When are we gonna see emulators?

Gleasonator · February 03, 2007, 09:30:16 PM

Does anyone know if someone's working on this? We already have dumps and modchips but no emulators.

I wonder what they'll do for controls. I bet GlovePIE will be integrated so that the remote is required. You'll probably need either to have your Wii running and set the sensor bar on top of the monitor or get a wireless one too.

I'm also curious about channels. I'm thinking that someone's gonna dump the bios and the Wii'll start on that and we'll just mount the ISO and channels on it. There's so many things that can happen. :doubt:

DeVS · February 03, 2007, 10:40:26 PM

First understand that the dvd work arounds are miles away from allowing us to run unsigned code on with Wii (like emus). And when we do get emus I dont we will use the Wii mote, by pointing and such, im sure they will use the GC or retro controllers.

dantheman · February 03, 2007, 10:48:10 PM

My impression was that he was talking about a Wii emulator for the PC, which I wouldn't expect to appear for a long time or in any usable state. Heck, even Gamecube emulators only run at about 5 fps, right?

Perseid · February 03, 2007, 11:16:47 PM

I am beginning to think that emulators for new systems may never happen. We don't even have a very good N64 emulator yet. No PS2 emulator. No XBox emulator. No Cube emulator. So we are a long way off from a Wii emulator if it ever happens. These systems may just be too complicated to reverse engineer.

Koji · February 03, 2007, 11:26:04 PM

Quote from: "Perseid"I am beginning to think that emulators for new systems may never happen. We don't even have a very good N64 emulator yet. No PS2 emulator. No XBox emulator. No Cube emulator. So we are a long way off from a Wii emulator if it ever happens. These systems may just be too complicated to reverse engineer.

Don't have a good N64 emulator o_O Have you never used Project 64 or 1964? Both of those work absolutely fantastic.

No PS2 emulator? No Gamecube emulator? What rock have you been under the last 3 years? There was a working Gamecube emulator out before there was even a PS2 one. While there hasn't been huge progresses in GCN emus lately, they are being worked on and released. There is a PS2 emu out now with fairly high compatibility. As for this generation, of course there will be emulators out, just have to be patient... the blasted things haven't even been out 3 months yet... Don't expect an emu for awhile yet.

Of the three though, Wii will likely be the first and easiest to emulate. Why? We already have some working GCN emus, the Wii is just an over clocked GCN with added ram, wifi, and blue tooth capabilities. That's it. Blue tooth is only really used to communicate with the controller, and there are already ways to use the GCN controller on computers so that negates the biggest hurdle already.

Gleasonator · February 04, 2007, 12:38:57 AM

Yeah I meant emulators for the computer.

Quote from: "Koji"Of the three though, Wii will likely be the first and easiest to emulate. Why? We already have some working GCN emus, the Wii is just an over clocked GCN with added ram, wifi, and blue tooth capabilities. That's it. Blue tooth is only really used to communicate with the controller, and there are already ways to use the GCN controller on computers so that negates the biggest hurdle already.

That's what I was thinking. dantheman said that GC emulators run at 5 fps, but that just depends on your graphics card, right? If you get like a 768 MB I don't see why it wouldn't run 100%... most games I've tested are very compatable with Dolphin, just slow because I have a 128 MB. Since the GC and Wii have pretty much the same hardware I doubt getting it to run will be as big of a pain as the PS3. I just wonder if you'll be able to use the keyboard or if it'll force you to use GlovePIE. Actually I'm wondering alot of things...

Perseid · February 04, 2007, 01:21:27 AM

Project64 is OK. It's close. But try playing something like Conker's Bad Fur Day. It'll glitch. Many games glitch. And I don't mean speed either. Perhaps I'm too picky. ZSNES is what I consider a very good emulator. WinUAE as well. WinVICE. Old, mature emulators for old, mature systems.

I do stand corrected on the PS2 emulator, though. PCSX2 let me play FFX at about 30FPS. Not quite a playable speed, but it looked and sounded right. Didn't try anything else.

---

No, a better video card will typically not help you on an emulator. The speed problems come in because your computer is forced to emulate another CPU, video chip, sound chip, etc. And you are entirely CPU bound for this. The only time a GPU on your computer might come into play is actually getting the emulated polygons onto your screen. But that's most likely not where the speed problem lies.

sonicwind · February 04, 2007, 01:37:30 AM

but with vista doesn't it use your gpu help run things leaving the cpu to do other tasks. And btw who the heck is going to drop 550$ on a 8800GTX to emulate a wii........

Perseid · February 04, 2007, 02:31:51 AM

A quick google leads me to believe that it only offloads the desktop and window drawing to the GPU, which makes sense because in Aero you are in 3-D mode all the time. If Vista lets you offload anything you like, that would be quite a trick and might help a bit in emulation. But we are still many years away from being fast enough to emulate a Wii at speed.

sinkhead · February 04, 2007, 05:25:26 AM

Quote from: "Perseid"Project64 is OK. It's close. But try playing something like Conker's Bad Fur Day. It'll glitch. Many games glitch. And I don't mean speed either. Perhaps I'm too picky.

I play Conker on Project64 and it works most times, I just could never get past the bit where you had to shoot the bees because it bugged, so I just used the built in cheat to unlock the next level and carry on playing.
512Mb RAM and a Celeron 2.53 Gigahertz processor

- Sam

Devil_Spawn · February 04, 2007, 06:40:11 AM

if you havent noticed there isnt even a very good emulator for the ds yet.....
also, the best ps2 emu there is plays only a small handful of games at full speed.

if you mean homebrew on the wii, so far it is thought to be near impossible, unless they break the encryption

fexo · February 04, 2007, 08:36:07 AM

Slightly off topic, but Adaptoids are back in stock at ZT Net store.

These are for using the N64 controllers on the PC. We've had one for some years now and they work fantisically well, especially for Project 64. They are quite pricey at $36, but when they aren't available they sell for huge prices on ebay.

Gleasonator · February 04, 2007, 01:28:23 PM

Quote from: "Perseid"No, a better video card will typically not help you on an emulator. The speed problems come in because your computer is forced to emulate another CPU, video chip, sound chip, etc. And you are entirely CPU bound for this. The only time a GPU on your computer might come into play is actually getting the emulated polygons onto your screen. But that's most likely not where the speed problem lies.

So your saying... to get the emulator to run you need a good video card but to get it working smoother you need a pimped out processor?

(fexo, thanks! I have two of those crappy PSX + N64 to USB adapters and neither of them work on any controller I've tried)

Hi · February 04, 2007, 01:49:09 PM

Not to get offtopic here but I had no idea that working GC emu's exsisted. Wow!

Does anyone know if there is an emu that will run super mario sunshine?

And, what's going on here? We can emulate the GC but not the nds???

Gleasonator · February 04, 2007, 03:11:14 PM

Quote from: "Hi"Not to get offtopic here but I had no idea that working GC emu's exsisted. Wow!

Does anyone know if there is an emu that will run super mario sunshine?

And, what's going on here? We can emulate the GC but not the nds???

Dolphin? Itruns games at about 8 fps... and it's been around for a while, and the NDS emulators have not...

But there is an nds emulator that has sound, and saves games. Compatibility just isn't awsome and sometimes graphics screw up. It's called what... DeSmuME?