Compiling Dolphin to Run Headless

[jackeown]

So I'm trying to make an AI for super smash bros melee (SSBM)...
In order to do this, I need to get a large amount of training data from many games played on dolphin.
I want to run them all on virtual machines in google cloud, but I need to be able to run "dolphin-emu-headless".
I tried to follow the instructions on the github page for compiling dolphin, but it doesn't say how to make it headless.
I read the CMakeLists.txt file and found the following line:

option(ENABLE_HEADLESS "Enables running Dolphin as a headless variant" OFF)

and I switched the "OFF" to "ON" and recompiled and reinstalled, but I still don't have a "dolphin-emu-headless" executable.
(Also the regular "dolphin-emu" executable doesn't show up and the only one that does is "dolphin-emu-nogui")

Any help I could get would be greatly appreciated.
Also, what's the difference between dolphin-emu-headless and dolphin-emu-nogui?

Thanks,
jackeown

[AnyOldName3]

I think dolphin-emu-nogui runs Dolphin without a GUI (i.e. headless) and dolphin-emu-headless is something you just made up based on the name of the setting that is used to turn on and off the building of dolphin-emu-nogui.

[jackeown]

(03-09-2018, 08:29 AM)AnyOldName3 Wrote: I think dolphin-emu-nogui runs Dolphin without a GUI (i.e. headless) and dolphin-emu-headless is something you just made up based on the name of the setting that is used to turn on and off the building of dolphin-emu-nogui.

That may be the case...I'm just confused by this code then: https://github.com/vladfi1/phillip/blob/0d2ccfe9dca1fb4ea8be1791f6ad157eed5bc196/phillip/dolphin.py
(This is code from another guy who made a bot for Super smash bros melee).
He has an executable called "dolphin-emu-headless" (or so it seems)

Even so, I've tried running dolphin-emu-nogui with NULL as the video backend in a teletype with no luck....
(Also if that's the case, then why do I still get "dolphin-emu-nogui" when I don't use the headless flag?)

[AnyOldName3]

You're not going to get any useful output with the null video backend unless you're using something like cheat engine or Dolphin's debugger to work out what's going on. Even then, if Smash requires any CPU<->GPU communication, it's still not going to work.

[Neui]

(03-09-2018, 08:13 AM)jackeown Wrote: I read the CMakeLists.txt file and found the following line:

option(ENABLE_HEADLESS "Enables running Dolphin as a headless variant" OFF)

and I switched the "OFF" to "ON" and recompiled

The proper way is to modify the CMakeCache.txt file.

(03-09-2018, 08:46 AM)jackeown Wrote: That may be the case...I'm just confused by this code then: https://github.com/vladfi1/phillip/blob/0d2ccfe9dca1fb4ea8be1791f6ad157eed5bc196/phillip/dolphin.py
(This is code from another guy who made a bot for Super smash bros melee).
He has an executable called "dolphin-emu-headless" (or so it seems)

I found this:

Code:

if self.gui:
      # switch from headless to gui
      if self.exe.endswith("-headless"):
        #self.exe = self.exe[:-9]
        self.exe = self.exe[:-9] + "-nogui"

It basically just replaces "-headless" with "-nogui". So it is effectively using "dolphin-emu-nogui"

[leolam]

Quote:The proper way is to modify the CMakeCache.txt file.

Or just pass -DOPTION=On to cmake.

[AnyOldName3]

I don't think editing a CMakeCache.txt is a proper solution to anything. Stuff should be done by setting it in the CMake GUI or by passing the command line version a -D

[jackeown]

Yeah so I emailed the guy who made that github repository, and yes, that is just a renaming. There's only supposed to be "dolphin-emu" and "dolphin-emu-nogui".
When I use ENABLE_HEADLESS, I ONLY get "dolphin-emu-nogui."

what's the difference between this executable and the one where I didn't use the compiler flag ENABLE_HEADLESS?