Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

(05-18-2014, 10:47 AM)delroth Wrote: [ -> ]

Quote:I've been trying to play Metroid Prime 2 and the game works near perfectly with an ancient revision (r7346 LOL), all you have to do is use save states for saving because formatting a memory card makes the game reset on the menu for some reason, and in the game options set the audio to mono because stereo makes some sound effects not play correctly. If you do that you have near perfect emulation.

Lol.

If you want to keep using buggy versions, have fun. Stop posting here though, we don't want your useless, non constructive noise.

Will do captain, hell at least it's playable unlike with the mess that is 4.0 where to get rid of the black bar bug you have to disable dual core (slowdown), or enable synchronize gpu thread, except you'll have to get the bios from your original gamecube first because if you skip the bios it wont work. Oh, by the way, this also ends up in a slowdown as well, so it's redundant lol

You have fun "fixing" stuff that never happened years ago because you're too stubborn to accept when you make a mistake. Hard to be constructive when you want everyone to believe that newer versions are somehow better even when they're blatantly not, and when someone points out older versions worked better you shove them off as "it's your hardware, not our software" or "you're not being constructive (as in praising me for everything I do), get out of my face".

Arrogance is one hell of a drug.

(05-18-2014, 11:03 AM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]you feel that the developers shouldn't have focused on increasing Dolphin's overall compatibility (not necessarily MP2, but other games) and stability over the past few years at the expense of performance, that's cool, but that's not how the developers see how to improve Dolphin. They would rather figure out how to properly emulate the GC (not without some trial and error) instead of relying on hacks and buggy, incomplete implementations of features.

It sure doesn't help that every time I load up dolphin 4.0 is to test how badly a game runs, and then rolling back to older revisions for better performance.

This trend continues as I try new games, Metroid Prime for example, metroid prime 2 is the most recent, super smash bros brawl as well (seems I'm not alone), soul calibur 2, F Zero GX, etc.

I'm sure this is just bad luck on my part, and it just so happens that every game I test runs worse on newer revisions. I'm sure there is a plethora of games that run much better than they used to and I'm sure compatibility has sky-rocketed thanks to the wonders of accuracy, I'm sure this is just some sick statistical joke dolphin decided to play on me where it so APPEARS that every game runs worse, but that's just the select few that I happened to test, as in just plain old back luck.

Nah, I'm sure that "with the right hardware" all these games would play perfectly, it's my machine.

How do you plan to go forward with these excuses? Aiming for accuracy is one thing but don't be so stubborn as to not being able to accept that might not be the best choice.

(05-18-2014, 11:06 AM)Heavy01 Wrote: [ -> ]... and when someone points out older versions worked better you shove them off as "it's your hardware, not our software"

Except, I can't evaluate that statement at all since you HAVEN'T BOTHERED TO FILL OUT YOUR PROFILE or even stated what hardware you're running. HINT HINT.

Heavy01 Wrote:except you'll have to get the bios from your original gamecube first because if you skip the bios it wont work. Oh, by the way, this also ends up in a slowdown as well, so it's redundant lol

When you enable Skip GC BIOS and you have the BIOS files present, Dolphin HLEs the BIOS instead. When you enable or disable Skip GC BIOS and you don't have the BIOS files present... Dolphin HLEs the BIOS. It's the same thing. It's doing what it was intended to do. Nothing is broken.

Heavy01 Wrote:Nah, I'm sure that "with the right hardware" all these games would play perfectly, it's my machine.

In all honesty, it most likely is your hardware. If you bothered to update your profile with HW info, we could tell you if your machine is inadequate or not for Dolphin.

Heavy01 Wrote:Aiming for accuracy is one thing but don't be so stubborn as to not being able to accept that might not be the best choice.

The developers have implemented a host of optimizations recently. Many users have reported that the latest developmental revisions are faster than 4.0.2 and 3.5. It's not like accuracy has been the only focus.

(05-18-2014, 11:13 AM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]

Heavy01 Wrote:except you'll have to get the bios from your original gamecube first because if you skip the bios it wont work. Oh, by the way, this also ends up in a slowdown as well, so it's redundant lol

When you enable Skip GC BIOS and you have the BIOS files present, Dolphin HLEs the BIOS instead. When you enable or disable Skip GC BIOS and you don't have the BIOS files present... Dolphin HLEs the BIOS. It's the same thing. It's doing what it was intended to do. Nothing is broken.

I looked on the dolphin wiki for metroid prime 2 and there are two solutions to fix the black bar bug, disable dual core (slowdown, not ideal) or to enable synch gpu thread, but this breaks the game. In order to fix it, you have to disable skip bios (had to dig a little to figure that out), but if you don't have the bios files then dolphin will obviously ignore your choice to not skip bios, and the setting checks itself again. Once you do get the bios files and dolphin can start the game without skipping the bios, gpu synch works, which fixes the black bar bug AND let's you run the game with dual core.

Here comes the fun part.

It runs worse that way than by just disabling dual core.

But heck, so long as "nothing is broken" who cares about results?

Yeah, the thing is, no one ever said "nothing is broken" as it relates to this specific problem, hence why there's an issue report for it :/

I thought you were talking about there was something wrong with enabling Skip GC BIOS as a function in Dolphin, like you expected it to do something it wasn't designed to do. Your original post was unclear about "it" not working.

(05-18-2014, 11:29 AM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]Yeah, the thing is, no one ever said "nothing is broken" as it relates to this specific problem, hence why there's an issue report for it :/

I thought you were talking about there was something wrong with enabling Skip GC BIOS, like you expected it to do something it wasn't designed to do. Your original post was unclear about "it" not working.

Well, maybe try reading better. I never suggested there was anything wrong with enabling skip GC bios (despite the fact the gamecube logo screen is horribly glitched and it makes your ears bleed), I was pointing out the fact that it's ironic you have to go through so much trouble to get it (legally) working and in the end, it actually runs worse than just disabling dual core.

(05-18-2014, 11:13 AM)Shonumi Wrote: [ -> ]In all honesty, it most likely is your hardware. If you bothered to update your profile with HW info, we could tell you if your machine is inadequate or not for Dolphin.

Doubt it, I tend to not mention my hardware when I feel it's not relevant (in the thread you locked for example, the issue was related to formatting a memory card which causes the emulator to go in a loop, hardly related to cpu or gpu performance).

But if you need to know, I have two systems where I test different builds, one is FX8350 OC at 4.3 GHz, and a GTX 770 GPU. The other one is a Intel Core i5-4590 stock, and a GTX 560ti gpu.

When I have an issue I try running the game in question in both systems, and when I don't notice any particular performance difference other than the issue itself which is present in both systems, I rule out system specs being relevant.

So no, in all honesty, it most likely is not my hardware.

(05-18-2014, 11:06 AM)Heavy01 Wrote: [ -> ]How do you plan to go forward with these excuses? Aiming for accuracy is one thing but don't be so stubborn as to not being able to accept that might not be the best choice.

Feel free to make your own emulator the way you want to. Nobody forces you to use our work. It's literally given to you for free, no strings attached, etc. Go ahead and prove your technical superiority.

(05-18-2014, 11:41 AM)delroth Wrote: [ -> ]

(05-18-2014, 11:06 AM)Heavy01 Wrote: [ -> ]How do you plan to go forward with these excuses? Aiming for accuracy is one thing but don't be so stubborn as to not being able to accept that might not be the best choice.

Feel free to make your own emulator the way you want to. Nobody forces you to use our work. It's literally given to you for free, no strings attached, etc. Go ahead and prove your technical superiority.

Everything wrong with dolphin development in one post, good job.

When open source becomes a dictatorship, that's where things tend to go wrong, as it nulls out the very reason you go open source to begin with.

Heavy01 Wrote:Well, maybe try reading better.

I'll advise you to try writing better first. Please define and clarify your antecedents before using pronouns like "it". This sentence is highly ambiguous as to what "it" is referring to:

Heavy01 Wrote:hell at least it's playable unlike with the mess that is 4.0 where to get rid of the black bar bug you have to disable dual core (slowdown), or enable synchronize gpu thread, except you'll have to get the bios from your original gamecube first because if you skip the bios it wont work.

The nearest possible antecedent is Skip the BIOS (the Dolphin feature), not the general idea that 4.0 doesn't work with MP2.

Heavy01 Wrote:FX8350 OC at 4.3 GHz, and a GTX 770 GPU. The other one is a Intel Core i5-4590 stock, and a GTX 560ti gpu.

The first build is not very good for Dolphin. Dolphin is chiefly CPU reliant more than the GPU. The GPU (assuming no CPU bottleneck is present) allows you to continue raising Internal Resolution and Anti-Aliasing higher until those settings are high enough to force your GPU to be the new bottleneck. But unless you have ridiculously high AA levels and a high IR, you'll most often be bottlenecked by the CPU. AMD FX CPUs have long since been known on these forums for their relatively poor performance in Dolphin in comparison to Intel CPUs. The single-threaded IPC has been proven, consistently through Dolphin-based benchmarks to be inferior to Intel's comparable offerings. An i3-4130 (even at stock) will significantly outperform your FX8350. You'd need to OC it even further still to get similar results.

The second build is much better, but it's a bit hard to imagine that you'd need to resort to such an old build to get decent levels of performance. Haswell CPUs perform roughly 25~30% better than Sandy Bridge CPUs in Dolphin (other applications usually don't see those gain, our benchmarks have show Dolphin likes whatever Intel has changed), so even when I'm clocked at 3.8GHz, you'll still be faster even at 3.3GHz (excluding your Turbo Boost obviously). And your GTX 560 Ti beats my GTX 550 Ti. Still I've had no trouble running 4.0 or 4.0-1596. The first build will struggle, but the second one shouldn't be getting any issues, since weaker hardware has run Dolphin just fine.

Any AMD offering simply won't run well with Dolphin. That FX is not the ticket to good performance in any application with low thread count. Your i5 should run pretty well.

I think this is simply a case of a filed, known bug with plenty of folks contributing info. Perhaps you could move things along on that bug by providing additional details, or better yet, a patch. After all, you seem to have a pretty good grasp of what open source is and how it works.