Thanks to the Dolphin Emulator, you can play your GameCube and Wii games on all kinds of devices, including PCs, gaming handhelds, and, of course, Android devices. The latest round of updates is making the emulator better than ever on Android.
Dolphin is making a few changes to its Android version, focused on making the overall user experience better. Mainly, the newly implemented changes address how the emulator behaves with controllers, and with newer Android versions. We should note that these changes aren’t coming as part of one update — rather, it’s a compilation of all changes implemented by Dolphin from February 2023 to April 2023. A few of the updates have already been available for a while, while others are new, and a few more aren’t fully rolled out yet.
Let’s start with the emulator’s handling of Android controllers. This is perhaps the biggest change made to the emulator in recent months, and it’s a complete rewrite of the emulator’s input system on Android. The way the Dolphin team puts it, the previous system was based on some quick code by one of the devs that got increasingly messier over the years.
The new controller implementation uses JNI (Java Native Interface), giving Dolphin access to more features. These include changing controller settings while a game is running, mapping your device’s sensors to whatever you want, saving and loading input profiles, support for more sensors, and more.
Another addition sees Dolphin properly support the new per-app storage settings in newer Android versions, even allowing file managers to access these per-app directories properly.
There are lots of other new features too, including some changes that affect Dolphin on other platforms. If you’re interested in giving that a read, check out the full progress report at the source link below.
Source: Dolphin
