 6 or so hours that I did. It also discouraged exploration, like I said before, with its slow moving characters and corridor style gameplay.
(Everything that isn't going to progress the story is locked off, you cannot go off the track, and why would you want to in case you hit that inevitable daed and and had to trudge all the way back again.)
They needed new blood to rejuvenate the franchise, Grasshopper was just a lousy choice I guess.

I don't necessarily think you will find anything different with the earlier games if you go back to them, they are better though. I can't remember much about the third game, but the first two I remember very fondly.
 
How well is Wii Motion Plus working with dolphin? I'm falling for the Skyward Sword hype, but I've heard that there have been calibration issues when using WM+ on Dolphin in the past.

My computer can barely run Wii games at the moment, but for the cost of a Wii (or a Wii U) I could probably get my PC the boost it needs to run them reasonably well at good resolutions. I'm just afraid that it won't play perfectly. It's probably not possible to accurately emulate WM+ actions on a gamepad or keyboard, right?
 
Rodney McKay said:
How well is Wii Motion Plus working with dolphin? I'm falling for the Skyward Sword hype, but I've heard that there have been calibration issues when using WM+ on Dolphin in the past.

My computer can barely run Wii games at the moment, but for the cost of a Wii (or a Wii U) I could probably get my PC the boost it needs to run them reasonably well at good resolutions. I'm just afraid that it won't play perfectly. It's probably not possible to accurately emulate WM+ actions on a gamepad or keyboard, right?
Doubtful you could do an upgrade that will make games run well for the price of a Wii since it's most likely the CPU that's the issue... Though, how do you rip the games without having one already?
 
Alextended said:
Doubtful you could do an upgrade that will make games run well for the price of a Wii since it's most likely the CPU that's the issue... Though, how do you rip the games without having one already?
Could have one of those LG drives that can read GCN/Wii discs. I have one but now that my Wii is homebrewed it's pointless, since the drive is so much slower.
 
I'm having a problem with multiple controllers in dolphin, one or two works but any more than that and none work. I've tried different revisions of dolphin but its the same every time. The same happens with my 360 controllers, my generic logitech and wiimotes.

Do anyone know a solution?
 
Alextended said:
Doubtful you could do an upgrade that will make games run well for the price of a Wii since it's most likely the CPU that's the issue... Though, how do you rip the games without having one already?
My roommate has a Wii. I just like using Dolphin because I've never been able to get the Wii hooked up to my monitor in a way that doesn't have garbage image quality.

What I meant by the cost was that I could probably sell my current CPU for a reasonable amount (Athon X4 640, so maybe $50-$75?) and added to the $130 of a Wii I could probably get a CPU that is more capable of playing Wii games. Right now I can run Wind Waker well and probably a few others (been a while since I've tried, HUGE Steam backlog ATM), but Mario Galaxy runs in slightly slow motion. Playable, but not ideal.

Since I haven't gotten many Wii games to work I haven't gotten my own Wii Remote or motion plus, so i dont really know how well those work. Does WM+ work well enough on Dolphin at this point?
 
If it doesn't, play it on your roommate's Wii. Why buy anything outside the game? Is he/she that stingy with owned stuff?
 
Alextended said:
If it doesn't, play it on your roommate's Wii. Why buy anything outside the game? Is he/she that stingy with owned stuff?
But I wanna play in HD! :(

I went back to my 360 recently and was shocked at how bad the graphics were for the games I owned for it. I hadn't played a console game in months and all the PC gaming I've been doing has pretty much ruined sub-HD, aliased, low framerate games for me. I can't even imagine playing Skyward Sword on my roommates 4:3 CRT television would be like for me. ;_;
 
You're probably limited to Phenom II CPUs, which aren't great for emulation anyway. And even with those (or even newer Intel CPUs) you would need to overclock. If you have a prebuilt PC that's not going to be possible.
 
chaosblade said:
You're probably limited to Phenom II CPUs, which aren't great for emulation anyway. And even with those (or even newer Intel CPUs) you would need to overclock. If you have a prebuilt PC that's not going to be possible.
That's what I was afraid of. There are the new AMD chips coming out, but those are pretty pricey and my current motherboard won't even support them, which would add even more to the cost.

I haven't actually tried overclocking my current CPU, and if I'm lucky that might give me the bump I need to at least play some of my Wii games in real-time instead of the minor slow motion I currently get. The latest Dolphin upgrade did a lot to increase the performance I was getting.
 
How well do the Unlimited Cruise games play? I've only played it in Japanese before and would love to replay them in English. Since it doesn't look like the 3DS port is coming to the US, I will import the PAL versions if it plays well.

Rodney McKay said:
I haven't actually tried overclocking my current CPU, and if I'm lucky that might give me the bump I need to at least play some of my Wii games in real-time instead of the minor slow motion I currently get. The latest Dolphin upgrade did a lot to increase the performance I was getting.
I have a Phenom II X3 720 BE and when I OC'd it to 3.6 I got a significant performance boost. Everything isn't perfect, but a lot more stuff is playable than before. I only spent $30 on the HS/F to do so too, so it was well worth the investment.
 
Pat said:
Anyone has a good guide for the settings of Twilight Princess?
Here are mine, but they're probably a bit different from other suggestions:

Backend: OpenGL (vsync must be enabled to avoid tearing -- causes frame rate to drop to 20fps in some parts of Hyrule field; if you don't mind tearing, this is not an issue)

Internal resolution: auto
Anti aliasing: 16xQ CSAA
Anisotropic filtering: 16x
Scaled EFB Copy enabled
Force texture filtering enabled

Skip EFB Access from CPU disabled
EFB copy to texture
Texture cache slider on fast

External frame buffer disabled
Fast mipmaps enabled
Disable per-pixel depth enabled

This is not the configuration recommended by the Dolphin wiki, but it will provide what is (in my experience) the best possible visuals with a minimal performance hit, outside of some sections of Hyrule field.

Of course, that all depends on your hardware. I'm running a 5870 and 4GHz i7, so not exactly top of the line but still plenty capable.

A lot of people tend to recommend D3D9 as the backend, regardless of game, but I've found that OpenGL often performs just as well if not better, and the 16xQ CSAA anti aliasing solution looks incredible for a much smaller hit than 9x SSAA.
 
I'm getting occasional Dolphin crashing with audio on Xenoblade... it's like instead of having constant audio glitching during cutscenes but no crashing, it's saving them all up for a single explosive motherload of crashing. :T

Settings: DSP HLE Emulation, Enable DTK Music, Enable Audio Throttle, XAudio2, 48000 Hz. 32000 Hz did not fix the problem
 
Crunched said:
Here are mine, but they're probably a bit different from other suggestions:

Backend: OpenGL (vsync must be enabled to avoid tearing -- causes frame rate to drop to 20fps in some parts of Hyrule field; if you don't mind tearing, this is not an issue)

Internal resolution: auto
Anti aliasing: 16xQ CSAA
Anisotropic filtering: 16x
Scaled EFB Copy enabled
Force texture filtering enabled

Skip EFB Access from CPU disabled
EFB copy to texture
Texture cache slider on fast

External frame buffer disabled
Fast mipmaps enabled
Disable per-pixel depth enabled

This is not the configuration recommended by the Dolphin wiki, but it will provide what is (in my experience) the best possible visuals with a minimal performance hit, outside of some sections of Hyrule field.

Of course, that all depends on your hardware. I'm running a 5870 and 4GHz i7, so not exactly top of the line but still plenty capable.

A lot of people tend to recommend D3D9 as the backend, regardless of game, but I've found that OpenGL often performs just as well if not better, and the 16xQ CSAA anti aliasing solution looks incredible for a much smaller hit than 9x SSAA.

I have the same video card, I'm going to give it a try, thanks!
 
Tomodachi said:
I just tried out your settings Crunched, pretty amazing stuff that 16xQ CSAA. I think I'll stick to these new settings.
Yeah it looks really good. Better than SSAA in some places imo, at least at 4 x.

I don't remember my sound settings offhand, but I can check after work. Pretty sure it's just the standard hle config though.

The only downside to my settings is they seem to increase the prevalence of texture seams. Not sure what causes that. Could be the AA, or forced texture filtering, maybe it's an artifact caused by opengl. Haven't tested it to see. Looks and plays good enough that a few seams don't bother me.

edit:
Yep, sound settings are default.
 
drspeedy said:
Thanks for posting those- I think SFA looks pretty impressive, for it's time anyway, but up res'd is great. How does it run?
http://wiki.dolphin-emulator.com/index.php?title=Star_Fox_Adventures
1.stutter
2.shadow glitch
3.Text subtitles are shown faster than Audio/Video
4.random crash
r6505-x86-dx9 tested...


AdawgDaFAB said:
How well do the Unlimited Cruise games play? I've only played it in Japanese before and would love to replay them in English. Since it doesn't look like the 3DS port is coming to the US, I will import the PAL versions if it plays well.
need dx11 plugin to remove the "white light", and a powerful cpu(like 2500k/2600k oc 4.0GHz ↑) to get full speed all the time
 
BlackBeetleKing said:
need dx11 plugin to remove the "white light", and a powerful cpu(like 2500k/2600k oc 4.0GHz ↑) to get full speed all the time
Boo, it sounds like it's not going to work well on my X3 720 BE @ 3.6GHz. Thanks for the info.
 
Well, looks like Kirby has some errors relating to playing the cut scenes, and creating the saves, but people who have reported importing a save from the Wii say the games plays pretty good normally. Hopefully the few issues can be worked out soon.

Also, someone mentioned before that they were surprised that Twilight Princess works better then Wind Waker, that is mainly due to there being a very specific set of hacks for the game, to make it run better.
 
Drkirby said:
Well, looks like Kirby has some errors relating to playing the cut scenes, and creating the saves, but people who have reported importing a save from the Wii say the games plays pretty good normally. Hopefully the few issues can be worked out soon.
Yeah, I didn't see the cutscenes, but with the DirectX 9 plugin, everything looks perfect. However, I had trouble taking screenshots with the DirectX 9 plugin. (Sometimes, the screenshot button didn't work, so I had to take shots via Dolphin's menu, so as a result, I couldn't take any shots where Kirby wasn't standing still.)

So these screenshots are with OpenGL, where there are some graphical glitches (Kirby/enemies are "floating" off the ground a little):

dtFvZ.jpg

6BA6l.jpg

MFfFa.jpg

Eh3XA.jpg

5bDTE.png

dufSw.jpg

JImGy.jpg

OWvWc.jpg


All within the first world and the 1st level in the 2nd world. No spoilers, really.

Edit: Hmm, maybe I should have applied some AA...
 
That looks pretty poor actually.

Can you post uncompressed shots at a higher res with some AA, or are you limited?
 
Crunched said:
That looks pretty poor actually.

Can you post uncompressed shots at a higher res with some AA, or are you limited?

Sorry, can only go as high as 720p (actually 1280x1024)... To improve the graphics, I used D3D9 this time, used 4x SSAA, and uploaded it to a lossless image host.



I also uploaded one shot with OpenGL. I have better AA options (like 16Q CSAA) but there are some graphics glitches like messed up shadows:



Maybe someone can come along and provide 1080p shots. Maybe jediyoshi?

This game is HD friendly, too. Like some other Wii games, the menus, fonts, and stuff are actually in HD.

Crunched said:
Much nicer. Not a bad looking game, but I prefer Epic Yarn's visuals.

I agree. Though I wouldn't want every Kirby game to look like Epic Yarn.
 
Uploading to a lossless host doesn't matter if the shots are compressed to begin with. I can't check now as I'm on my phone, but it looks like you posted jpgs with some color banding and distortion around objects, which made the not quite pristine shots even worse.

This isn't a screenshot judging thread though, so thanks for uploading them. Was just hoping for some cleaner grabs like what jediyoshi posted.
 
Holy shit. I forced Idle Skipping and VBeam Emulation for the Xenoblade ISO and FPS shot straight up to 30 from 20. What the dicks.
 
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