Dolphin configuration

[Mooglux]

Hi there,

I'm pretty new to dolphin, but i got most of my games up and running. I'm following the dolphin progress reports since a year now and it's impressive what you guys achieve each month! So far i really love dolphin and it works amazingly well with the dolphin bar with my original wii controllers. (first version which came with my wii + external wiimote plus addon).


But back to my actual question. Last month there were several improvements in LLE Audio. (tbh i don't have any clue about that audio stuff). What are the best settings now? I guess i should use LLE, but what else should i use there?
I noticed that the wiimote speaker isn't working so well, regardless of which audio "thing" i use (HLE / LLE). Did i do something wrong or isn't that working properly at all? The sounds kinda dull and with crackling noises. (tried house of the dead / cursed mountain).

And what about the graphics stuff? What should i choose? DirectX or OpenGL? Not really sure what's the difference or what's better
I have a pretty beefy graphics card (R9 290) which runs everything buttery smooth, so i don't want to go for performance but accuracy.

Thanks in advance!

[MayImilae]

Mooglux Wrote:Last month there were several improvements in LLE Audio.

The improvements were to HLE audio. It clearly stated that!

Mooglux Wrote:I noticed that the wiimote speaker isn't working so well, regardless of which audio "thing" i use (HLE / LLE). Did i do something wrong or isn't that working properly at all? The sounds kinda dull and with crackling noises. (tried house of the dead / cursed mountain).

No one is entirely sure why that happens, but it has always been that way. *shrug* There's no solution.

Mooglux Wrote:And what about the graphics stuff? What should i choose? DirectX or OpenGL? Not really sure what's the difference or what's better
I have a pretty beefy graphics card (R9 290) which runs everything buttery smooth, so i don't want to go for performance but accuracy.

No graphics backend is "better", and both are equally accurate (usually, see the wiki!). But what is fastest depends on the specific game and your hardware. AMD cards tend to favor D3D, so you may get better performance with it instead of OGL.

[Mooglux]

(09-08-2015, 06:46 PM)MaJoR Wrote:

Mooglux Wrote:Last month there were several improvements in LLE Audio.

The improvements were to HLE audio. It clearly stated that!

Oh, lol, sry, i confused that. As i said, i have no clue about that audio stuff, so i should go with HLE, i guess.
What settings are the best there? Or should i leave everything default?

(09-08-2015, 06:46 PM)MaJoR Wrote:

Mooglux Wrote:I noticed that the wiimote speaker isn't working so well, regardless of which audio "thing" i use (HLE / LLE). Did i do something wrong or isn't that working properly at all? The sounds kinda dull and with crackling noises. (tried house of the dead / cursed mountain).

No one is entirely sure why that happens, but it has always been that way. *shrug* There's no solution.

Ok thx, just good to know that i don't have to look for a solution when there is none. let's hope it'll get fixed sometimes in the future.

(09-08-2015, 06:46 PM)MaJoR Wrote:

Mooglux Wrote:And what about the graphics stuff? What should i choose? DirectX or OpenGL? Not really sure what's the difference or what's better
I have a pretty beefy graphics card (R9 290) which runs everything buttery smooth, so i don't want to go for performance but accuracy.

No graphics backend is "better", and both are equally accurate (usually, see the wiki!). But what is fastest depends on the specific game and your hardware. AMD cards tend to favor D3D, so you may get better performance with it instead of OGL.

Thx, i think i'll stick with Direct3D then. The wiki is great and i've already read a lot, but as i said, i don't understand most of the technical things there.

All those "efb buffer to texture / ram" stuff totally confuses me and i try to stick with the default settings if not mentioned otherwise in the wiki page of the actual game.

[Mooglux]

I've played around a lot with Dolphin's settings now and i've encountered a few strange things.

Mario Galaxy slowed down to 20fps when the lake was in sight, but when i wandered off the game was back to 60fps. I've tried a few different settings but i didn't notice any difference, then i tried other games and today i went back to mario galaxy and after some initial stuttering (shader cache?) it went to constant 60fps. Strange!

I also noticed a lot of crackling audio occasionaly without game slowing down, when i turned on the FPS counter it was gone though. Maybe also shader cache...

When playing Paper Mario TTYD on gamecube, i noticed that there are a lot of textures popping up when the scene is changed. I turned "Texture Cache Accuracy" to Safe and the problem was gone. No performance impact noticeable.
Is this required for Paper Mario?
Can i leave that option on? If not, is there a way to set it to safe just for Paper Mario?

I also changed the Audio Option to "OpenAL" instead of "XAudio" and the Dolby thing wasn't grey anymore, so i checked it. I guess OpenAl is better? Does this mean i have 5.1 Audio now?


Besides that, Dolphin is an amazing piece of software. It's great to replay my wii games in Full HD. It looks so awesome, almost on par with PS4 games! At least even better then my Wii U!

Btw, i've also noticed that save states are causing a lot of troubles. I tried it with Mario and Cursed Mountain and both games didn't respond to button presses correctly anymore afterwards (e.g. direction stick wasn't working anymore) and the characters kept slowly going in one direction.
Is this a bug on my side or is this a known bug?

[Neui]

If "Texture Cache Accuracy" is set to safe, then it is accurate (less graphical glitches), but for certain games this can introduce lag (not ingame-lag) (eg. Pokemon XD Gale of Darkness). If it doesn't impact the performance, then it you can let it at safe.

OpenAL and XAudio are used to output the audio (am i right? Not so sure). As far as i know OpenAL has time stretching, but for some games, the sound might be delayed at start. It is your choice, but the Wiki page says that for PM TTYD, OpenAL might lag.

The EFB Buffer to Ram-Thing is accurate than to Texture, but it isn't as fast as to Texture. The Wiki page says that for (some?) things it might display garabage if it is set to Texture, so, if you want and have the power, set it to Ram.

[JosJuice]

(09-20-2015, 12:29 AM)Mooglux Wrote: If not, is there a way to set it to safe just for Paper Mario?

Yes, by making a custom INI file for the game: https://forums.dolphin-emu.org/Thread-unofficial-howto-using-gameini-settings-per-game

(09-20-2015, 12:29 AM)Mooglux Wrote: Btw, i've also noticed that save states are causing a lot of troubles. I tried it with Mario and Cursed Mountain and both games didn't respond to button presses correctly anymore afterwards (e.g. direction stick wasn't working anymore) and the characters kept slowly going in one direction.
Is this a bug on my side or is this a known bug?

That's not a known bug. Savestates are known to not work well sometimes, but they shouldn't be as bad as you describe...

(09-20-2015, 05:25 AM)Neui Wrote: The EFB Buffer to Ram-Thing is accurate than to Texture, but it isn't as fast as to Texture. The Wiki page says that for (some?) things it might display garabage if it is set to Texture, so, if you want and have the power, set it to Ram.

If you leave it set to texture, Dolphin will automatically change the setting for most games that require it (except it stops working if you open the graphics configuration when playing a game). There are other settings that also behave in this way, like the texture cache accuracy.

[Mooglux]

Thx for the infos!

@JosJuice: For me, every save state seems to mess up the controls. I'm using the latest SVN rev.

[Bighead]

Save states tend to throw off the joystick's "center" if the wiimote was disconnected/reconnected from bluetooth or dolphinbar since the last time you played. It can be fixed by pressing Alt+F5 to disconnect from Dolphin, then press Alt+F5 again to reconnect it.

[AnyOldName3]

(09-22-2015, 12:11 AM)Mooglux Wrote: I'm using the latest SVN rev.

I'm just going to double check this, as the last SVN revision was made probably over 5 years ago, when Dolphin switched to GIT. You mean you've got the latest master branch build from the download page, right?

[Omegah]

Would be a problem if i let the textures cache accuracy set to safe always for all games?
Like a low performance on some games or so?