• Dolphin 4.0 released, has support for online Wii games now, 2500 changes
    125 replies, posted
[QUOTE]On behalf of the Dolphin Emulator development team, I am pleased to announce the release of Dolphin 4.0, the newest major release of the most compatible and most performant GameCube and Wii emulator for PC. Dolphin 4.0 is a special release for all of us, since it also marks the 10 years anniversary of the project, first unveiled by Henryk Rydgård (ector) in September 2003. Dolphin 4.0 can be downloaded for Windows (x86 or x64), Mac OS X (>= 10.7) or Ubuntu 13.04 from our official website: dolphin-emu.org. Changelog With about 2500 changes since Dolphin 3.5, Dolphin 4.0 is a big release with the addition of several new major features: Beta support for the Wii official online multiplayer (Documentation) This is a feature that has been coming for a long time. More than two years ago, Matthew Parlane and Shawn Hoffman started working on emulating the Wii Wi-Fi networking API in order to run Wii online multiplayer games inside Dolphin. While it was not an easy change in itself, it also required a lot of modifications to core components of the emulator to be implemented properly (for example asynchronous IPC HLE) and a lot of debugging. It is now working well enough that we are releasing it to the public as a beta: don't expect everything to work, but popular games like Mario Kart Wii or Super Smash Bros Brawl can be played online right now. Alpha support for ARM/Android About two years ago, Ryan Houdek began the implementation of an ARM port of Dolphin, designed to run on powerful mobile phones and other ARM devices in the future. After a long time spent making Dolphin work well on both ARM and x86, Dolphin can now emulate GameCube and Wii games on recent Android phones. This support is still in early alpha stages: crashes happen, it's slow on Qualcomm hardware because of graphics drivers issues, and it is still missing a ton of features. Nowadays, Dolphin on Android is a two man project: Mathew Maidment is helping Ryan with the UI and making the Android version actually usable. Global User directory on Windows (Documentation) This is not exactly a major feature, but it is a big change in how Dolphin works on Windows, and requires user interaction to move from the old configuration system to the new one. Before 4.0, Dolphin configuration was stored next to Dolphin.exe, often causing issues when upgrading to a new version of Dolphin. New versions of Dolphin use a centralized location to store the configuration for all builds, usually My Documents\Dolphin Emulator. The documentation article linked above explains the details of this move, as well as what you need to do to migrate your old configuration to the new system (if you were using Dolphin before). New AX DSP HLE emulation code DSP HLE is the main audio emulation technique used in Dolphin. Before 4.0, it was extremely inaccurate and full of bugs, mostly due to how it was implemented. Dolphin 4.0 introduces a full rewrite of the audio emulation used in 99% of games, fixing hundreds of audio related bugs in Dolphin. On the flip side, it is now required to run a game at full speed to get full speed audio out of it, which is a direct consequence of fixing these bugs. A lot of more minor changes were also integrated in that new Dolphin release: New look A new look has been designed by MaJoR for Dolphin (new icon, new icon theme) and implemented on a new version of the Dolphin website by Pierre Bourdon. Wii Balance Board and GC Steering Wheel support Support for these two devices was added respectively by Matthew Parlane and skidau. The Wii Balance Board is not emulated and requires the real device to be used. Wii Remote support improvements Wii Remote background scanning was implemented to more closely match how a real Wii detects remotes, and support for -TR (Wii Motion Plus Inside) remotes was implemented for Mac OS X. A new documentation guide about Wii Remotes on Dolphin was also written by MaJoR to help Windows users with Wiimote issues. Fastmem support for Linux and OS X Fastmem is an optimization for Dolphin's CPU emulation, which was previously only implemented on Windows. Adding Fastmem support on Linux and OS X boosted the performance by 15 to 20% on these platforms. New OpenAL audio backend This audio backend, written by skidau, supports three important features that are not implemented in other backends yet: configurable audio latency, surround sound using the information contained in the Dolby Pro Logic II encoding used by most GameCube and Wii games, and support for sound stretching to make audio slow down when a game does not run at full speed. OpenGL video backend rewrite The Dolphin OpenGL video backend was rewritten by Markus Wick in order to use newer features of OpenGL and be GLES3 compatible. As a result, the OpenGL backend is now the fastest Dolphin video backend on NVIDIA cards. NetPlay stability and usability improvements Before Dolphin 4.0, GameCube NetPlay was at best a curiosity. 4.0 added a lot of NetPlay related changes which makes it actually usable for most games, but sometimes with performance issues. Super Smash Bros Melee players are now using Dolphin for regular online NetPlay tournaments, and it just works. Read the official NetPlay guide for more information. Mac OS X support enhancements This release also adds a few small OS X improvements: the Dolphin DMG bundles are now signed by a valid developer ID and do not require you to disable Gatekeeper to be used. The emulator is also Retina Display aware and handles the logical scaling better on these screens. Icon themes support In addition to shipping with a new default icon theme, Dolphin now allows you to make your own themes and share them with other people.[/QUOTE] [url]https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2013/09/22/dolphin-40-release-announcement/[/url]
Why is a Wii Emulator news worthy? [highlight](User was banned for this post ("Don't post if you don't think it's news" - Craptasket))[/highlight]
Since online support maybe?
Glad to see the online works now. A year or two back, some friends and I tried to play Mario Party online together. It didn't help when the game would de-sync right before the mini games would start, and we'd all be playing different mini games on our own screen.
[QUOTE=Fangz;42277042]Why is a Wii Emulator news worthy?[/QUOTE] youre like the biggest nintendo apologist i know and youre gonna tell me a nintendo emulator reaching a substantial milestone isnt newsworthy? [editline]22nd September 2013[/editline] this is fucking awesome
Can it finally play Sonic Colors without running like complete ass?
[QUOTE=redBadger;42277147]Can it finally play Sonic Colors without running like complete ass?[/QUOTE] With emulation there's two framerates, the game's framerate that it had on the console, and the emulator's framerate. Due to emulation emulating the performance of the hardware as well (stuff like higher resolutions or AA is done as post processing IIRC) it will have the same performance.
Dang, this might make me play monster hunter again
[QUOTE=The Baconator;42277179]With emulation there's two framerates, the game's framerate that it had on the console, and the emulator's framerate. Due to emulation emulating the performance of the hardware as well (stuff like higher resolutions or AA is done as post processing IIRC) it will have the same performance.[/QUOTE] It's really rare that an emulator attempts to emulate the performance of the hardware. It usually tries to put a frame out as quickly as possible and leaves the timing mechanisms that allow the game to function properly to the game itself, or if the game only runs properly with vsync/frame limiting enabled, then you enable those two. And higher resolution and AA aren't done as post-processing, they're done concurrently when you render things out using OpenGL or Direct3D or software or whatever they choose to use. In fact, Dolphin uses a high level emulation approach for a lot of things, meaning that it doesn't care if the results are 1 : 1 by emulating every opcode/OS routine, it will take shortcuts to make things be more playable/quicker rather than more accurate. Best example of this is the sound emulation in Dolphin. PPSSPP, that PSP emulator, follows this paradigm for literally everything it does.
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;42277124]youre like the biggest nintendo apologist i know and youre gonna tell me a nintendo emulator reaching a substantial milestone isnt newsworthy? [/QUOTE] Stop [url=https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman]strawmanning[/url], if this was Xbox/Playstation/Vita emulator it still wouldn't be news worthy. Nintendo or non-nintendo, I don't think a new emulator hitting the internet is news worthy.
[QUOTE=Fangz;42277288]Stop [url=https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman]strawmanning[/url], if this was Xbox/Playstation/Vita emulator it still wouldn't be news worthy. Nintendo or non-nintendo, I don't think a new emulator hitting the internet is news worthy.[/QUOTE] It would be big news if a 360 emulator could do Xbox Live or a PS3 emulator could do PSN.
This is amazing, the biggest changes as a regular Dolphin user to me are the online and the DSP HLE changes. DSP HLE was awful before and made some games like Wind Waker unplayable for me, forcing me to use the much more intensive LLE. I could still run it, but others might not, so that's cool for them too.
[QUOTE=Fangz;42277288]Stop [url=https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/strawman]strawmanning[/url], if this was Xbox/Playstation/Vita emulator it still wouldn't be news worthy. Nintendo or non-nintendo, I don't think a new emulator hitting the internet is news worthy.[/QUOTE] please, if there were any logical fallacies made by me, it was [url=https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/ad-hominem]this one[/url] meanwhile i think good emulators being developed are always newsworthy. for example, just recently a fantastic ds emulator for android came out called drastic that was worth every penny. these things are great, especially to the gamer/hacker crowd that would frequent sites like facepunch
[QUOTE=Intoxicated Spy;42277303]It would be big news if a 360 emulator could do Xbox Live or a PS3 emulator could do PSN.[/QUOTE] It'd be big news if those even existed.
Love Dolphin, glad to see they are more powerful than ever.
Thanks to this update, I can now play Kirby Air Ride at full speed with no issues. Fucking awesome.
This is great, but I'd really like them to focus more on dolphin for android. The fact that it crashes on launch on Tegra 3 devices makes it unusable for me.
Can't wait to play Melee and Brawl, haven't used Dolphin in a while so I'm glad to see an update for it.
can i play rogue squadron 2 and 3 on the emulator yet or is it still broken
I presume you'd need a Wii and/or Gamecube with a game disk in, and a Wii Remote and motion detector thing set up in order to use this on your PC monitor? I dunno why I wouldn't just use the TV, its a bigger screen
[QUOTE=Dr.Critic;42277423]I presume you'd need a Wii and/or Gamecube with a game disk in, and a Wii Remote and motion detector thing set up in order to use this on your PC monitor? I dunno why I wouldn't just use the TV, its a bigger screen[/QUOTE] Do you know what an emulator does? Why would you need a Wii or Gamecube plugged in that literally defeats the entire point of the emulator.
[QUOTE=Downsider;42277270]It's really rare that an emulator attempts to emulate the performance of the hardware. It usually tries to put a frame out as quickly as possible and leaves the timing mechanisms that allow the game to function properly to the game itself, or if the game only runs properly with vsync/frame limiting enabled, then you enable those two. And higher resolution and AA aren't done as post-processing, they're done concurrently when you render things out using OpenGL or Direct3D or software or whatever they choose to use. In fact, Dolphin uses a high level emulation approach for a lot of things, meaning that it doesn't care if the results are 1 : 1 by emulating every opcode/OS routine, it will take shortcuts to make things be more playable/quicker rather than more accurate. Best example of this is the sound emulation in Dolphin. PPSSPP, that PSP emulator, follows this paradigm for literally everything it does.[/QUOTE] huh I guess PCSX2 is different then, cause that was what I seen posted on ngemu by people like that Squall avatar guy who is big on all the emu scenes.
[QUOTE=Fangz;42277042]Why is a Wii Emulator news worthy?[/QUOTE] Why did you post in a thread saying you don't care? You know you're going to get ripped apart for this, why do it?
Online? Yessssssssss!
[QUOTE=meppers;42277415]can i play rogue squadron 2 and 3 on the emulator yet or is it still broken[/QUOTE] [url]https://dolphin-emu.org/compat/[/url]
[QUOTE=The Baconator;42277436]huh I guess PCSX2 is different then, cause that was what I seen posted on ngemu by people like that Squall avatar guy who is big on all the emu scenes.[/QUOTE] Shit, I know that guy, he's always everywhere. :v:
[QUOTE=Generic Monk;42277441]Why did you post in a thread saying you don't care? You know you're going to get ripped apart for this, why do it?[/QUOTE] No has answered my question yet, why it is news worthy. A Emulator being released doesn't feel like it hold the weight like an article about world events or a company doing something good or stupid.
Holy shit you can use the Wifi Connect to play with players on a real Wii too this is amazing.
[QUOTE=Fangz;42277486]No has answered my question yet, why it is news worthy.[/QUOTE] Because it interests a large part of the userbase here? Just because you're cross over it doesn't mean everybody else is. Like the rating system hasn't already shown you that though.
[QUOTE=Fangz;42277486]No has answered my question yet, why it is news worthy. A Emulator being released doesn't feel like it hold the weight like an article about world events or a company doing something good or stupid.[/QUOTE] because this is the type of news that interests the gamer/hacker crowd that makes up most of facepunch's demographic i do not think i can be more clear
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