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Dolphin - Emulating Wii and Gamecube Games

M

mattiewheels

And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
My wiimote refuses to pair up with my Bluetooth anymore. It worked half and half most of the time, now nothing. And I just paired other devices up just to test the dongle, it's fine.

It actually successfully pairs every time, then just disconnects 5 seconds later.
 
M

MBison

Member
I want to set this up on my PC but even reading the OP I'm still kind of confused on what I need to do.

I already use a Logitech MX5500 wireless keyboard and mouse with my PC. Is that sufficient for a bluetooth device?

Or what is a bluetooth device I can get where I dont need the additional software (Bluesoliel or whatever).

Do they sell the Nyko wireless sensor bar still anywhere? Amazon doesn't seem to have it. Is there another brand that Best Buy or Target might carry that works just as good?

Sorry, I'm kinda newbish with this stuff and don't want to get the wrong stuff.

Thanks for any help!
 
Yaska

Yaska

Member
mattiewheels said:
My wiimote refuses to pair up with my Bluetooth anymore. It worked half and half most of the time, now nothing. And I just paired other devices up just to test the dongle, it's fine.

It actually successfully pairs every time, then just disconnects 5 seconds later.
Click to expand...

After the driver has installed. Have you pressed the refresh button so that dolphin will show 1 connected? I have to press refresh after each pairing, to get the mote to work.
 
T

tedtropy

$50/hour, but no kissing on the lips and colors must be pre-separated
boris feinbrand said:
It still amazes me that they were able to pull that off. Even now, some of the animation and designwork on the game looks outstanding. The reload animations alone are godlike.

Since I might be able to get a new PC by March, I'm eager to join the Dolphin Community^^ and play the game in all it's emulated HD glory and Wiimote support.
Click to expand...

The models have aged really well. The textures, not so much, but it's to be expected.
 
F

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
mattiewheels said:
It actually successfully pairs every time, then just disconnects 5 seconds later.
Click to expand...
It's the BT software stack, most of them are notoriously unstable, I've seen same behavior with Broadcom/MS drivers.
Best bet is Toshiba's but you'll need to google for a standalone version (not official anymore, but it works).
 
G

gillty

Banned
Valru said:
I have this one powered off a 5v USB cable, just solder the red to red contact, black to black. Works perfectly vs using burning through 4aa every week.
Click to expand...

MBison said:
I want to set this up on my PC but even reading the OP I'm still kind of confused on what I need to do.

I already use a Logitech MX5500 wireless keyboard and mouse with my PC. Is that sufficient for a bluetooth device?

Or what is a bluetooth device I can get where I dont need the additional software (Bluesoliel or whatever).

Do they sell the Nyko wireless sensor bar still anywhere? Amazon doesn't seem to have it. Is there another brand that Best Buy or Target might carry that works just as good?

Sorry, I'm kinda newbish with this stuff and don't want to get the wrong stuff.

Thanks for any help!
Click to expand...
The Nintendo Licensed APower Ultra Wireless Sensor bar works great, but like all wireless "sensor" bars eats through batteries. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/POWER+A...+Wii/9504146.p?id=1218115834193&skuId=9504146

Luckily it only requires 4aa batteries which means it requires roughly ~5v, the same voltage as usb so its as simple as splitting open a usb cable and connecting the red to the far positive battery contact and black to the far negative battery contact.
 
J

Jocchan

Ὁ μεμβερος -ου
I need a new laptop, so I decided to look for one capable of running Galaxy 1/2 @ 60 fps at a resolution possibly close enough to 1080p.

What sort of CPU should I be looking for? I got my eyes on the G74SX-TZ206V (Intel Core i7-2670QM 2nd gen 2.2 GHz up to 3.1, 8 GB DDR3, GTX 560M 3 GB). Would be enough?
 
T

Thrakier

Member
Jocchan said:
I need a new laptop, so I decided to look for one capable of running Galaxy 1/2 @ 60 fps at a resolution possibly close enough to 1080p.

What sort of CPU should I be looking for? I got my eyes on the G74SX-TZ206V (Intel Core i7-2670QM 2nd gen 2.2 GHz up to 3.1, 8 GB DDR3, GTX 560M 3 GB). Would be enough?
Click to expand...

No. You need a sandy brdige overlocked till at least 4.0GHZ. Even then you still get framedrops and audio distortions from time to time. But it's not too disctrating.
 
M

Mr. Wonderful

Member
Jocchan said:
I need a new laptop, so I decided to look for one capable of running Galaxy 1/2 @ 60 fps at a resolution possibly close enough to 1080p.

What sort of CPU should I be looking for? I got my eyes on the G74SX-TZ206V (Intel Core i7-2670QM 2nd gen 2.2 GHz up to 3.1, 8 GB DDR3, GTX 560M 3 GB). Would be enough?
Click to expand...

Yeah, basically you need a CPU clock speed faster than that. You'll be able to run many games with that CPU, but not all of them.
 
T

TyrantGuardian

Member
Ok GAF, help me out here. Trying to run F-Zero GX in Dolphin and am having some issues. I have a Core 2 Duo 3,06GHz and a HD4850.

What happens is that any menu and stuff runs at a solid 60 fps but as soon as the emulator has to draw 3D objects it just drops to ~20 fps. When I play a practice race with no other ships around, it varies between 45-60 fps but in a Grand Prix race with lots of ships it just drops even below 20 depending on how many 3D objects are around. Changing resolution settings doesn't seem to help and I've tried disabling/enabling everything I could think of, but there's no change at all regardless of settings (aside from making the framerate even worse). Am I missing something or is my hardware just not good enough for this game?

The emulator only seems to be using 50% of my CPU as well.
 
Trojita

Trojita

Rapid Response Threadmaker
Well shit, I'm beginning to wonder whether I should even play my games on the wii?

I don't generally like the setting up emulators to play on my hdtv, but I guess I might have to.
 
A

Aku-Audi

Member
I got 2 computers here, Mac Mini I5 model, 8gb RAM, 2011 model and I7 16gb RAM with Geforce GTX 550TI.

Could someone maybe tell me the best settings for either of these to play Wind Waker and other high end GC games?
 
Refreshment.01

Refreshment.01

Member
006.jpg

Resident Evil 4 is a puzzling game. That screen shot there looks like top tier of graphics in this gen. Too bad jedoshi doesn't have a screen of the room with the throne and that metal chandelier in the ceiling, that's one of the most realistic looking rooms in the hole game.
jediyoshi said:
Full gecko compatibility added.
Skyward Sword Instant text ahoy.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dmFN4ruVCy0
Click to expand...
Dolphin does what Nintendon't. Yet again...
 
N

Necronomikon

Member
SpidermanJones said:
Maybe a stupid question, but are you using the original sensorbar while the Wii is on?

Edit:
GAF, is there a sensorbar, which can be powered by USB?
Click to expand...

I've been using this sensor bar:
USB Sensor Eye

Although I discovered that sensor bar by looking at the original USB sensor bar
Sensor Bar HD

Both are a bit expensive though!

The thing I like the most about the Sensor Eye is that you can adjust the distance between the set of LEDs so you can get yourself close to the monitor and so the wiimote detection is not messed up (but consider that, the closest you get to the set of LEDs, the less field of view the wiimote has to scan for IR LEDs).

But they've worked just as I expected and they are nicely built (although the USB -> AC Adapter didn't shipped in working conditions, but USB works just fine). The only thing I would've wanted is a on/off switch and indicator led.

And just for reference, I play like 2 feet away from the sensor bar and I haven't experienced any inconvenience.
 
M

Mr. Robot

Member
Looking at this thread makes me want to join the dolphin race, are an i3 2120 3.3 GHz and a Radeon 6870 strong enough to run the games like SSB:B, F-Zero GX, Goldeneye or Zelda at 720p?

Im asking, because this is the PC that im going to build in a few days...
 
R

Red

Member
Mr. Robot said:
Looking at this thread makes me want to join the dolphin race, are an i3 2120 3.3 GHz and a Radeon 6870 strong enough to run the games like SSB:B, F-Zero GX, Goldeneye or Zelda at 720p?

Im asking, because this is the PC that im going to build in a few days...
Click to expand...

You will get alright performance in Brawl and Zelda with some slowdown, can't speak to F Zero or Goldeneye. Try OCing the cpu to squeeze a bit more performance out of it.

Brawl will probably run better than Zelda for you. It is the less demanding game, in my experience.

Wind Waker should run well.
 
M

Mr. Robot

Member
Crunched said:
You will get alright performance in Brawl and Zelda with some slowdown, can't speak to F Zero or Goldeneye. Try OCing the cpu to squeeze a bit more performance out of it.

Brawl will probably run better than Zelda for you. It is the less demanding game, in my experience.

Wind Waker should run well.
Click to expand...

Thanks, i dont think you can overclock the i3 2100 series, but i will look more into it, in the meantime i will dust off some of my GC games...
 
P

papercut

Member
Is anyone else experiencing input lag when playing Skyward Sword? My computer is connected to my receiver via HDMI but I'm using the no-processing option. Also I had no input lag with the PC version of Deus Ex that I just played via the same hookup.
 
R

Red

Member
Mr. Robot said:
Thanks, i dont think you can overclock the i3 2100 series, but i will look more into it, in the meantime i will dust off some of my GC games...
Click to expand...

Ah yeah - no OCing for you unfortunately.

To clarify: You might be able to play brawl and melee full speed. Zelda I don't know about. I held 30fps about 96% of the time, but I was on a 4GHz cpu. You would see more frequent drops.
 
J

Jocchan

Ὁ μεμβερος -ου
Thrakier said:
No. You need a sandy brdige overlocked till at least 4.0GHZ. Even then you still get framedrops and audio distortions from time to time. But it's not too disctrating.
Click to expand...

Mr. Wonderful said:
Yeah, basically you need a CPU clock speed faster than that. You'll be able to run many games with that CPU, but not all of them.
Click to expand...

Sorry for replying so late. What sort of CPU do you need to get decent performance on a laptop then? Anyone playing on a laptop willing to share their experience?
 
P

PatrickLyons

Member
so I take it Dolphin is a fair bit more CPU intensive than GPU intensive. Is that a fair sense of things? I'm currently rocking an i5-680 Processor at 3.60 GHz (don't ask why) and a 4670 at 1600x900, and i'm debating the investment to get this thing going.
 
Theonik

Theonik

Member
PatrickLyons said:
so I take it Dolphin is a fair bit more CPU intensive than GPU intensive. Is that a fair sense of things? I'm currently rocking an i5-680 Processor at 3.60 GHz (don't ask why) and a 4670 at 1600x900, and i'm debating the investment to get this thing going.
Click to expand...
You are correct. Also note that it doesn't use more than 2-3 thread so you won't see any benefit with crazy multi-core CPUs apart from any potential architectural enhancements made which improved performance per tread. Your GPu might only be a bottleneck with regards to AA and higher resolutions.
 
J

Jocchan

Ὁ μεμβερος -ου
Thrakier said:
No. You need a sandy brdige overlocked till at least 4.0GHZ. Even then you still get framedrops and audio distortions from time to time. But it's not too disctrating.
Click to expand...
Just checked and the i7-2670QM is a Sandy Bridge. The clock speed can apparently go up to 3.1 GHz with turbo boost (but I tend not to trust these figures).

I can't seem to find notebooks equipped with faster CPUs. Help? Anyone using Dolphin on a laptop?
 
S

shuffle2

Neo Member
I have a i7-2860QM and (when auto-overclocking) is comparable to my i7-2600k. Definitely recommend it. It's in a thinkpad t520
 
N

News Bot

Banned
Does Dolphin work okay with NVIDIA cards? I see a lot of AMD love. I want to be able to play the GameCube/Wii versions of the RE games.
 
W

Wichu

Member
News Bot said:
Does Dolphin work okay with NVIDIA cards? I see a lot of AMD love. I want to be able to play the GameCube/Wii versions of the RE games.
Click to expand...

Yep, my GTX560 Ti works perfectly. It's mostly dependent on your CPU anyway; GC/Wii games aren't really that demanding graphically. I think you'll probably want at least a mid-range graphics card though.
 
X

Xun

Member
Would Dolphin run well on this Mac Pro? I think the only downside is the GPU:

2 x 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 32 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
 
Y

ymmv

Banned
Xun said:
Would Dolphin run well on this Mac Pro? I think the only downside is the GPU:

2 x 2.26 GHz Quad-Core Intel Xeon, 32 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GT 120
Click to expand...

Since Dolphin doesn't utilize multi-core CPUs efficiently, you're also hampered by the CPU's clock speed which is only 2.2Ghz. Your GPU is more than just a downside, it's really a rebranded 9500 GT, a $100 entry level GPU from 2008. That certainly won't help.
 
X

Xun

Member
ymmv said:
Since Dolphin doesn't utilize multi-core CPUs efficiently, you're also hampered by the CPU's clock speed which is only 2.2Ghz. Your GPU is more than just a downside, it's really a rebranded 9500 GT, a $100 entry level GPU from 2008. That certainly won't help.
Click to expand...
Ah damn.

Also the GPU I'll probably get upgraded later this year.
 
D

Diprosalic

Banned
would dolphin work on this machine?

Prozessor 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7
Speicher 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Grafiken Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MB

i know the GPU is crap.
 
M

Mr. Wonderful

Member
Jocchan said:
Just checked and the i7-2670QM is a Sandy Bridge. The clock speed can apparently go up to 3.1 GHz with turbo boost (but I tend not to trust these figures).

I can't seem to find notebooks equipped with faster CPUs. Help? Anyone using Dolphin on a laptop?
Click to expand...

I would say that if you want decent emulation for the CPU-bound games, the 2720QM is the lowest you would want to go. The higher you go above that, the more buffer you're going to have and less chance of running to problems.

For example, I have the 2635QM, a 2.0GHz proccessor, and contrary to what everybody is telling you where "You need a 4GHz+ CPU!!", I was able to run Xenoblade barely comfortably at 30FPS at 720p-1080p, until I got to Eyrth Sea.

That should give you an idea. Like I said, I would go 2720QM, minimally, and ideally, probably the 2760QM (or higher, of course, if you can afford it).
 
T

Tomodachi

Member
Guys, I'm SO excited right now!
Last month I received a Wii as a gift from my boyfriend plus Skyward Sword from a few friends, I only had time to try the first hour of the game on my parents' hdready panasonic plasma, it was much better than what I anticipated so I thought what the hell, I can wait for Dolphin, maybe I'll set it in place when I'll be finished with the game. Then I moved my Wii to my room, waiting for my new tv to arrive, and since it took a lot of days in delays (holidays and stuff) I decided tonight to try it a bit with SS. 27" LCD, Wii turned on to use the sensor war (still didn't buy the wireless thing), (very) old bluetooth dongle I bought for I don't even recall the purpose many years ago when the technology was the new kid on the block.

Oh. My. God.

This is like... day and night. And I didn't even turn AA on because I didn't think my CPU could handle it (it's a phenom ii x4 840). I had to near the screen to check if it was really THAT good looking. The brush/dof effect is even better at higher resolution, I thought it would be weird or something. It's perfection.
I don't even want to say what I think about Nintendo and its decision not to launch an hardware revision in all these years. It's crazy really, casual gamers would have bought the cheaper one, that's all. Not the point of my post though.

I don't think I can go back to the Wii. I'm also a bit sad 'cause I feel a bit guilty not using "phisically" the gift I received (well at least I'm using the golden wiimote that came with the game and the blue nunchuck that came with the console, plus the rip of the game disc and all, but still). Now I just need to wait for my tv, I don't even want to think about what it will look on my panasonic 42st30.
 
N

nincompoop

Banned
Tomodachi said:
Guys, I'm SO excited right now!
Last month I received a Wii as a gift from my boyfriend plus Skyward Sword from a few friends, I only had time to try the first hour of the game on my parents' hdready panasonic plasma, it was much better than what I anticipated so I thought what the hell, I can wait for Dolphin, maybe I'll set it in place when I'll be finished with the game. Then I moved my Wii to my room, waiting for my new tv to arrive, and since it took a lot of days in delays (holidays and stuff) I decided tonight to try it a bit with SS. 27" LCD, Wii turned on to use the sensor war (still didn't buy the wireless thing), (very) old bluetooth dongle I bought for I don't even recall the purpose many years ago when the technology was the new kid on the block.

Oh. My. God.

This is like... day and night. And I didn't even turn AA on because I didn't think my CPU could handle it (it's a phenom ii x4 840). I had to near the screen to check if it was really THAT good looking. The brush/dof effect is even better at higher resolution, I thought it would be weird or something. It's perfection.
I don't even want to say what I think about Nintendo and its decision not to launch an hardware revision in all these years. It's crazy really, casual gamers would have bought the cheaper one, that's all. Not the point of my post though.

I don't think I can go back to the Wii. I'm also a bit sad 'cause I feel a bit guilty not using "phisically" the gift I received (well at least I'm using the golden wiimote that came with the game and the blue nunchuck that came with the console, plus the rip of the game disc and all, but still). Now I just need to wait for my tv, I don't even want to think about what it will look on my panasonic 42st30.
Click to expand...

AA has nothing to do with your CPU, it relies entirely on your GPU
 
F

Fafalada

Fafracer forever
Diprosalic said:
Prozessor 2.2 GHz Intel Core i7
Speicher 8 GB 1333 MHz DDR3
Grafiken Intel HD Graphics 3000 512 MB
i know the GPU is crap.
Click to expand...
The main downside with HD3000 are the drivers (your only option will be DX9 for Dolphin, OGL or DX11 won't work or will have compatibility issues).
Performance wise the GPU will hold its own around 1024x768 - so not great, but still an upgrade over Wii (eg. similar hw with switchable-GPUs: 60fps game on R6770@1080P would be HD3000@1024x768).
 
R

revolverjgw

Member
Anybody ever play Wario Land- Shake It with Dolphin? I can't get the shake controls to work here no matter what I do. They work in other games (using 360 controller).
 
M

Mr. Wonderful

Member
Fafalada said:
The main downside with HD3000 are the drivers (your only option will be DX9 for Dolphin, OGL or DX11 won't work or will have compatibility issues).
Performance wise the GPU will hold its own around 1024x768 - so not great, but still an upgrade over Wii (eg. similar hw with switchable-GPUs: 60fps game on R6770@1080P would be HD3000@1024x768).
Click to expand...

I thought Dolphin uses OpenGL 2.1?
 
N

Necronomikon

Member
SpidermanJones said:
Wow, thanks a lot! :D This is EXACTLY what I was looking for.


What would you recommend for using with a projector? Would a greater distance between the IR-sensors improve anything?
Click to expand...

Honestly I'm not sure. Theoretically it should!

For what I understand, people with projectors are using the Sensor Bar HD which covers over 30ft (~ 10mts) and I guess that's more than enough and IIRC the Sensor Eyes have the same kind of sets of LEDs so it should work just like the Sensor Bar HD but maybe tweaking the distance between the sets of LEDs could improve detection.

I hope that the final choice you make gets you the results you're waiting for!

Good luck buddy!
 
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