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[hlhbk]

In recent Metroid Prime threads there has been some back and forth regarding playing MPT on Dolphin. Comments range from it runs great/its the best way to play all the way to it runs like garbage.

So once and for all to get a general consensus please give feedback to the following:

1. How does MPT run on Dolphim?
2. Control options? How does it work with real Wiimote and controller/mouse and KB options?
3. If it runs well for you please post your PC specs along with version of Dolphin you are running along with your dolphin config in screenshot or list format.

The goal is to help people get the best possible experience to play MPT. Thanks!

 

[Wowfunhappy]

This really isn't about PC specs so much as:

A) How much can you tolerate stutter? (in standard Dolphin)
B) How much can you tolerate the lighting glitches in Ishiiruka + async shader compilation?

I will continue to argue that you're better off just playing on console until Ubershaders get implemented.

 

[ThisIsMyDogKyle]

It's been a while since I played, like a year or so, but it had some pretty major issues on the normal branch of Dolphin, especially in Prime 2 and 3, where either you had a thick black bar taking up a good chunk of the bottom of the screen, or the screen would randomly begin flickering and wouldn't stop. However, with a bit of messing around I was able to get it to run perfectly as far as I could tell using a custom branch, I think it was called Ishiiruka? of course this was a while ago and the main branch could be much better at this point.

as for control options I used the Dolphinbar and a wiimote and nunchuck I didn't have any problem with it but from what I've heard there's an even better solution nowadays called bluetooth passthrough.

I was running on an i5-4690k@ 4.5 GHz, a gtx 970, and 16 GBs or RAM. unfortunately since then I've moved to a different PC so I no longer have the exact dolphin or Ishiiruka version.

 

[jon bones]

i have a high end PC, tried Dolphin and ended up playing my wii disc in my wii u

 

[Atolm]

Even with Ishiruka the stuttering is too annoying for me. I played the first game thanks to the DF Retro vid and when I play the second, it will be on Wii U with Nintendont.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

It's been a while since I played, like a year or so, but it had some pretty major issues on the normal branch of Dolphin, especially in Prime 2 and 3, where either you had a thick black bar taking up a good chunk of the bottom of the screen, or the screen would randomly begin flickering and wouldn't stop. However, with a bit of messing around I was able to get it to run perfectly as far as I could tell using a custom branch, I think it was called Ishiruka? of course this was a while ago and the main branch could be much better at this point.

The black bar has been fixed in 5.0 stable (although according to forum reports it may have come back in a recent dev build). Stutter is still present.

Anyone who is determined to play this in an emulator should probably use Ishiruka (which is indeed what you are thinking of). It's a somewhat finicky solution though.

 

[Huge Succeeded]

I've only played Metroid Prime 1 and 2 on Dolphin, but they were the trilogy versions. Here's my feedback for you:

- I had very little stuttering and I wasn't playing on an ishiruuka build (because I got much better performance on normal Dolphin in general). With that said, in my experience a bit of stuttering still exists, but becomes less and less common as you progress through the game.

- Metroid Prime is fine with a mouse, but you're gonna have to get used to mouse controls that turn your camera based on the cursor's position as opposed to using 1:1 mouse movement to camera movement.

- Metroid Prime is fine with an Xbox 360 controller, and it's absolutely excellent with a Steam Controller, where the right touchpad controls the cursor's location (absolute, not relative - so that any given location on the touchpad corresponds to the same cursor location on-screen, every time). It's like your thumb is a tiny little Wii Remote.

(I accomplished that by making the right pad into a virtual analog within Steam, that I set as the Wii Remote cursor control within Dolphin, so that the cursor centers whenever I lift my thumb off the touch-pad.)

Honestly, when you don't have a Wii Remote/Nunchuk/Sensor Bar on hand, the Steam Controller is the absolute best way to play Wii games on Dolphin, generally speaking.

 

[LincolnSixEcho]

The stuttering is a result of shader caching. It eventually goes away while Dolphin builds up the shaders for the game. As long as you don't change Dolphin builds (and possibly avoid updating your graphics card driver), you'll eventually see the stuttering go away.
Personally I think Dolphin is the ultimate way to play these games.

 

[LightningXCE]

There's also a super great widescreen mod that physically alters the HUD mesh to be proper widescreen.

 

[Bjoern the Smexy]

Dolphin has a huge Wiki listing (almost?) every GameCube and Wii game that runs (or doesn't run) on it.
Here's the entry for Metroid Prime Trilogy.
According to that it runs just fine with only very minor problems.
You probably will need a halfway decent PC to run the games at 60fps though, and an even beefier one for HD or even 4k.

For reference:
I have an Intel Core i5-6600 CPU, an nVidia GTX 1060 (6GB) graphics card, 16 GB of RAM, Dolphin version 5.0, running this stuff off of my external HDD and it plays as fluid as can be.
Only minor problems, aside from the rare 1 or 2 frame/s long stutter which I blame on my external HDD (EDIT: It's actually from shader compilation and is apparently an issue that goes away the longer you play?)
I haven't played it with Keyboard and Mouse, though. I always used a real Wiimote and Nunchuk for it (connected via Bluetooth).

Just make sure to download the latest stable release build of Dolphin (not the nightly or beta release) EDIT: Well, seems like the nightly releases are actually the way to go, so disregard that.

EDIT: Oh, also be warned that there is some input lag, like ~3-6 frames at most. But that is common for all emulators anyway.

 

[bomblord1]

It's been quite a while since I've checked into but last I checked it was missing support for a lot of features and had serious problems running. Everytime I tried to get info on the forum they always said to just get the GameCube versions/3 if you wanted to play it.

Dolphin has made great strides in accuracy since then though and now even runs games like Rogue Squadron which I never thought would run.

Also if you're going to play it use a real wiimote and nunchuck there's no substitute short of Dolphin VR and Vive controllers.

 

[Schlomo]

I played Prime 3 to completion via Dolphin with a real Wiimote only some months ago, runs pretty much perfectly on Ishiiruka. For settings, just refer to the Dolphin wiki.

 

[hlhbk]

Can someone post the link to the Ishiiruka dolphin?

 

[Tizoc]

Can someone post the link to the Ishiiruka dolphin?

https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-ishiiruka-dolphin-custom-version
Check first post and scroll down a bit

 

[ItsTheNew]

I played 1 and 2 through Ishiiruka. Turn on a couple of options and it should be pretty smooth .

 

[hlhbk]

I played 1 and 2 through Ishiiruka. Turn on a couple of options and it should be pretty smooth .

What options? Trying to capture this information to add it to the OP since there's not a one stop shop on this anywhere I can find online.

 

[ItsTheNew]

What options? Trying to capture this information to add it to the OP since there's not a one stop shop on this anywhere I can find online.

I'll check when I get home

 

[LincolnSixEcho]

Just make sure to download the latest stable release build of Dolphin (not the nightly or beta release).

Nightly builds have many improvements at this point over the stable release, and are usually recommended first.

 

[Dmax3901]

I played them through last year I think, there were some issues but it's definitely playable.

If memory serves the first one was the worst offender, weird slowdowns when transitioning from underwater to above and vice versa. Also some audio popping here and there. I can't remember if I fixed either of those problems after some tweaking or just learned to put up with them.

R9 290 4gb
i5 4690k
16gb RAM

 

[hlhbk]

I'll check when I get home

Looking forward to it.

 

[Kyle8497]

Different versions of Dolphin have their different quirks with each entry in the game.

I would just play it on console.

 

[Vanadium]

Midrange laptop and it plays generally fine. Not solid 60.
My big rig with a dusty 2700k and 980Ti and it's fine.

 

[jdstorm]

Even with Ishiruka the stuttering is too annoying for me. I played the first game thanks to the DF Retro vid and when I play the second, it will be on Wii U with Nintendont.

Why not just use the Virtual Console release?

 

[hlhbk]

Why not just use the Virtual Console release?

Because if you play in Dolphin and have a powerful enough pc you can play at up to 4k with enhanced graphics?

 

[hlhbk]

I'll check when I get home

Can you please post your settings?

 

[Huge Succeeded]

Holy shit, I just remembered. I made a video last year of me using Steam Controller to play Metroid Prime 2 on Dolphin. Check it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06xpWs50_4U


Looks pretty solid, right?
Not just playable, but solid.


This is why:

(steam controller trackpad left, Metroid Prime screen right)

because I have the right pad set as a virtual analog stick in Steam, this allows for

- a neutral position (center of screen, represented by the black dot) for your aim cursor - a place for the cursor to default to whenever you lift your thumb off the pad

and

- 1:1 cursor movement. Every single time I place my thumb on the blue spot on the left side of that diagram, my on-screen cursor will JUMP straight to the blue spot on the right side of the diagram (representing the game screen). Same goes for green, pink, and yellow spots. You can't even do that with a Wii Remote. This allows me to initiate turns faster (as I can be aiming my cursor to the far left or far right of the ingame bounding box with an instantaneous press) and aim at specific screen elements instantly, without adjustment, without locking on.

In addition, sliding your finger across the touch-pad with this setup perfectly emulates the IR pointer functionality - so you've got the best of both worlds - a control scheme with the immediacy of analog camera control, and the granularity of IR aiming.

yeah, I'm being a little bit self-indulgent trying to sell you on my Steam Controller scheme, but I genuinely don't think there's a better way to play these game on PC than with that controller. You can even throw a little bit of gyro on top of my control scheme and it works just fine for tiny adjustments.

One last thing (the only part of this post that's relevant to you if you don't care about my Steam Controller bullshit): Give these Ishiruuka Dolphin settings a look. Obviously change the native resolution to suit your hardware. I don't have my old install of Dolphin that I played Metroid on anymore, but those settings align with my own, if my recollection is accurate.

One other last thing: regardless of whether you dump your Trilogy disc or just grab an ISO somewhere, you only boot that ISO once, to create a new profile. After that, you have to boot the game using a file that's inside the ISO that corresponds to the game you're trying to play - because on actual Wii hardware, the Trilogy front-end boots into one of three separate packages depending on the game you're playing, and IIRC Dolphin doesn't have that functionality. I'll post the actual specifics if/when I get around to playing Metroid Prime Trilogy on PC again - which I probably will before Metroid Prime 4 hits.

 

[hlhbk]

Ok massive update time! I received a dolphin bar today and after gathering info from around the web and here on GAF here is my progress for getting Metroid Prime Trilogy to play on Dolphin.

First of all my specs again are as follows:

Intel 4970K stock settings
Nvidia GTX 1080TI
16 GB RAM
SSD
Win 10

Version of Dolphin I am running?

The Ishiiruka build latest version located at: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-ishiiruka-dolphin-custom-version

Prior to setting everything up I purchased a Dolphin Bar from Amazon so I could use a real Wii Mote. Make sure to download the latest firmware! Link to purchase: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HZWEB74/?tag=neogaf0e-20

My settings are as follows:

With these settings in my test I was able to run the original Metroid prime at 1080p, 2x MSAA, at 60 FPS with no slow downs or graphical issues all the way up to the point you get the first map download. I attempted 4k since I am playing on a 4K TV but there was some slight stutters so I stuck with 1080p.

For those who would like to see how it looks and runs here is that test I ran and uploaded you my YouTube:

https://youtu.be/yZVrvuIgrOw

Please note that there are some slight hiccups in the video only because I am recording at 1080p 60fps and it's very demanding on my pc to be doing both at the same time. Actual gameplay is butter smooth! You may also notice a tiny dot in the center of the screen that is a bug in dolphin and can be removed by setting visor occupancy to 0. I never really notice it while playing so I leave it be.

One last thing to make sure you do before you start playing! If you want to 100% the game and get all the bonus content it's not possible without downloading a save file and importing it into Dolphin. There is no way to get the green credits anymore since they could only be obtained by getting friend vouchers via WiiConnect24 which is no longer online. We will need to download a save with the 15 green credits already present. Don't worry no other progress have been made on this save!

Go to this link: https://www.gamefaqs.com/wii/960329-metroid-prime-trilogy/saves

Download the first save and save it anywhere on your pc. Do into Dolphin and go to tools, and import Wii save. Browse to the location you saved the file you downloaded and select the file and click open. If prompted overwrite any files it prompts you to, and you now have the save imported! When you get in game it will have you select a new Mii and you now will have the 15 green credits.

It took a lot to capture all of this. I hope this helps people and really was what I was looking for in a guide to how to get MPT up and running! Feedback is welcomed and encouraged!

 

[hlhbk]

A new version of Dolphin has been released that apparently eliminates stuttering in Dolphin. Going to test that tonight.

 

[Huge Succeeded]

A new version of Dolphin has been released that apparently eliminates stuttering in Dolphin. Going to test that tonight.

0o0

same here

 

[Palmer27]

Interestingly more errors are listed on the GC version of prime 2, despite having 4 stars when compared to the trilogy version of prime 2 with a 3 stars on the site. Will tell you first hand how mp2 performs when my sensor bar arrives tommorow

A new version of Dolphin has been released that apparently eliminates stuttering in Dolphin. Going to test that tonight.

Ooh as in something newer than just the standard 5.0 - what version please?

 

[Wamb0wneD]

So can someone tell me whether it works or not? Because a friend of mine wanted to play Prime 2 but it stuttered really bad, audio as well, with heavy slowdowns. Prime 1 worked for him for some reason.

 

[Chris R]

Only thing that took me a while to setup correctly was mapping the stick to use CURSOR values and not it's default values. If you don't do that you can't use a 360 pad or whatever to play the game.

Might try playing with the steam controller I got kicking around though and following the setup info in this thread

 

[human onion]

It's been working great for me, at least the first game. TURN OFF ANTI ALIASING. Bump up internal resolution instead, and use xfb to remove the black bars. It probably depends on your specs.

 

[hlhbk]

It's been working great for me, at least the first game. TURN OFF ANTI ALIASING. Bump up internal resolution instead, and use xfb to remove the black bars. It probably depends on your specs.

Strange no black bars and I am not using xfb.

 

[NESpowerhouse]

I tried the ishiiruka build, but even though there was no stuttering, a lot of the textures kept flickering when a shader was being generated, and it was quite annoying.

 

[Fat4all]

Donut

and Poptart

 

[Bjoern the Smexy]

So can someone tell me whether it works or not? Because a friend of mine wanted to play Prime 2 but it stuttered really bad, audio as well, with heavy slowdowns. Prime 1 worked for him for some reason.

I started playing Prime 2 again thanks to this thread and noticed that sometimes (and I don't know what causes it) the Scan Visor will simply not work. As in, you can activate it but you can't scan anything.

Also shooting a lot can cause tremendous amounts of slowdown.
My game works at 60fps pretty much all the time (even scaled to to 5K resolution downscaled to 1080p) but once I shoot stuff the frames drop hard. The lowest I measured was 25fps. Game slowed down because of it, too. I haven't tested the newest build yet, though, just the stable release version.

That's with the GameCube version of the game.

The Trilogy version works almost as good but I can scan stuff (sometimes). But sometimes, as soon as I switch to the Scan Visor, the whole screen flickers like hell. Literally every second frame is just black.
I don't know what causes it as I have been following the instructions on the Wiki to a T.
It's weird.
Prime 2 is definitely one of, if not the most prone to visual bugs of all the Prime games.

 

[stoke1863]

Holy shit, I just remembered. I made a video last year of me using Steam Controller to play Metroid Prime 2 on Dolphin. Check it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06xpWs50_4U


Looks pretty solid, right?
Not just playable, but solid.


This is why:

(steam controller trackpad left, Metroid Prime screen right)

because I have the right pad set as a virtual analog stick in Steam, this allows for

- a neutral position (center of screen, represented by the black dot) for your aim cursor - a place for the cursor to default to whenever you lift your thumb off the pad

and

- 1:1 cursor movement. Every single time I place my thumb on the blue spot on the left side of that diagram, my on-screen cursor will JUMP straight to the blue spot on the right side of the diagram (representing the game screen). Same goes for green, pink, and yellow spots. You can't even do that with a Wii Remote. This allows me to initiate turns faster (as I can be aiming my cursor to the far left or far right of the ingame bounding box with an instantaneous press) and aim at specific screen elements instantly, without adjustment, without locking on.

In addition, sliding your finger across the touch-pad with this setup perfectly emulates the IR pointer functionality - so you've got the best of both worlds - a control scheme with the immediacy of analog camera control, and the granularity of IR aiming.

yeah, I'm being a little bit self-indulgent trying to sell you on my Steam Controller scheme, but I genuinely don't think there's a better way to play these game on PC than with that controller. You can even throw a little bit of gyro on top of my control scheme and it works just fine for tiny adjustments.

One last thing (the only part of this post that's relevant to you if you don't care about my Steam Controller bullshit): Give these Ishiruuka Dolphin settings a look. Obviously change the native resolution to suit your hardware. I don't have my old install of Dolphin that I played Metroid on anymore, but those settings align with my own, if my recollection is accurate.

One other last thing: regardless of whether you dump your Trilogy disc or just grab an ISO somewhere, you only boot that ISO once, to create a new profile. After that, you have to boot the game using a file that's inside the ISO that corresponds to the game you're trying to play - because on actual Wii hardware, the Trilogy front-end boots into one of three separate packages depending on the game you're playing, and IIRC Dolphin doesn't have that functionality. I'll post the actual specifics if/when I get around to playing Metroid Prime Trilogy on PC again - which I probably will before Metroid Prime 4 hits.

Can you upload your config to steam? im struggling with metroid not having a great time

 

[FUNKNOWN iXi]

A new version of Dolphin has been released that apparently eliminates stuttering in Dolphin. Going to test that tonight.

How did it turn out?

 

[wwm0nkey]

How did it turn out?

Yeah I want to know if Ubershaders tally did finally fix this

 

[Palmer27]

Running mpt prime 2 on dolphin 5.0 - initially stutters but improves once shader cashe is loaded after 15 minutes or so. Main issue is audio - constant speeding up and slowing down in the music. Still experimenting.

Running at 1080p on an i5 and 1060.

 

[BRSxIgnition]

Will I be able to run the trilogy on a 970 at 1080p?

Will the settings above work for that?

 

[stoke1863]

does anyone have a good config for Steam controller as a wii mote for MPT?

 

[Big Nikus]

Will I be able to run the trilogy on a 970 at 1080p?

Will the settings above work for that?

I tried last year and yeah it worked well with my 970, 1080p/60fps.

 

[Wamb0wneD]

I started playing Prime 2 again thanks to this thread and noticed that sometimes (and I don't know what causes it) the Scan Visor will simply not work. As in, you can activate it but you can't scan anything.

Also shooting a lot can cause tremendous amounts of slowdown.
My game works at 60fps pretty much all the time (even scaled to to 5K resolution downscaled to 1080p) but once I shoot stuff the frames drop hard. The lowest I measured was 25fps. Game slowed down because of it, too. I haven't tested the newest build yet, though, just the stable release version.

That's with the GameCube version of the game.

The Trilogy version works almost as good but I can scan stuff (sometimes). But sometimes, as soon as I switch to the Scan Visor, the whole screen flickers like hell. Literally every second frame is just black.
I don't know what causes it as I have been following the instructions on the Wiki to a T.
It's weird.
Prime 2 is definitely one of, if not the most prone to visual bugs of all the Prime games.

Hmm...Thanks.

 

[hlhbk]

How did it turn out?

Yeah I want to know if Ubershaders tally did finally fix this

Sorry for the delay guys! So yeah I just tested it and with the exception of a stutter at the very beginning of the game that lasted half a second I am thoroughly impressed with the Ubershaders! It actually runs better than the Ishiiruka build which I didn't think was possible! I haven't tested more than on the space station in Prime 1, but so far highly recommended! Make sure you run ubershaders in hybrid mode. Even on my rig exclusive mode caused major issues.

 

[hlhbk]

Holy shit, I just remembered. I made a video last year of me using Steam Controller to play Metroid Prime 2 on Dolphin. Check it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06xpWs50_4U


Looks pretty solid, right?
Not just playable, but solid.


This is why:

(steam controller trackpad left, Metroid Prime screen right)

because I have the right pad set as a virtual analog stick in Steam, this allows for

- a neutral position (center of screen, represented by the black dot) for your aim cursor - a place for the cursor to default to whenever you lift your thumb off the pad

and

- 1:1 cursor movement. Every single time I place my thumb on the blue spot on the left side of that diagram, my on-screen cursor will JUMP straight to the blue spot on the right side of the diagram (representing the game screen). Same goes for green, pink, and yellow spots. You can't even do that with a Wii Remote. This allows me to initiate turns faster (as I can be aiming my cursor to the far left or far right of the ingame bounding box with an instantaneous press) and aim at specific screen elements instantly, without adjustment, without locking on.

In addition, sliding your finger across the touch-pad with this setup perfectly emulates the IR pointer functionality - so you've got the best of both worlds - a control scheme with the immediacy of analog camera control, and the granularity of IR aiming.

yeah, I'm being a little bit self-indulgent trying to sell you on my Steam Controller scheme, but I genuinely don't think there's a better way to play these game on PC than with that controller. You can even throw a little bit of gyro on top of my control scheme and it works just fine for tiny adjustments.

One last thing (the only part of this post that's relevant to you if you don't care about my Steam Controller bullshit): Give these Ishiruuka Dolphin settings a look. Obviously change the native resolution to suit your hardware. I don't have my old install of Dolphin that I played Metroid on anymore, but those settings align with my own, if my recollection is accurate.

One other last thing: regardless of whether you dump your Trilogy disc or just grab an ISO somewhere, you only boot that ISO once, to create a new profile. After that, you have to boot the game using a file that's inside the ISO that corresponds to the game you're trying to play - because on actual Wii hardware, the Trilogy front-end boots into one of three separate packages depending on the game you're playing, and IIRC Dolphin doesn't have that functionality. I'll post the actual specifics if/when I get around to playing Metroid Prime Trilogy on PC again - which I probably will before Metroid Prime 4 hits.

does anyone have a good config for Steam controller as a wii mote for MPT?

Uh stoke see the quoted post above yours?

 

[Elixist]

i think you can turn on ssao with an ishiruka build in the game as well. played great on 6700k 980ti, i should go back to it sometime.

 

[Bizzquik]

I never found a community profile (and hack) that could mimic dual analog sticks for Xbox controller use. I looked so many times over the years to find a way to make the original title control more like a modern-day game....but it just wasn't meant to be.

If Nintendo ever releases a Switch remaster with dual Pro analog stick controls, I'll break my console from throwing my wallet at it too fast. #Need-NotWant

 

[jett]

Prime 1 works great on the Ishiiruka build. Prime 2 is a mess.