Talk:Configuration Guide

Quality Guide?
So we have this page describing settings for maximum performance. Should we add a page regarding settings for maximum graphics quality (AA, Antistropic, Resolution, Filtering, ...)? Kolano (talk) 18:16, 12 January 2014 (CET)
 * YES I'd love to see something like this. We can upload pics that will show various examples, like Anti-aliasing, resolution, and highlight performance impacts. In addition to this we could merge article DSP LLE to here as well. Oh, also add contents from these CPU Hierarchy Minimum Specs - video card Lucario (talk) 09:04, 11 March 2014 (CET)

Deletion Proposal
Recommended settings are already enabled by default in Dolphin emulator & it's preloaded with helpful dialogues. Nothing to see here. Lucario (talk) 06:57, 11 March 2014 (CET)
 * We know. Even though the fastest settings are just defaults, new users don't believe it. They insist that the defaults have to be bad and there has to be ways to speed the game up. It's crazy, but some people just have to see a "performance guide" before they'll believe something is actually faster. That's why this exists. - MayImilae (talk) 00:40, 18 April 2014 (CEST)
 * Also post twiddling settings it's good to have a guide to restore the defaults. Kolano (talk) 01:24, 18 April 2014 (CEST)
 * Makes sense. The first paragraph should be edited accordingly to what you've said earlier. Telling others that by using this guide even though they're already set as default is bit misleading and waste of their times. Lucario (talk) 01:51, 18 April 2014 (CEST)
 * Anyway, the guide is little bit bland. Why not we do something with previous topic above this? We can merge DSP LLE and other quality guides to here to make it more useful than just a guide how to reset back to default. Lucario (talk) 01:51, 18 April 2014 (CEST)
 * I'm against that. It's best to keep it separate and to the point. If you look at the history on the page, you'll note that there has been TONS of problems with people uploading random settings that make zero sense. It got so bad for so long it just had to be locked. Isolated like this, that can be contained here and leave the rest of the stuff open and available for editing, like what you did on the ripping guide. Besides, we tried merging. The Dolphin Manual fell through. Yes it's bland, yes it's kind of annoying to keep around (I have always said how much I hate this guide) but this really is the best option. - MayImilae (talk) 08:49, 18 April 2014 (CEST)
 * I agree with MayImilae. This guide is a mess, and there's no way of improving it (from my point of view). I prefer leaving this messy guide as it is now until something more appropriate is done (like finishing Dolphin Manual), no matter how long it takes... mbc07 (talk)

Err, bump? I think we should reeally get rid of this before 5.0. Most (if not all) the info present here is already baked in Dolphin's tooltips/config screens, not to mention it's not updated for a while, I see no point in maintaining this guide... - mbc07 (talk) 16:17, 30 January 2016 (CET)
 * That was what I was trying to say from the start. Though transforming this page into ELI5 quality guide with screenshots to show difference will be awesome, like what is Anisotropic filtering, anti-aliasing, regarding issues with dualcore, etc., with the addition of "you should leave settings default for the most optimal performance". Lucario (talk) 19:30, 8 November 2016 (CET)
 * I agree with Lucario, i think this guide should be redone to show differences between settings and when to activate them. EblfIYH (talk) 21:28, 14 May 2017 (CEST)
 * Currently working on remaking the page, anyone who wants to help is welcome. P.D I am remaking this as a config guide rather than a performance, so i suggest renaming this as "Configuration Guide" or "How to configurate Dolphin"EblfIYH (talk) 22:07, 14 May 2017 (CEST)
 * I've moved it. Will prevent me getting huffy every time coverage strays from performance details. Have fun. Kolano (talk) 04:56, 20 May 2017 (CEST)
 * I strongly oppose linking game pages into the guide like on the recent edit. Dolphin is always evolving and a game linked here might not need the mentioned setting in future. Regarding the naming, if we change it from "Performance Guide" to anything else, soon we'll have the same issue this guide miserably fails to address: users that think the default settings are slow and thus they think they need a performance guide (especially users on low-end machines)... - mbc07 (talk) 03:15, 16 May 2017 (CEST)
 * I forgot that last detail... Well, i won't link games to this guide then. However, i'll still working on it. EblfIYH (talk) 06:48, 16 May 2017 (CEST)
 * There should now be category pages for each configuration option that may be more appropriate to link to if you want to associate options with relevant titles. Though in some cases there may not be an exact match up due to multi-value settings. Kolano (talk) 04:59, 20 May 2017 (CEST)
 * Eh, this is wiki, some random editors could be around to update whatever is outdated. Linking to a category and transform exhaustive list into concise information will help but going as far as linking to a specific game should be fine if there's no better way. Dolphin UI have improved over time and lot of obscure performance hit settings became redundant and removed, and I don't think people will have problem finding what settings in Dolphin configuration are performance hit nowadays. I feel that there are someone who still don't get what's the importance behind settings like AA/AF, so transforming this page into more general configuration guide and still point out performance hit settings seems like in good direction. Lucario (talk) 00:37, 21 May 2017 (CEST)
 * Understood, but our general experience has been that things are frequently slow to be updated. Particularly with things that are to be highly linked to, like this guide, we'd prefer to keep things aligned to reduce the need for frequent updates. The categories are likely to be more closely aligned with reality over time, without specific maintenance. In the case of one off titles I'd be more supportive of linking to them, though I'd generally prefer to instantiate new categories if necessary than linking to specific titles.Kolano (talk) 07:24, 21 May 2017 (CEST)

Performance Guide Deletion
I see you went ahead and purged the Performance Guide but I noticed we caused issues on the main website! The Performance Guide still is on the list of Guides and now point to a deleted page and there's probably other places where this guide was linked too and they're broken as well... - mbc07 (talk) 18:06, 30 January 2016 (CET)

I thought the general sentiment was that the former guide was too outdated to align well for the 5.0 release anyway. We can re-add some statement, which I believe generally is that out of the box settings are best for performance. Some general configuration guide would still be good to have, but I haven't seen a lot of commitment to create/maintain such. Kolano (talk) 04:06, 31 January 2016 (CET)


 * It was *very* inappropriate to remove this without informing everyone or having a proper conversation about it! The prior discussion in April 2014 had settled on keeping it, and by removing it without informing anyone it violated the established discussion. But worse of all, I am very disappointed that something that affects the entire project was removed without talking to anyone inside or outside of the wiki. The devs learning about this from someone complaining about a dead link on our guides page is NOT how this project should be run! I'll send some PMs and make sure everyone is here to talk about it, we need to either remove the link from the main page or restore the guide ASAP! - MayImilae (talk) 09:53, 5 February 2016 (CET)


 * I guess I'll start with reasons for keeping it. As silly as it was, the performance guide was one of our most trafficked guides. Users have a tendency to not believe that default settings are correct, and they don't think to look at the emulator tooltips for that information, they google or look at our guides page. They'd find our performance guide, and we served them that information. Now that we don't have a performance guide, they'll google one and get god knows what giving them HORRIBLE advice! As bad as it was, and as annoying as it was, it served a purpose. I think it should be restored, and fixed up for the 5.0 release. - MayImilae (talk) 10:54, 5 February 2016 (CET)


 * Sigh. We had requests from multiple people to purge it, and it was well known and agreed upon that it's content it very out of date. I've restored the page, but not it's images or other internal wiki links to it. It's even more of a mess due to that, but that's probably reflective of the state of it's content currently. I really hate having such unrefined and out of date content on the wiki, particularly since the guide seems to provides minimal useful info (i.e. that isn't already included in Dolphin tooltips). It all needs to be rewritten so I'm not clear that restoring this old version of it really provides any assistance for setting up a 5.0 aligned version. If we do rewrite it we should make it a 5.0 performance guide and no longer update it with dev updates (i.e. no updates till 6.0), trying to maintain alignment with dev changes over time becomes too much maintenance effort. Kolano (talk) 17:22, 5 February 2016 (CET)


 * We'll never know if those million visitors were actually looking for recommended system requirements to play Dolphin smoothly. Lucario (talk) 19:14, 5 February 2016 (CET)


 * Honestly I would just remove the linking on the main website and let this die. The problem I see with the guide in its current form is that it just duplicates what already is in Dolphin (in a very poor way, if you ask me) and the screenshots just makes the maintenance harder. Said that, if purging the guide really is not an option (I wish it was), my proposal is rewriting the guide to clearly inform the user that the default Dolphin options already are the best performance settings and that they can read Dolphin's tooltips/descriptions for more details of "what option X does" (we could go even further and state that there's no magical setting in Dolphin that will make it run great on a computer not meeting the system requirements -- that's the main reason to someone seek a performance guide, I think?). We could also expand the guide a little more by listing known non-default options that sacrifices accuracy in order to improve the speed but warning very clearly of the consequences (also explaining they won't get support on the forums with problems caused by using those settings, for example). In other words, in current state this guide is unfixable and I have no hope on it, even if we just update the current guide to align with recent versions (or even if we make it a "5.0 stable only" guide) because it'll inevitably become the same mess in future, so, I'm in favour of either letting it die or doing a complete redesign. - mbc07 (talk) 19:51, 5 February 2016 (CET)


 * I would like nothing more than to see it go. :( But it is heavily trafficked, and the number of "performance guides" I've seen floating about the internet is very alarming. Honestly the only thing I disagree on about any of this is how it was done. I am sorry to be the person that goes "this crap must stay!", I'd much rather be the one pushing for it's removal, but... such is the situation we're in. :/ Maybe this time we can try a different approach and make it better!- MayImilae (talk) 20:16, 5 February 2016 (CET)


 * I'd generally prefer to provide general guidance around the various config settings, and not singularly focus on performance details. Provide some general statement on the "Performance Guide" page as indicated by mbc07 above (and previously by others) that default settings provide optimal performance and link to a more complete configuration guide for actual config details. Also, as indicated above, we should be cautious about documenting anything outside of what's in the 5.0 release. We go so long between releases it forces accounting for pre-release updates around the wiki, but the more we can avoid that the better. There were some config changes recently, so it's probably best that we held off updating things quite yet. Kolano (talk) 07:23, 6 February 2016 (CET)