
Dolphin 5.0 Release - samuelb
https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2016/06/24/dolphin-50-release/
======
aeontech
Dolphin's status update posts make it look like one of the best managed
projects I have _ever_ seen, open source or closed. Really incredible work.

~~~
jsheard
They posted a write-up of their development infrastructure last year - their
system for regression testing rendering bugs is especially impressive.

[https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2015/01/25/making-developers-
mo...](https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2015/01/25/making-developers-more-
productive-dolphin-development-infrastructure)

~~~
vvanders
Interesting, I'm curious how well their golden image tests worked out for
them. They always seem more work than help due to discrepancies between
various hardware vendors and subtle bugs/divergences in the way they interpret
the spec.

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mmastrac
Great work. I started contributing to Dolphin earlier this year entirely as a
result of seeing the well-polished status updates and technical articles that
made it to HN from time to time.

It's been in a "freeze" for quite some time while bugs were nailed down, but
I'm looking forward to being able to land some code finally!

And, if anyone is interested in some really cutting-edge ARM or x86 JIT code,
there are lots of interesting problems to tackle (say hi in #dolphin-dev on
freenode).

~~~
ndesaulniers
Note to self: do this.

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theschwa
Why is this emulator so well organized and polished compared to some other
emulator projects? They do such great technical write ups, but I'd love to see
one about how they manage the project.

~~~
Asooka
I guess it has a bit to do with Nintendo's choice of architecture. They
haven't moved past the Gamecube architecture - the Gamecube, Wii and WiiU all
use the same PowerPC CPU, the Wii is just faster and the WiiU has two. Same
for the GPU - they keep using pretty much the same Radeon, just newer, faster,
etc. This has allowed the project to remain relevant (able to play mostly
current games) for three console generations and find the support of qualified
individuals.

I agree that it's a bit weird though - the best, most well managed emulators
seem to be for Nintendo hardware. From the NES through to the Wii (and I
expect Dolphin to support WiiU soon), every console is reasonably well
supported and emulated.

Part of it might be due to Nintendo picking architectures that aren't too
alien to emulate on a standard PC.

~~~
delroth
> Same for the GPU - they keep using pretty much the same Radeon, just newer,
> faster, etc.

The GPUs of the GameCube and the Wii have nothing to do with Radeon GPUs. They
were designed by ArtX before they got bought by ATI (now AMD).

> and I expect Dolphin to support WiiU soon

This is a common misconception. Dolphin will never support emulating the Wii U
— it would make no sense to do so from a technical standpoint. The GameCube
and the Wii are very similar, the Wii U is a completely different beast.

> Part of it might be due to Nintendo picking architectures that aren't too
> alien to emulate on a standard PC.

Uh... while the CPU side is fairly standard (PPC 750 with just a few
extensions like locked cache, paired singles, gather pipe, etc.) everything
else is very much custom on GC/Wii.

The GPU is an undocumented mixed floating point (on the vertex side) / fixed
point (on the pixel side) architecture, with very few programmable elements
(TEV/TCG) and a lot of configurable state.

The DSP is a programmable 16/32/40 bits chip that kind of ressembles Motorola
DSP architectures but still looks completely custom when comparing actual
ISAs. The ISA of the DSP was actually fully reverse engineered by emulator and
homebrew developers, there is 0 technical documentation about it outside of
these communities.

And there are more things like that which are far from being standard when you
compare to e.g. an Xbox or an Xbox 360.

~~~
Asooka
I stand corrected then :). I was thinking about it in comparison to the PS2
and PS3 with their infamously weird architectures.

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ChicagoHero
In case anyone is wondering, Dolphin is an awesome emulator for Nintendo
GameCube and the Wii, in full HD.

~~~
distances
Thanks, for a while I thought this is about the KDE file manager.

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cookiecaper
Dolphin is amazing, plain and simple. It's been years since I tried to
contribute, but it's got a great development community and it's a great place
to learn, as you can probably tell from these detailed posts. Kudos to
everyone on an excellent release for an extremely compelling project.

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cm3
I'm so glad that Nintendo's misguided IP stance leading to gameplay video
takedowns hasn't affected the Dolphin project. I don't think Nintendo
management realizes that more gameplay videos and more fan creations of any
kind mean free advertisement.

~~~
steauengeglase
They just want to protect their walled garden. Thankfully Dolphin's word of
mouth has been really strong.

~~~
cm3
Word of mouth how? I'm not sure I understand.

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xutopia
Say I have a bunch of Wii games... how do I play them on my Mac?

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slantyyz
If you happen to have some old real Wii remotes and controller accessories
lying around, I _strongly_ recommend you pick up a Mayflash DolphinBar [1]
from Amazon for around $20.

It's basically a Wii sensor bar combined with Wii-mote compatible Bluetooth
radio specifically designed to work with Dolphin (although it will also let
you use your Wii-motes as HID controllers and a mouse too).

It will save you a TON of headaches in terms of getting up and running,
especially on Windows.

[1]
[http://www.mayflash.com/products/nintendowiigc/w010.html](http://www.mayflash.com/products/nintendowiigc/w010.html)

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AdmiralAsshat
I keep meaning to try out Dolphin on my Dell XPS 13 to see how well it runs on
integrated GPU's, but it continues to slip my mind. If the framerate is even
halfway decent on Gamecube games, I'd be thrilled.

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shrewduser
it should run well. integrated works great so long as you don't want to run
the games at much higher than native resolutions.

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flubert
Not related to the Smalltalk implementation apparently.

[http://www.object-arts.com/dolphin7.html](http://www.object-
arts.com/dolphin7.html)

~~~
kps
Or the Xerox Dolphin, the first of the post-Alto PARC machines, followed by
Dorado, Dicentra, Dandelion (the Star hardware), Dandetiger, and Daybreak. A
Dolphin emulator would be neat.

