[Guide] Dolphin - Assortment of Fixes

General Guides
#1

So I am pretty new to the RetroArch scene but I’ve been trying to fix a lot of things wrong with RetroArch default settings. Here are things I figured out how to fix.

Some Roms do not work on Dolphin-64 (Eternal Darkness in my case)/Some Text is missing from games.

There are missing files from the dolphin emulator in retroarch, which makes several games not work. Also if there is a mismatch between the .ini file and RetroArch, it will not load at all.

A lot of times when Dolphin is crashing it is because of a setting mismatch between RetroArch’s native settings (Video/Audio/Driver) and the Dolphin.ini file. Make sure to go in the Dolphin.ini file and ensure that the settings are all the same.

  1. Download Dolphin-64 Stand-Alone from there website: https://dolphin-emu.org/

  2. Extract the Sys folder from the 7z file and put it at %appdata%/retroarch/saves/

  3. Rename the folder to User (or if you already have a User folder, copy the contents of Sys to User)

  4. Open up the dolphin.ini file which should be at %appdata%/retroarch/saves/User/Config/

    Hint: If you do not have this file, you need to download the Sys folder from RetroArch using the content downloader. It will put this at \RetroArch\system, take all the contents for this and put them in our %appdata%/retroarch/saves/User/ folder

  5. Find GFXbackend in the dolphin.ini document.

    For OpenGL: Make sure it equals OGL then go to RetroArch and set the driver to “gl”.

    For DirectX11: Make sure it equals D3D then go to Retroarch and set the driver to “d3d11”

    EXCLAIMER: DOLPHIN CRASHES RETROARCH EACH TIME YOU CLOSE A ROM USING DIRECTX11*

Second Controller doesn’t work

  1. Go to the dolphin.ini (should be at %appdata%/retroarch/saves/User/Config/)

  2. Set SIDevice1 to 6 (I assume means enable)

    This should work for each controller

Some games randomly corrupt save files

  1. Go to the dolphin.ini (should be at %appdata%/retroarch/saves/User/Config/)

  2. Set SlotA/SlotB to 1 (which enables .raw format for saves)

Online BBA Adapter not enabled for online gameplay

  1. Go to the dolphin.ini (should be at %appdata%/retroarch/saves/User/Config/)

  2. Set SerialPort1 to 5 (Which means you are emulating a BBA)

Action-Replay Codes

  1. Go to the dolphin.ini (should be at %appdata%/retroarch/saves/User/Config/)

  2. Set EnableCheats to True

  3. Open up Dolphin-64 Stand-Alone (https://dolphin-emu.org/)

  4. Press the Config button to open settings.

    a. Make sure Enable Cheats is checked under the General Tab

    b. Add your Rom folder path to the Path Tab

  5. Close Config window and right-click the Rom you would like to add Action-Replay codes to and select Properties.

  6. Choose the AR Codes tab, input as many AR codes for that game you would like and press close.

  7. Repeat step 5-6 for each game you would like to have AR codes for.

  8. Navigate to C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME_HERE\Documents\Dolphin Emulator\GameSettings.

  9. Copy all these files into C:\Users\YOUR_USER_NAME_HERE\AppData\Roaming\RetroArch\saves\User\GameSettings

I hope this guide is helpful for everyone! I spent a lot of time going crazy trying to figure some of this stuff out.

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#2

This is pretty interesting. Any chance you have some insight towards getting the RA version of Dolphin to load the Gamecube BIOS? I didn’t see a way to get it working myself. I keep switching back to stand-alone because of it.

#3

I’d have to look into it, I havent been using RetroArch lately. I’ll let you know if I find anything down the road.

1 Like