Dolphin Wii Emulation

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

Previous topic - Next topic

Ryex


I've been wanting to play a few wii games for ages now. Zelda Twilight princess and certainly Skyward sword are the two I really wanted to play, but xenoblade was also up there. I've also known that Dolphin, the emulator, could play wii games but I needed a wiimote to do that. and to get a wii mote working I need a bluetooth adapter. And if I'm doing it on windows I need to get one that works with the toshiba bluetooth stack as the windows one is buggy as hell with wiimotes. Oh, and I'd also need a pretty powerful computer to pull this off too.

All that came together recently. I've had a pretty beast computer for a while now but I had kinda forgotten of my desire to play wii games, I'm not sure what inspired it, perhaps I walked by soe wii stuff at wall mart and remembered. In any case I went and did some research. Turns out a device called a "Mayflash Dolphin Bar"  Was recently released and the Dolphin emu people help Mayflash integrate the bar with their software. basily the bar is a self contained bluetooth adapter and sensor bar for a wiimote. the brilliant thing is that instead of passing the bluetooth hardware on to the computer and make you deal with the windows bluetooth stack they did all the hard work for you. sure it only works with wiimotes but the drivers for the bluetooth are built into the bar and it works flawlessly with the wiimote. They also added the bonus feature to let you control a mouse with the wiimote (this part even works on linux). the bar has 4 modes. mouse mode, mouse + controller mode, controller mode, and emulator mode. in the first two modes you get to control the computer with the wiimote by translating the moth to mouse motion and linking the A and B button to the mouse buttons, they also intergrated volume control and set up the D-Pad to trigger media button like pause, play, forward and backward. I(t's like having the perfect remote control for your computer.

The 2ed and exspecial the third mode cause the wiimote to be treated like a normal controller, IE xbox controller and you can play your games like normal (the second mode keeps mouse control but maps the other buttons to the game controller).

but most importantly for me the 4th moe links the wiimote to Dolphin EMU without any problems.

all but the 4th mode are self contained INSIDE THE BAR. the bard just presents itself as a different USB device every time you change modes. the 4th mode uses a driver shipped on a mini CD with the bar to inject a wiimote into the windows hardware bypassing the bluetooth stack and using the bar's. that means the first 3 modes work without any drivers of any kind and work in linux. you have no idea how happy I was when I figured that out.

The result? I spent 24 on the bar and 40 on a wiimote with motion plus and got a media remote, wireless game controller, and the ability to play wii games. I'm pleased

I've been playing Skyward sword flawlessly for the past month or so, putting in about 4-6 hours a week. Honestly the best Zelda game I've ever played. and I've played most of them. IF you guys are interested in playign wii games on your computer. Look into the dolphin bar.

I'm hella happy with it

How about you guys, played any wii recently?
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 />

WhiteRose

I started Xenoblade Chronicles on Dolphin over the summer. There's an HD texture pack for it that can be run through Dolphin and it makes it look almost like not a Wii game. Haha. I never got that far into the game, but the quality of emulation was great.

G_G

Awww man. Back when I was doing Wii emulation on my PC, I was just using a wireless sensor bar and Toshiba Stack. It worked great, but the toshiba stack was horribly hard to deal with. I still may get the bar just for the hell of it, but having an actual softmodded Wii defeats the purpose of emulating.

winkio

I have a real wii, but haven't played anything recently because all my games are gone.  I'll probably get a Wii U though in November :D

Wii games I recommend:

Super Mario Galaxy
Super Mario Galaxy 2
Super Paper Mario
Twilight Princess
Skyward Sword

Also Metroid Prime Trilogy.  Although I haven't played trilogy, I have played each of the individual games on their original consoles (first two on gamecube, third on wii).  They are all phenomenal.

Blizzard

September 20, 2014, 03:17:48 am #4 Last Edit: September 20, 2014, 06:11:43 am by Blizzard
What's your HW configuration? I'd be interested in this as well, but I don't know if my laptop can handle it.

EDIT: I can run PS2 games with PCSX2 alright in native resolution. I think Wii games just might work well enough as well.
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
Drinking Game for iOS      Never have I ever for iOS


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

You should be fine Blizz. Dolphin always seemed like it ran better than PCSX2.

Heretic86

I've tried dolphin, but mostly for gamecube games.  Not much luck on the Wii, but I've tried.  I mostly used the emulator for cheats that couldnt be pulled off on a real console.

The "Sensor Bar" is actually very misleading.  It isnt a sensor at all.  The sensor is the Wiimote itself.  The bar can just as easily be replaced literally with two candles since the real sensor bar just emits infrared light.

The bluetooth issue is a different story.  It sometimes requires different bluetooth stacks.  The native drivers for my bluetooth device I had wouldnt work, but forcing windows to use a different stack was possible, but a pain.  Once a compatible stack is in place, the Wiimote works just fine on windows and the emulator.
Current Scripts:
Heretic's Moving Platforms

Current Demos:
Collection of Art and 100% Compatible Scripts

(Script Demos are all still available in the Collection link above.  I lost some individual demos due to a server crash.)

MetalZelda

Quote from: Heretic86 on September 21, 2014, 05:18:04 am
I've tried dolphin, but mostly for gamecube games.  Not much luck on the Wii, but I've tried.  I mostly used the emulator for cheats that couldnt be pulled off on a real console.

The "Sensor Bar" is actually very misleading.  It isnt a sensor at all.  The sensor is the Wiimote itself.  The bar can just as easily be replaced literally with two candles since the real sensor bar just emits infrared light.

The bluetooth issue is a different story.  It sometimes requires different bluetooth stacks.  The native drivers for my bluetooth device I had wouldnt work, but forcing windows to use a different stack was possible, but a pain.  Once a compatible stack is in place, the Wiimote works just fine on windows and the emulator.


The sensor thing can be fixed. Try to find a faulty sensor bar (wire fault), cut it, cut an old usb, take an AA battery and place it between the Sensor and the USB  and plug it in.
Congrats, you have a working sensor bar for Dolphin, works hell great with Skyward Sword

Zexion

I've actually been using dolphin to play some gamecube games, lol. Only because wii games are huge downloads, and I don't feel like waiting 100 hours for it :u
They released some development builds that actually run really well on my laptop. It was a noticeable improvement from the version I had. Went from a barely playable 14 fps on soul calibur II to a steady full speed o.o

Needless to say the new versions are awesome :b

Blizzard

If you are having performance problems with a game, that's normal. I noticed on PCSX2 that Valkyrie Profile 2 was running decently as long as I used native resolution. Anything above that it would drop below 5 FPS probably. But FF12 emulates like crazy. I use 2x native resolution (that means 4 times the pixels!) and it runs smooth most of the time. O_o So it's not just PC, some games are more optimized that others.
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
Drinking Game for iOS      Never have I ever for iOS


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

Mmmmmm. Running FF12 at 4x Native was absolutely amazing. xD

Ryex

Dolphin has had some amazing breakthroughs lately in terms of speed. they've been implementing a Gamecube jit engine for a while now and in that last 4 months they had a series of bugfixes and improvements that kept adding 5-10% improved importance over the last the results was that their emulation speed of their jit compiler jumped almost 150%. add to that the fact that they got their HLE audio compiler reworked for a 120% performance improvement and even modest computers can play most games now.
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

March 28, 2015, 07:57:19 am #12 Last Edit: March 28, 2015, 08:08:11 am by Blizzard
Quick question: Is the Wiimote enough to play Wii games or would I need a Nunchuk as well? Since I noticed that they seem to be sold separately (at least on Amazon). If no, should I get a nunchuk? I've played Metroid Prime at winkio's place and I kinda had to use the nunchuk there and it felt like the proper way to play it.

EDIT: Or should I just get this? It seems to have everything I need.

EDIT: Also, what's the difference between Wiimote and Wiimote Plus?
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
Drinking Game for iOS      Never have I ever for iOS


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

Wiimote Plus has the wii motion built inside of it. It actually improves some game play for some games while other games actually require it. The nunchuk is definitely required by a lot of games, so I'd definitely get that as well. The link you posted would be perfect to get you started. And of course the original product that Ryex linked is recommended as well.

http://www.amazon.com/TOTALCONSOLE-W010-Wireless-Sensor-DolphinBar/dp/B00HZWEB74/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top

As a lot of games will require a sensor bar. If you don't want to spend the money on it, you can always get a cheap wireless IR bar, but then you have to get a bluetooth adapter and pair your Wii mote to it, and due to personal experience, doing it with specific wii mote models can be a pain in the ass, in particular, the Wii Mote Plus controllers.

Blizzard

Yeah, I already ordered the sensor bar. Thanks.
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
Drinking Game for iOS      Never have I ever for iOS


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.

Vell

Can this run Gamecube games?

G_G

March 30, 2015, 09:44:43 am #16 Last Edit: March 30, 2015, 10:34:14 am by gameus
Yes it can, and quite well actually. I think the only games I may have ever had issues with were the Pokemon Colosseum games but that was quite awhile ago. Of course there are still going to be a handful of games with issues.

Vell

How would you play gamecube games? A standard controller of any sort that's compatible with a pc?

Blizzard

I had no problems playing them with an XBox 360 Controller.
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
Drinking Game for iOS      Never have I ever for iOS


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

It's been awhile since I've used Dolphin but I believe there are specific settings just for the GC emulation. And yeah, any standard PC game controller will work.