------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dolphin is a Wii, Gamecube and Triforce emulator written mostly in c++ Vist the official Dolphin forum at, http://forums.dolphin-emulator.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Disclaimer 2) System Requirements 3) Features 4) Settings 5) Latest Dolphin builds 6) Contribution 7) Credits ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 1) Disclaimer ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - The creators of this emulator are not responsible in any way for any damages or data lose caused by the use of this software. - We are not affiliated with Nintendo in any way. - The Gamecube and Wii are trademarks of Nintendo. - The Triforce is a trademark of Nintendo, Namco and Sega. - This emulator is for educational purposes only and should not be used to play games you do not legally own. - Do not ask for game files/roms/iso's or provide these files for anyone. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2) System Requirements ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Windows XP or Higher. Linux or MacOSX. - A fast modern CPU that utilizes the SSE2 instruction set (this emulator will not work without SSE2). - A fast dual-core CPU is recommended for the best game speed. - Any reasonable modern GPU with pixel shader 2.0 or greater. Nvidia or AMD (ATI) video cards are your best choice. Older intergrated Intel chips probably will not work. Newer Intel chips (those that come on the i3/i5/i7 motherboards) will work but with low graphic settings. - The latest DirectX runtime. - MS Visual C++ Runtime 2010. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3) Features ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - This emulator runs Gamecube game discs, Wii game discs, Wii downloadable games/Virtual console games and Triforce arcade game content. - Action replay simulator. - Xbox 360 controller support. - Experimental netplay. - Anti-Aliasing, Anistropic Filtering. - Save states. - Frame skipping. - Memory card manager with GCI memcard inport/export support. - PowerPC (JIT) just in time recompiler. - WAD support. - Some support for homebrew and XFB emulation. - Hi-res texture support, texture dumper. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 4) Settings ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- CONFIG - GENERAL -- Enable dual-core. (enables the use of two CPU cores for more game speed) (may or may not conflict with some games) Enable idle skipping. (enables idle skipping) (recommended) Enable cheats. (enables cheats) Framelimit. (allows you to select if a game is limited in how many frames it can render or not) -- ADVANCED SETTINGS -- Skip GC bios. (skips the GC startup screen) (ipl.bin file needed for this option to work) -- CPU EMULATOR ENGINE -- Interpreter. (very slow, use this for testing if the JIT or JitIL recompilers fail to run a game) Jit Recompiler. (Just in time recompiler, this is what should be used in most cases) JitIL experimental recompiler. (may or may not be faster than the regular Jit, may also cause issues with some games) Lock threads to cores. (locks threads to cores) DSP LLE on thread. (run DSP LLE on a dedicated thread) (not recommended) -- CONFIG- DISPLAY -- Video backend. (allows you to choose one of the video backend options) (dx9 is normally the fastest) Fullscreen display resolution. (allows you to choose what resolution games wll be displayed at while using fullscreen) Window size. (allows you to adjust your window size) Start renderer in fullscreen. (starts emulation in fullscreen mode) Enable progressive scan. (will enable the progressive scan option if supported by software) Set console as NTSC-J. (required for using the Japanese rom font) -- INTERFACE SETTINGS -- Confirm on stop. (show a confirmation box before stopping a game) Use panic handlers. (enables error messages to be displayed if an error occurs) Theme. (changes the Dolphin GUI theme) Language. (enables you to change the language) -- CONFIG - AUDIO -- -- DSP EMULATOR ENGINE -- DSP HLE emulation. (less accurate but faster high level DSP emulation) (might be missing sounds/music in some games) DSP LLE recompiler. (accurate low level jit'ed DSP recompiler) (faster than LLE interpreter and gives you the best chance of game sounds being correct) (normally slower than HLE) DSP LLE interpreter. (accurate low level interpreted DSP) (probably slower than LLE recompiler and slower than HLE) (also gives you the best chance of sounds being correct) Enable DTK music. (this is used to play music tracks, like BGM) Enable audio throttle. (disabling this could cause games to run too fast) Dump audio. (sends game audio files to the "user/audio" folder after a game has been played) -- BACKEND SETTINGS -- Audio backend. (gives you the option to select one of the options below) No audio output. (no audio) Dsound. (Dsound) Xaudio2. (Xaudio2) -- SAMPLE RATE -- 32000Hz. (might make some game sounds better) 48000Hz. (might make some game sounds better) -- CONFIG - GAMECUBE -- System language. (allows you to select the system language) -- Device settings -- Slot A. (slot to enable memory cards or a usb gekko) Slot B. (slot to enable memory cards or a usb gekko) SP1. (slot to enable BBA or an AM-baseboard) Port 1. (slot to enable a controller, GBA, nothing or an AM-baseboard) Port 2. (slot to enable a controller, GBA, nothing or an AM-baseboard) Port 3. (slot to enable a controller, GBA, nothing or an AM-baseboard) Port 4. (slot to enable a controller, GBA, nothing or an AM-baseboard) -- CONFIG - WII -- Sensor bar position. (gives you the option to tell the emulator that the sensor bar is at the top or the bottom of your screen) IR sensitivity. (increases or decreases the IR sensitivity) (pointer on-screen) Speaker volume. (increases or decreases the Wiimote speaker volume) (the Wiimote speaker may or may not work at all with some games) Wiimote motor. (enables the Wiimote motor when using a real Wiimote) Reconnect Wiimote on load state. (Reconnects the Wiimote if it becomes disconnected after loading a save state) (hopefully) -- MISC SETTINGS -- Enable screen saver. (burn-in reduction) Use EuRGB60 mode PAL60. (allows PAL games to run at 60fps) Aspect ratio. (enables you to change the aspect ratio) System language. (enables you to select the system language) -- DEVICE SETTINGS -- Insert SD card. (tells the emulator and Wiimenu that a virtual SD card is inserted into the Wii) Connect USB keyboard. (tells the Wii and Wiimenu that a virtual USB keyboard is connected to the Wii) -- CONFIG - PATHS -- Search subfolders. (alows you to search sub-folders for ISO files) Default ISO. (selects the path for the default ISO) (used for the Wiimenu default ISO) DVD root. (selects the path of your DVD drive) Apploader. (Selects the path for the apploader) -- GRAPHICS - GENERAL -- Adapter. (Lists your display adapter/video card) Aspect ratio. (allows you to change the aspect ratio) -- ENHANCMENTS -- Anistropic filtering. (allows you to select the level of AF) (improves visual quality) Anti-alasing. (allows you to select the level of AA) (improves visual quality) Load native mipmaps. (loads the games mips instead of generating them) (might be slower) Pixel lighting. (probably more accurate) Force bi/trilinear filtering. (forces bi-tri filtering even if the game disables them) (improves visual quality) EFB scaled copy. (uses a high resolution render buffer for EFB copies instead of scaling them down to native resolution) (might cause glitches in some games but otherwise improves visual quality greatly) Pixel depth. (calculates depth values per pixel rather than per vertex) 3D vision (requires fullscreen) -- EFB -- Scale. (sets the EFB scale) (use 1x or lower for weak video cards) Enable CPU access. (allows the CPU to read or write to the EFB) (this is needed for certain gameplay functions, like the star pointer in SMG) (might also cause slowdowns in games) Emulate format changes. (enable this if the game you're trying to play has transluency issues or shows certain rectangular areas as black) -- COPY -- Texture. (texture hack for speed) RAM. (accurate behaviour, could be slower compared to the "texture" option depending on your hardware) Enable cache. (enables EFB copy to RAM cache) -- ACCURATE TEXTURE CACHE -- Enable. (enables the ability to select one of the three options below) Safe. (safe cache) Normal. (normal cache) Fast. (fast cache) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 5) Latest Dolphin builds ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - You can only get the latest SVN builds from unofficial compilers or compile the source for yourself. - You can get an unofficial build from mamario at http://www.dolphin-emulator.com/download.html ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6) Contribution ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - To contribute, download TortoiseSVN (unless you are doing the linux port, in that case you probably know what to do), and use it to check out the code. The path to the SVN repository can be found here. http://code.google.com/p/dolphin-emu/source/checkout - When you have done some significant changes, tell us, or just use the Create Patch feature and file an issue. If it looks good, we'll add you to Members, giving you full SVN access, and then you can submit it. - The Dolphin google code page. http://code.google.com/p/dolphin-emu/source/list - The Dolphin google code page displays the most recent page of code changes via revision numbers (example: r7477). You can also navigate to the top of the page and see the project home page/downloads/Wiki/issues or the source page. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 7) Credits ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Originally developed by F|RES & ector. Now open source under GPL 2.0 with lots of contributors. - Copyright (c) 2003-2011+ Dolphin Team. - Dolphin is currently still under development and things are always changing. For best results use the current official Dolphin release 2.0. Keep in mind that some features will not be avaiable in the 2.0 release compared to the latest SVN version since the 2.0 build is older. New official releases will be released as needed. - Readme written by [SS] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------