One of the most impressive emulators out there, Dolphin, has received another one of its monthly progress reports. Usually, we see bugfixes and minor improvements, but this month is a little different. It's been an entire decade since Dolphin went open-source, and the same amount of time since the Netplay feature was added. Netplay is something that allows people to connect online with their PCs in order to play GameCube and Wii games as if they were locally in the same room. Though it would work, it would require a lot of extra work from the user: syncing settings, making sure the save files are exactly the same, port forwarding.

July 2018's update makes some major improvements to Netplay, along with a new UI view. Previous versions of Dolphins looked like this:

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While the new versions offer a view that lets you see games by coverart, might like a Wii's USBloader program can. Dolphin can now grab coverts from GameTDB, and let your game collection now look like the following:

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As far as Netplay goes, major improvements started with version 5.0-8322. When playing online in a group, Netplay would work fine, until you needed to quit, or a stutter in emulation occured, which would result in all connected users having Dolphin go into Not Responding mode, and have to be forced to stop. Now, that's no longer the case, and has been fixed. Bandwidth usage has also been decreased, letting players with lower connections be able to potentially join.

Savedata for games can also be synced, which is an improvement for those that wish to play RPGs or games with progression via netplay. Settings can also be forced to sync between all users, making it easier to keep things stable. If you want a full rundown of every single change, you can check it out on Dolphin's official site.

Source

 

[Ev1l0rd]

Neato.

I'm not sure if I like the new UI though. Is there a toggle to switch it back to the old UI? The old UI felt more compact and game info giving at a glance (ie. Filesize, region, playability status), whereas this new one seems to focus on quantity over quality.

 

[leon315]

isn't nintendo online for wii discontinued? then how can we play online with our wii games??

 

[Chary]

Neato.

I'm not sure if I like the new UI though. Is there a toggle to switch it back to the old UI? The old UI felt more compact and game info giving at a glance (ie. Filesize, region, playability status), whereas this new one seems to focus on quantity over quality.

Yeah, this is just another different option for UI, since it apparently was a highly requested feature. The old ones are still there.

isn't nintendo online for wii discontinued? then how can we play online with our wii games??

Netplay uses peer to peer connections (iirc) so there's no connections made to Nintendo servers. It basically "emulates" local play.

 

[PrincessLillie]

isn't nintendo online for wii discontinued? then how can we play online with our wii games??

Netplay uses peer to peer connections (iirc) so there's no connections made to Nintendo servers. It basically "emulates" local play.

There's also Wiimmfi, but that takes a little extra work to set up with Dolphin.

 

[MaxiBash]

Fun fact:
I was just using Dolphin when this came out.
Although the old layout is already fine, this looks more mordern.

 

[Ev1l0rd]

Yeah, this is just another different option for UI, since it apparently was a highly requested feature. The old ones are still there.

Ah, great! I guess I'll stick to the old UI then. I guess the new one is more useful for those who just have a lot of games and want to quickly scroll through them.

 

[leon315]

i see...

 

[Viri]

GBAtemp 4 Swords Adventure multiplayer stream, when?

 

[RedoLane]

the new UI is so cool!

 

[NoNAND]

Wow @Chary thats great news
Might try to play some MK DD later
Its sad still no switch port

 

[Scott-105]

Wow @Chary thats great news
Might try to play some MK DD later
Its sad still no switch port

If that happened, I would be ecstatic but I doubt it will.

 

[CallmeBerto]

I was just thinking I wanted to play some gamecube games again.

 

[Windaga]

Apparently the recent port of Dolphin to Android works well, too. Granted, you need a powerful phone...

But Double Dash on the go sounds amazing.

 

[thealgorithm]

Tried games such as Mario kart 8 and pacman rally (gamecube games) on my snapdragon 835 phone (Moto Z2 force) - Full speed and even playing it for a considerable time did not affect frame rate.

 

[the_randomizer]

Dolphin never ceases to amaze

 

[Wolfy]

Glad to see Dolphin still making great progress ironing out it's aspects, the UI is definitely been getting some love recently and happy to hear that Netplay has been improved even more!

 

[LightyKD]

There's also Wiimmfi, but that takes a little extra work to set up with Dolphin.

Surprised that the Dolphin team doesn't work to make Wiimfi setup a lot easier.

 

[Deleted User]

Ah, great! I guess I'll stick to the old UI then. I guess the new one is more useful for those who just have a lot of games and want to quickly scroll through them.

Yeah, if anything, I think the old view is enabled by default. I was just updating Dolphin yesterday to 5.0-8512 (the feature was introduced in 5.0-8498), and the UI has remained the same for me:

Spoiler: Screenshot

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

Is peer to peer even good compared to standard online connections? I'm asking cause I never had the satisfaction of trying that sort of thing.

 

[KiiWii]

I update mine every other day it seems.

I love this emulator, it’s astounding how active the GC emulation scene still is: and I love it!

I just wish the android port still worked with triiforce games.