Dolphin - A GameCube and Wii Emulator
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Dolphin is an emulator for running GameCube and Wii games on Windows, Linux, macOS, and recent Android devices. It's licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later (GPLv2+).
Please read the FAQ before using Dolphin.
System Requirements
Desktop
- OS
- Windows (10 1903 or higher).
- Linux.
- macOS (11.0 Big Sur or higher).
- Unix-like systems other than Linux are not officially supported but might work.
- Processor
- A CPU with SSE2 support.
- A modern CPU (3 GHz and Dual Core, not older than 2008) is highly recommended.
- Graphics
- A reasonably modern graphics card (Direct3D 11.1 / OpenGL 3.3).
- A graphics card that supports Direct3D 11.1 / OpenGL 4.4 is recommended.
Android
- OS
- Android (7.0 Nougat or higher).
- Processor
- A processor with support for 64-bit applications (either ARMv8 or x86-64).
- Graphics
- A graphics processor that supports OpenGL ES 3.0 or higher. Performance varies heavily with driver quality.
- A graphics processor that supports standard desktop OpenGL features is recommended for best performance.
Dolphin can only be installed on devices that satisfy the above requirements. Attempting to install on an unsupported device will fail and display an error message.
Building
You may find building instructions on the appropriate wiki page for your operating system:
Before building, make sure to pull all submodules:
git submodule update --init --recursive
Android-specific instructions
These instructions assume familiarity with Android development. If you do not have an Android dev environment set up, see AndroidSetup.md.
If using Android Studio, import the Gradle project located in ./Source/Android.
Android apps are compiled using a build system called Gradle. Dolphin's native component, however, is compiled using CMake. The Gradle script will attempt to run a CMake build automatically while building the Java code.
Uninstalling
On Windows, simply remove the extracted directory, unless it was installed with the NSIS installer, in which case you can uninstall Dolphin like any other Windows application.
Linux users can run cat install_manifest.txt | xargs -d '\n' rm as root from the build directory
to uninstall Dolphin from their system.
macOS users can simply delete Dolphin.app to uninstall it.
Additionally, you'll want to remove the global user directory if you don't plan on reinstalling Dolphin.
Command Line Usage
Usage: Dolphin.exe [options]... [FILE]...
Options:
--version show program's version number and exit
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-u USER, --user=USER User folder path
-m MOVIE, --movie=MOVIE
Play a movie file
-e <file>, --exec=<file>
Load the specified file
-n <16-character ASCII title ID>, --nand_title=<16-character ASCII title ID>
Launch a NAND title
-C <System>.<Section>.<Key>=<Value>, --config=<System>.<Section>.<Key>=<Value>
Set a configuration option
-s <file>, --save_state=<file>
Load the initial save state
-d, --debugger Show the debugger pane and additional View menu options
-l, --logger Open the logger
-b, --batch Run Dolphin without the user interface (Requires
--exec or --nand-title)
-c, --confirm Set Confirm on Stop
-v VIDEO_BACKEND, --video_backend=VIDEO_BACKEND
Specify a video backend
-a AUDIO_EMULATION, --audio_emulation=AUDIO_EMULATION
Choose audio emulation from [HLE|LLE]
Available DSP emulation engines are HLE (High Level Emulation) and LLE (Low Level Emulation). HLE is faster but less accurate whereas LLE is slower but close to perfect. Note that LLE has two submodes (Interpreter and Recompiler) but they cannot be selected from the command line.
Available video backends are "D3D" and "D3D12" (they are only available on Windows), "OGL", and "Vulkan". There's also "Null", which will not render anything, and "Software Renderer", which uses the CPU for rendering and is intended for debugging purposes only.
DolphinTool Usage
usage: dolphin-tool COMMAND -h
commands supported: [convert, verify, header, extract]
Usage: convert [options]... [FILE]...
Options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-u USER, --user=USER User folder path, required for temporary processing
files. Will be automatically created if this option is
not set.
-i FILE, --input=FILE
Path to disc image FILE.
-o FILE, --output=FILE
Path to the destination FILE.
-f rvz|iso|gcz|wia, --format=rvz|iso|gcz|wia
Container format to use. Default is RVZ.
-s, --scrub Scrub junk data as part of conversion.
-b BLOCK_SIZE, --block_size=BLOCK_SIZE
Block size for GCZ/WIA/RVZ formats, as an integer.
Suggested value for RVZ: 131072 (128 KiB)
-c none|zstd|bzip2|lzma|lzma2, --compression=none|zstd|bzip2|lzma|lzma2
Compression method to use when converting to WIA/RVZ.
Suggested value for RVZ: zstd
-l COMPRESSION_LEVEL, --compression_level=COMPRESSION_LEVEL
Level of compression for the selected method. Ignored
if 'none'. Suggested value for zstd: 5
Usage: verify [options]...
Options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-u USER, --user=USER User folder path, required for temporary processing
files. Will be automatically created if this option is
not set.
-i FILE, --input=FILE
Path to input file.
-a crc32|md5|sha1|rchash, --algorithm=crc32|md5|sha1|rchash
Optional. Compute and print the digest using the
selected algorithm, then exit.
Usage: header [options]...
Options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-i FILE, --input=FILE
Path to disc image FILE.
-b, --block_size Optional. Print the block size of GCZ/WIA/RVZ formats,
then exit.
-c, --compression Optional. Print the compression method of GCZ/WIA/RVZ
formats, then exit.
-l, --compression_level
Optional. Print the level of compression for WIA/RVZ
formats, then exit.
Usage: extract [options]...
Options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-i FILE, --input=FILE
Path to disc image FILE.
-o FOLDER, --output=FOLDER
Path to the destination FOLDER.
-p PARTITION, --partition=PARTITION
Which specific partition you want to extract.
-s SINGLE, --single=SINGLE
Which specific file/directory you want to extract.
-l, --list List all files in volume/partition. Will print the
directory/file specified with --single if defined.
-q, --quiet Mute all messages except for errors.
-g, --gameonly Only extracts the DATA partition.