Dolphin / Gamecube / Wiiware / Wii Compatibility on Pi 5

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.

retropieuser555

@sugarfree with the game.ini do you know what VBI Skip is called in the configs? I couldn't seem to see that in their documentation and I don't want to set it for every game

https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=GameINI

sugarfree

@retropieuser555 said in Dolphin / Gamecube / Wiiware / Wii Compatibility on Pi 5:

@sugarfree with the game.ini do you know what VBI Skip is called in the configs? I couldn't seem to see that in their documentation and I don't want to set it for every game

https://wiki.dolphin-emu.org/index.php?title=GameINI

I think is this :

VISkip = True

I asked in their Discord for confirmation. If it works, tell me so I can give them feedback to update their wiki. Thanks.

update: It's working !

[Video_Hacks]
VISkip = True

retropieuser555

Retroachievements coming to GameCube next week. This won't work with lr-dolphin, only the standalone emulator

https://retroachievements.org/viewtopic.php?t=27191

DTEAM

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

First set as game folder in the Dolphin Gui the gc folder in the roms folder of RetroPie.
Configure correctly the gamepad from:
Dolphin GUi -> Controllers: evdev device/ gamepad. After configuration i create a profile and save.

Hi, I'm on a Pi5 and I'm not able to set the gamepads with that option. The box around the screen is there but I'm only able to play the game and exit with my keyboard. I also tried to launch the dolphin-emu program from the /opt/retropie/emulators/dolphin/bin/ (from command-line and also through a file explorer in the desktop ) but it won't load.

Any ideas. What I'm doing wrong?

retropieuser555

@DTEAM So we need to add a second line to emulators.cfg, I use this:-

dolphin-editor = "XINIT-WMC:/opt/retropie/emulators/dolphin/bin/dolphin-emu"

Trouble is there's no "Big Picture" GUI option that uses gamepads to control (apparently it's a feature that gets requested for Dolphin a lot so it'll probably get developed eventually)

Consequently right now you have to have a mouse plugged in to configure your controller

Edit: no idea why it didn't load from Pixel Desktop, that should've worked tbh. The command line I know you get QT errors when trying to launch the application outside runcommand's XINIT function

DTEAM

@retropieuser555 said in Dolphin / Gamecube / Wiiware / Wii Compatibility on Pi 5:

@DTEAM So we need to add a second line to emulators.cfg, I use this:-

dolphin-editor = "XINIT-WMC:/opt/retropie/emulators/dolphin/bin/dolphin-emu"

It works well, thanks!!!! I agree with you, it should be included by default or in retropie-setup --> configurations. BTW, for people with a touchscreen and a Pi5, the touchscreen works well with Dolphin GUI.

retropieuser555

Just an fyi, if you build dolphin from RetroPie as it's pointing towards the master branch, you get retroachievements access now, unlocked some bits on Wind Waker, Paper Mario and Pokémon Channel so it works as far as I can tell

TPR

So the issue I'm trying to figure out right now is why so many of my GC games are crashing upon loading them up in lr-dolphin.

For example, I made a completely vanilla Pi 5 Retropie build installing only the basic install and lr-dolphin and if I try to load the rvz file of NFL Blitz 2003 it crashes on the company logos 4 out of 10 loads, maybe more.

But there are images out there I've seen on AP that have lr-dolphin installed and using my same file for the game, it will load up flawlessly 50 times in a row.

Any idea what could be causing this?

@mitu any suggestions as to why my games on startup keep randomly crashing on lr-dolphin?

I can reproduce this using gl, Vulkan, pretty much any setting or change in the core. Yet these other builds seem to load lr-dolphin games just fine. The crashes seem to happen while loading up a game not during gameplay. I'd say 95% of the time it crashes before the game even starts If it makes it to when a game starts, usually its fine.

Any ideas?

TPR

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

So the issue I'm trying to figure out right now is why so many of my GC games are crashing upon loading them up in lr-dolphin.

For example, I made a completely vanilla Pi 5 Retropie build installing only the basic install and lr-dolphin and if I try to load the rvz file of NFL Blitz 2003 it crashes on the company logos 4 out of 10 loads, maybe more.

But there are images out there I've seen on AP that have lr-dolphin installed and using my same file for the game, it will load up flawlessly 50 times in a row.

Any idea what could be causing this?

@mitu any suggestions as to why my games on startup keep randomly crashing on lr-dolphin?

I can reproduce this using gl, Vulkan, pretty much any setting or change in the core. Yet these other builds seem to load lr-dolphin games just fine. The crashes seem to happen while loading up a game not during gameplay. I'd say 95% of the time it crashes before the game even starts If it makes it to when a game starts, usually its fine.

Any ideas?

@mitu So further testing...

This build I had downloaded a few months ago, I can load up NFL Blitz 2003 (USA).rvz 25 times in a row and it doesn't crash.

With the vanilla new install of RetroPie I made yesterday, it crashes on the loading screens 1 in 5 times.

Here's the info from the other build
blitz in old build.png

Here's the info from the build I made yesterday:
blitz in new build.png

And it usually crashes here:
crash 1.png
or here:
crash 2.png

If it makes it past these screens, I can play the game for a good 10-15 minutes without any issues. So the crashes seem to be happening right at the start when the game is loading.

Note that I've tested loading from both the SD card and an external hard drive, same issue. I've also tested .ciso, .rvz, and .iso files and I get the same results. Works fine in that other build, but crashes 1 in 5 times on the new build.

Different versions of RA from the old to the new build, but the lr-dolphin cores have the same file size. Any ideas?

mitu

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

@mitu So further testing...

I've done almost no testing and my input in this topic is minimal, tagging me and expecting an answer is not going to yield the desired effect.
If you want my advice, then ditch the Libretro core since it's outdated and buggy, and do your testing with the standalone emulator.

TPR

@mitu Appreciate the response either way! Thank you!

TPR

In case anyone is interested, here are more of my findings....

I copied the Retroarch version 1.16.0 to my build and then switching my audio output to "pulse" I was able to load the game (NFL Blitz 2003 (USA).rvz) 22 times in a row without it crashing at startup.

I switched back over to RA 1.19.1 and ASLA audio output and the game crashed on the very first load, and then it crashed again on 3 out of the 5 times I loaded. I do not appear to have the option to switch to "pulse" on RA 1.19.1 and I'm not sure why as the audio system is installed on my Pi.

Switched back over to 1.16.0 and with pulse and have now loaded it another 11 times without it crashing.

So I have added this older version of RA to my folder:
/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin

and renamed it retroarch_gc and created a new entry in my emulators.cfg to point to it:

lr-dolphin-pulseaudio = "/opt/retropie/emulators/retroarch/bin/retroarch_gc -L /opt/retropie/libretrocores/lr-dolphin/dolphin_libretro.so --config /opt/retropie/configs/gc/retroarch.cfg %ROM%"

I have NO IDEA AT ALL why this seems to be working, but this is the only thing I have found to make lr-dolphin more stable. In fact, in my last couple of hours of testing, I have not had the emulator core crash once on me since making this change.

I hope this is helpful to someone.

TPR

Even further testing....

I've now loaded up about 50 GC games at random, and played each one for about 3-5 minutes and I have not had a single one of them crash yet using the configuration I posted about above. Some other interesting tweaks...

I'm underclocking most games to a CPU setting of 40% - 70% and I'm seeing similar performance as the standalone build.

I have tried both the vulkan and gl video drivers and they seem to give about the same results. No obviously noticeable differences.

Some games, like Spongebob Revenge of the Flying Dutchman loaded up to an almost unplayable slow state, but then after underclocking it to CPU 30% it seems to play just fine.

I have no idea why an older version of RetroArch combined with using the Pulseaudio driver seems to be a working solution for making this core more stable, but it IS working for me.

I know a lot of people have said "use the standalone version of Dolphin" which I do have and I have used, but personally I just like the familiarity of the libretro cores and the consistency of the menus and having controllers be automatically configured, which is why I wanted to find a more stable solution for lr-dolphin

Hope this helps someone.

DTEAM

@TPR
If you want to play GameCube or Wii at fullspeed on a Pi5. You must use Dolphin standalone.
You just need to set your controller once and create hotkeys like lr-Dolphin and it will be like the lr-dolphin with the same hotkeys.

maliclandrea

@retropieuser555 how does one run Dolphin standalone? I've only figured out to run it through EmulationStation

AWiiEnthusiast

How did you get Mario Kart Wii to work? Whenever I load it up it says that it could not read or write to Wii system memory, asks me to make a new file, and says that the save data is corrupted.

retropieuser555

@AWiiEnthusiast not sure, I suspect similar to your Mario Party 5 problem there's some issue with your config files or your roms in some way.

Unrelated but I'm gonna leave this here. The most recent update on Dolphin gives access to Retroachievements when using allowed cheat codes, such as 16:9 wide-screen & 60fps modes

https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2025/03/10/dolphin-progress-report-release-2503/