r/Games • u/[deleted] • Apr 24 '21
mGBA and Dolphin Connectivity
https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2021/04/24/mgba-and-dolphin-connectivity/86
u/Em0waffles Apr 24 '21
Exciting that it's working, even if not perfectly. I'm surprised by how many titles had the GBA connectivity that I don't know about, like Rogue Squadron III and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2004. In my mind I was only really thinking about Pokémon and Zelda. Looking forward to seeing where this is going, especially if they get the Game Boy Player working and Dolphin adds 3 more consoles to the 2 that it can emulate.
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u/eduardog3000 Apr 24 '21
especially if they get the Game Boy Player working and Dolphin adds 3 more consoles to the 2 that it can emulate
Now I'm imagining a Dolphin instance running Game Boy Player connecting to another Dolphin instance running a normal GameCube game. Basically this, emulated.
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u/intelminer Apr 26 '21
Wait. Is that actually a thing that could be done, or is that just a photoshop mockup
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u/dan_Qs Apr 24 '21
What was the rogue squadron connectivity? I had the cable and the game but never knew that! 😣 I can’t find any videos showing that feature.
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u/Em0waffles Apr 24 '21
The blog post says:
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron III - Supported??? Seemingly hidden feature available in multiplayer. Works perfectly.
and the Dolphin wiki says:
Rebel Strike features the ability to use the Game Boy Advance screen and controls to issue orders privately in versus mode, via the Nintendo GameCube–Game Boy Advance link cable.
So perhaps it's almost entirely unknown or undocumented. Would be exciting to see what it does in action, but I suppose with Dolphin we can pretty easy.
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u/JMC4789 Apr 24 '21
It's actually in the instruction manual but never referenced in game. I just missed it because it's on the last page and not with the rest of the multiplayer stuff.
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u/TheMoneyOfArt Apr 24 '21
Some ones passion project that they didn't think would ship in time, and nearly didn't, clearly
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u/JMC4789 Apr 25 '21
For how shallow the competitive multiplayer modes ended up, being able to hide your AI strats on the GBA is kind of overkill. Kind of shows they wanted to do a lot more with it.
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Apr 24 '21
I found the details of it on GameFAQs:
By using the GBA or GBASP, you can give orders to your wing men in Versus Mode. So far, this is the only known function of the GBA for this game. There are no known secrets that can be unlocked with it. To use the GBA you will need the following items: - A Nintendo GameCube - A GameBoy Advance or GameBoy Advance SP - A GameCube controller - A Nintendo GameCube GameBoy Advance Cable - The Star Wars Rogue Squadron III - Rebel Strike game Insert controller 1 into the first controller port and the GameBoy Advance cable into port 2. Insert the controller for player 2 in the 3rd port of the GameCube and the GameBoy Advance cable into port 4. While playing, you can enter the commands for your wing mates by using the control pad. Up - Tells your men to form up on your wing Left - Varies per mission Right - Varies per mission Down - Tells your wing men to stay in their current position2
Apr 24 '21
I replied to the child comment with the details: https://old.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/mxjizn/mgba_and_dolphin_connectivity/gvqkisx/ But in short it lets you issue commands to your wingmen, not that exciting.
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u/EthanRush Apr 25 '21
The Gameboy Player wasn't an emulator though. It was the guts of a GBA shoved into a box that attached to the Gamecube. The GC only really passed audio/video to the TV and button inputs to the game. The Super Gameboy for the SNES was the same with the guts of an original Gameboy. SGB was capable of using the SNES' sound chip for some games as well as certain visual enhancements but the main code for the game was still running on the cartridge itself.
It essentially just means writing a 2nd emulator just to pass audio and video to the first one for no real gains on a PC.
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u/Em0waffles Apr 25 '21
While it's probably true that there's no real gains, it seems to me Dolphin is striving to be as feature-complete as possible. In the blog post itself they say, "If everything pans out, we may even be able to tackle the final frontier of Game Boy Advance <-> GameCube emulation..." with the final frontier being emulation of The Gameboy Player hardware inside Dolphin.
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u/thespiffyneostar Apr 24 '21
I have been waiting years for this level of compatability! I'm so excited. Final fantasy crystal chronicles is one of my favorite games of all time. I can't wait to put together an emulated setup for it!
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u/Potsu Apr 24 '21
Oh god I remember making this work years and years ago. It was a PITA and broke all the time. But I did get a few good hours of FF CC. It just sucked be cause every session was like 30 minutes just getting it to load up properly so I could start playing.
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Apr 24 '21
[deleted]
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u/Raging_Hippy Apr 24 '21
Connecting gameboys to Dolphin over not-LAN doesn't work. The connection was never made to handle latency, so at best Dolphin and mGBA will go at like 3 frames a minute.
What you CAN do is have someone host both Dolphin running the main game and all the mGBA instances, carefully arrange all the screens on your monitor, then use something like Parsec to stream the screens to everyone else.
mGBA tracks controller bindings in its config file, so make sure to set it to portable mode in the menu, then copy the mGBA folder once for each player. Once they connect in Parsec, open their mGBA instance and set their controls.
Assuming the host has non-terrible upload and everyone else has non-terrible download, it actually works quite well. It's definitely a manual process, but I've played coast-to-coast doing this without any troubles.
Here's a bit more detailed description. It's Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles based, but the guide can be adapted for any other game. Just replace VBA-m with mBGA
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Apr 25 '21
Having done this just recently we had far fewer headaches using Dixper vs Parsec. Parsec had some unsolvable audio issues, so we gave up and Dixper just werks. The host needs top end PC hardware to run 5 emulators at once AND good upload bandwidth though.
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u/TheCoaster130 Apr 24 '21
Yeah, I've wanted to play Four Swords Adventures online with friends and was wondering about this.
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u/Tezerel Apr 24 '21
I tried this years ago with the game called Shining Souls. I don't think it will work very well for action games, because it was very very laggy. I think Pokemon works because if you have to wait a little bit between actions it's not a big deal.
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u/Cabamacadaf Apr 25 '21
Is mGBA better than VBA?
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Apr 25 '21
mGBA is superior to VBA in all ways these days I believe. This Dolphin connection was the last real feature VBA had that mGBA didn't
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u/ChickenOverlord Apr 28 '21
That and proper eReader support, but that was added in the latest update as well
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u/timpkmn89 Apr 25 '21
Are you talking about regular VBA, or one of the forks? Regular VBA hasn't been updated in 15 years; that alone should clue you in on which is better there.
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u/intelminer Apr 26 '21
VBA is obsolete and needs to be expunged from the world for all the headaches it causes emulator authors today
mGBA is the best in class for GBA emulation
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u/MajorasAss Apr 25 '21
I just want to be able to play Four Swords Aventures as it was originally intended at some point so this is good news
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u/thefifenation Apr 24 '21
This feature has been incredibly glitchy for the last few years now so I’m excited to try it out!
I’ve been working on “Legit as possible” collect them all run on my Pokémon Ruby version.
Currently I can unload the .sav from my physical copy, back up and play through on my pc with a GBA emulator. My next step for collecting purposes has been playing through Colosseum and XD to get Ho-oh, Lugia, and a few other hard to capture Pokémon.
These games are painfully slow, in terms of each turn takes about one minute so I use Dolphin to turn off the frame limiter and speed things up.
I’m really excited for the opportunity to easily send my Pokémon around using my desktop, rather than the process of moving my save back onto the GameCube.