Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Hello! I recently got into Dolphin, and have been enjoying a variety of GameCube games. One such game is the original Animal Crossing. After playing for a few days, I got the idea to use Dropbox to share a memory card with a friend, also using dolphin, so we could share a town together, just like when we were kids. However, I foresee a few issues arising from this, most notably that we would not be able to play at the same time! I haven't tested it, but I believe it's safe to assume if we both played, whoever saved last would just override the other's changes, as if the one who saved first never even played. A few other minor inconveniences, such as having to remember to switch out what memory cards we're using often, are also giving me a bit of trouble.

Read the following paragraph with an understanding that I have no knowledge of how a GameCube memory card is structured.

I am a programmer, and would enjoy a challenge taking a crack at a tool to merge memory card changes. Although perhaps impossible to do cleanly, I was thinking, a one stop shop tool to launch dolphin, backup the Dropbox memory card to two different locations, change the config to use backup memory card 1, launch Animal Crossing, then, after play is finished, check if the Dropbox memory card matches backup memory card 2, the one which originally matched the Dropbox memory card, and which no changes should have been made to. If they don't match, go through byte by byte in both backup memory card 1 and the Dropbox card, and if one differs from backup memory card 2 at that byte, but not both, the change is made. If both make a change to that byte, then things are a bit sticky and one has to be chosen for precedence. After all the changes are merged, they come back together into the Dropbox memory card, ready to be used again.

The plan is vague, and has many holes. I am reaching out to the Dolphin community for advice on this topic, to see if any of this is possible(even just launching dolphin and changing config automatically). If nothing else, I plan to make a tool like this that will warn you when someone else is already using the memory card(by some kind of .txt file in the Dropbox the program uses to keep track). If anyone has any help to offer, or links to any resources I could use, I would greatly appreciate it!

Well, putting aside the Dropbox issue, I can probably shed some light on the memory card issue.
What you can do is change from using a memory card to the GCI Folder. This way, all the games are saved as individual .gci files. This will let you share just the Animal Crossing file, see who last used it/played it, and share it easier without messing up other saves.

That's not going to work, because tons of changes will overlap.

Changes to dolphin code or them playing the game and overlapping each other?

And it's more of a place to start so that they're only concerned with the animal crossing save and not corrupting a whole memory card

I mean what the OP asked about.

My guess is stuff would go corrupt but I'd love to see how it went. Maybe you could just make a functionality to report to the other Dolphin when the game is busy.