With the Christmas month being just a single day away in most countries, many of us are eagerly waiting for holidays from school/work in order to get some free time in which some gaming could be done. In this article, we’ll be looking at Dolphin for iOS and some mods for 3DS/Swtich games which can surely spice up your time spent gaming this holiday season!
iOS News: OatmealDome doing further work on ‘Dolphin for iOS’ pull request in hopes of getting it approved
Almost a week ago, OatmealDome surprised the smartphone/tablet emulation community by publishing a pull request to implement iOS support in Dolphin which demonstrated his efforts in getting a useable port of Dolphin to run on Apple’s devices. Fast forwarding to today, no final decision has been taken although some Dolphin developers such as Lioncash and degasus have commented on what needs to be improved with the latter helping out on an issue relating to memory allocation.
As per the pull request, Xenoblade Chronicles runs at full-speed on an iPhone X (A11) meaning that this port has a good deal of potential!
As the pull request now contains some pretty lengthy comments about what needs to be done and what’s been done, the current status has been summarised in point form:
- One of the main points of contention with porting Dolphin to iOS both in the present and the past has been the fact that it requires a jailbroken device to work BUT work is currently ongoing to remove this requirement by making Dolphin’s memory map fit into 1GB RAM which can be allocated on some non-jailbroken devices
- The main reason behind this is so that the port sees more usage and doesn’t end up as a niche used only by a few people
- Lioncash described it as “It’s a cool idea, but I think it needs a bit more polish” after reviewing the initial pull request meaning that there’s the possibility of it being green lit and seeing further development down the line
- The feedback that was left mostly had to do with improving the documentation of iOS-specific code to indicate why it exists, following code conventions adopted by the emulator’s team, reducing IFDEFs and making code more manageable
- A few hours ago, OatmealDome published a comment describing numerous internal code improvements which include the reduction of IFDEF usage, extending current APIs to support WX Exclusivity (required on iOS) and adding a d-pad to the touch-screen controller
To read more about the effort of porting Dolphin to iOS, follow this link to see the pull request itself.
3DS & Switch Releases: CTGP-7 1.0 & 5 new 60FPS mods for the Switch
While Mario Kart 7 is a pretty cool game, CTGP-7 adds so much content that will surely make you want to start playing the game again!
Moving to the Nintendo 3DS scene, the CTGP-7 mod for Mario Kart 7 has finally got its 1.0 release, 5 years after the initial release. This mod (or modpack) adds a lot to the base game from Nintendo such as custom tracks, more characters, more karts, hacked items, a course manager, backwards camera and much much more!
This update, which is touted as the largest one to date, took its version number from 0.21.4 to 1.0 and this includes 26 more custom tracks (compared to v0.21.4), an anti-cheat feature when playing online with the mod, Custom Tracks WorldWide (multiplayer on an unused region by Nintendo) and a custom character manager among other things such as a R.O.B Custom Character!
You may download it from GameBanana.
Want to play Monster Hunter @ 60FPS on your Switch? The hacking community has got you covered 
Staying on the subject of Nintendo consoles, the Switch has received even more 60FPS mods for commercial games from masagrator & Kirby567fan this week and these include:
- Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate / XX (Version 1.4.0 (non-JP) and 1.5.0 (JP))
- Super Kirby Clash (Version 1.01)
- With a 1.785GHz CPU and 768MHz GPU OC, the game runs at 60FPS 99% of the time
- The Stretchers
- Dragon’s Dogma: Dark Arisen (Version 1.0.1)
- Senran Kagura Peach Ball (Version 1.0.2)
Obviously, overclocking (some minor and some major) is required to achieve 60FPS so make sure you follow the specified settings in the links above.
Conclusion
Staying on the subject of emulation, RetroArch is gaining even more quality-of-life features on the run-down to RetroArch 1.8.2 and the latest one is manual content scanning which has been requested for quite a while! On a different note, if you’re still looking around for Black Friday week deals and wish to get a hackable Switch, it seems that some some stores such as Target, Walmart and GameStop are selling a Mario Kart Black Friday bundle containing older model Nintendo Switch with some being unpatched although make sure you check the serial number on the box through this website!
The post News: Dolphin (Wii/GameCube Emulator) for iOS progressing further with OatmealDome improving code & adding a D-Pad onscreen; CTGP-7 1.0 (mod for Mario Kart 7) has been released alongside 5 60FPS mods for the Switch! appeared first on Wololo.net.