Dolphin Emulator - Search results for 'Wii U Hack Guide' (2024)

Written by MayImilae, JMC47 on Feb. 12, 2023

/ Last update on Feb. 12, 2023 / Short link / Forum thread

We've got a lot of exciting news and features packed into this Progress Report. On top of the normal emulator development, Dolphin's infrastructure has seen a massive overhaul. While most of the work has gone into optimizing our backend and hardware to meet new demands, users may notice some upgrades to user facing features like the Dolphin Wiki and FifoCI.

Some focus on the infrastructure doesn't mean there was a slowdown in progress for the actual emulator, though! A bevy of new contributors to the project mixed with the efforts of stalwarts has brought together some massive new features no one will want to miss. Headlining this Progress Report is a massive new performance hack called VBI Skip. If you're on a weak device that can't consistently play a game full-speed, VBI Skip is a powerful tool that can help make the game more playable and keep audio crisp and clear. If you're looking for higher performance overall, a ton of Vulkan optimizations and general emulator optimizations have given Dolphin a pretty large performance increase. A new option called Cull Vertices on the CPU can also greatly improve the framerate in many games.

If you're instead looking to enjoy some unique games, the Skylanders games can now be played without needing a physical Portal of Power connected. You can even use your own figurine data to continue where you left off with powerful Skylanders!

We have a lot to get through... but first.

It's that time again - we have to warn users of a rather annoying problem that can decimate Dolphin's performance, particularly in mobile devices. The culprit this time is NVIDIA based Optimus laptops - users have been reporting that the discrete NVIDIA graphics card has been giving them a fraction of the performance of Intel's onboard graphics!

We're unsure of what is wrong and haven't been able to determine exactly when it started happening. However, if you find that Dolphin is suddenly running slower than before, you can work-around the issue! Simply add Dolphin to the 3D Settings in the Nvidia Control Panel and set our Power Management setting to "Prefer Maximum Performance." That has been the only way to consistently fix performance.

We also have one more announcement to make. For Android users who want the latest development builds on their phone without wanting to wait, we now have an Open Testing Program on the Play Store app.

Selecting this option will keep your Dolphin up to date with the latest development builds. This means you'll have access to the latest optimizations and features immediately, without having to wait for the next beta update. However, as with our development builds on desktop, there is always the risk of bugs and/or regressions slipping in and going unnoticed for a bit. If you want to live on the bleeding edge, Dolphin's Open Testing Program is here.

Now with all of that out of the way, let's finally get on with December and January's Notable Changes.

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This article is number 75 within the blog series Dolphin Progress Report. ‹ Previous article in series / Next article in series ›

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• Accessory
• Feature Removal
• bugfix
• mod
• new feature
• performance
• progress report

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Written by MayImilae, JMC47 on Dec. 21, 2022

/ Last update on Dec. 23, 2022 / Short link / Forum thread

As we hit the holiday season, our Progress Report might be considered a bit late. A two month report became a three month report as we realized just how much work we had to catch up on. While the usual summer burst of activity didn't come, it seems instead everyone poured their time in throughout the autumn months! There's so many features, performance improvements, quality of life updates, and more that had to be considered.

We're going to have to skip out on some of the smaller updates this time around because there are so many big hitters. For instance, if you hate shader stuttering, Dolphin's Ubershaders have gotten a new tool that helps smooth out issues on Vulkan, D3D12, and Metal thanks to Dynamic Vertex Loaders that help reduce/remove pipeline compiles during gameplay.

If you're on a weaker device that stays away from Ubershaders... maybe after these optimizations you might finally be able to make the leap. Raw performance in Dolphin is up across the board thanks to many optimizations to the GPU emulation thread (which is emulated on CPU). Because this optimization affects the very core of Dolphin, pretty much every game should be faster, with a few select games seeing improvements of roughly 50%!

If you're looking to play with friends, we have some good news on that front as well. Dolphin's "experimental" Wii Remote Netplay support has finally received some much needed attention that may help it break free of that experimental moniker in the coming months.

And, for our Android users, a lot of the performance improvements also affect tablets and phones, but we also have a special treat only for you. The Android GUI has also seen a huge overhaul that should make it easier to use and easier on the eyes. And for those having problems with particular games using features Dolphin can't reasonably emulate, we have a few presents from an old friend to patch them up.

We could go on and on, but you know what time it is. Please enjoy these Notable Changes!

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This article is number 74 within the blog series Dolphin Progress Report. ‹ Previous article in series / Next article in series ›

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• GBA
• Metal
• WiiConnect24
• android
• bugfix
• mac
• new feature
• performance
• progress report
• tas
• ubershaders
• ui
• vulkan

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Written by MayImilae, JMC47 on May 17, 2022

/ Last update on May 19, 2022 / Short link / Forum thread

After a long wait, the Progress Report is back! This time it wasn't so much from a lack of content, but from a lack of content creators. The past three months had illnesses hit one of our writers and the other had a very challenging move. Even with these major hurdles jumped, we're not even close to 100% yet. It's been a battle to get caught up with all of the big changes to Dolphin the past couple of months and because of that this report is a tad late.

Needless to say, there's only one way to start catching up, and that's to get to digging through the past three months of Notable Changes. Enjoy!

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This article is number 71 within the blog series Dolphin Progress Report. ‹ Previous article in series / Next article in series ›

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• Disney Trio of Destruction
• Factor5
• Steam Deck
• android
• bugfix
• controller
• driver
• new feature
• progress report
• technical

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Written by MayImilae, JMC47 on Feb. 8, 2022

/ Last update on May 1, 2022 / Short link / Forum thread

This year, we've hit an important milestone that's been in the works for nearly a decade. In late 2012, Sonicadvance1 began work on Dolphin's ARM JIT. Back then, there weren't any devices that had even a sliver of hope of running Dolphin close to full speed, but that wasn't really the goal. All he wanted to do was see if it could be done; it sounded like a fun, challenging project. However, as time passed the idea turned into more than just a passing curiosity. Users were more than happy to donate to cover the hardware cost of staying on the bleeding edge of a rapidly evolving ecosystem, allowing ARM development to flourish. By 2015, Sonicadvance1 astounded developers and the community alike with footage of Mario Kart: Double Dash!!'s time trial mode running close to full speed.

On that note, we're happy to announce that Dolphin's AArch64 JIT has finally reached feature parity with Dolphin's x86-64 JIT. This means that every PowerPC instruction that the x86-64 JIT supports along with every major JIT feature are now supported in the AArch64 JIT! And this is a great time for ARM in general, with each generation of processor pushing the boundaries and companies like Apple adopting the architecture for larger and higher power devices like their M1 Mac line. For those on mobile phones and tablets, Adreno powered devices provide decent enough graphics drivers to get a reasonable experience at this point. And with a critical bottleneck getting fixed just days ago, performance on Adreno GPUs has skyrocketed. You won't have to scroll far for that news, we promise.

But that's only the tip of the iceberg; we've had three months worth of changes pile up and some other important infrastructure news. We've improved the user experience on macOS significantly and restored support for older devices. In fact, enough has happened that we'll be detailing the status of Dolphin's macOS support near the end of the report.

And... we haven't even talked about any emulation fixes yet. The past three months have had tons of changes that would have normally been the highlight of a Progress Report. The three month gap between reports was not because of a lack of changes. Want to take Riivolution games on netplay? You can. Hate the EA VP6 bugs? Make them a thing of the past with a new option. Wish your favorite LogicOp game worked on GLES or MoltenVK? Odds are, it does now! The list goes on, but outlining everything would take way too long, so let's just dive in. Please enjoy the November, December, and January Progress Report!

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This article is number 70 within the blog series Dolphin Progress Report. ‹ Previous article in series / Next article in series ›

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• Factor5
• JIT
• android
• bugfix
• gamebug
• homebrew
• mac
• netplay
• new feature
• performance
• progress report
• technical

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Written by MayImilae, JMC47 on Sept. 7, 2021

/ Last update on Sept. 7, 2021 / Short link / Forum thread

Many gaming communities over the years have reached out to thank emulator developers for their efforts. Emulators are an important part of many classic game communities and give players access to features like netplay multiplayer, modding, and savestates, while also opening up the doors to enhancements not possible on console. Sometimes it's simply more convenient to use an emulator that runs on your desktop, tablet, or phone rather than to dig out and hook up the original console every time you want to play one of your favorite games. However, it's important to state that our relationship with gaming communities is mutual, and without the help of players and fans, there's no way we could handle maintaining a library of thousands of games.

In this Progress Report, the gaming communities were the direct catalyst to many of the changes. They went on difficult debugging adventures, caught small issues that would be invisible to anyone who wasn't extremely familiar with the game, and even came up with patches to make games friendlier to emulator enhancements. All of these contributions, even if it's not code, are appreciated and help make Dolphin what it is today.

So, without further delay, let's get started with the August Progress Report! Enjoy.

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This article is number 68 within the blog series Dolphin Progress Report. ‹ Previous article in series / Next article in series ›

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• Graphics
• JIT
• Netplay
• bugfix
• performance
• progress report
• speedrun
• technical
• video

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Written by MayImilae, JMC47 on Dec. 6, 2019

/ Last update on Feb. 15, 2023 / Short link / Forum thread

One of the most enjoyable parts about being a part of emulation is seeing the classic gaming community use the tools we provide to find hidden bits of joy that would be impossible to reach otherwise. Freelook has found secret after secret hidden away just off-screen, and there's even a youtube series that focuses entirely on them! Savestates basically made speedrunning and TASing possible, allowing for quick testing of routes and sequence breaks to push games to their limits. But communities can go far beyond that, with tools now allowing us to look directly into game files and expose unreleased and rare relics. In the past couple of months, we've had two incredibly interesting leaks: A TGC file ripped from a store preview disc containing a pre-release version of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and a very early prototype of the never released Spider-Man 4.

Each of these games give a very specific look into their development. Wind Waker's prerelease demo is very close to the retail product and fully playable beginning to end without the imposed timer. Those that have looked into it have found a plethora of minor differences and glitches between this build and the one Japan would see a few weeks later. Spider-Man 4 on the other hand, never saw release and this was just about everyone's first look at the game. While it emulates just fine in the latest development builds, it does not run in Dolphin 5.0, due to broken support for unencrypted Wii discs. If you do run it, you get to see an incredibly early preview of the game with many non-existent textures, placeholder graphics, and incomplete collision detection. Still, we're happy that Dolphin was chosen as a platform to test out this unique prototype and the game worked without needing modification. With that bit of interesting news out of the way, let's get back to our regularly scheduled Progress Report.

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This article is number 57 within the blog series Dolphin Progress Report. ‹ Previous article in series / Next article in series ›

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• Datel
• bugfix
• homebrew
• new feature
• progress report
• ui
• video
• wiimote

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Written by JMC47, MayImilae on Sept. 1, 2018

/ Last update on July 9, 2023 / Short link / Forum thread

One of the most interesting challenges of developing an emulator is that both the target hardware and most of the target software start out as black boxes. As often mentioned within emulation circles, the first step to developing an emulator for a console is getting unsigned code running on real hardware. While running unsigned code on the GameCube can be a bit of a pain, requiring custom hardware or a mixture of the broadband adapter and certain games, the Wii has one of the most robust homebrew environments of any console. Just about anyone can download devkitpro, write their own homebrew, and run it on the Wii.

The truth is that Dolphin is mostly used as an emulator for retail games, but it can also be a useful step for testing homebrew and hacks. After all, when running in Dolphin, users can pause execution, dump RAM, and poke memory without the need for a USB Gecko. While the golden age of Wii homebrew has long passed, several game hacks are still under active development and the Wii remains one of the easiest game consoles to jump into and develop software. Because homebrew can rely on behaviors that games wouldn't ever want to do, even the simplest of projects can stumble into emulator bugs.

Developers kind enough to make their homebrew open source give Dolphin developers an interesting way of debugging issues. It's one of the rare cases where the software being debugged isn't a black box! This greatly cuts down how much effort and expertise is needed to debug what is happening in an issue - instead of mapping out what a game is doing through assembly, we can just look at the source code! Users who write tests that break Dolphin and provide source code give us a much easier look than trying to reverse-engineer what closed source software is doing.

This month, two bugs were discovered that, to our knowledge, do not affect any retail software! Thanks to homebrew projects, these bugs are now a thing of the past. In addition to that, Dolphin on Android has seen a myriad of improvements since our article earlier this month, and netplay saw some new features to make setting up games easier along with a new mode to reduce latency in three/four player matches!

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This article is number 48 within the blog series Dolphin Progress Report. ‹ Previous article in series / Next article in series ›

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• Netplay
• android
• bugfix
• discord
• new feature
• progress report
• ui

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Written by MayImilae, JMC47 on June 3, 2018

/ Last update on June 3, 2018 / Short link / Forum thread

Users of Dolphin may have noticed that things look a little bit different in the GUI. That's right, mid-April DolphinQt was unleashed to the masses as the default GUI! It hasn't been without some expected headaches and growing pains, but, overall most of the features are working and the transition is going along as smoothly as we could have hoped. For those having problems, the DolphinWx.exe is still included and will be updated with all the core changes.

Considering that we spent a whole monthly article on Qt, let's get into some actual emulator changes. In between the mountain of Qt changes has been an explosion of progress and fixes hitting everything from CPU edge-cases to Vertex Loader fixes! With that, please enjoy this month's notable changes!

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This article is number 45 within the blog series Dolphin Progress Report. ‹ Previous article in series / Next article in series ›

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• Factor5
• Feature Removal
• Qt
• bugfix
• new feature
• progress report
• technical
• ui

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Written by JMC47 on March 16, 2017

/ Last update on March 16, 2017 / Short link / Forum thread

As of version 5.0-2874, Dolphin can do the unthinkable: you can now access the Wii Shop Channel from within the emulator.

Dolphin can now download the free demos Nintendo made available on the system, as well as purchase Wiiware and Virtual Console games from the service. Because this feature is so new, it may take some time for the guides to get updated. The Wii Networking Guide will get …

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• Wii
• bugfix
• new feature

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Written by MayImilae, JMC47 on March 1, 2017

/ Last update on April 3, 2018 / Short link

As most of you know, Dolphin was born a GameCube emulator. A lot of its core design and concepts are based around assumptions made that it would only be a GameCube emulator. And, as a GameCube emulator, Dolphin performs admirably, with the ability to boot every single title and a large portion of the library having no major issues.

But, Dolphin isn't just a GameCube emulator. One of the more incredible things about its history is that it was modified into a Wii emulator around the time it went open source in 2008. While the core of the Wii is a supercharged GameCube, and things like CPU and GPU emulation were fairly easy to modify into working with only some minor details changing, there are a lot of quirks around it that have been problematic. Not only are there emulation challenges associated with the Wii that Dolphin side-stepped with some dirty hacks, it also struggled to add on all of the new features of the Wii. For many years, the Wii Remote, GameCube controllers configuration, and GameCube controller settings were completely split apart because Dolphin's UI was not designed with more than one primary input method in mind!

In terms of actual emulation, the problems mostly come from the Wii's Starlet ARM coprocessor and everything it brings to the table. To give you an idea of how important Starlet and IOS (Internal Operating System) are on Dolphin, it controls features such as disc access, savegames, networking, USB, ES_Launch (aka, booting games,) and other features necessary for the Wii to function.

Last month, we saw a lot of IOS-HLE improvements, resulting in a big uptick in compatibility. But with these accuracy improvements have come some hiccups and regressions as well. When we fixed The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask by using proper, reverse-engineered values for some important IOS-related things, it brought out some regressions too.

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This article is number 34 within the blog series Dolphin Progress Report. ‹ Previous article in series / Next article in series ›

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• Ubisoft
• bugfix
• progress report

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