Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Background:
long story short a friend bet me that i couldnt beat Pikmin without loosing any pikmin claiming it was "impossible" and i wanted to prove him wrong. I decided to test out dolphins recording function on the final boss fight level and sure enough i beat the game with all 203 pikmin i gathered through out the game without a single casualty. being the skeptic i am (and feeling really proud) i decided to watch the recording. this is where the problems start.

Problem:
the first few minutes of the video are identical to what i just finished recording, as it should be right? but then once i started getting ready for the boss fight, organizing my pikmin and such, i noticed the crowds looked weird. like i didnt organize them that poorly and then olimar started making movements i dont remember doing. i watched in horror as an army of 100 pikmin quickly got demolished.

Question:
so my question is how does dolphins "recording" function actually work? because it sure as hell doesnt record video as previously thought. does it jsut record the inputs for a game? if so are they just for the player? because the AI moved completely different from when i was playing although olimar seemed to move the same way(for the most part).
edit: the video seems to play out differently each time i watch it so im thinking it might just record inputs.

obligatory specs:
windows 8.1
4core intel i7
16Gs ram
64bit op
1T HD
nividea Gforce g650m(?) i think i might have an 860M but it doesnt matter much right?

Did you record in Dualcore? There are some settings that are non-deterministic.

(08-31-2014, 05:53 PM)JMC47 Wrote: [ -> ]Did you record in Dualcore? There are some settings that are non-deterministic.

i have no idea. there was a hot key to "start recording" and i clicked it, a little message showed up on my screen saying "started recording" in yellow like every other notification. the only thing i did was change the recording hot keys.

Basically, not all settings in Dolphin are deterministic. If you record a game in dualcore, then odds are it will desync. That's all there is to it. If you turn off dualcore... I don't believe any other of the default settings will cause desyncs.

When recording, use an outside program, like Nvidia Shadowplay to prevent issues.

Although Dump Frames could be used, which I'm pretty sure creates the video at the game's native framerate regardless of emulation speed. The drawbacks are that it sometimes/often doesn't work, and it doesn't record audio to the video file.

(09-01-2014, 07:21 AM)KHg8m3r Wrote: [ -> ]When recording, use an outside program, like Nvidia Shadowplay to prevent issues.

i mean i guess but then what good is it for the emulator to have the option?

The emulator would work with single core on. It's literally recording inputs, and if you have a non-deterministic option on, then it desyncs when playing back the inputs.

(09-01-2014, 10:43 AM)JMC47 Wrote: [ -> ]The emulator would work with single core on. It's literally recording inputs, and if you have a non-deterministic option on, then it desyncs when playing back the inputs.

ah. well that explains the weirdness. quad core and i let everything run on as many of them as it wants. ill use a 3rd party recorder from now on but i got the answer i was looking for. thank you.