4 ms·

They might be shovelware, but they are still programs that are not being emulated correctly, showing that the emulator still isn't accurate enough. Who knows wh

They might be shovelware, but they are still programs that are not being emulated correctly, showing that the emulator still isn't accurate enough. Who knows what else is missing then?

ReactiveJelly 3y ago
They have that wiki, so I imagine they do know what else is missing?
- ac2u 3y ago
  OP means if you know the emulation is a long ways from perfect, then even the games that are documented as running smoothly may have subtle gameplay differences below the surface. Probably not things that most people could notice, but the trio is a nice benchmark to aim towards
Shawnj2 3y ago
There was this one game called True Crime: New York City which didn’t work on Dolphin because they used a bunch of non standard things also also because the game is so broken on native hardware that figuring out what is an issue with Dolphin and what is an issue with the game was an actual concern. https://www.pcgamesn.com/emulation/dolphin-games-true-crime-new-york-city https://www.pcgamesn.com/emulation/dolphin-games-true-crime-...
- NovaDudely 3y ago
  Kind of not surprised that True Crime NY is like that. It felt like a title that was a little strapped together and yet could push the hardware in unique ways at the same time.
Timon3 3y ago
"Accurate enough" isn't a boolean value. An emulator can emulate all games perfectly without being fully accurate, and it will be much much much faster than a fully accurate one. It's accurate enough for most games, but not accurate enough for those specific three. But if getting them running doesn't give you anything besides getting them running, did you really improve your accuracy? Or just implement workarounds for those games?
- zirgs 3y ago
  Yup - also those 3 games are available on steam so if someone wants to play them - there's an easier way to do so.
- circuit10 3y ago
  You never know when a different game will be found to also rely on the same behaviour
  - Timon3 3y ago
    You never know when a different game will be found to be broken by the changed behavior. At this point it's safe to say that pretty much all Wii games have been tested with Dolphin.
    - circuit10 3y ago
      If changing the behaviour to make it more accurate breaks games then it was either implemented wrong or it exposed an existing bug. Either way, it’s a good test to find problems and make it even more accurate
      - Timon3 3y ago
        It seems like you have this strange understanding that a perfect emulator works 100% like the original hardware (cycle accurate emulation). As I've already stated, you're not going to get a performant emulator by being 100% accurate, and making some games more accurate in a non-cycle-accurate way can result in bugs in other games. In a perfect world with unlimited hardware resources you'd be right. But we don't live in that world and instead have to build non-cycle-accurate emulators, so you aren't.
        circuit10 3y ago
        Dolphin doesn’t aim for cycle accuracy, but it does aim to be as accurate as possible without making performance extremely bad. This philosophy has brought the emulator very far, as relying on game specific hacks means it will be forever limited to a small subset of the game library. The Dolphin devs always try to hardware-verify behaviours when possible. This extends to removing hacks that previously made games playable because it’s much better for code and emulation quality in the long term. If you disagree then you can make your own emulator I guess but it won’t get far

They might be shovelware, but they are still programs that are not being emulated correctly, showing that the emulator still isn't accurate enough. Who knows what else is missing then?

ReactiveJelly 3y ago

They have that wiki, so I imagine they do know what else is missing?

ac2u 3y ago
OP means if you know the emulation is a long ways from perfect, then even the games that are documented as running smoothly may have subtle gameplay differences below the surface. Probably not things that most people could notice, but the trio is a nice benchmark to aim towards

Shawnj2 3y ago

There was this one game called True Crime: New York City which didn’t work on Dolphin because they used a bunch of non standard things also also because the game is so broken on native hardware that figuring out what is an issue with Dolphin and what is an issue with the game was an actual concern. https://www.pcgamesn.com/emulation/dolphin-games-true-crime-new-york-city https://www.pcgamesn.com/emulation/dolphin-games-true-crime-...

NovaDudely 3y ago
Kind of not surprised that True Crime NY is like that. It felt like a title that was a little strapped together and yet could push the hardware in unique ways at the same time.

Timon3 3y ago

"Accurate enough" isn't a boolean value. An emulator can emulate all games perfectly without being fully accurate, and it will be much much much faster than a fully accurate one. It's accurate enough for most games, but not accurate enough for those specific three. But if getting them running doesn't give you anything besides getting them running, did you really improve your accuracy? Or just implement workarounds for those games?

zirgs 3y ago
Yup - also those 3 games are available on steam so if someone wants to play them - there's an easier way to do so.
circuit10 3y ago
You never know when a different game will be found to also rely on the same behaviour
- Timon3 3y ago
  You never know when a different game will be found to be broken by the changed behavior. At this point it's safe to say that pretty much all Wii games have been tested with Dolphin.
  - circuit10 3y ago
    If changing the behaviour to make it more accurate breaks games then it was either implemented wrong or it exposed an existing bug. Either way, it’s a good test to find problems and make it even more accurate
    - Timon3 3y ago
      It seems like you have this strange understanding that a perfect emulator works 100% like the original hardware (cycle accurate emulation). As I've already stated, you're not going to get a performant emulator by being 100% accurate, and making some games more accurate in a non-cycle-accurate way can result in bugs in other games. In a perfect world with unlimited hardware resources you'd be right. But we don't live in that world and instead have to build non-cycle-accurate emulators, so you aren't.
      - circuit10 3y ago
        Dolphin doesn’t aim for cycle accuracy, but it does aim to be as accurate as possible without making performance extremely bad. This philosophy has brought the emulator very far, as relying on game specific hacks means it will be forever limited to a small subset of the game library. The Dolphin devs always try to hardware-verify behaviours when possible. This extends to removing hacks that previously made games playable because it’s much better for code and emulation quality in the long term. If you disagree then you can make your own emulator I guess but it won’t get far