[HN Gopher] Dolphin Progress Report: February, March, and April ...
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Dolphin Progress Report: February, March, and April 2022
Author : soopurman
Score : 85 points
Date : 2022-05-17 19:15 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (dolphin-emu.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (dolphin-emu.org)
| baal80spam wrote:
| This software is fantastic. I have greatest respect for the
| Dolphin Team.
| makeworld wrote:
| About the update servers: why don't they just host their own copy
| of the required update files? I thought maybe because of
| copyright issues, but when the current solution is running their
| own intermediary server it seems kind of equivalent.
| duskwuff wrote:
| > but when the current solution is running their own
| intermediary server it seems kind of equivalent.
|
| My impression is that they aren't hosting or relaying any of
| the update files -- they're running a web service which
| provides Dolphin users with URLs of files which are hosted by
| Nintendo.
| delroth wrote:
| The update data is not redistributable, but there is nothing
| copyrightable in what the "fake update server" returns (30
| lines of PHP serving some trivial static XML files).
| masklinn wrote:
| Maybe the "fake update server" could have a "cache" for
| "reliability"?
| makeworld wrote:
| Ah I see, thanks! I thought the fake update server would be
| returning the actual data files itself. What a precarious
| situation to be in though, that's unfortunate.
| Jasper_ wrote:
| > The creatively named "Windows.Gaming.Input" (WGI) is the newest
| input API for Windows.
|
| For now! The Windows.Gaming.Input API is the Xbox One API, and
| has been around since Windows 8 for UWP and the Xbox One SDK. The
| new one is GameInput [0], which is used on the Xbox One X by
| Microsoft's new gaming SDK, the GDK. It's not yet on Windows, but
| it is, ostensibly, coming soon...
|
| [0] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-
| us/gaming/gdk/_content/gc/inpu...
| poglet wrote:
| Recently installed Dolphin to play some coop games with my
| family. - Using the origional Wii Remotes (I purchased a 4th one
| from Ebay) and the Mayflash sensor bar which I've had for a few
| years. - It works great, much better the the origional Wii - I
| will need to further explore the GameCube / Wii U games.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| Could Dolphin ever add support for WiiU/3DS? I realize there are
| existing emulators for those platforms, but Dolphin rocks.
| delroth wrote:
| It wouldn't make any technical sense to do so. 3DS is
| completely different hardware, Wii U has some hardware
| similarities but the environment in which games run is
| completely different (there's an OS, a bunch of dynamic
| linking, etc.).
| HelixEndeavor wrote:
| Does the Wii not have an OS? Or do you mean Wii U titles are
| far more integrated into its OS?
| tech234a wrote:
| The Wii U titles appear to be far more integrated into the
| OS. On the Wii it appears that games were run at a pretty
| low level [0]. Also, on the Wii, although there is an
| updatable system menu capable of downloading and running
| some small apps, the menu shown when you press the home
| button while in a game was included with each game as part
| of the SDK, not as part of the OS [1]. (The Korean version
| of Mario Kart Wii was found to have unused files for a
| Chinese home menu [2].) Meanwhile on the Wii U it is
| possible to launch an entire web browser and certain other
| apps from the home menu and still return to your running
| game afterwards.
|
| [0]: https://fail0verflow.com/blog/2013/espresso/
|
| [1]: https://wiibrew.org/wiki/HOME_Menu
|
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gfFDAXNMj8
| msk-lywenn wrote:
| Wii boots into a shell but when a game starts, it
| completely takes over. The menu you see when pressing the
| home button is not from the OS, it is called by the game
| into a linked library provided by Nintendo. Even shutting
| down the console by pressing the power off button had to be
| implemented by developers in order to be allowed to
| release.
| bombcar wrote:
| Yeah, Dolphin was a Gamecube emulator and since the Wii was
| basically two GameCubes taped together it was very easy for
| it to begin supporting Wii titles.
|
| The Wii U is significantly different, I think.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| The Wii U could run Wii games thanks to dedicated chips on
| the MoBo. That's why it has to switch into Wii mode. Most
| Nintendo backwards compatibility depends on dedicated
| hardware to operate. Wii and GameCube are the exception.
| The Super Nintendo was going to be backwards compatible
| with the NES but Nintendo found it too expensive.
| fredoralive wrote:
| Pedantically, I'm not sure if there are any extra
| physical chips on the Wii U for backwards compatibility,
| at least for the major bits. On the CPU side, the Wii U
| uses a weird triple core PowerPC 750 (aka G3) setup, even
| though the 750 was a) ancient and b) not designed for
| SMP, in order that it could be used for backwards
| compatibility with the previous 750 powered units. On the
| GPU side it does still have the old GC / Wii "GX" GPU as
| a separate unit, but it's just on the same chip as the
| modern GPU.
| a_shovel wrote:
| > _It 's an impressive effect for the time, as the lighting on
| the ridges will shift and match the sun's angle even as the suns
| dynamically move through the sky. Bump mapping like this wouldn't
| become common until the next console generation, and here it is_
| in a GameCube launch title _from 2001!_
|
| It's always fun when a Factor 5 game appears in one of these.
| These people were wizards.
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Bump mapping was supposed to be a selling point of the Gamecube
| hardware, so it wouldn't surprise me if Nintendo specifically
| asked or told Factor 5 to incorporate it.
|
| IIRC, it was used in the Zelda Spaceworld 2000 demo. I remember
| magazines at the time noting the bump mapping on Ganondorf's
| sword:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvE3yJv3fm0
|
| Slightly longer video of just the Zelda segment:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIa79bTDuV4
| HelixEndeavor wrote:
| Why did they drop that selling point? Did it hog too much
| performance for most games?
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| I think the article itself probably explains it well: you
| didn't get it for free.
|
| >However, there was a reason this effect didn't take off
| until years later. The DirectX9 and newer forms of bump
| mapping are painless - developers can use them with very
| little setup and they are very, very cheap to run. Devs
| don't even need to think about it. But with this older type
| of bump mapping, developers had to build the effect
| themselves. And it was not cheap. For something that just
| adds a bit of visual flare, most GameCube and Wii
| developers decided it was not worth it and passed it by.
|
| So again, Nintendo themselves probably coded it into the
| tech demo because they wanted to show off what was possible
| with the hardware, even if it wasn't practical (I believe
| there was a Dreamcast tech demo that bragged about how many
| polygons they had put into rendering a bowl of fruit).[0]
| And it is known that Nintendo worked with Factor 5 directly
| to provide them with prototype Gamecube hardware before the
| console was ready so that F5 could release a "killer app"
| launch title. It wouldn't surprise me, then, that F5
| similarly threw in all the bells and whistles they could
| think of.
|
| [0]https://imgur.com/HvQqYjT
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