Yes that's right,
We've finally released what we've been working on in our spare time the last seven months. Dolphin is an experimental GameCube emulator that so far runs quite a few games somewhat, but most are pretty slow. Keep in mind that this release is just a preview, if it works good for you, if it doesn't please don't cry too much in the forum!
Have fun!
Recommended games to try (of course your own ripped GCMs of your legally bought discs):
Bust-a-Move 3000 (fully playable)
Crazy Taxi (slow, gfx glitches)
Zelda (slow, gfx glitches)
Mario (slow, gfx glitches)
18 Wheeler (slow, gfx glitches)
Ikaruga (slow, gfx glitches, crashes after four waves, but still cool)
and more..
http://www.dolphin-emu.com/
Code:
Dolphin TEASER
by F|RES and ector
2004-01-26
An experimental Nintendo Gamecube emulator
IMPORTANT:
===========================================================
TEASER means that this is just a public preview of what we
have been working on on and off the last 7 months. Do not
expect to play any games to completion, there is no saving
support, etc. We're not guaranteeing that it will run on your
computer or that anything will work at all. If it does,
good for you, have fun :)
The Team
===========================================================
* F|RES (Main coder):
core, recompiler experiments, plugin architecture, the
first 3d graphics, dsp interface
* ector (Main coder):
core, 2d, advanced 3d graphics, user interface,
debugger, streaming audio, audio hle
* schibo (Additional coder):
dynarec
The System Requirements
===========================================================
GFX: Radeon 9500+ series card recommended, but Geforce FX
series also work. Expect severe graphics problems
with lower cards.
CPU: The fastest you can find.
RAM: 256MB or higher strongly recommended.
Audio: Any Windows/DirectX-compatible soundcard.
The Gamecube Information
===========================================================
The main processor of the Gamecube is a PowerPC derivative
running at 485MHz with some additional SIMD instructions.
It is extremely time consuming to emulate and is the main
bottleneck of Dolphin.
The Gamecube "Art-X" graphics chip is probably the most
complex ever seen in a console, except maybe the NV20+ in
the XBox. Unlike the NV20 the Art-X is very different from
PC hardware, so it requires a lot of computer power to
emulate, and it may not be possible to support all features.
It can do some very weird stuff like having two alpha
compare operations that can in turn be xored, anded or
whatever, and has performance counters that are impossible
to emulate properly that may be used/abused for purposes
like occlusion culling, as has been seen already (the
weird boxes in Mario Sunshine). Coverage queries may
possibly be used on hardware that supports them to fake
this feature reasonably.
Also its texturing abilities are extremely advanced, right
up there with the XBox and in some areas even more
feature rich.
That is why Radeon 9500+ / Geforce FX is the minimum
specification for running Dolphin properly.
The Gamecube has 24 megs of fast RAM and 16 megs of slower
"ARAM", primarily used for audio but can also be used as a
temporary scratch space.
The Gamecube has a custom DSP for audio with an unknown
instruction set. It will be possible to HLE sound in many
games, those that use the AX library, but we are not sure
about the others yet. A simple type of streaming music
(used by a few games) has already been somewhat emulated.
The Dolphin Information
===========================================================
Dolphin was written in C++, compiled with Microsoft Visual
Studio .NET 2003. It's not a .NET application of course.
Dolphin uses Direct3D for the graphics, DirectSound for
sound and DirectInput for keyboard.
For the graphical interface plain Win32 code was used.
The Future
===========================================================
We will most likely do more releases of Dolphin, we'll
continue coding until it's no longer fun.
Will we open the source code someday? Who knows?
Contact Info
===========================================================
Use the Dolphin subforum at www.emutalk.net to leave your
comments or contact the authors. Please do not request any
ROMs or ISOs or GCMs or whatever, don't ask how to copy
games etc.
The End Of File
===========================================================
See the Help feature of Dolphin for more information.
Social Networking Bookmarks