Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

(02-23-2015, 11:33 PM)fagoatse Wrote: [ -> ]There's a much better GBA emu out there that might be worth looking into instead of VBA-M which is pretty much dead at this point anyway.
https://github.com/mgba-emu/mgba 
the author actually intends to implement the GBA link as seen in his todo.

If this guy's intentions are true, skidau might just want to investigate this as well.

It looks like he's going for a bsnes approach. And cycle accuracy bodes well for another accuracy-oriented emulator such as Dolphin.

I think if skid and shuffle2 can prove that even VBA-M can reliably emulate the GBA-GCN connection with Dolphin, it would go a long way to getting other emulators (active ones) on-board, especially with working code to go off of.

Sadly, I can't test this atm, not without a decent Windows PC, but I am looking forward to seeing what the GBA-side code looks like. I'm at the point in GBE+'s development where basic emulation of this feature should be possible, so it would be pretty cool to get GBE+ and Dolphin talking.

Tested the 5409 build with the modified VBA, i cannot seem to get a second VBA instance to connect, "Nintendo" doesn't pop up for the second one.

I'm playing Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles.

I waited until after the first one got in-game, and i also tried to connect both instantaneously.

[EDIT]
Missed the part about FFCC, my bad!
I quickly tested FFCC and both connected, but before i could get into a level my computer crashed from CPU undervoltage, i will test again tomorrow.
From the few seconds i was in-game though, it seemed good!

[EDIT]
Played the game with two players, tested the speed in a level and got around 70fps (over 2x the speed of the game) while pressing tab.
No connection issues, pretty pleased really!
Now i just need a second monitor to display the vba screens..

I've also tested your build recently with a 4 player setup.

While using standard settings and LLE in dolphin the VBA crashes at the Gameboy logo.
With savestates for each player however it works, but takes ages to connect all four controller.
Using the menu of VBA pauses the emulation and breaks the connection temporary.

Good job so far!

[attachment=13215]

(02-23-2015, 06:43 PM)moosehunter Wrote: [ -> ]Pokemon Colosseum doesn't seem to work at all. It never detects the GBA and the GBA game boots normally.
The Pokemon Colosseum bonus disk detects the GBA when turned on, but the GBA game still boots normally and the connection fails because of that.
Sonic Adventure 2 Battle works just fine when transferring Chao without using Sonic Advance. I haven't tried it with the GBA game.

I'm having the same problem with the Colosseum bonus disc. I limited frames to 60 so it runs at normal speed in both Dolphin and VBA. In Dolphin you see the game notices that VBA is started and the connection is initiated, but after that the game on VBA starts normally and the connection seems to be lost(?).

Updated links and source code. Looking for final testing. Not everything works. Hangs, crashes, disconnections, timeout, slow transfers and waiting for connections appear frequently.

Managed to run FFCC in dps HLE by first going into LLE and setting up the VBA-M's, then stopping and starting the game again in HLE.
@Two-Tone-
You said this failed when you tried to do it? Either way, it worked for me now.

I also noticed that when i changed settings in VBA-M while playing, both of the links disconnected, and then i had to wait a few minutes for them to both connect again (They were separately connecting and disconnecting, until they both finally connected at the same time)
Not really a problem, as you just don't change settings while playing...
Either that, or it was due to the fact i was trying to play FFCC in HLE.

(02-27-2015, 08:33 PM)killerloader Wrote: [ -> ]Managed to run FFCC in dps HLE by first going into LLE and setting up the VBA-M's, then stopping and starting the game again in HLE.
...
I also noticed that when i changed settings in VBA-M while playing, both of the links disconnected, and then i had to wait a few minutes for them to both connect again (They were separately connecting and disconnecting, until they both finally connected at the same time)
Not really a problem, as you just don't change settings while playing...
Either that, or it was due to the fact i was trying to play FFCC in HLE.

That's because VBA-M pauses while using the settings menu.
Couldn't find a way to deactivate the pausing, if there even is one.
It can be quite a hassle while trying to connect multiple VBA-M, since the displayed player often changes so you either have to swap the controllers or change the assigned layout in VBA-M and get disconnected again.

I'll test the new build too when I'm back at home.

EDIT: build is running fine so far with FFCC.
I can confirm that HLE is working too with multiple players if using savestates to get them connected.
The crashing of VBA-M at the Gameboy logo while using LLE however remains for me, but is not that critical.

Has this been tested using different machines for Dolphin and VBA-M? Last I checked, the network code in VBA-M does stupid things like only looking at the first X bytes of each packet received which causes major problems if the machine at the other end decides to coalesce/fragment packets before sending (which typically won't happen on the loopback connection).

I tested it over my home network via lan cables with four swords adventures and it worked at fullspeed with a single vba-m instance connected (after some fiddling around with the windows firewall). I did not have a single issue, but i did not test for very long or any other games. Same with Crash Bandicoot.
Chrystal Chronicles on a single machine did not work too well for me with 2 vba-m instances. The second player disconnected a lot. So i did not bother to test it over my network.