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Cemu, World's First Wii U Emulator, Suddenly Released
- Thread starter Piston Hyundai
- Start date
This is great news. Game preservation lives on.
Don't forget the great progress on Citra (3DS). Are any Vita emulators on the horizon? It has a pretty straightforward architecture (essentially a customized iPad 2) and pretty low cpu clock (444 MHz) so it shouldn't be too challenging on the scale of things?
TheSlySoul
Member
Seems Wii U is easy to emulate then.
NX having Wii U backwards compatibility seems like a given.
NX having Wii U backwards compatibility seems like a given.
Only Smash and WWHD are 1080p. The others are 720p.
And even then, the image quality is far from ideal (though still fairly good in context given the hardware). Downsampled 4K Smash Bros. would be a not-inconsiderable improvement. Imagine all the shots of the substitute doll...
Dash Kappei
Not actually that important
Hey Rich what do you say you put up a discussion thread for WiiU' hb?
I'd do it myself but I haven't followed the scene at all until now
Given how robust and capable to Dolphin community is I wonder if some programmers from there will try to lend a hand to polishing this up? If it's one guy's own project then it's probably not going to amount to much more than a curiousity. There's a HUGE difference between being able to boot a game and having a polished emulator that works decently with most games.
Yeah it's definitely an accomplishment.
I hope the project opens itself up so others can help out. Like I said, it's done amazing things for Dolphin.
AcademicSaucer
Member
good point, people will play it without a wii u tho , even here on neogaf.
Not likely. Nintendo's only ever included hardware based backwards compatibility before. Unless they stick a Wii U soc in the NX console I don't see it happening.
KojiKnight
Member
I honestly expect when it is eventually released we'll see a lot of dolphin code in it... which makes me think it should probably already be open sourced based on their licenses... but who knows, I could be wrong... it just seems like there would be a lot of reinventing the wheel otherwise.
Pokemaniac
Member
Based on projects to get GamePad support working on PC, it seems that all the console really needs is a decent 5Ghz Wifi adapter capable of creating an access point.
sörine;181483164 said:
They've never done it before, but they are clearly big on including BC in general. When you consider that they're trying to move over to a more account-based relationship with customers, it may make sense to use emulation if it's possible to keep Wii U games (and 3DS ones for that matter) available.
At any rate, the existence of this emulator is encouraging for NX being able to emulate Wii U.
I assume it's because of the WiiU CPU. Unless the NX uses that same architecture for a 4th time, the NX won't have backwards compatbility through hardware.
Crimsonclaw111
Member
Now... How do I rip my Wii U discs and dump my eshop purchases for this in the future?
I get the feeling expecting NX to emulate Wii U will be sort of like expecting 3DS to emulate Dreamcast. The performance envelope just won't be a far enough jump for that.
I feel like we'll either see speedy ports of the more desirable Wii U games (Zelda, Splatoon, Smash Bros, Mario Maker, etc) or we'll see that disc drive add-on which was implied in the recent patent filings with a Wii U SoC stuffed inside for playback.
3DS compatibility is probably more likely due to ARM legacy compatibility and card media, even in the home console NX. And even then we'll probably have to see some degree of emulation for GPU calls and whatever else since I don't see a 3DS SoC being integrated either.
It can be shut down but with this release everyone now has access to the foundation to keep the project going forever. There's no plugging that hole back up.
Wowfunhappy
Member
I think everyone's getting a bit ahead of themselves. This will have next to zero impact on Wii U sales. It won't be fully playable for many, many years. Dolphin has taken a full decade to get to where it is now.
KojiKnight
Member
Do we actually know how (in)expensive the Wii U CPU is to produce? It may not be all that infeasible... especially for a first generation model (think GBA support dropped from later DSi models).
We also know through Microsoft's own BC exploits that a software solution IS possible with a decent enough CPU to begin with... Unless there is anyone that still clings to the Wii U CPU being stronger than the 360's.
An emulator in it's infancy can't boot commercial games. This has been being worked on for quite a while.
Eh, more like the power of the WiiU Cpu.
Wowfunhappy
Member
Kind of. All DS Lite's could play GBA games, and all DSi's could not. But that's just because Nintendo removed the cartridge slot to save space--the hardware to play GBA games is still there. Actually, the hardware is still there in the 3DS too--the ambassador games use it!
Pokemaniac
Member
Dolphin is GPLv2. If this emulator uses dolphin code, that would be a violation of the Dolphin license due to its completely closed source nature of.
Besides, Dolphin is more suited to the GameCube and Wii, where all software runs in kernal mode with full essentially unrestricted access to anything the PowerPC CPU has access to. With a Wii U emulator, it makes more sense to leverage the fact that the Wii U has a real OS and that Wii U games run in user mode. You don't have to emulate the exact Wii U hardware, but instead the abstraction of that hardware exposed by the OS.
sörine;181485804 said:
The fact that Microsoft got 360 games running on Xbone is actually very encouraging regarding Wii U emulation. Thanks to the the Wii U's lack of threads, lower clock speed, and more standard design compared to the 360, the overhead for Wii U emulation would likely be significantly less than that of 360 emulation.
Peterthumpa
Member
ElectricBlanketFire
Member
Looks better than Tony Hawk.
lol. His "scarf" is amazing.
360 emulation isn't a system wide solution, just like Xbox wasn't. Nintendo won't include backwards compatibility unless they have something that runs 99.9% of old platform games out of the box. I can see that realistically happening for 3DS but not Wii U.
By the time anything is playable, it won't be.
Pokemaniac
Member
sörine;181488222 said:
Wii U would definitely be more of a challenge, but it probably isn't insurmountable. Especially if they planned ahead and got a head start.
Besides, I think the power gap between Wii U and the NX console may be bigger than most expect. Miyamoto actually complained about the Wii U's CPU strength recently, which is very uncommon. The spec bump on New 3DS was also significantly bigger than expected.
It's still early. By the time Wii U emulation becomes a suitable replacement for actual hardware the system will probably be dead and buried.
This caught me off ward. So good.
AcademicSaucer
Member
Wii U will be dead next year, this emulator needs atleast 2 years to be somewhat playable .
ScottSullivan
Member
So i could buy a retail wii u disc and play it on my pc with this?
Pokemaniac
Member
You'd need a Wii U on a specific outdated firmware version in order to rip it.
LordOcidax
Member
At least is going to work for take some screenshots at 1080p.
thomasmahler
Member
sörine;181489710 said:
The future is now!
I kid, I kid. I like my WiiU
Always good to see people emulating stuff though. I'd love a working 3DS emulator that allows to play stuff in 1080p at playable speeds. Yes, I know of CITRA, it's cool shit
KratosEnergyDrink
Member
sörine;181474335 said:
Before this Wii U emulator could play real games the project will be abandoned, like many other emulators before.
Its a nice technical demonstration but I doubt it will be developed long (and without a Gamepad it is useless for many games anyway).
A Wii emulator is one thing, but to emulate a multiprocessor system with special graphics hardware you need much more hardware power as PCs could deliver in the next ten years.
gingerbeardman
Member
I think you have missed the multiple videos of it playing real games.
sixteen-bit
Member
Interested to see how this develops
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