Need Dolphin to work when not the Active Application

[briant]

Hi, I'm trying to do Mario Kart Double Dash Lan Battle on the same PC using the same Monitor. The problem I'm having is that when dolphin is not the active application the controller stops working... I need to get 2 instances of Dolphin on the same screen, but whenever I click on the other instance with my mosue, the controls stop working for the other instance. Really need to get this working as I am going to have a party tomorrow and we were going to try and do a 8 player lan race. Could Someone please tell me how to get dolphin to still accept controller commands even when it is not the active application. Also, need help with BBA emulation, see post 3. Thanks in advance to anyone who helps.

BrianT

[Invader]

In the controller config, Enable background input.

[briant]

Thanks, that worked perfectly. However, now after more testing with the BBA Lan Emulation, it seems to be pretty unstable... Is there anyway to improve this? Basically, after I have both instances up and Double Dash Running, I go to the lan setup, then it waits while establishing the link, then Dolphin crashes sometime after the countdown, Usually at "180 Seconds Remaining". I have tried this on 4.0-8291, another recent build (sorry, forgot the revision) and the 2+ year old, Dolphin 4.02. All were of mixed results. Sometimes, one instance would crash immediately at the lan setup, sometimes one instance would crash halfway through searching, and other times both instances of dolphin would crash, one right after the other, after searching. Sometimes it even gets to the end of the timeout and says that the systems couldn't find each other. Also, I thought it worked, but I guess I just didn't do enough testing earlier. Also, let me explain my system specs, and how everything is configured:

Intel Core i7 3770k @ stock settings
MSI z77a-G45 Gaming Motherboard
16GB RAM
2TB HDD, and 256GB SSD
Nvidia Geforce 650 GTX
Windows 10 x64 Home

AS for my dolphin setup, I have a a mix of xbox 360 controllers and real gamecube contollers connected to dolphin via usb adapter. Each instance has a portable.txt file in it, and both revisions are 4.0-8291. Also, I have created 2 Tap adapters via Openvpn, and bridged both of them together. I have both instances set to have the sp1 to BBA. Also, I have my firewall disabled to test. I have both instances running in opengl mode, and both instances are on a single monitor (no multi-monitor... yet)

If there is anything I forgot to add, please tell me. Also, Thanks in advance to anyone who helps. Also, I think I should rename the title but don't know how, If one of the mods could do it, that would be great.

[Aleron Ives]

Dolphin's BBA emulation is really slow under Windows, so it's possible that it simply can't keep up with a game that expects < 1ms latency for proper operation. I'm not aware of anybody who has gotten the LAN games to work well with Dolphin, at least under Windows. Linux BBA performance is supposedly better, but I haven't tested it. Sadly, the one developer who recently showed interest in trying to improve BBA emulation under Windows threw in the towel.

[briant]

Hmm ok, I guess I'll be trying the Linux port. I've been meaning to install a copy of Ubuntu on this machine, for some time now. Just never had the time to do it. Now I have a good reason to, lol. Anyway, it might take me some time before I can do this, as I am pretty busy, but I would definitely like to try this if the BBA Emulation is more stable than on Windows. Also, for future reference, was wondering how to bridge 2 tap adapters together on Linux. On windows it's pretty straightforward. On Linux, idk how... I saw the dolphin wiki, it talked about how to bridge a Ethernet adapter with the tap adapter, but I want 2 Tap adapters bridged together. How would I exactly go about doing that?

[Sonicadvance1]

I tested this a bit ago in Linux just to see how much the difference is between Windows and Linux BBA emulation latencies.
Currently the Linux TAP source only searches for a "Dolphin" TAP device, so only one instance of Dolphin can connect to it.
I have some code to change that so up to four instances of Dolphin can connect to TAP devices, but I have yet to commit it.

The overhead in Linux is nothing, while the overhead in Windows is in the multiple of seconds apparently.
As proof, here is me running four instances of Mario Kart Double Dash on my laptop at full speed. In Windows this would have so much overhead that the games wouldn't even maintain a connection.

[Aleron Ives]

If any current developer has an interest in trying to fix the BBA emulation under Windows, zeroZshadow offered to share his experience in his abandoned Win32 BBA rewrite PR. The sluggish BBA emulation seems to cause problems in WAN play, too: PSO crashes frequently in online mode when being sent a lot of data all at once, such as when loading a quest. Even though Dolphin is emulating the BBA, you get modem-caliber speeds, too.