How to Get Logs for Dolphin Errors

From Heavy Iron Modding

While testing or playing a modded game in Dolphin, you may sometimes run into errors that cause the game to stop working, such as:

  • Invalid write to 0x0000001c, PC = 0x800034ec
  • Invalid read from 0x00000000, PC = 0x800c0608

If you know someone experienced at debugging and/or disassembling GameCube games (you can find several people willing to help in the Heavy Iron Modding Discord), in some cases, the info contained in these errors is enough to help track down the cause of the error and determine what needs to be fixed. In most cases however, it is much more helpful to have the full callstack (and other info such as register values) on hand. Dolphin by default does not give you this info, but this guide will show you how and where to find it.

Steps (BFBB)

  1. Make sure the game is not running.
  2. In Dolphin, go to Config > Advanced and make sure Enable MMU is checked. This will make the game run its own exception handler instead of Dolphin's.
  3. Go to View > Show Log Configuration and make sure all the log types are checked. You can press Toggle All Log Types to enable or disable them all at once. If you want, you can check Write to File to send all log output to a file, which you can send to someone else later if needed.
  4. Ensure the Log window is visible by going to View > Show Log.
  5. Start the game and reproduce the error. Dolphin's error message will not show up, but you should see a ton of detailed information about the error populate in the Log window.
  6. Stop the emulation.
  7. You can now either take a screenshot of the error, select and copy all of the text in the Log window, or if you selected Write to File earlier, you can find the log file in your Documents folder > Dolphin Emulator > Logs > dolphin.log. Note: you may need to wait up to a minute for the log file to finish saving.