10-06-2013, 09:33 PM
Remember when Dolphin was early in development prior to going open source and the first few thousand or so revisions after? Remember how most games didn't render properly, JIT crashes, missing and messed up audio, low game compatibility, fifo errors, backpatch errors? Dolphin has come a long way since going open source, how much more can the project improve as time goes on? I was digging through some backup archives and found some old screens I took and the difference is amazing from then until now. The biggest features and improvements since going open source are the following imho:
Wii support.
Wiimote & Wiimotion+ support.
Functional netplay.
Increased compatibility. Most games are compatible now; So many games crashed early in development and several games were plagued with graphics issues severe enough they couldn't be played normally. Addition of EFB to Ram, EFB Access and Format Changes for compatibility. Other graphics fixes to long to list, JIT crash fixes, backpatch error fixes, fifo fixes, timing fixes, DX10 & DX11 support.
The addition of audio for Zelda and Mario games; these games were completely silent in the beginning. A massive undertaking alone due to lack of proper documentation. Everyone went crazy once they were able to hear just garbled audio from these games.
The addition of LLE for games that didn't work correctly with HLE and improvements to LLE audio.
Improvements to HLE over the course of development. Most if not all games except for a select few now have proper audio with HLE. Other improvements to audio and audio backends.
Performance improvements. Fixed quantizers so no more weird stretchy Remake characters.
Wow.. it doesn't really feel like it's been that long. If the project was still using svn I wonder what revision it would be by now. Now the project is at a point that it is being ported to smartphones. I want to say congratulations to the Dolphin team for their amazing work, I could only dream to be a quarter as amazing as they are with development of Dolphin.
I will post some then and now screens once I find where I saved the old ones.
Wii support.
Wiimote & Wiimotion+ support.
Functional netplay.
Increased compatibility. Most games are compatible now; So many games crashed early in development and several games were plagued with graphics issues severe enough they couldn't be played normally. Addition of EFB to Ram, EFB Access and Format Changes for compatibility. Other graphics fixes to long to list, JIT crash fixes, backpatch error fixes, fifo fixes, timing fixes, DX10 & DX11 support.
The addition of audio for Zelda and Mario games; these games were completely silent in the beginning. A massive undertaking alone due to lack of proper documentation. Everyone went crazy once they were able to hear just garbled audio from these games.
The addition of LLE for games that didn't work correctly with HLE and improvements to LLE audio.
Improvements to HLE over the course of development. Most if not all games except for a select few now have proper audio with HLE. Other improvements to audio and audio backends.
Performance improvements. Fixed quantizers so no more weird stretchy Remake characters.
Wow.. it doesn't really feel like it's been that long. If the project was still using svn I wonder what revision it would be by now. Now the project is at a point that it is being ported to smartphones. I want to say congratulations to the Dolphin team for their amazing work, I could only dream to be a quarter as amazing as they are with development of Dolphin.
I will post some then and now screens once I find where I saved the old ones.