Homebrew Question How is Nintendo 64, Gamecube and PS2 emulation coming along?

[Beware]

I was talking about a possible GCN Virtual Console using Nintendo and NVIDIA's emulator. Even Sony use specifics hacks and emulator settings for their PS2 Classics on PS3 so I wouldn't be surprised if Nintendo started selling some of their GCN games on the Switch eShop. As for Dolphin, you can use hacks. In fact, the graphics backend has a lot of hacks you can turn on if you need more performance, and you can downclock the CPU and/or use AR/Gecko codes.

Do you genuinely think I don't know that? I'm part of the RetroNX team I didn't just roll out of bed and make this shit up. Dolphin is NOT happening. Whether Nintendo chooses to specifically rerelease GCN titles we will NOT be emulating it with Dolphin. And there are major differences between the hacks Dolphin does employ and the per-game hacks you're talking about. Dolphin does NOT subscribe to that style of optimization any more. That's right from the Dolphin dev team's mouthpiece.

 

[PiracyForTheMasses]

Have any of you actually used Dolphin on a Shield TV? You wanna talk being a noob, yet you don't even understand what it takes to run Dolphin adequately. Dolphin, even Ishiiruka, runs barely adequate on the Shield TV. The Shield TV has the same hardware clocked nearly TWICE as fast as the Switch and still can't run most games adequately. You are chasing something that is outside the realm of physical possibility. Here's the straight up data that proves you wrong:

Switch Docked | Switch Non-Docked | Shield ATV or Lakka (OC)
CPU: 1020 MHz | 1020 MHz | 2 GHz
GPU: 768 MHz | 307.2 MHz | 1 GHz
MEM: 1600 MHz | 1331 MHz | 1600 MHz

How the hell are we going to get something full speed that doesn't run on hardware nearly 100% faster? Incredible that you can call someone a noob when you clearly have no clue what you're talking about. Wishing and believing really hard does not alter the laws of physics.

Take your attitude and your straight-up fabricated "facts" elsewhere, you're out of your league.

Yet again noob, your argument holds no weight. Did I say anything about dolphin, no I did not. I said the official emulator that the shield tv is using to run Nintendo games was in fact made by a dolphin developer that Nvidia hired. I also said that Nintendo has already proven that the shield is more than capable of emulating wii and gamecube. You also forget that Nintendos os isnt resource heavy like android os. Another thing you have not taken in to consideration is the fact that different versions of dolphin run games at different speeds. Same goes for android os, the version of android os being used plays a big factor in emulation performance when it comes to dolphin. Now lets address your ps2 statement. You say ps2 isnt going to happen, yet you have nothing to back up your claims. If ps2 can be emulated on an old ass android smart phone with decent performance theres no reason the switch can not do the same. Your opinions are not fact, nor have you bothered to research the facts.

 

[Beware]

Yet again noob, your argument holds no weight. Did I say anything about dolphin, no I did not. I said the official emulator that the shield tv is using to run Nintendo games was in fact made by a dolphin developer that Nvidia hired. I also said that Nintendo has already proven that the shield is more than capable of emulating wii and gamecube. You also forget that Nintendos os isnt resource heavy like android os. Another thing you have not taken in to consideration is the fact that different versions of dolphin run games at different speeds. Same goes for android os, the version of android os being used plays a big factor in emulation performance when it comes to dolphin. Now lets address your ps2 statement. You say ps2 isnt going to happen, yet you have nothing to back up your claims. If ps2 can be emulated on an old ass android smart phone with decent performance theres no reason the switch can not do the same. Your opinions are not fact, nor have you bothered to research the facts.

Except I'm a member of the RetroNX team, you're a nobody who likes to spout nonsense. Damon was an emulator that used stolen code. It will not, under ANY circumstance, make it to Switch. You really don't seem to understand the difference between facts and opinions. An Android phone is NOT the same as the Switch. The Switch hardware runs at VERY low clock speeds. You can't change the laws of physics just by being stubborn.

PS: I love how I gave you literally facts with data yet I haven't done my research, while all you've done is make shit up and pass it off as truth. You are a perfect example of everything wrong with this "community."

 

[matthi321]

the switch is not powerfull enoug to emulate ps2, atleast not this version. it should be able to run some gamecube games at ok speed as the nvidia shield can

 

[Beware]

the switch is not powerfull enoug to emulate ps2, atleast not this version. it should be able to run some gamecube games at ok speed as the nvidia shield can

No it won't do anything "as the Shield can" because the Shield hardware runs twice as fast.

 

[matthi321]

No it won't do anything "as the Shield can" because the Shield hardware runs twice as fast.

oh i always thought the switch had the exact same hardware as the shield?

 

[Beware]

oh i always thought the switch had the exact same hardware as the shield?

As i've now explained 3 times in the last hour: The Switch "has" the same hardware, but it is clocked at half speed. I even posted a chart showing the differences.

 

[matthi321]

As i've now explained 3 times in the last hour: The Switch "has" the same hardware, but it is clocked at half speed. I even posted a chart showing the differences.

i see

 

[weatMod]

@alexg1989 NGC and PS2 doesn't work with Lakka yet.
As the others said, Lakka is your best alternative right now.
You can play NES, SNES, GB, GBC, GBA, N64, PS1, PSP, Sega Megadrive and Sega Saturn. It also supports Videos and Music (without fixed Kernel for Audio, these two are more or less useless) as well as Images (Image viewer).

It's true that there are issues with the Battery but because my Switch is connected to my Powerbank almost every time I use Lakka, I don't really care about that
Hopefully this Issue will be fixed someday.

Here's a Video I recorded playing Kingdom Hearts - Birth by Sleep (PSP) on Nintendo Switch.

do we still need a dedicated SD for lakka now that we have dock USB support and since TX has made their
work on this public i wonder if it could made so that we can use one normal SD card in the switch
and then have the lakka image on a USB drive connected to the dock , and some kind of lakka launcher that runs from the homebrew launcher ,or some way to reboot and redirect the boot when when docked
to run lakka , a way that lakka would run only when docked to a dock with USB HDD connected with a lakka image on it ,then we wouldn't need to worry about having to swap out SD cards or about battery issues or about power issues

 

[Beware]

You can use a fat32 SD card and keep SX, RetroArch, and Lakka all on the same SD. You've been able to use one SD the whole time. Booting Lakka from an external HDD is impossible.

 

[Deleted User]

@Beware. Thank you for your information.

There are people working to overclock the switch: https://gbatemp.net/threads/switch-overclocking-coming-improved-n64-psx-emu.521552/

They say they can overlock the Switch without damage to the system.
Would this close the gap between the switch and shield enough for them to become equal?

 

[Beware]

@Beware. Thank you for your information.

There are people working to overclock the switch: https://gbatemp.net/threads/switch-overclocking-coming-improved-n64-psx-emu.521552/

They say they can overlock the Switch without damage to the system.
Would this close the gap between the switch and shield enough for them to become equal?

No. A 2GHz OC is nowhere near safe. I'm not even comfortable recommending the 1.5GHz OC that i'm using. Lakka has had full OC capabilities the entire time and Dolphin has never been anything but awful to use.

 

[Silent_Gunner]

Have any of you actually used Dolphin on a Shield TV? You wanna talk being a noob, yet you don't even understand what it takes to run Dolphin adequately. Dolphin, even Ishiiruka, runs barely adequate on the Shield TV. The Shield TV has the same hardware clocked nearly TWICE as fast as the Switch and still can't run most games adequately. You are chasing something that is outside the realm of physical possibility. Here's the straight up data that proves you wrong:

Switch Docked | Switch Non-Docked | Shield ATV or Lakka (OC)
CPU: 1020 MHz | 1020 MHz | 2 GHz
GPU: 768 MHz | 307.2 MHz | 1 GHz
MEM: 1600 MHz | 1331 MHz | 1600 MHz

How the hell are we going to get something full speed that doesn't run on hardware nearly 100% faster? Incredible that you can call someone a noob when you clearly have no clue what you're talking about. Wishing and believing really hard does not alter the laws of physics.

Take your attitude and your straight-up fabricated "facts" elsewhere, you're out of your league.

Best part about it is that there's a rumor that he supposedly is known for spreading viruses with his developments according to a mod on r/AM2R!

EDIT: I must have misremembered the subject of the Reddit posting I referred to.

 

[Beware]

Best part about it is that there's a rumor that he supposedly is known for spreading viruses with his developments according to a mod on r/AM2R!

He who? Piracy for the Masses? Is he UpsideBob?

 

[Silent_Gunner]

@Beware. Thank you for your information.

There are people working to overclock the switch: https://gbatemp.net/threads/switch-overclocking-coming-improved-n64-psx-emu.521552/

They say they can overlock the Switch without damage to the system.
Would this close the gap between the switch and shield enough for them to become equal?

This just isn't realistic, even with something like ThermalGrizzly's Conductonaut from what I've been told. Besides, dynarecs are better and worth waiting for.

The Tegra X1 is severely underclocked in the Switch compared to the SHIELD, which is just par for the course for a portable device like the Switch.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Never mind. I must have misremembered something.

 

[Grmmish]

You do understand simply overclocking a device does not mean it is a perfect subject for running things such as Dolphin. ._. It required proper emulation.
And emulation/programming is an art. No 2 emulators/applications will be made the same no matter what. Some are good for this and some are good for that, etc.
Many factors play a part of emulating another system than just overclocking.
EXAMPLE: Graphics and game of Breath of the Wild far surpasses anything the Nintendo 64 has to offer and plays perfectly yet the emulator I'm using for N64 does not work well... Depending on exactly the problem(s), overclocking alone may not necessarily fix this issue.

 

[LuigiGold]

You do understand simply overclocking a device does not mean it is a perfect subject for running things such as Dolphin. ._. It required proper emulation.
And emulation/programming is an art. No 2 emulators/applications will be made the same no matter what. Some are good for this and some are good for that, etc.
Many factors play a part of emulating another system than just overclocking.
EXAMPLE: Graphics and game of Breath of the Wild far surpasses anything the Nintendo 64 has to offer and plays perfectly yet the emulator I'm using for N64 does not work well... Depending on exactly the problem(s), overclocking alone may not necessarily fix this issue.

What do you mean with "proper emulation"? Dolphin is already optimized. And even with that it runs poorly on the Switch. Dolphin isn't feasible, it doesn't even run well on a Shield TV. Period.

 

[Grmmish]

What do you mean with "proper emulation"? Dolphin is already optimized. And even with that it runs poorly on the Switch. Dolphin isn't feasible, it doesn't even run well on a Shield TV. Period.

Sometimes to convert a data type (This is an example) into another can cause extra excess after the conversion or incomplete data. Just like translating one language to another. We an get AN IDEA of what is being said, but "Bo" in bablabla could mean "How are you today" in bleebleeblee. Obviously the two sentences are very different. However, Jimmy can translate "Bo" to "How are you this morning?" or "How it do?" and the outcomes are very different. This includes the meaning, how many syllables are being said, how someone interprets it and so on. This is a bit similar to "Extra excess" or the opposite, "Incomplete data". Sometimes big changes to the source hardware makes life easier than trying to work around what is already made and backwards engineer.

My point is that Dolphin isn't "Already optimized" because Dolphin isn't the "Optimal solution". There's no such thing as an "Optimal solution" when everyone has their own solutions for doing the same things. Some are better and some are worse. I might make a Wii/Gamecube emulator for Switch RIGHT NOW and it has the same frame rate as an actual Gamecube and Wii... But, for this example, I may have made this happen because I made my engine NOT render 3 dimensional graphics and only the 2 dimensional graphics. Sure this is not how anyone wants to play a Gamecube or Wii but it certainly is considered "Gamecube Emulation" and certainly is indeed proper frame rate. Is this considered "Optimal"? Of course not because the majority of the games are unplayable.
Another example. Jimmy may make one as well. It runs at great frame rate and the quality is high. At first glance it seems like a good "Optimal solution"... But he accomplishes this by connecting hard modding the switch by opening it up, manufacturing extra devices such as RAM and memory into the Switch's hardware and then his emulator runs the Gamecube games from these devices that are now built into the Switch. Similar to building a computer to process specific things better. Is this considered an "Optimal solution"? Certain it does indeed run Dolphin at an ideal frame rate and certainly it does indeed show everything we want to see.
One last example would be Jerry making his own Gamecube and Wii emulator. Let us pretend the Switch can play Gamecube and Wii games without much tweaking. Jerry's new emulator runs Gamecube and Wii games at an insanely horrible frame rate and causes many graphics glitches. He accomplishes such a poor job because his skills are not up to par. His emulator continuously builds up cache data without clearing it, his emulator take an HD screenshot of every frame every time it happens, and in the end, it simply does a very poor job. Fills up your storage device for no reason and causes many background screenshots to get saved to the Switch's "Album.". Sure we all can say "Why would he make his emulator do this?" Maybe he was trying to have a screenshot function and it glitched, right? BUT we can say this exact same thing about Dolphin's emulator. Sure we all respect that the Dolphin developers know what they are doing and if they feel something isn't possible or beyond their reach then we know it probably is. But then super computer hacker John could walk up to the Dolphin team and say "No, no no! This is all wrong. If you do this and that, it will cause the emulator to be slow." and Dolphin comes out with their next big thing simply because programming is an art and no one does the same thing the same way. When it comes to art, there's no such thing as an "Optimal solution". Yes we know that sometimes it is far too difficult to convert certain data to other data, or to read something in a different way because it takes too much processing memory etc. whatever. But although Dophin's emulation features are not well made for Switch, it does not mean it isn't possible. Sometimes it just needs sacrifices to make things work "Optimally" and sometimes people are simply lazy and/or inexperienced. Sure we can doubt the latter but it's always a possibility.

The way I look at it is if we can run it at a horrible frame rate, then that means it can be ran. And if it can be ran, you have done the hard part, now all one needs to do is optimize it where sacrifices or reprogramming could be made to save it's speeds.
N64 emulation has been done with RetroArch now and in soon to no time at all I am sure it will be up to speed because as of now, it is not running at "Optimal" speeds and frame rate. When it IS optimal, it just proves even more it just needed to be tweaked and it just wasn't done at the time and some things are harder than the next. And some things just aren't worth being a "Super hacker" for. (Super hacker is just a humorous term.)

 

[LuigiGold]

Sometimes to convert a data type (This is an example) into another can cause extra excess after the conversion or incomplete data. Just like translating one language to another. We an get AN IDEA of what is being said, but "Bo" in bablabla could mean "How are you today" in bleebleeblee. Obviously the two sentences are very different. However, Jimmy can translate "Bo" to "How are you this morning?" or "How it do?" and the outcomes are very different. This includes the meaning, how many syllables are being said, how someone interprets it and so on. This is a bit similar to "Extra excess" or the opposite, "Incomplete data". Sometimes big changes to the source hardware makes life easier than trying to work around what is already made and backwards engineer.

My point is that Dolphin isn't "Already optimized" because Dolphin isn't the "Optimal solution". There's no such thing as an "Optimal solution" when everyone has their own solutions for doing the same things. Some are better and some are worse. I might make a Wii/Gamecube emulator for Switch RIGHT NOW and it has the same frame rate as an actual Gamecube and Wii... But, for this example, I may have made this happen because I made my engine NOT render 3 dimensional graphics and only the 2 dimensional graphics. Sure this is not how anyone wants to play a Gamecube or Wii but it certainly is considered "Gamecube Emulation" and certainly is indeed proper frame rate. Is this considered "Optimal"? Of course not because the majority of the games are unplayable.
Another example. Jimmy may make one as well. It runs at great frame rate and the quality is high. At first glance it seems like a good "Optimal solution"... But he accomplishes this by connecting hard modding the switch by opening it up, manufacturing extra devices such as RAM and memory into the Switch's hardware and then his emulator runs the Gamecube games from these devices that are now built into the Switch. Similar to building a computer to process specific things better. Is this considered an "Optimal solution"? Certain it does indeed run Dolphin at an ideal frame rate and certainly it does indeed show everything we want to see.
One last example would be Jerry making his own Gamecube and Wii emulator. Let us pretend the Switch can play Gamecube and Wii games without much tweaking. Jerry's new emulator runs Gamecube and Wii games at an insanely horrible frame rate and causes many graphics glitches. He accomplishes such a poor job because his skills are not up to par. His emulator continuously builds up cache data without clearing it, his emulator take an HD screenshot of every frame every time it happens, and in the end, it simply does a very poor job. Fills up your storage device for no reason and causes many background screenshots to get saved to the Switch's "Album.". Sure we all can say "Why would he make his emulator do this?" Maybe he was trying to have a screenshot function and it glitched, right? BUT we can say this exact same thing about Dolphin's emulator. Sure we all respect that the Dolphin developers know what they are doing and if they feel something isn't possible or beyond their reach then we know it probably is. But then super computer hacker John could walk up to the Dolphin team and say "No, no no! This is all wrong. If you do this and that, it will cause the emulator to be slow." and Dolphin comes out with their next big thing simply because programming is an art and no one does the same thing the same way. When it comes to art, there's no such thing as an "Optimal solution". Yes we know that sometimes it is far too difficult to convert certain data to other data, or to read something in a different way because it takes too much processing memory etc. whatever. But although Dophin's emulation features are not well made for Switch, it does not mean it isn't possible. Sometimes it just needs sacrifices to make things work "Optimally" and sometimes people are simply lazy and/or inexperienced. Sure we can doubt the latter but it's always a possibility.

The way I look at it is if we can run it at a horrible frame rate, then that means it can be ran. And if it can be ran, you have done the hard part, now all one needs to do is optimize it where sacrifices or reprogramming could be made to save it's speeds.
N64 emulation has been done with RetroArch now and in soon to no time at all I am sure it will be up to speed because as of now, it is not running at "Optimal" speeds and frame rate. When it IS optimal, it just proves even more it just needed to be tweaked and it just wasn't done at the time and some things are harder than the next. And some things just aren't worth being a "Super hacker" for. (Super hacker is just a humorous term.)

HAHAHAHAHA

I laughed at the last part of your comment.

1. A dynarec is NOT an optimization. It's a whole new and big feature.

2. Dolphin already has an ARM64 dynarec, so it's the best it can run (unless faster drivers, but trust me it won't run well even with that).

The only way to have GC/Wii running on the switch is whether nintendo does it or writing a new emulator specifically for ARM64 (which no one will do since it's YEARS of developing).

GC/Wii isn't happening. Likely never. That's all what I have to say about.

Move on. ;p

 

[Grmmish]

writing a new emulator specifically for ARM64 (which no one will do since it's YEARS of developing).

The time and effort it takes is not the point, my friend.

 

[Mambila2001]

The time and effort it takes is not the point, my friend.

You're trying way too hard dude.