Dolphin Mobile reaches v0.9


EssoAir

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Hey everyone! I know I'm probably the only person on the forum to have a US varrient Galaxy S4, but on the off chance that I am not alone, I thought I would share some exciting news. Dolphin Emulator is a cross platform (ARM and x86 - OS X, Windows, Debian) emulator for Gamecube and Wii games. The most recent development is Dolphin Mobile which is the official port to Android. The developer doing the work is known as Sonicadvance1. Unfortunately, per emulation requirements, the only devices that can run it properly are ones supporting Open GL ES 3.0. And to this date only one commercially available Android device does, the US varrient Galaxy S4. 0.9 is huge imo as it means we are very close to an official RC1. Most of the code has allready been written and the major hault in developemnt has been the incredibly buggy Qualcomm drivers found on the Snapdragon 600. Sonicadvance1 has been blasting Qualcomm with bug reports so hopefully they'll make new drivers in the next few months. Even if Samsung doesn't officially make an update and push it to the phones, I'm sure custom roms can be made to impliment the drivers.


Well thats about it. This was mostly an update for those who are interested in the developements of Wii and Gamcube games running on a phone
 
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Yeah I'm wondering about performance as well. I'm sure not all games will run 100% smooth, but how do the more popular GameCube/Wii games perform? :) curious because I've been considering going android.
 
lol "going android". Stuck in 2007 with an iPhone? lol. Ya it's not dont yet so you get about 1 frame every 10 seconds, so no where near playable. But it's being worked on. I would wait for the Note 3 and the Exynos 5540 which will be the first Exynos chip to support Open GL ES 3.0. It will be a lot better than the Snapdragon 600 or even the 800.
 
I'd rather extract my own fingernails than play Gamecube/Wii games on a phone/phablet

A reasonably sized tablet & pad would be infinitely preferable.. wonder how the imminent Tegra 4 will cope with this..?
 
Well Tegra 4 doesnt support Open GL ES 3.0 (with the ezception of the Nvidiya shield which has a realtime converter used for their wifi streaming software). So it wont be playable ever. If someone donated an Nvidia shield to Sonicadvance1 he said he'd be willing to try and get it working, but its doubtful
 
Stuck in 2007? :p nah, I jumped on the bandwagon with a 3G, lol. Every time I gave android a chance, they would crash like a computer, or wasn't nearly as butter smooth (framerate wise in the OS) as iOS. I've noticed jellybean has become alot more smoother now, and in some cases I've seen smoother androids than iOS, and now iOS crashes nearly as much as anything else. Just haven't made the switch yet :p
 
My iPad doesnt go through a full school day without crqshing twice. Most android phones also suck balls when you have the stock ROM installed. But slap a custom rom on and they are sure to fly
 
I just picked up the new nexus 7 and it's smooth as butter. I'll have to try out dolphin on it once I get my build environment set up.
 
So, 1 month after the first post, the actual version is Pre-Alpha 0.10, not like expected a nearly good working RC1. I've tested the Gamecube version of Mario Kart on my Nexus 4 with JB 4.3. Open GL ES 3.0 should be supported now, but the emulator crashed, if activated.

The game starts as a slideshow with sometimes nearly accurate sound.

If you look at the minimum hardware specs of the PC version, it seems more realistic to expect a good working emulation in 2 to 4 years, because actuall and coming ARM chips can't handle it.

But it's nice to see the progress, Dolphin Mobile made from time to time.  :)
 
It was never the hope of the devloper to have decent performance for current hardware. But now that OpenGLES 3.0 is functional on Android, now was the best time to start development. So, by the time the software is nearly done, the hardware will hopefully be fast enough to run it
 
Luigi, the report is in and it doesn't look good... we are sad to report our worse fear is indeed a reality... you have an extremely large brain tumor

... and it has metastasized to both your hands and body

... and it's a ultra rare form of cancer that's contagious... it appears both your pet birds are infected as well....
 
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So, Shield may be the "end all and be all" for mobile Dolphin emulation then? At least for the foreseeable future?

Why has Nvidia not sent these guys some units. They sent some to the RetroArch team didn't they?

Chris
 
So, Shield may be the "end all and be all" for mobile Dolphin emulation then? At least for the foreseeable future?

Why has Nvidia not sent these guys some units. They sent some to the RetroArch team didn't they?

Chris
Possibly because nVidia recognizes that the emulator will still largely be too slow to be useful. Then again, maybe they're in the process of sending one. They said they'd give Lordus one too, he's still waiting on that (frankly I'd just as soon buy one, but I guess if they offer..)
 
A couple of clips of Dolphin for android running on my Xperia Z Ultra, with snapdragon 800 SOC. Slow but definite progress :)

 

I didn't record the audio on either of these clips.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKymTj0xqtwhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKymTj0xqtw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKymTj0xqtw

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6BpDJhsD9Yhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6BpDJhsD9Y

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6BpDJhsD9Y
A hell of a lot faster than my phone. Cant wait for the Galaxy S5 (or Galaxy F as it may be called) which should have playable speeds :)
 
So, Shield may be the "end all and be all" for mobile Dolphin emulation then? At least for the foreseeable future?

Why has Nvidia not sent these guys some units. They sent some to the RetroArch team didn't they?

Chris
No? Whats leads you to this conclusion?
 
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