Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hey guys! I'm new to Dolphin, and already I've encountered some problems sadly. Today I got Dolphin and a game to boot, obviously it was Metroid Prime, as the subject foretold that. Anyways, my problem began as soon as I started up the game... .3. It, well...Sounded bloody horrid first of all. I couldn't even make it to the file selection before trying to fix it.

So I went on an epic journey to try and fix this audio problem, down the line though I figured out it probably wasn't an audio problem it was more or less an issue to do with how fast it was running. Now I don't per-se have a high end laptop/pc, but I'm damn well positive I can run this game how it's intended to on this laptop. What I've learned is that I possibly have slow VPS, and probably frames. My FPS is at 27-28 and my VPS is 27-28. Pretty on par, but for some reason the game seems to be running in slow motion.

SO, I started diggin' around some more online I seen some stuff on Yahoo, I've seen some stuff on these forums. To no avail I should mention. So I decided I'll make an account and ask for help on the forum, cause I mean..what else are forums for eh? You guys and your endless amounts of knowledge. :3 Anyways, I bet one of you geniuses could help me out, I really want to be able to play this master-piece once more. I'm not entirely inept at computers, but if you guys start goin' on about "1.21 Jigawatts" I'll be lost. Thank you in advance!


I'll link you guys a picture of my specs and what-not. http://gyazo.com/b77733e9e708f47cc6c2a65fce4f0f80

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Also, I'm a junior member, get on my level.

(03-17-2014, 04:51 PM)Keigimice Wrote: [ -> ]Now I don't per-se have a high end laptop/pc, but I'm damn well positive I can run this game how it's intended to on this laptop.

Actually, not really. See below.

(03-17-2014, 04:51 PM)Keigimice Wrote: [ -> ]My FPS is at 27-28 and my VPS is 27-28. Pretty on par, but for some reason the game seems to be running in slow motion.

Nope. Far from par. Metroid Prime is supposed to run at 60 FPS for NTSC versions and 50 FPS for PAL versions. Either way, you're running the game almost as half as slow as it's intended to be played. Most consoles games, quite unlike modern PC games, have a set FPS that they need to run at. While something like BF4 can run at 20 FPS, 30 FPS, or 45 FPS and still look good to you, most GC/Wii games are designed to run at a set FPS. When emulating this, if you're not running the game fullspeed, you're running it in slow-motion.

(03-17-2014, 04:51 PM)Keigimice Wrote: [ -> ]SO, I started diggin' around some more online I seen some stuff on Yahoo, I've seen some stuff on these forums. To no avail I should mention. So I decided I'll make an account and ask for help on the forum, cause I mean..what else are forums for eh? You guys and your endless amounts of knowledge. :3 Anyways, I bet one of you geniuses could help me out, I really want to be able to play this master-piece once more. I'm not entirely inept at computers, but if you guys start goin' on about "1.21 Jigawatts" I'll be lost. Thank you in advance!

The straight answer is that your hardware is simply too slow for Dolphin. Some games in Dolphin have some serious hardware requirements. The Metroid Prime games are some of the more demanding games that you can play. Keep in mind that Dolphin relies heavily on single-threaded CPU performance, which your CPU does not provide enough of.

Thanks for the reply man, it means a lot. Also considering it's like 4 AM why are you even awake? But just so I understand completely! There's nothing I can possibly do to help my problem? What I seem to notice is it's just the Audio that's choppy, the game doesn't seem slow. But then again I could be wrong. Still new to the hardware. Again, thanks for the response!

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(03-17-2014, 05:20 PM)Keigimice Wrote: [ -> ]Also considering it's like 4 AM why are you even awake?

Wait, are you 12 hours ahead of me?

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Also, I should note. When I said "On par" I meant that VPS and FPS are the same, aka on par with eachother. Sorry for the confusion.

If you run Dolphin in Windowed mode, you should see a little % at the bottom telling you overall game speed. If it's below 100%, that means you're not playing the game at fullspeed, even if you're not detecting visual lag (it'll be more evident though the greater the % decreases).

Audio is probably as good as it's going to get. Audio time-stretching was recently added to the Dolphin development builds, so using a recent build is the best you can do audio-wise. I haven't tried this myself, but I think I remember hearing that with the new audio time-stretching features, it works pretty well if you specifically limit your FPS in Dolphin to something low (e.g. 25 in your case). That might not be very accurate, I only glanced at those discussions.

Recent dev builds are here btw: https://dolphin-emu.org/download

Well, this is a lot of information to cram down one's throat when first jumping into a whole new thing. It does make sense, but sadly I'm not experienced enough with the software to use it. So I'll take a loss today...er tonight/this morning I s'pose? Anyways, I'm sorry for taking up your time with a trivial matter. I'll probably hang up the towel for tonight, maybe take a crack at the wiki tomorrow and try to learn as much as I can. Before I go though, do you have any estimates at what my laptop may be able to run? I'd love to be able to relive some memories.

Animal Crossing, TimeSplitters 2, Muramasa: The Demon Blade, and a lot of WiiWare titles should be "light" enough for your hardware to run fullspeed. SSBM and SSBB should run decently, but perhaps not fullspeed.