(10-15-2016, 11:56 AM)tiadefum Wrote: @JosJuice I am aware that because it is free does not mean it can inherently be redistributed, however I misunderstood the HBC's license model, and was under the impression that it was literally freeware, as in can be redistributed and modified.
That's not what freeware means. To quote Wikipedia:
"Freeware is proprietary software that is available for use at no monetary cost. In other words, freeware may be used without payment but may usually not be modified, re-distributed or reverse-engineered without the author's permission."
(10-15-2016, 12:16 PM)Kurausukun Wrote: This is just curiosity--do we want to emulate the Wii system internals/IOSes/etc. at a lower level at some point, or would it completely unavoidably murder performance and is thus not planned?
It will only happen if someone steps up to do it, which nobody has done yet. We can't know in advance if anyone will do that.
(10-15-2016, 01:38 PM)tiadefum Wrote: Quite frankly, and I couldn't say for sure, but I think that has to do with just how much more powerful hardware gets in the next half a decade. However even if there is a good chance of it happening, I certainly wouldn't say it was impossible to accurately emulate the Wii/IOSes low-level and retain majority, or even totality quality of performance. After all the Wii only had 88MB of RAM and a 723MHz processor, realistically (at least when it comes to the required difference in magnitudes of power between the emulated and emulating machine's raw power for things to be both near-identically accurate, and preform well) a modern 3.5-5.0GHz multi-core processor with over a dozen GBs of RAM to spare would in no way be considered lacking said magnitudes increase. Really I think it comes down to finding more efficient ways of preforming the same tasks that the Wii's processor preforms (perhaps by creating a pin-for-pin virtual CPU for the machine, in which firmware could be overwritten by replacing files/programs that preforms the same tasks as ad exist as placeholders for the BIOS/CPU[divided into a program per function, called when needed, never running in the background for efficiency]/NAND[which has already been done]/etc.. Of course this method would rely on licensing the schematics from IBM/Acorn/whoever designed the PPC chip in the Wii, and would require open-source alternatives that were both fully compatible with, and only recreating the function of the original IPs from Nintendo, which again with this part is partially done.)
TL;DR: perhaps it could be achieved using a method similar to what FreeDOS and other PC-DOS compatibles did, while it may not be an easy task; recreating the functions in a way compatible with the original, that does not necessarily directly emulate it. So, realistically as far as Dolphin being an emulator goes: no, however when it comes to the System Menu and other system oriented firmware properties, as a separate project or perhaps a sub-project of Dolphin specifically designed to achieve accurate Wii low-level replication quite possibly, but in the end even if this did work the games themselves would likely still run on the existing Dolphin framwork, with Low-Level being relegated specifically to homebrew/system functions which require it.
Many parts of this post don't make sense.