Dolphin Wii Emulation

Started by Ryex, September 20, 2014, 12:18:00 am

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Blizzard

May 07, 2015, 04:13:53 pm #40 Last Edit: May 07, 2015, 04:15:25 pm by Blizzard
*bump*

I've played some more today. They've really outdone themselves. I finished the first dungeon and I loved it. It was short which is good for a first dungeon. But what I loved the most is how they turned the whole thing with swinging the sword using your Wiimote into a proper game mechanic rather than just a gimmick. I loved the puzzles with the eyes (not gonna spoil it). I also loved the fact that you have to turn skulltulas upside down by using an uppercut sword swing first and then using a finishing strike on them, because it was so intuitive. I was thinking "Damn, it's crawling and on the floor and I can't get to its weak point on its belly. Hm... I wish I could turn it upside down somehow." And then it hit me. Brilliant. The boss fight was also pretty cool. I think I'm gonna have a sore arm tomorrow, hahaha! They did a fantastic job with this Zelda, I love it. I miss no chance to swing my sword around a bit. I probably cut every piece of grass I found in the game so far, hahahahahahahaha!
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Blizzard

May 23, 2015, 07:51:49 am #41 Last Edit: May 23, 2015, 08:00:23 am by Blizzard
*bump*

Alright, finished the game. I looked up the last 5 Pieces of Heart I was missing and the list of quests for a few so I don't have to wander aimlessly in the game to finish it. I also cheated a little bit with the Thunder Dragon's Battle Challenge to get the Hylian Shield (using save states to avoid damage), also to save time. Other than that, it's a good game. It has a fair deal of side quests. The puzzles are elegant and not too easy. Only one or two times I felt like a puzzle should have had a different or multiple solutions (I expected you could shoot through those plants with the water drops using arrows rather than thrusting a sword through it), but it made sense. That song in the first room of the final dungeon reminded me of Majora's Mask as it was equally mysterious so it's a shame they didn't keep it. But I loved the music from the 3rd dungeon as it also had similarities with one of Majora's themes during the final boss fight.

It's great that the use the Wiimote for everything and that a good deal of puzzles (and even enemies) are centered utilizing the Wiimote and the items you have. Funnily enough it barely ever gets boring to cut grass using the sword. I also loved the alternative way how you can shoot the bow by pulling back the nunchuk and your pose resembling actually holding a bow with a drawn arrow. I discovered it by accident when I wanted to switch off 1st person mode while I was holding up the bow. I don't remember reading about it anywhere so it might be a nice extra since the arrow power charges up to the max when you do that instead of having to wait like when pressing A.

One thing I can say about the game is that it never gets dull. Every boss is a challenge and so is every dungeon and every new mechanic/item that gets introduced. The learning curve is good and I noticed how enemies from the beginning of the game in the later parts of the game were not as much of a problem to conquer as their first incarnations did. But at no point did the game feel too easy.

All in all I can say that it is definitely a game on its own. While Ocarina of Time felt more mystical and epic and Windwaker felt a bit more lighthearted, Skyward Sword feels somewhere in between. While the constant "bright colors" give you a feel of a fantasy world, some of the events and locations clearly remind you that you are playing a Zelda game. Never was obtaining the Master Sword this satisfying.

@winkio: The creepy parts you mentioned, did you reference the Silent Realm trials? Because if you did, I totally agree. They turn nightmarish and as someone who's played Silent Hill, I very well remember the music. And it seems somebody was inspired by the series while making the theme when the guardians chase you. I admit, it was quite unnerving.

EDIT: I ran the game mostly using DX9. It simply had the best performance, but it kept crashing when I tried to enter a Silent Realm. Switching temporarily to OpenGL (DX11 seemed to work sometimes as well) while in the Silent Realm fixed the problem for me. Apparently it's a DX9 shader error and it was fixed in later versions, but the last stable release was 4.0.2 (from somewhere in 2013) and it wasn't fixed there. Just a heads-up for those of you that want to emulate the game.

EDIT: Also, the Wiimote eats up batteries 5 times as fast as my Xbox 360 Controller. ._. During my almost 40 hours of Zelda I've drained 3 sets of batteries. My Xbox Controller can run for at least 60 hours for each set. ._.

Does anybody have any good Wii/GC games they can recommend? I'm definitely planning on playing through the Metroid Prime series. I've played at winkio's place and it's really fun.
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Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

syldocaine

If you haven't played it already, I would recommend you Xenoblade Chronicles.
It's an awsome JRPG with a really good story.

Was alot of fun for me.

Blizzard

Uuuuuhhh, this looks interesting. o.o Downloading right now, but not sure when I'll play it.
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Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

Ryex

for future emulation endevors, don't bother with the stable build. The devbuilds are so far ahead right now It's not even funny. and believe it or not their dev builds are LESS buggy, like a hell of a lot less buggy. If your read on their forum their dev builds are actually recommended over the stable build.
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Blizzard

Lol, then they should make a new stable build.
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Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

Spaceman McConaughey

So, at that point, why even have the stable build up for download?

There's literally no point, and it just causes confusion.

Blizzard

That's not true. When you're in the middle of developing a new feature or refactoring code, sometimes bugs happen. When you have a stable build, it means that this build was tested for bugs and has the least chance of crashing. Even though it may not include some new stuff, at least it won't crash. And that an app doesn't crash is the #1 requirement any software has to fulfill before any other requirement.
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Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

Ryex

The difference between dolphin's dev and stable builds is that the stable build is a known checkpoint. where as the dev build is literally updated daily. if you fetch it on the wrong day it might very well be broken (it's happened to me before, had to jump back two or three days to a good build). but when it's not a good half of the known emulation flaws from the stable build are fixed and the speedup is night and day. They. managed to nearly triple their emulation speed in the last 8 mounts or so. one of their devs worked some JIT compiler magic.
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Spaceman McConaughey

Alright, that makes more sense.

I still don't see why the stable build hasn't been updated for so long, though.
From what I understand, there has been plenty of builds that work without issue since then.

Blizzard

Quote from: Archer on June 04, 2015, 06:09:02 pm
I still don't see why the stable build hasn't been updated for so long, though.
From what I understand, there has been plenty of builds that work without issue since then.


I totally agree with that. They should just take a previous stable dev build and turn it into a new stable one IMO.
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Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

Ryex

I no longer keep up with posts in the forum very well. If you have a question or comment, about my work, or in general I welcome PM's. if you make a post in one of my threads and I don't reply with in a day or two feel free to PM me and point it out to me.<br /><br />DropBox, the best free file syncing service there is.<br />

Blizzard

January 01, 2016, 11:06:46 am #52 Last Edit: January 01, 2016, 11:25:02 am by Blizzard
So, I've been playing again. I kinda stopped on about 40 hours into Xenoblade Chronicles about 2 months ago and haven't had time to play. I noticed that my new drivers (that I had to update so I could actually play Fallout 4) improved performance on DX11 a lot while playing it again in the past few days. DX9 and DX11 were about the same now. That got me thinking and I downloaded the newest build (4.0-8520) today. I didn't want to upgrade earlier, because DX9 was removed in later versions and only DX11 is used. And I obviously had performance issues with DX11.

So I started it up and... Oh. My. God. I'm running it on 2x resolution (basically 720p) with 4x Anisotropic filter for the textures and it runs on 60 FPS as smooth as a newborn's ass. Not to mention that the game looks significantly better now since a lot of effects could not be emulated on DX9.

They've done some fantastic work in the past months. Big props. I might donate a few bucks to keep them running.

EDIT: ... if I can find the donation email somewhere that is. O_o
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Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

Ryex

Ya, it's really impressive. I've played windwaker and skyward sword at 3x res (1080p) a fair bit lately
I no longer keep up with posts in the forum very well. If you have a question or comment, about my work, or in general I welcome PM's. if you make a post in one of my threads and I don't reply with in a day or two feel free to PM me and point it out to me.<br /><br />DropBox, the best free file syncing service there is.<br />

Blizzard

I'm looking for my next Wii game now. Any recommendations (beside the mentioned ones) that use the motion controls in a fun way? Except Metroid Prime series.
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King of Booze 2      King of Booze: Never Ever
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Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.

G_G

If I recall, the Prince of Persia game uses motion controls. One of the first Wii games I've ever played. I enjoyed it a lot but I honestly can't remember if the motion controls are taken advantage of or not.

G_G


Blizzard

Check out Daygames and our games:

King of Booze 2      King of Booze: Never Ever
Drinking Game for Android      Never have I ever for Android
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Quote from: winkioI do not speak to bricks, either as individuals or in wall form.

Quote from: Barney StinsonWhen I get sad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead. True story.