Please use builds from
http://dolphin-emu.org/download/ . The latest master version should generally be the best to use for tasing in most cases. New features are being added in all the time to improve the tools available for TASing.
Versions prior to 4.0-3595 are deprecated and will not be accepted in the future.
Both Gamecube and Wii games are supported for TASing with Dolphin. For the Wii, Wiimote inputs are only supported through Emulated Wiimotes or TAS Input.
Important settings for tasing:
Dual Core: This must be
off. This is very important, as it can cause desyncs, and even if it doesn't, it is impossible to properly dump video with this on.
DSP emulator engine: DSP HLE is currently recommended due to multiple issues of desyncs occuring with LLE. DSP LLE can be used, but be warned that potential desyncs can occur with memory cards.
Other Game Settings: These days, it should be fine to stick with what games recommend for settings, and shouldn't cause any desyncs.
Graphics settings: Search for your specific game on
http://wiki.dolphin-emu.org . Nothing should matter for tasing in particular, though you may want to disable all of the hacks.
SRAM: It's possible for games to utilize SRAM values in games for RNG purposes, causing desyncs if they don't match up. For this reason, it's currently recommended to either copy the SRAM.raw file, or delete it prior to starting a TAS. This will be accounted for in the near future, but to remove any known risks of desyncs, it's best to start from clean SRAM.
Desyncs: Desyncs can, and will potentially happen. We're constantly working on and updating Dolphin to be a better emulator for TASers. If you do run into a situation where you do desync, feel free to either contact myself on the forums or on IRC, or make a post on the forums providing as much information as possible. Tracking down desync causes can be difficult, so providing as much information as possible helps us to track it down and hopefully resolve these issues for new versions of Dolphin.
Wii TASes with saves:
As of 4.0-6512, Wii TASes which require save files will not work as it creates a Blank NAND (which does not transfer saves). To resolve this for the time being, use Dolphin versions prior to 4.0-6512.
As of
5.0-2413, Wii saves will now transfer over to the blank NAND when creating a TAS if the save already exists for that particular game.
Bounding Box: Newer versions of Dolphin use hardware optimized implementations of bounding box, which produce different results at different resolutions and graphical settings, as well as being tied to specific hardware. To avoid this while using the latest versions, use the
Direct3D backend with Microsoft Basic Renderer (as to be hardware agnostic), or use version
4.0-5124 or older to us e the older software based bounding box solution.
I will be updating this post as much as possible as soon as new information becomes available.
Thanks to RachelB for the
original topic.
Edits by feos:
Dolphin revisions from
5.0-10039 to
5.0-10093 inclusively should not be used for TASing due to non-determinism across different operation systems, exposed by tweaks to Idle Skipping. It was fixed in
5.0-10095.
Since 5.0,
MMU must be explicitly enabled for TASes. Enabling it causes Dolphin to emulate crashes more accurately, which (in certain edge cases) helps ensure that whatever glitches you're exploiting in the game actually work on a real console. Go to
Config ->
Advanced and tick
Enable MMU.
Builds from
5.0-11231 until
5.0-13180 have audio/video desync in AVI dumps, first frame will be missing. If the first frame repeats, all its duplicates will also be missing. It can't be fixed on user end. Use older or newer versions.
If you don't have
portable.txt in your Dolphin folder, it will store all the config settings in a User folder of your OS, and settings from various versions of Dolphin will mess with each other. So to reduce the possibility of desyncs because of this, always keep
portable.txt in your Dolphin folder.
Do not use NKit images or other bad dumps, they are not sync-compatible with clean dumps. To check if your dump is good:
- Right click the game in the list -> Properties -> Verify tab -> click the Verify button
Messed up stereo setting in the GameCube BIOS may cause desyncs that persist with default
SRAM.raw in
User/GC. Try setting byte 0x13 to 00 in a hex editor or refer to
this post for clearing it through the BIOS menu in Dolphin.
