Please give a general overview how Dolphin works

[vimr]

Hello,

I'm new to Dolphin and would like to help to develop. I studied the wiki, especially the developer guide. I downloaded the source code and started to debug dolphin to see how it works. As you know it's not so easy and very time-consuming to understand the architecture and main ideas only by debugging. Unfortunately there is not very much info on the wiki.

I would like to aks the developers to give a general overview how dolphin works, what are the main ideas?

[ExtremeDude2]

I suppose you could read the code comments :3, they may or may not be helpful depending on who wrote them

[neobrain]

Do you know how emulators are supposed to work in theory? If not, that would be a starting point.

What kind of things are you interested in most? There's no use for me to give you an overview about the gfx pipeline if you actually want to work on JIT stuff. OTOH, if you do care about gpu emulation, you could read my blog to get an insight (.. even though it doesn't really explain any of the gpu emu architecture, yet).


@ ExtremeDude2: For Dolphin, comments are a terrible source to learn anything. At best, they're going to tell you nothing at all unless you already understand wtf is going on.

[AnyOldName3]

For example, when Delroth posted some of the old HLE code, one of the comments was '//WTF does this do?'.

[NaturalViolence]

Quote: if you do care about gpu emulation, you could read my blog to get an insight (.. even though it doesn't really explain any of the gpu emu architecture, yet).

We've been waiting for part 3 for MONTHS. Don't become Gabe Newell.

[neobrain]

(12-19-2012, 07:57 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: We've been waiting for part 3 for MONTHS. Don't become Gabe Newell.

Meh, not like anyone really cares about FIFO emulation... :p

[vimr]

I'm new to development of emulators. I don't know on what I want to work on for now, but I'm interested in all the low level stuff. Before I can start I would like to know the basics of dolphin.

In the first step I would like to have a general overview of the main process. From booting a game to executing the game code to rendering the graphics.

Ok, there is a gamecube/wii game iso. There is something like an operating system on the game dvd, isn't there? Does Dolphin boot that OS? What happens next?

@neobrain: I read the two posts on your blog. very interesting, especially how dolphin handles the memory mapped I/O. more of that please...

PS @ neobrain: If you would explain all the stuff, you would explain it not just for me, I think it would also be a good starting point for other new developers.

[delroth]

(12-19-2012, 08:27 AM)neobrain Wrote:

(12-19-2012, 07:57 AM)NaturalViolence Wrote: We've been waiting for part 3 for MONTHS. Don't become Gabe Newell.

Meh, not like anyone really cares about FIFO emulation... :p

I do care FWIW. Please write more

[Shonumi]

No joke, right before I came to read this thread (starting with NV's post) I had just checked neobrain's blog to see if it had been updated, out of curiosity. neobrain, you seriously seem to underestimate the interest people have for any sort of background info on how emulators work :p Let's just say that there aren't a lot of up to date documents about how the GC and Wii work, so anything the Dolphin team writes is rain upon a desert. I can understand if you haven't the time, but no one else is writing about this kinda stuff in any authoritative capacity.

That was a rather long-winded way to say I second NV and delroth