Possibility of emulated Skylanders Portal of Power

[floorpigeon]

Would it be possible for the RPCS3 emulated Skylanders portal to be ported to Dolphin? Or would it have to be built from scratch?

[MayImilae]

We already support passing through the portal of power, so you can use your actual skylanders figures with skylanders in Dolphin! https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2016/01/26/wii-usb-hid-support/

So there hasn't been much interest for us to emulate the feature. Like, combining physical figures with a video game is kind of like, the point of skylanders. It's like playing guitar hero with a gamepad. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.

[Shonumi]

For posterity and for preservation, it's something that should be emulated via software eventually. That's my opinion anyway. Today it's easy enough to grab the Portal of Power and use USB passthrough, but one of these days years in the future that won't be possible due to original hardware ultimately breaking down and failing. That's decades away from ever happening, but it's still unavoidable. We'll get to a point where either reproduction hardware or software emulation will be the only choices available.

Then again, that's my bias as a video game preservationist and an emudev. I mean, I've emulated sewing machines, robotic toy dinosaurs, and slot cars, so it's pretty clear my mentality is to emulate as many things as possible.

Personally, I don't think a lot of the underlying experience is lost by having a virtual interface representing Skylanders figures and the Portal of Power. They're nice to look at and it does feel cool to stick them in the Portal, but the end result of bringing the toy into the game itself is where the gameplay changes. To be fair, I've actually had a lot of fun emulating the Legendz games on the GBA, which uses the Soul Doll Adapter accessory in a similar manner to the Portal of Power.

Unfortunately though, I'm not a Dolphin dev, so my opinions probably aren't worth much

[floorpigeon]

(04-24-2022, 11:13 AM)Shonumi Wrote: For posterity and for preservation, it's something that should be emulated via software eventually. That's my opinion anyway. Today it's easy enough to grab the Portal of Power and use USB passthrough, but one of these days years in the future that won't be possible due to original hardware ultimately breaking down and failing. That's decades away from ever happening, but it's still unavoidable. We'll get to a point where either reproduction hardware or software emulation will be the only choices available.

Then again, that's my bias as a video game preservationist and an emudev. I mean, I've emulated sewing machines, robotic toy dinosaurs, and slot cars, so it's pretty clear my mentality is to emulate as many things as possible.

Personally, I don't think a lot of the underlying experience is lost by having a virtual interface representing Skylanders figures and the Portal of Power. They're nice to look at and it does feel cool to stick them in the Portal, but the end result of bringing the toy into the game itself is where the gameplay changes. To be fair, I've actually had a lot of fun emulating the Legendz games on the GBA, which uses the Soul Doll Adapter accessory in a similar manner to the Portal of Power.

Unfortunately though, I'm not a Dolphin dev, so my opinions probably aren't worth much

Yes I agree and I appreciate. Getting something to run on something it wasn’t initially designed for is well, what emulation is and emulating the Skylanders portal is crucial for the series’ preservation and even the preservation of individual Skylanders in game.

[Admentus]

Just my 50 cents on it. But time can only be spend once. Don't get me wrong, I love to see everything properly emulated, but if it comes at the expense of let's say something more interesting and exciting (GameBoy Player pretty please ) I rather have that instead. But hey, there might be someone super invested into doing this, and I definitely wouldn't want to keep someone from working on his passions. But yeah, chances likely are those who could work on this feature are likely interested in something else instead.

But who knows in the future. At some point Dolphin gets to have everything else included, which just leaves features such as these to be worked on.

[Miksel12]

This wiki page states that the Portal of Power station for PS3, PS4, Wii, Wii U and PC are all interchangeable: https://skylanders.fandom.com/wiki/Portal_of_Power
That makes it sound like the Portal of Power emulation in RPCS3 could be ported over.

[Shonumi]

(04-25-2022, 08:17 AM)Admentus Wrote: Just my 50 cents on it. But time can only be spend time. Don't get me wrong, I love to see everything properly emulated, but if it comes at the expense of let's say something more interesting and exciting (GameBoy Player pretty please ) I rather have that instead.

The beauty of Dolphin being open source is that it's attracted a lot of different programmers. It's not a one-person or small group of people working on changes. Everyone can work on areas of their own interest simultaneously, so supporting a specific feature/function isn't a zero sum equation, for the most part. Keep in mind that a person knowledgeable enough to add support for the Game Boy Player might not be knowledgeable enough to even contribute anything regarding the Portal of Power and vice versa, as both devices operate in two separate domains, essentially.

Regarding the Portal of Power, does Dolphin even have an interface or framework setup for emulating attached USB devices? Something similar to how it handles devices from the GC controller port, for example? If not, that's something that needs to be addressed before anything else can be done, otherwise the actual implementation shouldn't be too difficult if the Portal's protocol has been documented. But there's also GUI stuff to consider, along with doing stuff like maybe saving/loading individual files representing data from the figures.

If there is/once there is an interface for adding emulated USB devices, I'd be interested in helping get the Wii Speak working. I've already done a very small amount of reverse-engineering, so probably just mostly assisting with documentation and testing.

[JosJuice]

(04-26-2022, 12:46 AM)Shonumi Wrote: Regarding the Portal of Power, does Dolphin even have an interface or framework setup for emulating attached USB devices?

It doesn't. It could be nice to have for maybe emulating Rock Band controllers too...

[floorpigeon]

(04-26-2022, 12:14 AM)Miksel12 Wrote: This wiki page states that the Portal of Power station for PS3, PS4, Wii, Wii U and PC are all interchangeable: https://skylanders.fandom.com/wiki/Portal_of_Power
That makes it sound like the Portal of Power emulation in RPCS3 could be ported over.

Interesting. Thank you

[Kolano]

There's a wide array of input methods we should probably better support. That said, they mostly are supported via the USB pass-through.