dolphin gba emulator

[chumpz]

dolphin can be linked to vbam so why not add a gba emulation for dolphin?? so that we dont need 3rd party apps just to trade pokemon or use the tingle tuner

[Admentus]

Because Dolphin is a GameCube / Wii emulator and not an GameBoy Advance emulator?

It ain't gonna happen.

Through support for the Game Boy Player for the GameCube would be awesome, Not an actual GameBoy Advance, just an addon for the GameCube that uses it's physical hardware to run GameBoy games rather than software emulation. Still not likely to gonna happen, Dolphin still remains effectively a GameCube / Wii emulator.

On a side-note, does Dolphin still only work properly with VBAM to link with? MGBA turns out to be quite an effective Gameboy Advance emulator too.

[DrHouse64]

Emulating several machines on one program means : build a code and GUI structure that fit this idea, and more maintenance and regressions.
Dolphin dev team have already enough work to do with one machine.

It's better to let this to BizHawk or RetroArch teams, which can focus on building a good multi-emulation program without having to develop core emulators.

[Kolano]

Through support for the Game Boy Player for the GameCube would be awesome, Not an actual GameBoy Advance, just an addon for the GameCube that uses it's physical hardware to run GameBoy games rather than software emulation.

The "Game Boy Player" hardware more or less is a GameBoy Advance. They have the same (or probably just rather similar) hardware with a few bits and bobs to feed the outputs into the GameCube.

[chumpz]

a seperated dolphin created Gameboy emulator or plugin will be nice.. i think GB/GBC/GBA emulation is easy for devs because there are tons of GB/GBC/GBA emulator

[Kurausukun]

This is another thing that has been asked multiple times, and the answer is always no. Dolphin will never emulate any systems besides the GC/Wii/Triforce. Also, GBA emulation is far from "easy." Just because there are many emulators out there does not mean it is a simple task. In general, making any sort of emulator requires an immense amount of knowledge of both systems and, to that end, arduous research. It's far from easy.

[AnyOldName3]

At some point, we may completely overhaul how link cable emulation works so that multiple GBA emulators can implement support for it. This might be enough to make hooking up your favourite other emulators really easy to the point where it isn't worth having one integrated even from the perspective of a user who has to do no real work to make it happen. I suppose that there might also come a point where we expose an interface so a GBA emulator could be connected as a virtual GameBoy Player. There isn't much advantage to that, though, as all that would happen is there'd be extra performance impact compared to just emulating the game and not sending the output to another emulator. When the GameBoy Player supports additional features like rumble, good GBA emulators also support rumble, even though an actual GBA didn't.

[Shonumi]

a seperated dolphin created Gameboy emulator or plugin will be nice.. i think GB/GBC/GBA emulation is easy for devs because there are tons of GB/GBC/GBA emulator

lol

Trust me, Game Boy emulation is easy to start, challenging to improve, and absolutely insane to perfect. Making a good DMG/GBC/GBA emulator from scratch is easily a multi-year project. If you just want something that can run most games, you can throw something together in a few weeks. But if you really want something that'll play things accurately, it's going to take you a while. Most Game Boy emulators you see out there are people just learning about emulation for the first time (the DMG/GBC is great for beginner programmers), but they trip all over themselves with a bunch of advanced edge cases. I've been at it since 2012 and I still have a bunch of glitches I haven't eliminated yet. It's relatively simple to get basic Game Boy emulation up and running, but it takes time and effort to mature it.

Not to mention the Game Boy has a ton of accessories and add-ons and just plain weird hardware that needs to be supported. Printers, cameras, link cables, over a dozen special cartridge types, barcode scanners, card scanners, and way more. Some of the more exotic stuff isn't even emulated yet by anyone.

Now, it's possible for Dolphin to take an existing Game Boy emulator and shove it inside itself, but that would be a nightmare for the codebase, especially if no one updates it or maintains it. A much better approach is to have Dolphin connect with a Game Boy emulator through networking for the GBA <-> GCN cable and the Game Boy Player. In the case of the Game Boy Player, the GB emulator just needs to send audio/video data over to Dolphin, and then Dolphin can plug that into the Game Boy Player software.

[JMC47]

I just want a GBA emulator built into Dolphin so the wiki people have to deal with 1000s of more games.

[Admentus]

I just want a GBA emulator built into Dolphin so the wiki people have to deal with 1000s of more games.

I already feel kinda bad for you. I imagine the insane amount of wiki maintenance on top of the GameCube, Wii, WiiWare and Virtual Console library.