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Dolphin - Emulating Wii and Gamecube Games

NEO0MJ

Member
ZoddGutts said:
Which would be better to play on Dolphin. Twilight Princess GC or Wii version. What improvements does the Wii version have?

Widescreen was the only advantage the wii version of the game had, other than motion controls. But I think it might be possible to hack the GC version to play it in widescreen with Dolphin.

I hope we get news on how Skyward Sword runs on dolphin, it will be the deciding factor if I buy a gaming PC or not.
 
Isn't the widescreen in the Wii version a cropped widescreen? You'd be losing information on the top and bottom compared to the GC version.
 
StevieP said:
There are moments of "holy shit awesome" in TP in 1080p, but there are also textures that (honestly) look like a muddy shit stain fart. These look even worse when uprendered.

That said, I just recently did the same thing EatChildren did, and Twilight Princess Wii still holds up in many ways. Textures are not one of those ways. It was a GC game through-and-through.

Textures don't decrease in quality when a game is uprezed. Everything just looks better.
 

Mael

Member
StevieP said:
There are moments of "holy shit awesome" in TP in 1080p, but there are also textures that (honestly) look like a muddy shit stain fart. These look even worse when uprendered.

That said, I just recently did the same thing EatChildren did, and Twilight Princess Wii still holds up in many ways. Textures are not one of those ways. It was a GC game through-and-through.
I'd argue that it should have been on 2 disc or scrap the gc version, the game never use the engine to its full extent anyway.
 
Mael said:
I'd argue that it should have been on 2 disc or scrap the gc version, the game never use the engine to its full extent anyway.

The game doesn't use the full capacity of the disc. The ISO is about 1.1GB IIRC. (and a large chunk of that is taken up by the attract video)
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
One thing I do find weird about a lot of games is that Nintendo uses surprisingly high 2D assets for the button prompts, hud and menus. They're incredibly clear, given the game is supposed to be only 480p.
 
EatChildren said:
One thing I do find weird about a lot of games is that Nintendo uses surprisingly high 2D assets for the button prompts, hud and menus. They're incredibly clear, given the game is supposed to be only 480p.

Yeah, most of Nintendo's Wii games have HD rez HUDs. They've obviously made them with the intention of having them rendered in HD though emulation (probably in mind for their future VC re-release)

Sadly their GCN games only have SD rez HUDs; which makes sense considering that they came up with the VC when designing the Wii.

Same goes with Kirby's Epic Yarn and NSMB Wii (its 2D elements). They're actually HD rez games that aren't being fully resolved at 480p!
 

Mael

Member
Nuclear Muffin said:
The game doesn't use the full capacity of the disc. The ISO is about 1.1GB IIRC. (and a large chunk of that is taken up by the attract video)
WHAT?
So that means that this is all they could in the timeframe they had?
The engine can run the game without breaking a sweat so much more and they didn't even try to make it sweat.
I mean there's never more than 3 dark beasts in the places to get the teleporters and the engine would allow for twice that at least!
 

HooYaH

Member
Cannot wait for Skyward Sword in Bullshot mode.
Gameplay_(Skyward_Sword).png

Just hope it doesn't run buggy.
 
Mael said:
WHAT?
So that means that this is all they could in the timeframe they had?
The engine can run the game without breaking a sweat so much more and they didn't even try to make it sweat.
I mean there's never more than 3 dark beasts in the places to get the teleporters and the engine would allow for twice that at least!

Have you ever played the GCN version? It suffers from quite a bit of slowdown in places (particularly Hyrule Field)

A lot of system resources were also probably dedicated to its lighting effects (which is where the game truly shines. It has some of the best lighting of any PS2/GCN/XBOX game out there!)

And with those dark beasts, they appear in all sorts of places (including Hyrule Field, where the game often struggles) so they have to be designed to work in all different environments.
 

Mael

Member
Nuclear Muffin said:
Have you ever played the GCN version? It suffers from quite a bit of slowdown in places (particularly Hyrule Field)

A lot of system resources were also probably dedicated to its lighting effects (which is where the game truly shines. It has some of the best lighting of any PS2/GCN/XBOX game out there!)

I even have an Action Replay to go with it.
I stand by my statement, granted the field is MASSIVE but the other areas could be way more filled with foes and the like.
There's even an AR code to put something like 10 to 20 Darknut in the first town and the game manage no pb
 
Mael said:
I even have an Action Replay to go with it.
I stand by my statement, granted the field is MASSIVE but the other areas could be way more filled with foes and the like.
There's even an AR code to put something like 10 to 20 Darknut in the first town and the game manage no pb

Well they design the game with the intention of making it fun, not with how much they can push the console. But yeah, it is a bit weird (especially with how you can have lots of enemies in certain environments, but then the game struggles in places with fewer enemies)

They could've made the environments more detailed I guess, but then again they would've had to design the game in such a way so as to optimise loading times (more detailed environments & textures = longer loading times)
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Had to do the third tears quest three times due to Dolphin crashes, and took a ton of screenshots during the Interlopers filmclip, only to find FRAPS decided it didn't actually want to do what it's supposed to do.

I'm so fucking livid.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Scratch that. Dug around the net and found a save right before this sequence, converted it to Dolphin format, and watched it again for happy snaps. I figure I'll post these now rather than include them in my bundle once I'm done with the Water Temple, since there's quite a few goodies.

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Mael

Member
EatChildren your images are amazing

Nuclear Muffin said:
Well they design the game with the intention of making it fun, not with how much they can push the console. But yeah, it is a bit weird (especially with how you can have lots of enemies in certain environments, but then the game struggles in places with fewer enemies)

It's rather weird really, then again I suspect that the game engine load the whole 4 parts of hyrule field in 1 go which would explain the engine struggling when there's no one at all (and I'd add that it's only true in the gc version)

Nuclear Muffin said:
They could've made the environments more detailed I guess, but then again they would've had to design the game in such a way so as to optimise loading times (more detailed environments & textures = longer loading times)

Not even speaking of making better detailed environments, they're mighty fine apart from 2 or 3 textures.
They could have provided more existing foes in places.
I mean the Lost Wood is basically my fav place in that game and once you've done the quest related to that place it's freaking empty with NO ONE in it.
The swordfighting engine they used is very very fun to use, but before the cave of ordeal and the last dungeon it's barely used (but still more used than in WW)!
 
Nuclear Muffin said:
A lot of system resources were also probably dedicated to its lighting effects (which is where the game truly shines. It has some of the best lighting of any PS2/GCN/XBOX game out there!)
I don't think so. Games with the better or at least most advanced lighting effects were on the XBOX the past generation, by a fair margin compared to TP.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
One of Hyrule field's technical accomplishments is the minimal if not completely eradicated pop-in and asset loading. I believe it was Miyamoto who wanted all enemies, trees and what have you to be viewable from anywhere on any of the fields, rather than have them pop-in as you get close.
 

Mael

Member
EatChildren said:
One of Hyrule field's technical accomplishments is the minimal if not completely eradicated pop-in and asset loading. I believe it was Miyamoto who wanted all enemies, trees and what have you to be viewable from anywhere on any of the fields, rather than have them pop-in as you get close.
So my theory of the game loadin gthe massive field in 1 go has some ground...
 
EatChildren said:
One of Hyrule field's technical accomplishments is the minimal if not completely eradicated pop-in and asset loading. I believe it was Miyamoto who wanted all enemies, trees and what have you to be viewable from anywhere on any of the fields, rather than have them pop-in as you get close.
Another cool thing with the Hyrule Field of Twilight Princess is that it gives the player the option to use some sort of "loading tunnels" that interconnect all of the different areas so you don't see loading screens that take you out of the game. So you can ride Epona from one corner of the map to the other with zero load screens.

However, is too bad that they could implement the idea to interconnect the areas by water traveling. Would love to see that.
 

Gvaz

Banned
If you're at that desert town or have beat the desert town thing, how far done with the game am I? I think that's where I was last, and I spent like 15 hours
 

StevieP

Banned
ZoddGutts said:
Which would be better to play on Dolphin. Twilight Princess GC or Wii version. What improvements does the Wii version have?

True widescreen, better framerate. Waggle was annoying but I'd take that disadvantage to its advantages.
 

Thrakier

Member
Wow, got my i5 2400 @3,1GHZ today. Goes to 3,4GHZ max I guess. And SMG2 is running at 100%. I always thought you needed some kind of highend machine @5ghz to do that? There are some drops here and there down to 50, but they are not very often. Maybe those are in SMG2 as well?
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Mael said:
So my theory of the game loadin gthe massive field in 1 go has some ground...

Not all of the field and areas are loaded. As Refreshment.01 said Nintendo built them segmented, so that the new areas could stream into the memory while going through these less detailed, smaller corridors. Mostly Nintendo's attitude with Twilight Princess was to get rid of all the loading screens (as with most of their games) and prevent nasty pop-in that plagues games with large areas, especially given the hardware. So yeah, I guess when you're in one of those area segments, pretty much everything in the area is loaded into the memory and rendered.

Gvaz said:
If you're at that desert town or have beat the desert town thing, how far done with the game am I? I think that's where I was last, and I spent like 15 hours

Not sure which part you're talking about. The desert town shoot out that's like a Western?

Anyway, I should be done with the Water Temple soonish. One thing I want to note is that even though Wind Waker is the poster child for expressive characters, that same attention to detail is just as prevalent in Twilight Princess. The expressions are less cartoony, but there's a lot of detailed animation on character faces during conversations that really bring them to life. It's sort of one of the reasons why I've always loved Zelda having zero voice acting. It forced Nintendo to make these lively, animated characters that have to sell their disposition and personality through visuals only.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Lakebed Temple kaput. It's not a bad one, but I prefer the first two temples. I don't really like the Morpheel battle despite how large scale and epic they tried to make it. The Lakebed Temple is also chock full of treasure chests full of goddamn rupees. Skyward Sword either needs to remove the wallet cap, remove all these chests, or make it obvious from the look of the chest whether a rupee is inside or not, because goddamn did I get sick of the whole "YOUR WALLET IS FULL LETS PUT 'ER BACK" shit.

On the plus side, the clawshot owns and is one of my favourite Zelda items. Plus the temple itself is pretty straight forward and not a confusing difficulty spike like the Water Temple in Ocarina of Time.

Anyways, here's more screenshots than anybody asked for. If people want me to tone it down, just ask.

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I'm not the only person who was reminded of Metroid Prime when I fought this boss was I? (especially when you couple it with the music!)

And I love these shots, keep em coming!
 

Gwanatu T

Junior Member
So I'm ready to jump on the Dolphin train and get this puppy looking good on my plasma. I've found that most of my games will work, but I can't find anything related to Boom Blox anywhere. This is a must, as those two are easily some of the best Wii games out there. Anyone try to run these?
 

Thrakier

Member
That's not fair. Now I can finally run SMG2 @100speed with beautiful crispy GFX and...there is no MUSIC. WHAT THE HELL? :( Sad panda here.
 

Thrakier

Member
Nabs said:
Gotta switch to LLE Audio. Google it and read up on it.

Yeah, i did that, but Audio is not perfect. As soon as the framerate drops a bit the music drops as well and starts stuttering...happens quite often. Don't know if it's my system...
 

Gvaz

Banned
Thrakier said:
Yeah, i did that, but Audio is not perfect. As soon as the framerate drops a bit the music drops as well and starts stuttering...happens quite often. Don't know if it's my system...
It's just how it is. Everyone gets that a bit. Emulation is not perfect.
 

Thrakier

Member
Gvaz said:
It's just how it is. Everyone gets that a bit. Emulation is not perfect.

So...it's not my system?

It's supposed to havbe some overclock feature to 3,4 GHZ but I don't know how to activate it...and now my dlophin just crashed. -.- Definitly runs better without DSP LLE.

EDIT:

Weird, thought it was LLE but it's running about the same with HLE, maybe 2-3 frames less. So is this just the "normal" SMG2 performance which has framedrops in game? I'm in the 2nd world btw, there are some scenes where it drops to 50 to 55. BTW HLE audio was just working fine, stopped after 4 minutes or so...but till this point everything was fine.
 

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
Leondexter said:
On that topic, if anyone has experience the insane buzzing problem and fixed it, help me out! Thanks.
Using LLE solved the buzzing problem for me, it seems. My only concern is that its use causes slowdowns during the emulation, I wanted to overclock my i7 2600k to see if I can achieve a near perfect emulation but i have an H67 board. (wanted to use the HDMI out..)

Thrakier said:
So is this just the "normal" SMG2 performance which has framedrops in game?
I don't recall any noticeable framerate drops in SMG2 on Wii.
 

Mistle

Member
Is there any way to make the sound effects and music in Twilight Princess Wii balanced? Currently, the music overpowers the sound effects a lot :/

Also, if anybody has a GC Twilight Princess save file/state before snowpeak, then I'd love it! Nevermind, I found one. But I thought the sound issue would be fixed in the GC version- it wasn't.
 

Thrakier

Member
Lonely1 said:
I don't recall any noticeable framerate drops in SMG2 on Wii.

Yeah, I wouldn't notice them either if the music wouldn't slow down...it goes town to 50 to 55, not much more, only small drops. I doubt you#d notice them on Wii.

I just want to know if it's my system because then I would upgrade the proc to a i5 2500.
 

Beats

Member
Gwanatu T said:
So I'm ready to jump on the Dolphin train and get this puppy looking good on my plasma. I've found that most of my games will work, but I can't find anything related to Boom Blox anywhere. This is a must, as those two are easily some of the best Wii games out there. Anyone try to run these?

Boom Blox: Bash Party on Dolphin

Not my video and the build used in this one is pretty old, but it looks like it's playable. There's that shadow glitch though, but maybe that's gone in the newer builds. I haven't ripped the game yet to my PC so I can't check myself.
 
Am I doing something wrong here?

When I try to play Resident Evil 2 and 3 the games run around 10-20 FPS and are completely unplayable. I just beat REmake and it ran at full speed 99% of the time (the only real area with bad slowdown is the main lobby when the candelabra is showing), RE0 is good as well.
 
Hey guys, looking for a bit of advice here..

I have Dolphin 3.0 all set up and a few games on it. In general it seems it can run well. However every few minutes (and it seems to be in all the games, not any particular one) it will get terrible slowdown. FPS will be cut down to 25%, the audio slows down, etc. After a few seconds it goes back to normal.

I tried looking at my monitoring tools in Win7 to see if it was some sort of automated job, file indexing, etc, but I don't see anything suddenly spike up to the top of CPU or IO charts when this happens.

I created a small sample of Twilight Princess running, and once in the town and twice herding goats you can observe this behavior:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANt-0nEHmTU

Any ideas? I'd love to get this fixed.

(Side question: I've heard you can move your saved games from a Wii to Dolphin? Is there any chance, though it seems highly unlikely, I could use a Wii Twilight Princess save with the GameCube version?)
 

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
AdawgDaFAB said:
Am I doing something wrong here?

When I try to play Resident Evil 2 and 3 the games run around 10-20 FPS and are completely unplayable. I just beat REmake and it ran at full speed 99% of the time (the only real area with bad slowdown is the main lobby when the candelabra is showing), RE0 is good as well.
You should consider the PsOne versions then. Should run like a charm on almost anything. About why... Maybe they are emulated on the cube?
 

Stallion Free

Cock Encumbered
Lonely1 said:
You should consider the PsOne versions then. Should run like a charm on almost anything. About why... Maybe they are emulated on the cube?
No, the GC versions of RE2/3 had some model improvements over the PS1 versions. Cube was not doing a straight emulation of them.
 
Yeah the GC RE2 and RE3 look better than the PSX version and also have the nice Type C controls from REmake, that's why I was hoping I could play them via Dolphin.

Edit: I got it working at a solid 30 FPS now (that's the normal speed right?). All I had to do was move the Texture Cache - Accuracy slider. It was all the way at Safe before, resulting in my crappy framerates. I moved it all the way to Fast and all seems well.

Would there be any negative I should look out for running the emu this way?
 

Thrakier

Member
I'm trying to run Wave Race Blue Storm but emulation is way too fast, like double the speed. Any way to bring it down to just 100%?

nvm worked. but the racers have no heads in the menu? It's fine in game...what the hell?
 

Lonely1

Unconfirmed Member
I tried the HD texture pack for RE4: Wii edition, but it makes the game to stutter a lot. I guess is because its constantly Reading the textures from the HDD. Is that correct? Or is there a way to fix this? Such a pity otherwise.
 
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