This makes it easier to go through menus, choose characters, and even allows you to taunt between shots in Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour! New controls have been added to the imgui interface to allow you to take control directly from within the render window. Unlike the AQZ plugin's version of golf mode, Dolphin's golf mode allows you to maintain control while you're not the main player, albeit with a latency penalty.
The main difference between that and golf mode is that you can change who has no latency while you're playing the game! This means in a game like Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour you no longer need to worry about latency at all. Inspired by the AQZ netplay plugin used in N64 emulation, golf mode allows us to give one player at a time no latency, much like Host Authority Input mode. In this case and a few others, the turn based nature of the game gives us an opportunity to mitigate latency with a feature that has been referred to before as golf mode. One frame can be the difference between a perfect shot down the fairway and a ball that goes into the bunker. Even the slightest amount of latency throws off the player's timing for the game's rather strict hitbar. Playing games like Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour on netplay has been a rather painful experience. To go along with the announcement of our new netplay server browser, we have another new netplay feature that makes it more reasonable to play certain games on netplay.
For now, the server browser should be considered experimental and subject to change as we monitor its launch. There is no added latency from using the server browser and the base games are still handled in a peer-to-peer manner. You can create named lobbies with passwords for your friends to easily find and join. Just load up the lobby, find the game you want, and join! This new feature also simplifies things for people who just want to play with friends. With this, public and private netplay sessions are available to be browsed and joined without having to go through the hassle of transferring IP addresses or finding a chatroom to organize netplay games. That's right, users can now create public netplay rooms that can be viewed directly from within Dolphin. Using the Netplay Server Browser allows you to see active and open game sessions.