Dolphin / Gamecube / Wiiware / Wii Compatibility on Pi 5

TPR

How have you been getting multi-disc games to work?

I've tried using an m3u file but lr-dolphin doesn't seem to load it.

for example. .m3u file contains:

/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gc/B/Baten1.rvz
/home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gc/B/Baten2.rvz

but then it just kicks me back to ES with the following error in my log:

[libretro INFO] 38:09:360 DolphinLibretro/Boot.cpp:177 N[Video]: Using GFX backend: Vulkan
[libretro ERROR] 38:09:360 DolphinLibretro/Boot.cpp:193 E[BOOT]: Could not boot /home/pi/RetroPie/roms/gc/B/Baten.m3u. M3U contains no paths
[ERROR] [Content]: Failed to load content

Any ideas?

ionx

@TPR
I haven't tried this emulator yet, but I believe that all libretro emulators work the same.

So, try the .m3u file structure like this:

game_disk1.rvz
game_disk2.rvz

Or like this:

game (Disk 1).rvz
game (Disk 2).rvz

TPR

@ionx said in Dolphin / Gamecube / Wiiware / Wii Compatibility on Pi 5:

@TPR
I haven't tried this emulator yet, but I believe that all libretro emulators work the same.

So, try the .m3u file structure like this:
game_disk1.rvz
game_disk2.rvz
Or like this:
game (Disk 1).rvz
game (Disk 2).rvz

I did... same error. :(

EDIT: I should mention that all my other .m3u files are working just fine on all my other consoles: Saturn, Dreamcast, X68000, etc, etc... so this is not my first rodeo with the format.

retropieuser555

So someone over on reddit pointed this out and have been testing a little bit. For certain games playing with the under clock function seems to help smooth some of the games out that were on the edge of playability. So things like skies of Arcadia have a few slowdowns but putting the under clock to 70% seems to have smoothed that out. It might be worth playing with those settings for some games to see what it fixes. Although for a few it makes no real difference (Luigi's Mansion for example)

ionx

@retropieuser555
Thanks for the tip. Is this for the standalone version or Libretro, or both?

retropieuser555

@ionx standalone. I don't use the libretro version as it's a fair bit out of date, it might have an underclock option in the retroach core menu though

ionx

@retropieuser555

I tested it with Resident Evil Zero, which had massive frame drops during fight scenes, and the game is playable now.

Thank you very much again!

ionx

I tested more than 50 games with the underclocking setting, and the improvement is huge! I suggest making this setting the default.

retropieuser555

@ionx I'm not sure it would be a good idea across the board as certain games timings are linked to the clock speed. So if you had a game that runs pretty much perfectly at 100% clock, underclocking could introduce issues.

Out of curiosity what perfect of clock speed are you testing at? Or are you mixing and matching across games?

Overall each game in standalone dolphin can have its own .ini file, so in theory having an .ini certain games could be done (as dolphin checks them by gameid, not rom/file name etc)

ionx

@retropieuser555

I think you are right, and it's good to know that each game can have its own .ini file.
I set the CPU speed to 70% and tested the games with this setting only.
Games like Metal Gear Solid, The Matrix, Resident Evil Zero, and Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Academy are playable now.

retropieuser555

@ionx but it's more than just an ini file, the trouble with retroach is you can't really create unique configs as you've no idea what the user will call their file name. Whereas in standalone dolphin it's not looking for the rom file name, it's that games unique ID, which is how mupen64plus manages to have loads of individual hacks for each game to make them work

TPR

@retropieuser555 @ionx The libretro version does have the underclock option and I have tested it on a couple of games and found it also helps improve performance. I've only had time to test that it is there and to see if it works or not. Anyone else have more time to dive into it further?

ionx

@TPR
I had issues with Libretro, such as system freezing or black screens, and I don't use it. I suggest you use the standalone version

TPR

@ionx yeah I have both installed. I just like libretro for the ease of everything being under one roof. But if I find something that really doesn't run at all with it, I'll switch over to the standalone.

sugarfree

Great news:

Raspberry Pi Vulkan support in Dolphin Emu

I tried it, and it's working fine, some games are running better.

retropieuser555

@sugarfree will need to redo the spreadsheet now ha! Had a quick go on twilight princess, the mini map works now and there were only a couple of slowdowns vs lots of slowdowns on openGL. So it does seem an improvement

Edit:- and it doesn't fix dual source blending using Vulkan so no Double Dash, Resident Evil 4 or Battalion Wars

sugarfree

@retropieuser555
Resident Evil 4 was the first thing I tried, but unfortunately, it didn’t work.
I added some entries to the spreadsheet, and most of them involved the trick of decreasing CPU usage to 70%. I will test them with Vulkan later.
So far, the games with Red are running better, but they still fall into the Red category.

sugarfree

It looks like with Vulkan and the plethora of options in the emulator, it was possible to play some problematic games:

F-Zero GX
Def Jam Fight For NY
Beyond Good & Evil
Red Faction II

My settings: Vulkan+VBI Skip+Skip EFB Access. All others are the default.

retropieuser555

@sugarfree that's awesome, there are a few I intend to test again that I tried before that were too slow, F Zero was definitely one of them, it was maybe 5fps on OpenGL, so definitely much better support on Vulkan for that game. Will try a few more next week if I find the time, Star Fox Adventures in particular

Edit: Star fox still is a tad too slow imo, maybe there's some hacks that make that work slightly better

The biggest improvements I've noticed are on Wii and wiiware games. The slowdowns I noticed in Donkey Kong Country Returns & Little King's Story are gone now using vulkan. Also Strong bad, Lost Winds, Doc Louis' Punch Out & Pokemon Rumble all had massive slowdowns in OpenGL and play perfectly fine in Vulkan.

Have you found any games so far that are better in OpenGL than in Vulkan? I wonder about just setting vulkan as the default for pi 5 in the dolphin installer script

sugarfree

@retropieuser555
For GameCube, I use Vulkan by default. For Wii, I have tried only one game: Xenoblade Chronicles, and I feel that it works better with OpenGL.

Star Fox Adventures is running well (not perfectly) with the following settings:

VBI Skip: Enabled
Dual Core: Enabled
CPU at 80%

I am using the above settings for the majority of the games. Sometimes, I enable the Skip EFB Access, which removes some heavy effects in the games.

Generally, the emulators that take big advantage of Vulkan are lr-flycast-dev, lr-ppsspp, and Dolphin.