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Dolphin Emulator Progress Report: August, September, and October 2023

137 points by thepbone 3y ago

pests 3y ago
> You might be wondering, where is all the pageantry? The honest truth is that things aren't ready yet. We have a few massive changes on the horizon that we wanted to be ready for the 20th anniversary, but that date was not an excuse to release something in a broken and incomplete state. Awesome.
paulryanrogers 3y ago
Incredible the variety of scaling techniques. I'd prefer higher native resolutions where possible, but maybe that requires too many per game hacks?
- nyanpasu64 3y ago
  Many of the scaling techniques are used to run games at native resolutions higher than the computer monitor (eg. combined with MSAA which is faster than SSAA, and smooths geometry but not textures/alpha), then downscale it to the screen's native resolution.
  - cogman10 3y ago
    Yup. This was particularly important when your monitor resolution was 1024x800 or lower. Without AA, everything was staircases.
jamesy0ung 3y ago
There's also been work on getting Windows NT 4.0 running on Wii. The dev is using Dolphin for testing https://haqueers.com/@Rairii/111472418904748866 https://haqueers.com/@Rairii/111472418904748866
pjerem 3y ago
> This past October, Dolphin turned 20 years old. Incredible. First thing : I’m old. Second thing : Just a thought but it’s amazing that the best Wii emulator is older than the Wii itself. I know it’s logical since the Wii was basically an overclocked GameCube with WiFi and Bluetooth but it’s still impressive that this project managed to follow this evolution in real time. And last but not least, I’m frankly amazed by this piece of software. It works incredibly well and I’m very grateful of what those people did, it’s a really important thing for video game preservation.
lIl-IIIl 3y ago
I thought it was like the Goat Simulator, but for dolphins.
- buescher 3y ago
  I would play that game.
ThrowawayTestr 3y ago
Dolphin is one of those projects you point to when talking about how great open source software is.
stuckinhell 3y ago
Wow amazing? What's even left to do major feature wise ? VR ?
- soulofmischief 3y ago
  It's not mainline but there is a fork of Dolphin with VR support and it's pretty OK for a few games! https://dolphinvr.wordpress.com/downloads/ https://dolphinvr.wordpress.com/downloads/
AdmiralAsshat 3y ago
So 20 years in: at what point would the developers consider the emulator "feature complete"?
birracerveza 3y ago
>If you're in the TAS community or relying on constant savestate usage for your project, this is a huge optimization that might make your life a lot easier. Malleo noticed that Dolphin was using LZO for savestates, which has a good compression ratio, but is quite a bit slower than LZ4 when it comes to decompression. By moving Dolphin's savestate compression to LZ4, savestate loading is now ~72% faster. >For the casual users, savestate loads are now snappier. For speedrunners this will make practicing a single trick over and over again take a little less time. But for people using hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of savestate loads for TAS creation or AI projects, the savings really start to add up. This makes me incredibly happy. This is the kind of stuff that developers should care about. A tiny thing that most people don't even notice, but has a huge impact on those who actually use your software.

137 points by thepbone 3y ago

> You might be wondering, where is all the pageantry? The honest truth is that things aren't ready yet. We have a few massive changes on the horizon that we wanted to be ready for the 20th anniversary, but that date was not an excuse to release something in a broken and incomplete state. Awesome.

paulryanrogers 3y ago

Incredible the variety of scaling techniques. I'd prefer higher native resolutions where possible, but maybe that requires too many per game hacks?

nyanpasu64 3y ago
Many of the scaling techniques are used to run games at native resolutions higher than the computer monitor (eg. combined with MSAA which is faster than SSAA, and smooths geometry but not textures/alpha), then downscale it to the screen's native resolution.
- cogman10 3y ago
  Yup. This was particularly important when your monitor resolution was 1024x800 or lower. Without AA, everything was staircases.

jamesy0ung 3y ago

There's also been work on getting Windows NT 4.0 running on Wii. The dev is using Dolphin for testing https://haqueers.com/@Rairii/111472418904748866 https://haqueers.com/@Rairii/111472418904748866

pjerem 3y ago

> This past October, Dolphin turned 20 years old. Incredible. First thing : I’m old. Second thing : Just a thought but it’s amazing that the best Wii emulator is older than the Wii itself. I know it’s logical since the Wii was basically an overclocked GameCube with WiFi and Bluetooth but it’s still impressive that this project managed to follow this evolution in real time. And last but not least, I’m frankly amazed by this piece of software. It works incredibly well and I’m very grateful of what those people did, it’s a really important thing for video game preservation.

lIl-IIIl 3y ago

I thought it was like the Goat Simulator, but for dolphins.

buescher 3y ago
I would play that game.

ThrowawayTestr 3y ago

Dolphin is one of those projects you point to when talking about how great open source software is.

stuckinhell 3y ago

Wow amazing? What's even left to do major feature wise ? VR ?

soulofmischief 3y ago
It's not mainline but there is a fork of Dolphin with VR support and it's pretty OK for a few games! https://dolphinvr.wordpress.com/downloads/ https://dolphinvr.wordpress.com/downloads/

AdmiralAsshat 3y ago

So 20 years in: at what point would the developers consider the emulator "feature complete"?

birracerveza 3y ago

>If you're in the TAS community or relying on constant savestate usage for your project, this is a huge optimization that might make your life a lot easier. Malleo noticed that Dolphin was using LZO for savestates, which has a good compression ratio, but is quite a bit slower than LZ4 when it comes to decompression. By moving Dolphin's savestate compression to LZ4, savestate loading is now ~72% faster. >For the casual users, savestate loads are now snappier. For speedrunners this will make practicing a single trick over and over again take a little less time. But for people using hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of savestate loads for TAS creation or AI projects, the savings really start to add up. This makes me incredibly happy. This is the kind of stuff that developers should care about. A tiny thing that most people don't even notice, but has a huge impact on those who actually use your software.