Dolphin / Gamecube / Wiiware / Wii Compatibility on Pi 5

[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

Here's the info from the build I made yesterday:

And it usually crashes here:

or here:

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.