The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (GC)

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Developer(s)	Nintendo EAD
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Series	The Legend of Zelda
Platform(s)	GameCube
Release date(s)	JP December 2, 2006 NA December 11, 2006 EU December 15, 2006 AUS December 19, 2006
Genre(s)	Action-adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player
Input methods	GameCube Controller
Compatibility	5 Perfect
GameIDs	GZ2J01, GZ2P01, GZ2E01
See also...	Wii Version Dolphin Forum thread Open Issues Search Google Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess Wikipedia page Debug Symbol Files

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess is an action-adventure game developed by Nintendo Entertainment Analysis and Development, and published by Nintendo for the Nintendo GameCube and Wii video game consoles. It is the thirteenth installment in The Legend of Zelda series. Originally planned for release in November 2005, Twilight Princess was delayed by Nintendo to allow its developers to refine the game and add more content. The Wii version was released alongside the Wii console on November 19, 2006, in North America, and in December 2006 in Japan, Europe, and Australia. This made Twilight Princess the first Zelda game released at the launch of a Nintendo console. The GameCube version was released in December 2006, and was the last Nintendo-published game for the console. During early development, Nintendo referred to Twilight Princess as The Wind Waker 2. As development progressed, Nintendo announced a new title, Twilight Princess, during the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in 2005.

Problems

Hyrule Field Slow Down

Over time in the game Hyrule Field may become progressively slower. To fix this use the "ZTP hack" or "ZTP speedup hack" (not the projection hack). This can be found in the game properties by right clicking the game in the main dolphin window and clicking game properties. Make sure this option is checked for this game and only this game. See issue 720 and issue 2499.

Sound Issues

Sound problems may occur with the DSP HLE audio plugin. To correct these problems, use DSP LLE.

Minimap

• With EFB to Texture the minimap will become unusable after a transition into another area, showing nothing but visual garbage. Use EFB to Ram to fix it.
• The minimap requires Texture Cache Accuracy to be set to position 1 (Safe), otherwise the arrow will become confused and fail to follow Link as he travels.

Bloom

Due to the low resolution bloom, a "ghost" image will appear around certain objects in areas with high amounts of bloom. There is no known solution.

D3D Darkness

With the D3D graphics backend the lens flare from the sun is glitched. When looking at the sun through trees of buildings, part of the effect shows through, displaying a small lens flare and an overall darkening of the screen. Only the D3D backend has this problem, so use OpenGL to avoid it. See issue 5999.

File:TwilightPrincessGC-DX11Blackness.jpg

Looking through trees at the lens flare in D3D11

File:TwilightPrincessGC-DX11Blackness2.jpg

The same scene properly emulated in D3D9

Sun Rays

Twilight Princess uses a ray effect at various points throughout the game, most notably at windows and the fountains. The effect is very easily broken. How it is broken depends on the backend used:

• D3D - Anti-aliasing and an Internal Resolution above 1x Native damage the effect
• OpenGL - The GLSL merge (3.5-1025) greatly improves the effect in OpenGL. It is now only affected by Anisotropic Filtering and an Internal Resolution above 1x Native.

Broken sun rays

Proper Emulation of the effect

Widescreen Hack

Enabling the widescreen hack will cause reflections to be buggy and certain objects to disappear at the edges of the screen.

Better switch off the widescreen hack and use the following AR Code instead. It works for the PAL version. NTSC not tested yet:

B90N-0GDF-AM009
KJFT-T2HY-49A20

Remember to turn on "Enable cheats" and use the "Force 16:9" Aspect Ratio.

Configuration

Only configuration options for the best compatibility where they deviate from defaults are listed.

Graphics

Config	Setting	Notes
Texture Cache Accuracy	Position 1 (Safe)	Needed for the minimap arrow to work

Audio

Config	Setting	Notes
DSP Emulator Engine	LLE	Fixes sound issues

Version Compatibility

The graph below charts the compatibility with The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess since Dolphin's 2.0 release, listing revisions only where a compatibility change occurred.

r6271

3.0-735

Δ

5.0-21401 (current)

Δ

Δ

Δ

Δ

Δ

2.0 (r5384)

Compatibility can be assumed to align with the indicated revisions. However, compatibility may extend to prior revisions or compatibility gaps may exist within ranges indicated as compatible due to limited testing. Please update as appropriate.

Testing

This title has been tested on the environments listed below:

Test Entries
Revision	OS	CPU	GPU	Result	Tester
r6271	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core 2 Duo E7500 @ 2.93GHz	ATI Radeon HD 4850	Fully playable and no slowdown in Hyrule Field (only when ZTP hack is enabled, otherwise you will get only 10 FPS).
r6758	Mac OS X 10.6.8	Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.13GHz	nVidia GeForce 9400M	Fully playable, but by far the slowest game I've tested. Most areas run around ~7-17 FPS, even houses and save screen. Dungeons fare better; ~20-30 FPS in most rooms (strangely this excludes the Goron Mines). Map is extremely glitchy without proper settings. Hyrule Field is only ~9 FPS, ZTP hack doesn't help at all	Ac
r6800	Windows XP SP3 x86	Intel Atom N270 @ 1.6GHz	Intel GMA 945 (GMA 950)	Very playable 8-10 FPS. Disable Lighting and sound Off for best performance.	LORPAL
r6815	Windows 7 x86	Intel Core 2 Quad @ 2.4GHz	ATI Radeon HD 4870	Fully playable in dungeons and in other areas but still slowdown in Hyrule Field (ZTP hack is enabled it helps but not so much, you obtain 15 FPS).
r6887	Windows Vista x86	Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 @ 2.2GHz	ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470	Fully playable in dungeons and in other areas but still slowdown in Hyrule Field (ZTP hack is enabled it helps but not so much, you obtain 15 FPS).
r6912	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i5-2500K @ 4.2GHz	ATI Radeon HD 5770 x2	Fully playable in all areas at 30 FPS
r7435	Windows 7 x64	AMD Phenom X4 955 @ 3.2GHz	ATI Radeon HD 4870	Works perfectly without any slowdowns	Shachi
r7450	Linux Debian Wheezy	Intel Core 2 Duo @ 2.88GHz	ATI Radeon HD 4850	Works, but slower than when running on Windows
r7583	Windows 7 x64	Intel Pentium E2200 @ 2.2GHz	nVidia GeForce 7100 GT	Fully playable in all areas, except in Hyrule Field
r7590	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i7-950 @ 3.27GHz	AMD Radeon HD 6870 x2	Fully playable in all areas at 30 FPS
r7607	Windows 7 x64	AMD Phenom II X2 555 @ 3.8GHz	nVidia GeForce 9800 GT	Fully playable in all areas at 30 FPS @ 720p+vsync no slowdowns in Hyrule Field (ZTP Hack disabled)
r7607	Windows 7 x64	AMD Athlon II X2 620 @ 2.6GHz	ATI Radeon HD 4870	Fully Playable @ 25-30 FPS	Shyvo
3.0	Windows 7 x64	AMD Phenom II X4 @ 3GHz	AMD Radeon HD 6970	Mostly okay. Some random crashes. Slowdown to around 20 FPS on Hyrule field with ZTP hack activated. Ending has no music whatsoever.	No Pistons
3.0	Windows XP x86	AMD Phenom II X2 545 @ 3.1GHz	nVidia GeForce 8600 GT	Fully playable, some slowdowns on Hyrule's Field and Faron's forest. 30 FPS with OpenGL plugin and suggested settings from this page.	luken
r7661	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i7-950 @ 3.07GHz	ATI Radeon HD 5770	Unfortunately, this doesn't fair much better than my testing of the Wii version. Resizing, maximizing/minimizing the game window causes the EXACT same errors regarding D3D shading, with the same ridiculous amount of error spam, followed by Dolphin crashing. For some reason, however, maximizing the window when the Nintendo and Dolby logos were occurring, it didn't error spam or crash. That's somewhat of an improvement over my Wii experience I suppose.	Schala
r7669	Windows 7 x64	AMD Phenom II X4 @ 3.2GHz	nVidia GeForce 9600 GT	Fully playable @ 30 FPS on OpenGL without any errors	Shyvo
r7695	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i5 @ 2.27GHz	ATI Radeon HD 5450	Fully playable, PERFECT!!!.	IguanaMasterz
r7714	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i3-370M @ 2.4GHz	AMD Radeon HD 6370M	Fully playable: No slowdowns, no known glitches.
r7719	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i3-2100 @ 3.1GHz	nVidia GeForce GTS 450	Fully Playable @ 29-30 FPS on DX9 with 4xSSAA and DSP HLE(Slows down to about 23-28 FPS with DSP LLE on Hyrule Field). Also when Hyrule Field is about 65% complete(before 3rd dungeon) frame rate drops to 24-28 FPS in Hyrule Field only.	Exa
^3.0	Linux Ubuntu 12.04	Intel Core i7-3770	nVidia GeForce GTX 560	Awesome 30 FPS all game no slowdowns and fully playable. Scaled 3x resolution and everything is great.
^3.0-96	Linux Sabayon	Intel Core 2 Duo E6420 @ 2.13GHz	nVidia GeForce GT 430	Playable, but slower the larger the current area is. This is noticeable everywhere, but only the forest is a bit slow (I don't mind), and Hyrule Field is very slow (which is annoying). If you're not in Hyrule Field, it works very well overall. Sound works nicely, too, but adapts to the game's speed (so in the slow areas it will be playing slower). Use suggested settings from this page, otherwise you get graphics bugs. State saves work! If you get crashes (happened for me once), try switching between the experimental and non-experimental JIT.	scummos
3.0-187	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i5-2500K @ 4.8GHz	nVidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti	Perfectly ~30 FPS (60Hz) with Direct X (3D11), 1920*1080, 16/9 Hack, Internal Resolution x4 (maximum), Anti-Aliasing 4x (quality 16), Anisotropic 16x (maximum). Just Water effects with 16/9 widescreen bug (it does not matter)	Sanitarium026
3.0-204	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i7-870 @ 2.93GHz	nVidia GeForce GTX 470	Perfectly ~30 FPS (60Hz) 1920*1080, Default settings and the following: MMU speed hack + ZTP hack + custom projection hack, Anti-Aliasing 4x, Anisotropic 1x, Everything works great. Been playing half the game and the only freezes are random when howling as a wolf (solved by saving state before howling and retrying several times). Small issue: Music volume is much higher than SFX	salkinrawr
3.0-235	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i5-2500K @ 3.3GHz	nVidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti	30 FPS almost all the time, will dip to 25 in Hyrule Field, dips to 20 in some intense combat scenes. Sound glitches fixed by using DSP LLE recompiler. Does not freeze at howling stones or howling at grass with MMU Speed Hack, which does not make FPS drop. Can use anti-aliasing with little impact on performance. Second dungeon completed with no game breaking issues so far.	drhead
3.0-235	Mac OS X 10.7.3	Intel Core i5 @ 2.7GHz	AMD Radeon HD 6770M	Fully playable with constant 100% speed and 30 FPS at 2.5x Native resolution.	Swiftwinter
3.0-306	Windows 7 x64	AMD Phenom II X6 1090t @ 3.68GHz	AMD Radeon HD 5850	30 FPS almost all the time, occasionally dipping to 28-29 on busy scenes with very rare lows of 25. Hyrule field is 29-30. Froze once on howling stones but worked grand after a restart. Got as far as return to Ordon after kakariko, fully playable, no major graphical glitches. Used settings shown on this page and graphics are set as OpenGL, 2x native mode, 2x anti-aliasing, 1x anisotropic. No post-processing, OpenCL texture decoder set, cache display lists set, openmp texture decoder set.	Tsukiko
3.0-369	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i5-2500 @ 3.8GHz	nVidia GeForce GTX 460	Running at mostly 30 FPS, occasionally dipping down to around 27-28 in Hyrule Field. Using D3D9 at 1080p and on JITIL experimental recompiler, DSP HLE, 2x native internal resolution, 9x SSAA AA and 16x AF. EFB copies to RAM, disable External Frame Buffer, check Fast Mipmaps, Disable Per-Pixel Depth, OpenMP Texture Coder and Enable Progressive Scan.	penguinswithpie
3.0-371	Windows 7 x64	AMD Phenom II x4 955 BE @ 3.2GHz	AMD Radeon HD 6950	Runs between 27 and 30 FPS. Some slowdowns here and there as well as a freeze once an hour or so. Game still freezes at howling stones. I have to use the MMU + MMUSpeedhack method to bypass this. Other than that, runs fine with ZTP Hack, 1x Native 9x SSAA x16 AF, Force Texture Filtering, Per-Pixel Lighting, EFB copies to ram, disable External Frame Buffer, Fast Mipmaps, Disable Per-Pixel Depth, OpenMP Texture Coder, Cache Display Lists, and the settings used in the problem section of this article.	gtrhitman
3.0-371	Windows 7 x86	Intel Core i5-750 @ 2.67GHz	nVidia GeForce GTX 460	Fully playable (and enjoyable!) with 27-31 FPS, except I didn't fix the intro making garbage audio, but reloading a save did the trick for the rest of my play through so far. Rarely hear an unusual beeping noise in game, but nothing too annoying. Also, before configuring Dolphin accordingly, during the intro, both characters had body parts/clothing flashing bright yellow occasionally; no idea how i fixed it but it's gone. Using JIT Recompiler with D3Dlevel at 9, EFB copies RAM w/o Cache enabled. Texture Cache Accuracy is at Fast. EFB is at Virtual, else the output was very low-res. I also skip EFB Access from CPU and no glitches happened so far when enabled. Force Texture Filtering is enabled. Framelimit is at Auto and Limit by FPS is off. Audio Back-end is DSound with DTK music enabled. Overall, using most settings recommended for optimal results.	MrBucket
3.0-371	Windows 7 x86	Intel Core i3-530 @ 2.93GHz	nVidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti	Roughly a constant 30 FPS. There are slowdowns in big/busy areas, but so far the FPS never went below 20. Tested using D3D9 video back-end, 1920x1080 resolution, 3x native internal resolution, no AA, 16x AF, EFB copy to texture (My game always freezes when using EFB copy to RAM for some reason.), texture cache accuracy is fast, no XFB, and skip EFB access from CPU is on. ZTP speedhack is enabled, and I get 23-27 FPS on Hyrule Field, with no slowdowns. I haven't experienced any issues with the audio. XAudio2 with DTK music enabled.	Orang
3.0-458	Mac OS X 10.8	Intel Core i7 @ 2.6GHz	nVidia GeForce GT 650M	Works at 30 FPS, 100% most of the time, only dropping slightly in Hyrule Field when it's fully open. However the dark character glitch is glaringly obvious in twilight zones and in the evening.	Ac
3.0-458	Mac OS X 10.8	Intel Core i7 @ 2.6GHz	Intel HD 4000	Force-swapping to integrated GPU almost works as well but slows down significantly in some parts of Hyrule Field. However all lighting glitches are gone. I don't know what to choose, faster speed or no graphical glitches.	Ac
3.0-555	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 @ 2.7GHz	AMD Radeon HD 6850	Enabled Open CL Texture decoder, ~50% speedup, no glitches	Me
3.0-636	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i7-950 CPU @ 3.06GHz	nVidia GeForce GTX 470	Fully Playable with average 95-100% lowest ever was 88%.	zorga
3.0-637	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i7-2600 CPU @ 3.4GHz	AMD Radeon HD 6900	Slowed to 20% on moving screens using Direct3D9, but upon switching to OpenGL runs perfectly	Mark
3.0-717	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core 2 Q9550 @3.5GHz	ATI Radeon HD 4870	Fully playable but the music on HLE is not right (missing instruments). Not really noticeable unless you played on a real GC before. LLE has perfect music but on my system it works a bit slow. LLE on thread makes the game crash within a few seconds.	Herpderpus
3.0-721	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i3-370M @ 2.4GHz	Intel HD Graphics	Still testing. So far smooth gameplay through the beginning. Have not made it to Hyrule field yet but game runs around 90-100% with some minimal settings. Basic glitches include map and water on widescreen hack.	Spock6742
3.0-735	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i5-2500K @ 4.2GHz	nVidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti	Fully Playable 30 FPS. The game will run fine on a nice (no bottlenecks) Core i5 2500K build on DSP HLE, checked in dolphin options as well as in the game options (accessed by right clicking it), but as far as my experience goes, DSP LLE requires a bit OC on the turbo boost.	jtafurth
3.0-752	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i7-950 @ 3.06GHz	nVidia GeForce GTX 580	The mini-game inside "STAR Tent" (Castle-Town, West Road) cannot start, with the error msg:"BackPath: Currently only supporting reads". Version 3.0-692 is OK on that.	Nos
3.0-766	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 @ 3.01GHz	AMD Radeon HD 4890	Overall runs well with 28-30 FPS in most areas. Hyrule field slows down to between 15-20FPS, and a few other places (such as Hyrule castle town) are also slow, but so far completely playable. However, I have only been able to run it using DSP HLE - using LLE, performance is so poor the game is unplayable (and LLE on thread just makes it crash). As a result, audio volume levels vary wildly from what they're meant to be, and occasionally the sound glitches out completely, requiring a full restart of the game to fix - not regularly enough to be a really major problem though.	Bob2004
3.0-774	Linux Debian Wheezy x86_64	Intel Core i7-2700 @ 3.4GHz	nVidia GeForce GTX 550 Ti	Runs well, fully playable at 30 FPS and 100% speed. Only slight slowdown in Hyrule Field (slows to approx. 90% speed). The rest of the game runs well with no other problems. In a strange note, running with ZTP Hack disabled actually makes Hyrule Field faster (90% with it disabled as opposed to 60%-70% enabled).	Zed
3.5	Windows 7 x64	AMD Phenom II x6 1100T @ 3.7GHz	nVidia GeForce 660 Ti	Works at 30 FPS and 100% speed aside from the popular Hyrule Field slowdown. Playing on any SSAA setting and Anisotropic Filtering setting resulted in an extremely smooth experience with no problems at all.	Rhyno
3.5	Windows 7 x64	AMD Phenom II x4 945 @ 3GHz	nVidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti	Full speed 30 FPS slowdown only on hyrule field to 22 FPS (when overclock cpu to 3.3GHz getting 27 FPS on hyrule field) on other areas some minor slowdowns on busy scene 28 29 FPS efb copies to texture minimap works great for me no garbage with efb to texture directx9 beckend audio HLE openMP and openCL texture decoder enabled, ticked scaled efb copies disable per-pixel depth ignore format changes 1680x1050 res internal resolution 2.5X NATIVE AF 16x	Mirocroatia
3.5	Windows 7 x64	AMD FX-6300 Six-Core @ 3.5GHz	nVidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti	The games runs at full 30 FPS most of the time. In heavy areas like Gerudo Desert the FPS can drop slightly to 27 FPS when a lot is happening on the screen otherwise they run on 30 FPS. The fully unlocked Hyrule Field drops to 18-20 FPS (overclocking the CPU to 4.1Ghz brings a slight boost of 2 FPS to about 21 but isn't really worth it; ZTP hack is recommended, without it Hyrule Field runs at only 14 (!) FPS). EFB setting is set to Texture however there aren't any problems with the minimap or anywhere else in the game (unless you change the setting while the game is running). AA is turned off and AF is set to 1x. Otherwise completely playable.	TowerTowel
3.5-329	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i5-3570k	nVidia GeForce 560Ti 448	I use LLE sound emulation because HLE fails to play some notes and instruments in music (not noticeable if you don't pay attention and don't know how the music sounds on a real GC). Even with ZTP Hack, there is a FPS drop in hyrule field even on my system when the field is fully "unlocked" (tested with complete save). I haven't noticed any graphical glitch so far, except the one that happens if you use Widescreen Hack (weird distortion on the sides of the screen when there is water or other special effects displayed).	Herpderpus
4.0	Windows 7 x64	Intel Core i5 3570K @ 3.6GHz	AMD Radeon HD 7850	With ZTP Hack Enabled, and DirectX9 Backend, Runs Perfectly	Caboose700

Gameplay Videos

The Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess HD - Let's Play 01

Zelda Twilight Princess Dolphin 3D 1080p

Zelda Twilight Princess Dolphin LLE 1080p

• Zelda Twilight Princess Final Battle in Dolphin R7719-M (720p), with widescreen hack 16/9