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Dolphin 4.0 Released

PGamer

fucking juniors
For those of you who don't follow the Dolphin thread the first official Dolphin release in 9 months has just come out. The download link and changelog are below.

Download: https://dolphin-emu.org/download/

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 OSX

Fastmem is an optimization for Dolphin's CPU emulation, which was previously only implemented on Windows. Adding Fastmem support on Linux and OSX 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.

For further Dolphin discussion on GAF join us in the Dolphin OT: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=395121
 
Last edited:

Malajax

Member
Wonder if this fixes the audio issues I was having in DKCR. Looking forward to playing around with this more soon.
 
The Wii online beta thing uses Nintendo's servers, right? It is still not possible to play a game with closed servers (Monster Hunter 3 for example)?

Hopefully it won't cause disruptions (lag? freezes?) while playing with players using a real Wii. Mario Kart Wii's online mode is already infested with cheaters.
 

StevieP

Banned
It may be an eon before you can play something as demanding as galaxy on an android phone... Anyway great on the dolphin team. Will be trying this out shortly
 

Seik

Banned
HOLY SHIT!

OK...OK.

Shit, I don't have time for this, I'm playing W101 and GTA right now....

Will check it out soon enough for sure though.
 

thuway

Member
Does this have better optomization for lower end hardware? I have a Toshiba Qosmio X505-Q894 and I cannot get Dolphin to run the way I want.
 
Wow.

I will turn my PC on now and try it.
Can't wait to see the improvements made to DSP HLE.

Maybe we won't need to use LLE anymore?
 
StevieP said:
It may be an eon before you can play something as demanding as galaxy on an android phone... Anyway great on the dolphin team. Will be trying this out shortly
Maybe, but the fact that they're getting started now means that by the time hardware is powerful enough to utilize the code it will be worth utilizing.

Honestly, the audio and networking fixes alone make this an awesome upgrade. Like another poster stated if this fixes DKCR and Galaxy's music I will be beyond ecstatic.
 

Garteal

Member
The Wii online beta thing uses Nintendo's servers, right? It is still not possible to play a game with closed servers (Monster Hunter 3 for example)?
Yes. Only a select number of tested games are supported.

Hopefully it won't cause disruptions (lag? freezes?) while playing with players using a real Wii. Mario Kart Wii's online mode is already infested with cheaters.
When you play normally, then no. If you remove your framelimit, etc though, you might cause issues in the game. Not sure what exactly happens as I haven't tried it yet.
 

Garteal

Member
Wow.

I will turn my PC on now and try it.
Can't wait to see the improvements made to DSP HLE.

Maybe we won't need to use LLE anymore?
You do for a few games. A lot of games work (near) perfect with the new HLE, namely Tales of Symphonia which was completely broken before.
The catch is that you now need to maintain full speed in the game, otherwise you will start to hear crackling, etc.
 
Interesting. I haven't used dolphin since 3.0 or something. Do you still need a super high clocked CPU to reach 60fps in stuff like SMG? Also does wind waker run perfectly now? Tried it out but transparencies and heat effects were boned.
 

qq more

Member
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.
oh awesome, I hope that means desync becomes a lot less frequent. Could hardly play as match of Melee online without getting desynced so fast.
 

Blackthorn

"hello?" "this is vagina"
If I can run Super Mario Galaxy full speed at 1080p on my 3770k, then I am very, very happy.
Right there with you. Never found a way around very irritating stuttering in Galaxy. Can't wait to try this out and see if it's fixed.
 

Garteal

Member
If I can run Super Mario Galaxy full speed at 1080p on my 3770k, then I am very, very happy.
Should be able to run it at full speed already.

Interesting. I haven't used dolphin since 3.0 or something. Do you still need a super high clocked CPU to reach 60fps in stuff like SMG? Also does wind waker run perfectly now? Tried it out but transparencies and heat effects were boned.
Not if you have a decent CPU namely the Haswell. A 3570K @ 4.0GHz-ish or 4670K at 3.7GHz will do the trick.

Wind Waker should run fine. There are ways to get rid of the heat issue. Check out the wiki.

Is there a list of places to obtain HD texture packs?
There's a HD Texture Projects forum on the Dolphin forums. Check it out.
 

Garteal

Member
Need to know if Rogue Squadron 2 is playable now.
Neobrain has fixed the zfreeze issue. It's (afaik) only fixed for OpenGL. The game doesn't seem playable yet due to performance issues and broken audio. (Source: tester on the wiki)
zfreeze_win_zps99b41a4f.png
 
Yes.


Xenoblade has worked fine for a while now. What exactly are you referring to?


It's still there. What is the issue?

can't remember. since the build i was using was ages ago around the time the PAL version came out lol.

hopefully i still have it on my external HDD. don't feel like ripping it again.
 

Kemal86

Member
Was hoping this would (somehow) fix the audio stopping 5 minutes into Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 when using HLE...nope :(
 

Drkirby

Corporate Apologist
I honestly didn't realize the Balance Board wasn't supported yet, or that there was actually a steering wheel for the Gamecube that wasn't just a normal controller remapped. Cool.

Shame I can't really make use of all the improvements until I get a better PC, my CPU is just too slow.
 
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