Dolphin Emulator?

[tential]

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.



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.



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.

That's disappointing. I was looking forward to a day where Dolphin would get to a point where a processor liek the 4770k wouldn't still need OCing to achieve playable frame rates. But I also assume this is in part because we're upping the resolution to 1080p?

As for people saying that why not get a Wii? As said, the games look far more beautiful in 1080p. I have a 1080p HDTV, this isn't the stone age. I don't want to play games at low resolutions I want to see them at 1080p on a big screen. Biggest reason I don't play the Wii or Gamecube is resolution is horrible so it's not even worth playing it on my 70 inch HDTV.

 

[Red Hawk]

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

Actually yes, the Wii version is more demanding. I can play the start of the Gamecube version of Twilight Princess fairly smoothly with only the occasional sound glitch, while the Wii version had sound glitches all over the place. I asked on the Dolphin forums why that was happening, and I was told that Wii games are generally 50% more demanding on Dolphin than Gamecube games.

As for which version, if you have a PC gamepad, the Gamecube version is probably the best. You can just plug in the gamepad and control the game exactly how you would control it on the console. You need a Wiimote, bluetooth radio, and a sensor bar in order to get the full experience of the Wii version.

That's disappointing. I was looking forward to a day where Dolphin would get to a point where a processor liek the 4770k wouldn't still need OCing to achieve playable frame rates. But I also assume this is in part because we're upping the resolution to 1080p?

As for people saying that why not get a Wii? As said, the games look far more beautiful in 1080p. I have a 1080p HDTV, this isn't the stone age. I don't want to play games at low resolutions I want to see them at 1080p on a big screen. Biggest reason I don't play the Wii or Gamecube is resolution is horrible so it's not even worth playing it on my 70 inch HDTV.

The graphics aren't the most demanding thing about Dolphin, the audio really is. Even if you kept the resolution at the original setting, and you didn't add any graphical extras, the audio still needs lots of CPU cycles or it starts glitching. That's just how the emulation is.

 

[avatar82]

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

the wii only outputs at 480p thats true but for our purposes we don't care about the wiis capabilities on an emulator with graphical enhancements.

You can render the textures at whatever resolution you want "internal resolution upscale" before it gets scaled to the resolution of your monitor. it's a feature all the prominent emulators have now that just ignores the "output limitation" of the original hardware in this case 480p.

here is a playstation 2 game at native resolution
http://i.imgur.com/dc5ah.jpg

and playstation 2 internal resolution 4x native
http://i.imgur.com/7PT1B.jpg

wii at native res
http://i.imgur.com/8Z9RkZH.png

and wii at 4x native res
http://i.imgur.com/L1uIx2L.png

now imagine if you turn on anti-aliasing

 

[Revolution 11]

Try Dolphin again if you thought it was not that good in the past. It has really improved in the last year with much better audio DSP emulation and more accurate emulation in general.

 

[norseamd]

Try Dolphin again if you thought it was not that good in the past. It has really improved in the last year with much better audio DSP emulation and more accurate emulation in general.

will a sound card do anything? also what do you recommend for other system emulators?

mess would not work for me. do you know how mess even works?

 

[Aikouka]

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).

From what I remember, it was a lot easier to just download a game that you own. Only specific drives can read Wii discs, and they're old, IDE-based clunkers! However, last I checked (months ago), you could get them on eBay for about $25.

 

[Revolution 11]

will a sound card do anything? also what do you recommend for other system emulators?

mess would not work for me. do you know how mess even works?

No, I meant the Gamecube/Wii's audio DSPs and how they are used in game emulation, not the user's sound card. Older versions of Dolphin had glitchy gameplay often because of bad sound emulation.

I like Snes9x and bsnes for the Super Nintendo, Project64 1.6 for the N64, and PCSX2 for the PS2. Have not decided on the best emulator for the Sega Saturn and PS1.

 

[bunnyfubbles]

will a sound card do anything?

it won't help with the emulation process load, but it will allow you to hear sound over your analog speakers or headphones

 

[Anarchist420]

yes, zelda TP for the gamecube works perfectly on dolphin with my setup and the config i choose. basically, it looks how it should've looked on the original hardware... dont know what nintendo was thinking when they spend all of that money on R&D for crappy hardware that couldn't even do properly rotated grid AA or ARGB8 when they could've just used off the shelf components. Nintendo would've been wiser to have just licensed a VSA-100 from 3dfx, built it on a new process, used an A3D audio processor, used a DVD drive, given it a hard drive, and used an intel CPU (or simply used an off-the-shelf Power PC and clocked it higher).

when you add in per pixel depth, per pixel lighting, trilinear filtering, set the res right so texture aliasing is at a minimum, and 4x SSAA (which is actually properly rotated grid, not downsampling) under OpenGL on an nv GPU (with GPU scaling set along with no scaling, override app scaling, and negative LOD bias clamped as that works for OGL still), it looks sweet as hell.

 

[tential]

Try Dolphin again if you thought it was not that good in the past. It has really improved in the last year with much better audio DSP emulation and more accurate emulation in general.

My biggest issue with trying Dolphin is that it still lists most games as being only "playable" with still graphical/audio issues and it says the issues are only "minor". Ok, how minor?

With such a small selection of games that work perfectly fine it's hard for me to want to try the emulator knowing full well I'll always have to look to the forums to trouble shoot every single game.

 

[ImpulsE69]

My biggest issue with trying Dolphin is that it still lists most games as being only "playable" with still graphical/audio issues and it says the issues are only "minor". Ok, how minor?

With such a small selection of games that work perfectly fine it's hard for me to want to try the emulator knowing full well I'll always have to look to the forums to trouble shoot every single game.

Then emulation isn't for you. They aren't for the lazy.

 

[tential]

Then emulation isn't for you. They aren't for the lazy.

Other emulators before dolphin didn't have only 8% of titles fully playable. They had a lot more. I'm fine with emulation/tinkering if I can get quite a decent number of games working.

If I can't get the majority of big titles to work flawlessly not really a point. I've used pretty much the majority of emulators before Dolphin and have been happy with them. Dolphin though just has too few games working for me. I'm there to play games, not troubleshoot emulators. Other emulators have a far wider group of playable/flawlessly working games.

 

[ImpulsE69]

Other emulators before dolphin didn't have only 8% of titles fully playable. They had a lot more. I'm fine with emulation/tinkering if I can get quite a decent number of games working.

If I can't get the majority of big titles to work flawlessly not really a point. I've used pretty much the majority of emulators before Dolphin and have been happy with them. Dolphin though just has too few games working for me. I'm there to play games, not troubleshoot emulators. Other emulators have a far wider group of playable/flawlessly working games.

Like I said, emulation isn't for you. It's not an exact science. You want 100% compatibility, get a Wii and wait for 10-15 years to try Dolphin. I grew up helping with emulation of various systems (mostly SNES). Games not working is nothing new. This era most of those emulators have been worked on for over a decade and are still not perfect. Dolphin is still very new by comparison. Emulation requires most games each have their own hacks and tricks to make them work correctly...and flawless is a term that describes maybe 5% of the games out there on any system. Many older emulators get around some things simply by the sheer horsepower of todays computers. Newer gen consoles don't have that luxury and will need to wait until later.

I'm not being an ass, I'm just stating the reality of the situation. It's not for everyone, especially if you are the "gotta have it now" type. People that cry "this game don't work why???" are not the people these are for.

 

[sweenish]

Then emulation isn't for you. They aren't for the lazy.

That's not true at all. The emulator just needs more work (if it's accurate, games don't need hacks), and it's up to each person to decide how much trouble they want to go through.

Nestopia, bsnes (or higen now, I guess), psX, PCSX2 etc. all run flawlessly and barely require the user to fiddle with anything. Even when they do, it's one and done, not a game-by-game basis. Outside of button assignments and finding a front-end, even MAME doesn't require a lot of fiddling.

It's just as much about tolerance levels as it is emulator maturity.

 

[norseamd]

Like I said, emulation isn't for you. It's not an exact science. You want 100% compatibility, get a Wii and wait for 10-15 years to try Dolphin. I grew up helping with emulation of various systems (mostly SNES). Games not working is nothing new. This era most of those emulators have been worked on for over a decade and are still not perfect. Dolphin is still very new by comparison. Emulation requires most games each have their own hacks and tricks to make them work correctly...and flawless is a term that describes maybe 5% of the games out there on any system. Many older emulators get around some things simply by the sheer horsepower of todays computers. Newer gen consoles don't have that luxury and will need to wait until later. I'm not being an ass, I'm just stating the reality of the situation. It's not for everyone, especially if you are the "gotta have it now" type. People that cry "this game don't work why???" are not the people these are for.

what games work on dolphin without much effort?

got the socom demo working on pcsx2 without any trouble at all. the problem was that the other isos i downloaded were corrupt. where can i get good iso image files for ps2

 

[futurefields]

what games work on dolphin without much effort?

There's a compatibility rating on the official Dolphin website. I'm assuming anything with 5/5 is very playable.

 

[futurefields]

Do you need to use .torrents to download games?

If so I guess I won't be able to try it anytime soon, torrents kill our router and I don't always have access to the router (house share situation)

oh well.

 

[lamedude]

A hacked Wii can rip games.

 

[Red Hawk]

yes, zelda TP for the gamecube works perfectly on dolphin with my setup and the config i choose. basically, it looks how it should've looked on the original hardware... dont know what nintendo was thinking when they spend all of that money on R&D for crappy hardware that couldn't even do properly rotated grid AA or ARGB8 when they could've just used off the shelf components. Nintendo would've been wiser to have just licensed a VSA-100 from 3dfx, built it on a new process, used an A3D audio processor, used a DVD drive, given it a hard drive, and used an intel CPU (or simply used an off-the-shelf Power PC and clocked it higher).

when you add in per pixel depth, per pixel lighting, trilinear filtering, set the res right so texture aliasing is at a minimum, and 4x SSAA (which is actually properly rotated grid, not downsampling) under OpenGL on an nv GPU (with GPU scaling set along with no scaling, override app scaling, and negative LOD bias clamped as that works for OGL still), it looks sweet as hell.

The Gamecube compared favorably to the Xbox and PS2 as far as hardware goes, any better would have probably pushed up the price of the system. It's also good that they didn't go with Intel for the CPU; Microsoft used an Intel CPU for the Xbox and got screwed over later because Intel wouldn't reduce the price of each chip even as the chips got cheaper to make, IIRC. That's why they switched to a PowerPC design which they held all the rights to with the 360.

Do you need to use .torrents to download games?

If so I guess I won't be able to try it anytime soon, torrents kill our router and I don't always have access to the router (house share situation)

oh well.

Gamecube ISOs can generally be found on the same websites that host ROMs for older consoles, no torrenting needed. Wii ISOs take a little more digging, but I found a site that didn't require torrenting. Due to the...questionable legality...of downloading ISOs, I can't provide a link to it, but it's not that hard to find.

 

[ImpulsE69]

That's not true at all. The emulator just needs more work (if it's accurate, games don't need hacks), and it's up to each person to decide how much trouble they want to go through.

Nestopia, bsnes (or higen now, I guess), psX, PCSX2 etc. all run flawlessly and barely require the user to fiddle with anything. Even when they do, it's one and done, not a game-by-game basis. Outside of button assignments and finding a front-end, even MAME doesn't require a lot of fiddling.

It's just as much about tolerance levels as it is emulator maturity.

All of those have been developed much (and some much much much much) longer than Dolphin or are spin-offs of older existing emulators. You're proving my point. If you want to emulate last gen 100% you're going to be waiting awhile. It's that simple.

 

[Red Hawk]

And keep in mind that the creator of Bsnes/higan said that it's pretty hard, relatively speaking, to get perfect emulation of just the SNES. Something like 3 GHz on a modern CPU, which is a lot of processing power compared to the actual SNES.

 

[Revolution 11]

And keep in mind that the creator of Bsnes/higan said that it's pretty hard, relatively speaking, to get perfect emulation of just the SNES. Something like 3 GHz on a modern CPU, which is a lot of processing power compared to the actual SNES.

Actually, what he said was that to have reasonably accurate emulation for the SNES, you need about 3 Ghz CPUs. If you want perfectly accurate emulation, 3 Ghz would be just enough for the original Pong.

 

[Anarchist420]

The Gamecube compared favorably to the Xbox and PS2 as far as hardware goes, any better would have probably pushed up the price of the system. It's also good that they didn't go with Intel for the CPU; Microsoft used an Intel CPU for the Xbox and got screwed over later because Intel wouldn't reduce the price of each chip even as the chips got cheaper to make, IIRC. That's why they switched to a PowerPC design which they held all the rights to with the 360.

you're right although nintendo still could've come up with some off-shelf combination and saved money... microsoft was trying to make a PC in a box and for that they needed an x86 processor but nintendo wasnt.

 

[Fox5]

Intel cpus are better at emulation anyway. Apparently their cache setup makes a huge difference, and some of their additional SSE instructions sets put them ahead of AMD.

Anarchist420: You don't understand how engineering works, and I'm not sure why you're focused on 3dfx, which was a defunct company by the time the GameCube launched. IT costs a lot of money to "shrink or update" a chip, and without the original company, that wasn't going to happen. Heck, it cost so much money, that even 3dfx couldn't update their own chips!

That said, Nintendo has used ATI/AMD for their last 3 consoles. When the GameCube game out, the chip was reasonably powerful compared to ATI's best (like a Geforce 2 GTS/Radeon 8000), but the Wii and Wii U were vastly underpowered even compared to low end chips.

 

[sweenish]

Then emulation isn't for you. They aren't for the lazy.

All of those have been developed much (and some much much much much) longer than Dolphin or are spin-offs of older existing emulators. You're proving my point. If you want to emulate last gen 100% you're going to be waiting awhile. It's that simple.

No, you never talked specifically about last gen only not being for people.

You said emulation in general wasn't for them, which I showed to be false.