Dolphin Emulator?

[futurefields]

Anybody here use it much? I was thinking of downloading it because I really want to go back and play Zelda Twilight Princess.

 

[dragantoe]

i used to, it works but everytime I try twilight princess it's just full of bugs

 

[gorcorps]

Never was able to get through a whole game without running into a game-breaking bug.

Wiis are so freakin cheap it doesn't even seem worth emulating anymore.

 

[ImpulsE69]

It's great. It's come a long ways in the last 6 months or so compared to where it was. I've played plenty of games w/o issue. It's not about cheapness, the games are simply BETTER on Dolphin.

I've played through Xenoblade, Luigis Mansion(GC) to name a few and currently playing Metroid Prime Corruption w/o issue.

I do say I prefer games that you can use the controller on rather than the wiimote, but the wiimote works great now. I just point it at my chandelier and it works.

I haven't tried Twilight Princess though, couldn't stand that game.

 

[norseamd]

how do you emulate a wiimote on a pc with dolphin

 

[ImpulsE69]

how do you emulate a wiimote on a pc with dolphin

The emulator uses keyboard/mouse to emulate,

but you can use a real wiimote and nunchuck / controller with it via blue tooth adapter which is the preferred method.

 

[mazeroth]

how do you emulate a wiimote on a pc with dolphin

With a cheap Bluetooth USB adapter (preferably 1.0 for better range).

Once you play Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 at 1080p with anti aliasing, it will blow your mind. Literally, playing on Dolphin with 1080p graphics is like stepping up a whole generation. Just be prepared to have a very fast CPU in order to emulate the Wii. For the Mario Galaxy games, we're talking 4+ ghz. speed Intel chips. I have an i5-3570k at 4.2 ghz. and I get slowdowns running those two games. It's the sound emulation's fault, and there's no way around it.

 

[norseamd]

Once you play Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 at 1080p with anti aliasing, it will blow your mind. Literally, playing on Dolphin with 1080p graphics is like stepping up a whole generation. Just be prepared to have a very fast CPU in order to emulate the Wii. For the Mario Galaxy games, we're talking 4+ ghz. speed Intel chips. I have an i5-3570k at 4.2 ghz. and I get slowdowns running those two games. It's the sound emulation's fault, and there's no way around it.

what if you have a sound card? i run a amd 8350. right now it runs at 4.2 ghz. i could move it up to 4.4 ghz or maybe even more.

 

[rifken2]

it isn't the sound card. It is the sound emulator for the Wii/Gamecube.

 

[norseamd]

it isn't the sound card. It is the sound emulator for the Wii/Gamecube.

and the code is written for the cpu?

 

[CuriousMike]

So, if you turn sound off, you gain massive FPS ?

 

[ImpulsE69]

Eh..not sure, haven't tried. The sound is sketchy though. Sometimes it works fine other times it will cause havoc with framerates due to audio syncing. I've found it to be a mixed bag but not a deal breaker in most cases.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

Totally worth it if you have the hardware to do it, their game support forums have everything you'd need to get just about any noteworthy game running great: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Forum-game-support

i used to, it works but everytime I try twilight princess it's just full of bugs

while Dolphin can be finicky, there are enough people using it to have figured out how it needs to be setup to at least run all of the popular games flawlessly, going as far as to determine which version of the emulator works/works best at what settings and on what hardware

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-wii-the-legend-of-zelda-twilight-princess

Never was able to get through a whole game without running into a game-breaking bug.

Wiis are so freakin cheap it doesn't even seem worth emulating anymore.

While I can understand that sentiment and would agree that Dolphin can be more trouble than its worth to completely replace using a Wii if you just want to pop in one of many different games whenever, if you care about playing just one or two games, Dolphin can turn Wii or even GameCube games into titles that could pass as next gen. Games that are otherwise underwhelming on the Wii can suddenly turn into breathtaking experiences, it can definitely be worthwhile to set up and deal with some issues for a playthrough of a big game like Mario or Zelda.

It's great. It's come a long ways in the last 6 months or so compared to where it was. I've played plenty of games w/o issue. It's not about cheapness, the games are simply BETTER on Dolphin.

I've played through Xenoblade, Luigis Mansion(GC) to name a few and currently playing Metroid Prime Corruption w/o issue.

I do say I prefer games that you can use the controller on rather than the wiimote, but the wiimote works great now. I just point it at my chandelier and it works.

I haven't tried Twilight Princess though, couldn't stand that game.

maybe it has improved a lot recently, but I remember using Dolphin to play Skyward Sword when it came out and I was able to, at least with some work, get it setup to play flawlessly @ 1080p with all the extra eyecandy, and that was back in 2011...

 

[ImpulsE69]

Possibly, I only started using it really in the last year and there were lots of bugs in the 3.0 to 3.5 code with various games (at least with the games I was interested in). So far 4.0 is a huge improvement.

 

[tential]

It's great. It's come a long ways in the last 6 months or so compared to where it was. I've played plenty of games w/o issue. It's not about cheapness, the games are simply BETTER on Dolphin.

I've played through Xenoblade, Luigis Mansion(GC) to name a few and currently playing Metroid Prime Corruption w/o issue.

I do say I prefer games that you can use the controller on rather than the wiimote, but the wiimote works great now. I just point it at my chandelier and it works.

I haven't tried Twilight Princess though, couldn't stand that game.

Can you delve into this more man?

I'd love for you to tell your whole experience as a person who ALWAYS wanted to get Dolphin Emulator working. I haven't had a decent enoug hPC until recently and haven't had the motivation to do so for fear I'd just never get it up and working.

If you can tell us your system/how long iit took you to get working and how you enjoy/use the system that'd be great. Since my HTPC was purchased to emulate the console experience, it'd be nice to have dolphin on it. Extremely nice actually.

Would LOVE to play some Zelda games right now lol. Windwaker in particular. Probably could play 10 hours today and not notice it.

Emulators usually require you to have top of the line stuff but Dolphin has been out for awhile I'm hoping my stock 4770k can handle it? (Don't laugh, I bought a 4770k to not overclock I know.... Maybe I will when I decide to buckle down and read up on how exactly to do it. Never needed the extra performance enough to care).

 

[shortylickens]

I have to agree with the above post.
Wii's are cheap and let you run old games. Thats the easy route in this situation.

 

[norseamd]

already have dolphin installed for gamecube games. no games have been downloaded yet because of the size. can you play wii games with a regular controller? was going to install the gamecube twilight princess but if i can play the wii version i might do that instead

 

[ImpulsE69]

I have to agree with the above post.
Wii's are cheap and let you run old games. Thats the easy route in this situation.

I would disagree, I don't have a single TV in my house that I can actually connect it to that it doesn't look like trash. I have one sitting here collecting dust because I just don't want to bother.

If you haven't tried Dolpin and seen exactly how much better it looks, then you can't really speak to which is better and it plays Gamecube games great as well.

I can go into details later, but I've only dealt with games that I actually own and not all of those. (like i have both mario galaxies but haven't bothered trying them in dolphin).

My system specs are 2500k@4.2, Gtx480 1.5 and 8GB ram. Everything else is standard fair.

 

[norseamd]

My system specs are 2500k@4.2, Gtx480 1.5 and 8GB ram. Everything else is standard fair.

would my system work?

8350 at 4.2 ghz (could go 4.4 ghz or more)
8 gb ram at 1866 at 9-11-9-27
2 gb asus direct cu 2 top 270x at 1175 and 1500 (always resets to 1120 and 1400 when restarted)

 

[mazeroth]

Your system will play 95% of the games at full speed, no problem. It's more of a CPU hog than anything, and that's only for a few select games (like the Mario Galaxy series). You should have no problem getting it up an running in 20-30 minutes, optimized for the games you want to play.

What's really fun is to launch a Wii game in its native 480p resolution and play it for a few minutes. Then jump out, crank it up to 1080p (3-4x internal res) and see the difference for yourself. It's staggering, especially on a 104" projection screen.

 

[norseamd]

What's really fun is to launch a Wii game in its native 480p resolution and play it for a few minutes. Then jump out, crank it up to 1080p (3-4x internal res) and see the difference for yourself. It's staggering, especially on a 104" projection screen.

the wii is 480p. how does it process the 1080p from the wii game code if it is not written for it

 

[Aikouka]

the wii is 480p. how does it process the 1080p from the wii game code if it is not written for it

I remember reading something about how some Wii games actually have higher resolution assets available on the disc, but they don't use it for obvious reasons. Also, the emulator can technically render the game in whatever size it wants. Most emulators are designed to interpret the game binary, which is usually in a different ISA than the host machine. Even if they aren't (e.g. XBOX, XBOX One, or PS4), it would still require some finagling to make it work on the host OS (e.g. translation to DirectX commands).

 

[Red Hawk]

I've tried out the Dolphin emulator, for Twilight Princess in fact. The thing about Twilight Princess is that you need a really fast CPU for accurate emulation. If it's too slow, then the audio desyncs and hitches all over the place. I've overclocked my 2500K to 4.2 GHz and it still gets audio glitches.

Twilight Princess looks great on Dolphin, though. You can actually turn up the native resolution to HD and add goodies like antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. It has Direct3D 9, OpenGL, and Direct3D 11 rendering modes, various graphics and performance options, and even different audio backends, so there's a lot of room to figure out what works best on your PC.

Emulators usually require you to have top of the line stuff but Dolphin has been out for awhile I'm hoping my stock 4770k can handle it? (Don't laugh, I bought a 4770k to not overclock I know.... Maybe I will when I decide to buckle down and read up on how exactly to do it. Never needed the extra performance enough to care).

As long as you overclock, your 4770K should be capable of playing it relatively smoothly. Just be sure to follow all the optimization guidelines on the official Dolphin wiki.

would my system work?

8350 at 4.2 ghz (could go 4.4 ghz or more)
8 gb ram at 1866 at 9-11-9-27
2 gb asus direct cu 2 top 270x at 1175 and 1500 (always resets to 1120 and 1400 when restarted)

Eh...while there is some multithreading built into Dolphin, it still very much needs high single-threaded performance, which your 8350 is not as good at as even my 2500K. It's worth a try, but you will definitely need to push to 4.4 GHz.

 

[Imaginer]

Can these emulators work in reading the game discs from a PC's optical drive?

I am asking this, because it is sometimes a bit longer in process to switch sources on the media receiver and then turning on the Wii U then having that boot into the Wii for these games.

I of course have Wii game discs to try and continue to play (obviously starting a new with game saves).

 

[norseamd]

Eh...while there is some multithreading built into Dolphin, it still very much needs high single-threaded performance, which your 8350 is not as good at as even my 2500K. It's worth a try, but you will definitely need to push to 4.4 GHz.

any difference between the wii and gamecube versions as far as performance?

and i know they are slightly different and such and both are flipped from each other so if you have played both which one would you recommend