Dolphin In The Future

xxballerxx54 · (This post was last modified: 11-17-2013, 10:26 AM by xxballerxx54.)

As dolphin is almost perfect (to me anyways) here is some things I wonder.
1. Will all games be multiplayer like on wii? It would be awesome to have all multiplayer games work and hopefully in the next dolphin 5.0 or whatever will be most games will be emulated for multiplayer. I know its hard but I hope.
2. Since lots of stuff are using cloud now I wonder if there will be cloud emulation lol I should keep dreaming.
P.s. this is a quick question could I optimize dolphin for my pc like change the code to make it run better for my pc or no.

***Shonumi*** · 11-17-2013, 11:28 AM #2

xxballerxx54 Wrote:1. Will all games be multiplayer like on wii? It would be awesome to have all multiplayer games work and hopefully in the next dolphin 5.0 or whatever will be most games will be emulated for multiplayer. I know its hard but I hope.

Well, Dolphin's already mostly there. Nintendo's WiFi Connection is already supported. Most games should work fine (MK Wii, Brawl, and Bomberman Blast I have personally tested myself). Netplay emulates what games would be like if you and your friends got together at your house and played on the same physical system in front of the same TV, except you do it online of course. It's long since worked for Gamecube games and Wii games that supported the GC controller, but now Wiimote support has been added to the latest Dolphin revisions. It's in a playable state, last time I heard, but it very doable at the moment.

xxballerxx54 Wrote:2. Since lots of stuff are using cloud now I wonder if there will be cloud emulation lol I should keep dreaming.

What exactly is "cloud emulation"? The "cloud" is just a buzzword for having servers do everything for you, from processing data to storing data (just like mainframes way back when...) It's not like running Dolphin as a service on Amazon's servers, for example, makes much sense, aside from pure novelty.

xxballerxx54 Wrote:P.s. this is a quick question could I optimize dolphin for my pc like change the code to make it run better for my pc or no.

Yes. Technically you could change the code to make it run faster (given you knew what you were doing). But knowing what to do is a very big stipulation for many people, thus it's not really realistic or easy for people.

xxballerxx54 · 12-01-2013, 12:55 AM #3

(11-17-2013, 11:28 AM)Shonumi Wrote:
' Wrote:1. Will all games be multiplayer like on wii? It would be awesome to have all multiplayer games work and hopefully in the next dolphin 5.0 or whatever will be most games will be emulated for multiplayer. I know its hard but I hope.

Well, Dolphin's already mostly there. Nintendo's WiFi Connection is already supported. Most games should work fine (MK Wii, Brawl, and Bomberman Blast I have personally tested myself). Netplay emulates what games would be like if you and your friends got together at your house and played on the same physical system in front of the same TV, except you do it online of course. It's long since worked for Gamecube games and Wii games that supported the GC controller, but now Wiimote support has been added to the latest Dolphin revisions. It's in a playable state, last time I heard, but it very doable at the moment.

' Wrote:2. Since lots of stuff are using cloud now I wonder if there will be cloud emulation lol I should keep dreaming.

What exactly is "cloud emulation"? The "cloud" is just a buzzword for having servers do everything for you, from processing data to storing data (just like mainframes way back when...) It's not like running Dolphin as a service on Amazon's servers, for example, makes much sense, aside from pure novelty.

' Wrote:P.s. this is a quick question could I optimize dolphin for my pc like change the code to make it run better for my pc or no.

Yes. Technically you could change the code to make it run faster (given you knew what you were doing). But knowing what to do is a very big stipulation for many people, thus it's not really realistic or easy for people.

well that stinks since I don't know much about the code lol. But how much of a speed gain would you get from a code change 10-20 fps?

***Shonumi*** · 12-01-2013, 04:00 AM #4

xxballerxx54 Wrote:well that stinks since I don't know much about the code lol. But how much of a speed gain would you get from a code change 10-20 fps?

Even if you know nothing about code, you know what the answer would be:

Spoiler: (Show Spoiler)

In all seriousness, that's the correct answer. It depends on what you're changing and how you're changing it. Even when the you have a solid estimate of possible performance increases, you never know until what the performance will be for sure until you actually see it.

limith · (This post was last modified: 12-01-2013, 04:10 AM by limith.)

Quote:Yes. Technically you could change the code to make it run faster (given you knew what you were doing). But knowing what to do is a very big stipulation for many people, thus it's not really realistic or easy for people.

Writing optimal code is very tiresome. C++ with pointers and memory management doesn't make it easier (though C++ is much faster than Java overall since you have access to memory management).

Loop unrolling, OpenMP, cache blocking. You would need to optimize based on the platform the game is being run on to take advantage of the cache size (requires CPU knowledge I suppose) which isn't an easy task if you are attempting to support multiple platforms.

Alternatively something with thread splitting, but I wouldn't know where to begin in C++, only used Java Nachos in class and Python Reactors (Twisted). Not sure if a reactor based process would be faster since there isn't much in terms of network IO and disk read should be quite fast.

xxballerxx54 · 12-01-2013, 05:19 AM #6

(12-01-2013, 04:05 AM)limith Wrote:
Quote:Yes. Technically you could change the code to make it run faster (given you knew what you were doing). But knowing what to do is a very big stipulation for many people, thus it's not really realistic or easy for people.
Writing optimal code is very tiresome. C++ with pointers and memory management doesn't make it easier (though C++ is much faster than Java overall since you have access to memory management).

Loop unrolling, OpenMP, cache blocking. You would need to optimize based on the platform the game is being run on to take advantage of the cache size (requires CPU knowledge I suppose) which isn't an easy task if you are attempting to support multiple platforms.

Alternatively something with thread splitting, but I wouldn't know where to begin in C++, only used Java Nachos in class and Python Reactors (Twisted). Not sure if a reactor based process would be faster since there isn't much in terms of network IO and disk read should be quite fast.

so is the code complicated and hard to understand if youre like me being a beginner.

limith · (This post was last modified: 12-01-2013, 05:37 AM by limith.)

(12-01-2013, 05:19 AM)xxballerxx54 Wrote:
(12-01-2013, 04:05 AM)limith Wrote:
Quote:Yes. Technically you could change the code to make it run faster (given you knew what you were doing). But knowing what to do is a very big stipulation for many people, thus it's not really realistic or easy for people.
Writing optimal code is very tiresome. C++ with pointers and memory management doesn't make it easier (though C++ is much faster than Java overall since you have access to memory management).

Loop unrolling, OpenMP, cache blocking. You would need to optimize based on the platform the game is being run on to take advantage of the cache size (requires CPU knowledge I suppose) which isn't an easy task if you are attempting to support multiple platforms.

Alternatively something with thread splitting, but I wouldn't know where to begin in C++, only used Java Nachos in class and Python Reactors (Twisted). Not sure if a reactor based process would be faster since there isn't much in terms of network IO and disk read should be quite fast.
so is the code complicated and hard to understand if youre like me being a beginner.

Well for optimization, I presume at a minimum you need to be able to understand all of the topics listed here (specifically weeks 7-13, I took this class in a much earlier semester):
http://www-inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61c/fa13/
On top of that, you need to know Wii infrastructure and I assume GPU infrastructure

I'm not a developer of Dolphin though. I took a peek at the SVN earlier.

**RachelB** · 12-01-2013, 08:49 AM #8

(12-01-2013, 05:19 AM)xxballerxx54 Wrote: so is the code complicated and hard to understand if youre like me being a beginner.

I can't even begin to imagine anyone who describes themselves as a beginner would be able to do anything that would have any noticeable impact on performance.