
Dolphin Emulator Progress Report - Nition
https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2017/06/03/dolphin-progress-report-may-2017/
======
BoorishBears
I've been following the development of Cemu
([http://cemu.info/](http://cemu.info/)), the Wii U emulator that I'd consider
the equivalent of Dolphin if it were closed-source.

One big difference I've noticed is regressions. While Dolphin has an insanely
strong regression suite and plenty of people testing for regressions, Cemu
seems to randomly go back and forth on support for games.

If you look at this unoffical "change report" you see a lot of comments
mentioning that:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/cemu/comments/6d3nwc/180_megathread...](https://www.reddit.com/r/cemu/comments/6d3nwc/180_megathread/?ref=share&ref_source=link)

Part of it is probably how early in the game it is compared to Dolphin, but
part of me wonders if being closed source means it's development won't ever
reach Dolphin levels of quality

~~~
sturmen
I'm not sure this is a symptom of a closed-source vs. open source debate,
although it can surely be cast that way. Dolphin is a role model for open
source projects: many active and talented contributors, excellent project
organization and discipline, and a focused community rallying behind one
project rather than dozens. (Dolphin is the only GC/Wii emulator worth
anything and therefore attracts all GC/Wii emulator contributors. Compare that
to the impossibly fractured GBA emulator scene, or to a lesser extent N64).

Measuring Cemu against this holy grail is a fool's errand. Cemu is so early
and so immature that it's impossible to tell where it will go. But we do know
this: Cemu is, for now, _very_ well funded[1] and so far Nintendo has turned a
blind eye. As long as customers keep paying in and getting meaningful progress
back out, I see a long and successful future ahead of it. Hell, Cemu is doing
better as a business (despite not being one) than some actual companies I've
worked at.

As far as the future of Cemu and the capabilities of Wii U emulation in the
long term? I encourage you to read the Dolphin wikipedia article[2] and notice
that Dolphin's origins are shockingly similar to Cemu's. Will it follow a
similar path? Who knows? The reality is Dolphin didn't have the benefit of
Patreon in 2008, and Cemu devs must be making good money...

[1] [https://www.patreon.com/cemu](https://www.patreon.com/cemu) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_(emulator)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin_\(emulator\))

~~~
BoorishBears
I totally chalk up most of it to where Cemu is in development, my point is
more if Cemu can _ever_ reach:

"many active and talented contributors, excellent project organization and
discipline, and a focused community rallying behind one project"

The one project part is probably going to stick due to the high barrier of
entry (some whispers have said that the reason CEMU is closed source is they
used parts of the Wii U SDK that were under NDA to bootstrap development).

But the many talented contributors may be limited due to the closed source
nature, and the culture of excellent organization and discipline might have
trouble developing if the community is comprised of a few very talented
developers focused on an emulator. Open source work allows people of varying
quality to contribute, which can be a curse (if the overhead of filtering low
quality contributions is too high), or a blessing, because people end up
contributing to house keeping tasks that the core devs otherwise wouldn't have
time for.

(and of course, this is all assuming it's not open sourced in the future)

~~~
sturmen
Ah, to speak specifically to that question, I think that Dolphin's history
proves it _can_ go from closed-source pile of hacks to model citizen, but I
suspect the allure of money and the reluctance to split it will keep Cemu to
be a closed source project, even if the resolve any potential legal issues and
are in all other ways capable of being a community project.

------
tyingq
Some context: _" Dolphin is a GameCube and Wii emulator"_

~~~
therealdrag0
Thank you. I was like "Are they making an AI cyborg dolphin?"

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inDigiNeous
Love reading the status updates from the Dolphin Emulator, although I don't
even have a machine with a powerful enough GPU to run their emulator, it's
fascinating to read about the technical implementations, especially when I
used to own a GameCube and Wii back in the day.

~~~
esturk
You'd be surprise to know that a flagship Android phone/tablet can run
Dolphin. In fact, GCN ver. of Twilight Princess is playable.

~~~
inDigiNeous
Thanks for the info! I actually have a recent Nvidia Shield Tablet and also a
One Plus 3T Android Phone. Will have to see if it works on either one of
those.

------
ekianjo
Funny they mention with so much insistence Vulkan as being "better for
Windows", but no word about how it fares on Linux vs OpenGL.

~~~
jchw
I can answer why. The writers are not all developers. One of them has Linux as
a daily driver but I do not believe they have Vulkan working. So, they just
opted to not mention it, which is better than making things up.

Theoretically, Vulkan should be great for Linux users, since GL took a large
hit when tev_fixes_new got merged. But I haven't tried it either :)

~~~
ekianjo
> One of them has Linux as a daily driver but I do not believe they have
> Vulkan working. So, they just opted to not mention it, which is better than
> making things up.

yeha, but it reads as if Vulkan was chosen by the devs for Windows performance
only. Actually, it's not just for that. It's also a matter of multiplatform
support.

~~~
jchw
Sounds like a reasonable critique to me. I don't think there was any intent to
leave out the fact that it supports more platforms than the now-deprecated
D3D12 backend, but you're right, it would've been good to mention.

------
ozzmotik
Glad to see that dolphin is still seeing active dev, as I use it quite
frequently.

------
Kelteseth
"Oh by the way - Qt is pronouced as "cute", not "que-tee". If you read the
above as que-tee, you need to go back and read it all again."

~~~
polpo
Over the many years and several companies I worked with Qt, nobody could bring
themselves to call it "cute." Everyone called it "que-tee."

~~~
to3m
Yes. If they want people to call it "Cute"... why not spell it like that? I
don't care how it's capitalized - if you stick two letters together in an
unpronouncable fashion, people will say it as if it's just those two letters,
one after the other.

I can only assume this has something to do with its being written by non-
native English speakers.

