NAND

[Hurlburt7x2]

As I understand you have enforced a strict 512MB limit on NAND however the attraction and benefit of Dolphin was to be able to play as many games without the hassle of exporting and importing and constantly removing game saves to play other games. Yes perfect emulation would include this however most users of Dolphin liked that feature of unlimited NAND moreover most Wii systems are hacked to use d2x CIOS and EmuNAND providing unlimited NAND and my suggestion is to make that requirement optional with a user controlled setting that users can enable and disable so that users of dolphin can have similar experience with unlimited NAND if they so choose. Most games work just fine with USB Loader GX and unlimited EmuNAND on real Wii and us users would like to have that back at least as a user choice. I like using my laptop because it’s easier to transport and used to be able to do all my games in one place and now with the forced small NAND in Dolphin a lot of games have issues with saves unless I delete 90% of my saves… It is a deterrant to users of Dolphin and more likely more users will probably abandon Dolphin and purchase a Real Wii because on a real wii with USB Loader GX you can have all your games in one place with unlimited NAND and no issues.

[ErmaPeters]

As I understand you have enforced a strict 512MB limit on NAND however the attraction and benefit of Dolphin was to be able to play as many games without the hassle of exporting and importing and constantly removing game saves to play other games. Yes perfect emulation would include this however most users of Dolphin liked that feature of unlimited NAND moreover most Wii systems are hacked to use d2x CIOS and EmuNAND providing unlimited NAND and my suggestion is to make that requirement optional with a user controlled setting that users can enable and disable so that users of dolphin can have similar experience with unlimited NAND if they so choose. Most games work just fine with USB Loader GX and unlimited EmuNAND on real Wii and us users would like to have that back at least as a user choice. I like using my laptop because it’s easier to transport and used to be able to do all my games in one place and now with the forced small NAND in Dolphin a lot of games have issues with saves unless I delete 90% of my saves… It is a deterrant to users of Dolphin and more likely more users will probably abandon Dolphin and purchase a Real Wii because on a real wii with USB Loader GX you can have all your games in one place with unlimited NAND and no issues.

It's understandable that the strict 512MB limit on NAND in Dolphin may be inconvenient for some users who prefer the benefits of having unlimited NAND. However, it's important to note that Dolphin is an emulator, and its main goal is to accurately emulate the behavior of the original console, not necessarily to provide the same user experience as a hacked console.


The decision to enforce the 512MB limit was made to improve the accuracy of the emulation and to prevent potential issues that could arise from exceeding the original hardware's limitations. While it may be possible to implement a user-controlled setting to allow for unlimited NAND, it would likely come at the cost of accuracy and could potentially cause compatibility issues with certain games.

Additionally, it's worth noting that using a hacked console with unlimited NAND is not only illegal, but it also carries the risk of damaging the console or causing other issues. Emulation on Dolphin provides a legal and safe alternative for users to enjoy their favorite games without the risks associated with hacking a console.

[iwubcode]

As mentioned by ErmaPeters, we strive to accurately match the emulated console. I've brought up the idea of making the restriction on space optional and I believe the answer was that it would be difficult to do while trying to provide accurate emulation.

The compromise is to introduce another system that can swap out the oldest data when data gets low, see https://bugs.dolphin-emu.org/issues/12373 . The only downside to this approach is you wouldn't be able to go into the Wii and manually manage your titles because the Wii would not know about this other system.

[mbc07]

For reference, old Dolphin versions used to have an unlimited NAND size, but it caused various issues, to the point it got dropped during the big IOS HLE rewrite. Don't expect it to come back anytime soon...