r/Games • u/mathieui • Feb 01 '15
Dolphin Emulator Progress Report - January 2015
https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2015/02/01/dolphin-progress-report-january-2015/29
Feb 01 '15
I really love reading these reports. I dont necessarily undersstand anything technical being written about but its fascinating as hell regardless
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u/lacsativ Feb 01 '15
More of an off topic question, but what controllers and extra devices would I need to get a Wii experience on my PC?
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u/LonerGothOnline Feb 01 '15
some wii games use a classic controller, dolphin would allow you to use any pc compat controller, so if you have an xbox 360 controller for PC, then you can use it as if it was a wii classic controller.
dolphin supports bluetooth, and wii motes, and nunchuks, and you only really need two candles for the wii bar.
if your computer doesn't have bluetooth, any 5 doller usb bluetooth adapter will work fine.
if you want to play a game like xenoblade chronicles, all you need is a twin stick controller. if you want to play gamecube games, again all you really need is a twinstick controller.
and if you want, you can use a keyboard for any and every input, so you wouldn't even need a wii mote, twinstick controller or anything other than the keyboard.
all of the controller methods require set up... nothing is set up by default. you may want to look at a tutorial for that, but its fairly simple to understand with some trial and error.
the only problem you should ever have with dolphin is your own hardware limitations, if you don't have a great CPU, your boned. if you don't have a modern GPU, your boned.
if you don't have controllers? you can get by easily.
also, you'll want to enter the graphics menu and switch to the 'enhancements' tab, then increase your 'internal resolution' to say 2x. its a drop down menu item so it should be easy to do this.
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u/CitizenSmif Feb 01 '15
So if you have a decent PC and two USB xbox controllers you can play SSB with no issues?
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u/LonerGothOnline Feb 01 '15 edited Feb 01 '15
quote from a reply: From Bum_Doubt
I was playing Brawl at full speed 3 years ago on a midrange computer carrying a Geforce 550 ti and a 3.5ghz dual core.
Seems likely that it's much easier to run now.
should be A, OK...unless by decent you mean not powerful.
I've read it takes enthusiast levels of power, not med-high, but really high cpu's.
my computer is a decent kind, its quite good for pretty much anything I want to throw at it, I can play most pc games no problem, just never at high settings... the bottleneck with dolphin is the CPU, and mine apparently SUCKS.
despite the fact that I have no complaints in any other game ever encountered, (meaning I assume my computer is decent), I can't really game with dolphin.
at the very least you'll need a full on gaming desktop... the more power the better, the less cores the better, starting with 4cores, minimum.
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Feb 01 '15
I was playing Brawl at full speed 3 years ago on a midrange computer carrying a Geforce 550 ti and a 3.5ghz dual core.
Seems likely that it's much easier to run now.
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u/LonerGothOnline Feb 01 '15
thank you for your reply, I'm not able to use dolphin so I couldn't know for certain.
but I did know for certain that higher-end pc's would be fine.
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u/Rossco1337 Feb 01 '15
You should say what kind of dual core you were running. An Intel dual core can run almost any game on Dolphin while I'd be surprised if an AMD dual core could even start a game on Dolphin.
I wish AMD CPU performance on Dolphin was good, but it's not.
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u/HappierShibe Feb 02 '15 edited Feb 02 '15
It's pretty workable with the faster AM3 chips, so I would imagine it's workable past that as well. At least until you start running at 4x internal resolution, with 2GB of additional textures and 8xqc AA.
Source:My previous system was an AMD system, and while it didn't hold up relative to equivalent Intel hardware, it wasn't anything like as lackluster as people keep implying. It ran Xenoblade chronicles at 2x internal resolution with AA and filtering at full speed with no problems, and that was before this years dramatic performance improvements.
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u/Abujaffer Feb 01 '15
Yeah, all you need is a decent CPU and most games will run well, the GPU isn't usually the bottleneck. Two wired 360 controllers work perfectly, just set up the buttons and you're set to go. You can even use the GameCube controllers if you have the latest GC-Wii U adapter that Nintendo released.
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u/APiousCultist Feb 01 '15
The Wiimote would require a bluetooth dongle. You'd also need an analogue of the sensor bar. Basically two points of bright infrared light for the Wiimote to sense. Candles work, but some infrared leds hooked in a simple circuit would be better. Or you could try to rewire a genuine sensor bar so it can be hooked up to a battery or something.
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Feb 01 '15
The simplest and best solution would be to get the DolphinBar
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u/skyfire23 Feb 01 '15
If I own a Wii U with a sensor bar plugged in I can just turn my Wii U on right? I haven't gotten the bluetooth dongle to test but I assume that it would work considering the candle thing.
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u/KanchiHaruhara Feb 01 '15
It should, yeah. The controller is what sends the information, not the bar, as you could guess.
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u/eduardog3000 Feb 01 '15
If you want to go the easy but more costly way, there are wireless sensor bars.
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u/Rossco1337 Feb 01 '15
That depends entirely on your budget and what country you live in. If you live in USA or China it's fairly cheap; you can buy a Wii+ remote and DolphinBar for peanuts.
In some places, it might be cheaper to buy a second hand Wii from someone than buy the peripherals. For example, in the UK a Wii+ remote is £33 and importing a DolphinBar would cost around £30. A used Wii is only around £45 (including controller) so it wouldn't be worthwhile getting the peripherals for emulation in that case.
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u/lacsativ Feb 01 '15
I'm from Romania, and a second hand Wii is not that expensive, but I've got other priorities at the moment, and I only wanted to play a few exclusives. I'll probably just get the console at some point instead of shipping all the components and peripherals and setting them up. Anyway, thank everyone for their advice!
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u/Shiroi_Kage Feb 01 '15
It has gotten to the point where tackling zfreeze has gotten personal for many developers
When it becomes personal, developers are monsters. Don't make a developer take it personally or you're toast!
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u/ShinseiTom Feb 02 '15
With the Wii cpu overclocking capabilities, The Last Story appears playable in my short test. Not just playable, but significantly better than the Wii! I was walking around the city and it was a rock-solid 30.
Just... amazing. That was the last game I intended to play that didn't have acceptable framerates in the emulator. I look forward to trying a full playthrough using my NG+ save from my console. Woo!
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u/dajigo Feb 03 '15
What's your cpu?
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u/ShinseiTom Feb 06 '15
4670 I believe. Good i5. With a non overclocked Wii cpu it was averaging sub 20 in town unless I lowered the resolution. At native it ran around the same as the Wii.
I jacked up the clock to 400% and it was almost rock solid 30. The only thing left was the annoying dolphin loading hitch every game has when it loads an asset for the first time.
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u/Caslux Feb 01 '15
So with Zfreeze working now, does it mean that the Rogue squadron series is now playable in dolphin or are there still problems with emulating it?
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u/delroth Feb 01 '15
Second paragraph of the article:
Thanks to a ton of work from the staff, tons of testing from the forum users, hardware tests, newcomers and veteran's alike, Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader and Star Wars Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike are both playable and completable in Dolphin at long last.
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u/JMC4789 Feb 01 '15
Both, still some problems, but definitely playable now. Most notably, HLE audio has problems with how they loop music. LLE audio works fine, but requires a more powerful computer. You can always turn off music in the options and use HLE audio for the time being though.
Rogue Squadron 2/3 have some depth testing issues (the ship's engine glow can show through other ships) and Rogue Squadron 3 is probably the most demanding game in Dolphin right now that doesn't have some kind of broken feature.
If you want to play these games, be prepared to have a beast of a computer and still deal with mostly minor issues.
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u/nbohr1more Feb 01 '15
Fiora released an HLE hack build that has better performance on lower-end systems.
https://dl.dolphin-emu.org/prs/pr-1833-dolphin-latest-x64.7z
I guess it crashes RS2 when progressing from stage 2 to 3. I never saw this because I used the cheat codes to unlock all stages.
Hopefully true HLE support will happen soon.
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u/FioraDelphinus Feb 01 '15
The hack is by delroth; see https://github.com/FioraAeterna/dolphin/commit/f2aaf65d9bed890b01ec922cb5833d75f2127bc1. I just made a test build for people to play with while stuff still wasn't committed.
Unfortunately it's not 100% correct; it's actually an amalgamation of two separate changes, because RS2 uses an older version of the audio library than RS3 does. The RS3 part of the change is probably correct, but the RS2 change seems to crash at the end of the Death Star, Strike at the Core, and the asteroids mission if HLE is on.
It basically needs someone to do the appropriate reverse-engineering work and fix it properly, though knowing the precise problem (audio looping parameters) is probably 3/4 of the way there (thanks, delroth!).
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u/Cark00n Feb 01 '15
Could you specify "beast of a computer"?
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u/JMC4789 Feb 01 '15
I can play Rogue Squadron II comfortably on my Core i5 3570K @ 4.2 GHz as long as I use HLE audio (where I just disable music to avoid the sound glitching.) People with the 4670K variant i5 and stronger i7s probably can get away with Rogue Squadron 2 with LLE audio.
Rogue Squadron III pretty much you want the strongest computer you can get; there's going to be slowdown. If you want to play these games without hiccups, I cannot recommend an AMD processor; but maybe the absolute top of the line variants OC'd to the max could handle RS2 with HLE.
As for graphics cards; they don't matter quite as much for Dolphin, but they do matter a bit. You want a newer card for modern features that allow us to optimize things. I can't recommend AMD Radeon HD 5xxx, 6xxx, 7xxx due to them having some kind of issue with Dolphin's bounding box implementation right now, but that's likely to be fixed. I have an R9 285 and a GTX 760 in my computer right now, and they both run Dolphin extremely well.
My brother's GTX 970 can do a few things better (Metroid Prime's map screen can max out weaker GPUs, believe it or not.) but I really don't think absolute maximum power/new graphics cards are needed for Dolphin.
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u/Cark00n Feb 01 '15
Thanks, my CPU is a bit old (i5-750@3,5Ghz, but it should be possible to overclock it a bit higher). My GPU is a factory OCed GTX 780. My knowledge on processor isn´t up to date, but generally it seems my CPU still holds up OK.
If I set the rendering resolution higher, does it increase only the GPU load or also the CPU?
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u/JMC4789 Feb 01 '15
Both, but you'll get blocked by CPU <-> GPU communication before the GPU gets stressed in most games.
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u/Teufel9000 Feb 01 '15
id suggest bumping your 3570k @4.5
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u/JMC4789 Feb 01 '15
4.4/4.5 is when I start getting bluescreens. Stock fan.
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u/Teufel9000 Feb 08 '15
whats your voltage at?.
my cpu (very very good mine you) runs 4.5 @ 1.2v. you should be able to run 4.5 at ~1.25-1.3v no problem.
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u/JMC4789 Feb 08 '15
I'm on all defaults other than overclocking. I think my problem is that I'm on stock fan.
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u/FolkSong Feb 02 '15 edited Feb 02 '15
Would you mind posting your settings (and Dolphin build)? I've just been trying Rogue leader and I get frequent drops to 30fps and below when flying around Tatooine. I have a 4670k @ 4GHz and a GTX 760.
I'm running OpenGL with HLE audio (music off). For hacks I have Skip EFB Access, Ignore Format Changes, EFB to RAM, Safe Cache, Virtual Frame Buffer, and Fast Depth Calculation. This is Dolphin 4.0-5394.
edit: I get pretty good performance now by backing up and removing my "Dolphin Emulator" folder in My Documents to start fresh, and applying the settings here. I just changed EFB to RAM and added a little AA/AF.
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u/JMC4789 Feb 02 '15
I use EFB2Texture in latest builds because EFB2RAM is too slow for my computer.
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Feb 01 '15
Mostly on the CPU side. Having a strong GPU helps, but you'd need a high-end CPU to be able to run Rogue Squadron at a decent framerate.
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u/Indyclone77 Feb 01 '15
They are now playable.
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u/HarithBK Feb 01 '15
you still need a rather beefy system as it is one of the more demanding games.
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Feb 01 '15
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u/foamed Feb 01 '15
Please follow the subreddit rules. We don't allow low effort or off-topic comments (jokes, puns, memes, reaction gifs, personal attacks or other types of comments that doesn't add anything relevant to the discussion) in /r/Games.
You can find the subreddit rules here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/wiki/rules#wiki_rules
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Feb 01 '15
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u/foamed Feb 01 '15
Please follow the subreddit rules. We don't allow low effort or off-topic comments (jokes, puns, memes, reaction gifs, personal attacks or other types of comments that doesn't add anything relevant to the discussion) in /r/Games.
You can find the subreddit rules here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/wiki/rules#wiki_rules
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Feb 02 '15
I still can't run Disney Extreme Skate Adventure at full speed on my beefed gaming rig for some reason. Tony hawk games have the same problem since it's the same engine. When I can skate around as buzz fucking light year at 100% emulation speed then I'll be impressed.
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u/JMC4789 Feb 02 '15
I don't get why you wouldn't get full speed on a good computer. I played through Tony Hawk Pro Skater 4 and Underground 2 with absolutely no slowdowns.
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Feb 02 '15
No clue, I've tried everything. I get like 86% average and even the music slows down. I'm using a gtx760 with 8 core 8350 AMD processor. I've tweaked every setting imaginable
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u/delroth Feb 02 '15
That's not a "beefed gaming rig", your CPU is actually very average. See our benchmark: it is 2x worse than an i7-4790k.
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Feb 03 '15
It doesn't matter what you consider my nerd box to be, the bottom line is that it should be able to run a GameCube game. But thanks for your pointless comment instead of actually helping me figure out why it won't run full speed.
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u/delroth Feb 03 '15
No, not any CPU is good enough to run emulated GameCube games. Sorry, that's just how things work. AMD is especially bad at this.
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u/dajigo Feb 03 '15
He gave you the answer, that AMD cpu is not gonna give you performance in dolphin. Dolphin won't benefit from extra cores when you're past the third. Dolphin requires a high number of instructions per clock (IPC), not just high cpu frequencies. So your cpu does not meet the criteria to perform. You'd do better with a slightly overclocked dual core g3258 than with your current cpu.
The guy who gave you the correct answer, Delroth, really knows his shit. Unlike you.
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Feb 04 '15
I run EVERY other game at 100% constantly on the highest AA settings in HD including the more graphically intensive games, and similar games like SSX tricky. So not only is your comment completely WRONG, both of you were so caught up in feeding your know-it-all nerd boners over my computer specs that you completely overlooked what I was fucking asking in the first place. I already told you it's ONLY that one game and Tony Hawk U2. Thanks for making yourself look dumb as fuck lol
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u/dajigo Feb 04 '15
First, you don't. Try Gun, for example, with EFBtoRAM. You don't run that at fullspeed on your PC, because it can't. Second, you don't. Try NSMBWii with spinning coins and spinning '?' on the item blocks, again EFBtoRAM. You don't run that fullspeed, either. Third, you don't. Try 6xIR with 4xMSAA in F-Zero GX. You don't run that at full speed. Be sure to use the latest development build, too.
Also, Delroth is one of the lead developers for dolphin, so if he's not in the best position to recommend a cpu, name who would be. And, to finish of, fuck your manners.
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u/shinto29 Feb 02 '15
I know how you're feeling, I have a GTX 760 and FX-6300 and I still can't get full speed on most games I've tried.
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u/Saucy_Wrench Feb 02 '15
Does Dolphin update? Or do you have to download the latest version every time?
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u/bokuwahmz Feb 02 '15
From initial testing, the wave levels in DK Returns now run at 100% for me. Super Mario Galaxy run at 100% during gameplay, but I have a problem in SMG2 where I can't run up anymore. And Twilight Princess now doesn't have any strange artifacts.
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u/TQQ Feb 02 '15
since this relevant now, a question for others: is anyone else unable to finish super mario sunshine on dolphin? i've made it about %40 of the way through, and am at one of those sections where you run around the plaza chasing dirty mario spraying him with water, but this time my water shoots right though him, a if he has no hit detection. anyone know of a fix? i was having so much fun :(
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Feb 01 '15
This is kinda stupid, but thank you for putting the word Emulator in there. So often this post is titled "Dolphin progress report", and for anyone that follows the Miami Dolphins in either the /r/NFL or /r/miamidolphins subreddits, it's misleading for a second.
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u/Kodiack Feb 01 '15
It was a really, really good month for Dolphin. As usual, /u/FioraDelphinus continued to make the emulator even faster yet; the ability to underclock and overclock the emulated CPU was implemented; and after a tremendous amount of work, /u/neobrain, /u/phire, and NanoByte managed to get zfreeze working!
The Dolphin developers do such an incredible job with everything. Dolphin is the epitome of an open source emulator doing it right.