Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

I am looking for testing of a WIP build of Dolphin and VBA-M which emulates the GameCube and GBA link cable.  The link cable emulation already exists in current versions of both emulators but this test build enhances the speed and reliability of the connection (hopefully).



VBA-M configuration
GC-GBA link emulation requires the GBA bios files.  Make sure the GBA BIOS file has a ".BIN" extension (case sensitive).  The BIOS is configured in VBA-M (Options > Emulator > BIOS File).  Enable the BIOS by selecting the "Enable" option on the right side near the BIOS browse button.  Do not enable the "Skip the boot logo" option.  The GBA BIOS file has a CRC32 of 81977335.

Enable VBA-M's link cable emulation by selecting "Enable Joybus Connection" under Options > Link > Joybus Options.  Enter an IP address of 127.0.0.1.

Do not use frameskip in VBA-M (Options > Speed > Frame Skip).  Disable the "Pause when inactive" option found under Options > Emulator



Dolphin configuration
Dolphin is to be configured by selecting "GBA" from Standard Controller drop-down found under the Controller Settings.  Up to four GBA's can be configured.  This will require four VBA-M instances started up.

Some games require DSP LLE to work.  The DSP LLE roms dumped from a Wii are required.  The roms supplied with Dolphin will not work.  Most notably, Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles will not connect more than one VBA if DSP HLE is used.



Starting it up
Start Dolphin first and configure the Controller ports before starting the game in Dolphin.  Once the game has started, start VBA-M and load the GBA BIOS file (File > Open GBA).

The Nintendo logo should appear and start flashing below the Gameboy logo.  This means that the data is getting downloaded into the GBA.  This can be quite slow, so wait a few minutes for it to finish downloading.  Once the download completes, the game should start in VBA-M.

Once the game starts in VBA-M, Dolphin takes over the framelimit throttle of VBA-M.  Pressing Tab on Dolphin will also affect the throttle of VBA-M.  If Dolphin drops in speed, VBA-M will slow down too.  This is normal.

The next VBA-M instance can now be started.  Connection of VBA-M to the port in Dolphin is random - the first instance of VBA-M may not necessarily connect to port 1 of Dolphin.  Successive VBA-M instances download slower.  The bandwidth between the VBA-M instances is shared.  This is a limitation of the GameCube hardware.



Troubleshooting
The connection does work over wifi but is very slow (slower than 30% speed).

If VBA is stuck on the letter "M" of the Gameboy logo, go into Dolphin and select GBA under the Port option of Controller Settings.

Do not map the same input controls on every VBA-M instance as this will cause input issues.

Some games require that the throttle in Dolphin is disabled to connect.  This is a known issue.

The connection uses TCP port 54970.  Make sure that this port is open on the firewall.

A TCP/IP monitor can be used to analyse the traffic being sent.  If Dolphin is sending a whole bunch of 0xFF bytes, that means the connection is being reset and is not a good sign.



Test Build
Please test this version out and post the results to this thread.    Both Dolphin and VBA-M builds have to be downloaded.  The WIP build is a Windows build.
http://dl.dolphin-emu.org/prs/pr-2139-do...est-x64.7z

Updated VBA-M and patch:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/d1h8u2..._cable.zip

Update 17 March 2015
The links above have been updated with the latest build.  The changes are link speed improvements and improved handling of disconnections.  However, I could not get the Pokemon games to work with this version and the spell casting issue in FFCC persists.  In FFCC, the radar map has to be turned off for spell casting to work.

Update 20 March 2015
The update has been merged into master 4.0-5899.  It requires VBA-M svn 1235.  Thanks for all of the testing reports.  They were all very helpful.

I've compiled a quick list of games that I know are working in the latest build.

Animal Crossing - Works
Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex - Works
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles - With more GBAs level loads will take longer and longer. Seems playable otherwise. Sometimes characters jitter.
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures - Works
The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures+ - Works; Tetra's Trackers has broken audio on VBAs side.
Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour - Connects and transfers everything. VBA runs at 70% while connected.
MegaMan X Command Mission - Works, requires LLE for audio to work properly on VBAs side due to ucode switching.
Metroid Prime - Works
Nintendo Puzzle Collection - Works
Pacman VS - Works
Pokemon Series - Requires throttle off to connect. Subject to problems during connection. one GBA works well, but further GBAs get successively difficult.
Sonic Adventure - Works
Sonic Adventure 2 - Apparently disconnects early popping up an error, but works anyway for dropping off and picking up. Stats carry over.
Star Wars Rogue Squadron 3 - This works. I don't think any existing hardware will get full speed, but it works.
Wario World - Works

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles

Works the best I've seen so far, but the characters still stutter. If you want to eliminate the stuttering, with ALL GBAs linked, press select to switch to GBA mode (it may press it for you twice), press B to go to the menus, select again, and viola.

The reason why the characters are stuttering (just mentioning for the sake of documentation) is because it's updating the maps, player locations, etc constantly on every GBA screen when players move around. When your character moves without the radar screen on, it moves lag-free.

Again, the most lag I've seen is in River Belle. I have no idea why. Every area I've seen so far, even the cave where you cross some sort of rift towards the top of the first map, has 30 frames pretty consistently.

So yea, this is pretty playable. It's just a little laggy with River Belle. I'd like PMs to links with best configurations for FFCC for best performance if possible.

Tested FFCC, seems to work!

http://imgur.com/mUs4Vi6
http://i.imgur.com/bAxsJi6.jpg
http://imgur.com/t3AZWOz

Had some trouble setting everything up from scratch, thanks to skid for all the help!

Tested only 2 GBAs, but no performance problems so far (my PC is relatively new though, Intel Xeon E3-1231, 8 GB RAM, Asus R9 280).

Your post makes it sound like the link is not emulated right now. Doesn't it already exist, except buggy?

It works great. thanks
now all we need in the vba-m emulator is e-reader support with link function and then it needs to be merged with master branch.

(02-23-2015, 02:52 PM)jimbo1qaz Wrote: [ -> ]Your post makes it sound like the link is not emulated right now. Doesn't it already exist, except buggy?

Yes, the feature already exists.  I worked on the emulation of it with shuffle2 five years ago to this day.  5 Year Anniversary!

Have updated first post to not lead people astray.

These are my findings I've made so far when testing out FFCC:


I decided to stop emulating FFCC to switch the dsp engine to get better speeds without turning off the VBA-M instancess, which is akin to turning the gamecube off and on again without switching off the GBAs.  What is suppose to happen is that the GBAs enter a "waiting for connection" state until FFCC loads up.  When FFCC loads up they resume connection like nothing happened. However, upon restarting the emulation of the gamecube, all VBA-M instances become completely unresponsive and Dolphin refuses to actually emulate anything.  Trying to stop the emulation by hitting the stop button doesn't do anything.  Closing the VBA-M instances is the only way to completely stop the emulation process.




Was able to make 3 characters, but player four's character (the yellow gba) was unable to make a character.  The character creator would work, but upon finishing it the character slot would read empty but still show the correct character model.  Trying to select it would just start the whole creation process over.  This is hit and miss, usually more miss than hit.  Example Image




I noticed that sometimes while creating characters, an already established character's name will disappear.  They're still selected and loaded, their name is just missing.  Once actually in game, their name works as normal. I don't know for certain, but I think it primarily affects the first character only. You can see what I'm talking about in the last linked image.




Various visual artifacts when there are multiple VBA-Ms connected, but not all are used.




Loading up the VBA-Ms before loading up FFCC (turning on the GBAs before turning on the gamecube) will cause the VBA-Ms to either crash or hang.




Using savestates to skip the initial loading times works!  I do them one at a time.  Once blue is loaded and says "Please look at the TV" I make a save state called "blue ffcc".  I then do the same for the others.  Then when I reload I just load the savestates and bam, done.  Funny thing is that you can actually use the colors interchangeably. I one time had two yellow background GBAs when one was suppose to be green.  The colors eventually fix themselves.




Input is a little sporadic.  I'll select a slot that I wish to create a character in and I'll go into the character creator and then immediately back out.  I didn't test this a lot, but I think it has to do with how long I hold the button down.

@skid - Just to clarify, this is all being done with a vanilla build of VBA-M, correct?

No, the VBA-M is modified and works only with the version of Dolphin bundled.