Donkey Kong Country Returns on a mac

05-15-2018, 03:03 AM #1

hello dears, I'm using a brand new Mac Book Pro with retina but I see some graphical glitch and sounds is very bad.
What is the right configuration to play this game on a mac?
I'm using the latest developer dolphin 5.0-7494

My mac is
MacBook Pro (15-inch, 2017)
2,9 GHz Intel Core i7
16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3
Radeon Pro 560 4096 MB and Intel HD Graphics 630 1536 MB (don't know how to select one or other)

**JonnyH** · 05-15-2018, 03:50 AM #2

Is this using the discrete (Radeon) GPU or the Intel one? You can force it to use the discrete version by disabling 'automatic graphics switching' in the 'energy saver' preferences panel. Make sure you change it back after testing though - as it can significantly effect battery life!

If it still reproduces after that (making sure you completely quit and restart dolphin) I'd be interested - what games? Is there any chance you can record a fifo trace?

05-15-2018, 04:07 AM #3

Hello JonnyH, thanks for your answer.
Unfortunatly disabling automatic graphics switching didn't work, I got the same graphic glitch and terrible audio
Game is Donkey Kong Country Returns
I recorded the FIFO trace but it only created me empty directories.

**JonnyH** · 05-15-2018, 05:33 AM #4

(05-15-2018, 04:07 AM)Looser Wrote: Hello JonnyH, thanks for your answer.
Unfortunatly disabling automatic graphics switching didn't work, I got the same graphic glitch and terrible audio
Game is Donkey Kong Country Returns
I recorded the FIFO trace but it only created me empty directories.

Unfortunately I don't have that game - is it just in that single game, or are there graphical issues in others too? If not, hopefully someone will be able to get a fifo to play with, I'll ask around...

Also, what macos version are you using? And is this with the default graphical/enhancements/hacks settings?

05-15-2018, 04:47 PM #5

yes, I tried super mario wii and it seems is ok, but sounds is very bad too.
Mac OS X is the latest 10.13.4
graphical/enhancements/hacks is what I was asking for cos I'm not able to find anywhere those settings.
Would you please send me a link where I can find these settings?
Really thanks.

**JonnyH** · (This post was last modified: 05-16-2018, 03:45 AM by JonnyH.)

(05-15-2018, 04:47 PM)Looser Wrote: yes, I tried super mario wii and it seems is ok, but sounds is very bad too.
Mac OS X is the latest 10.13.4
graphical/enhancements/hacks is what I was asking for cos I'm not able to find anywhere those settings.
Would you please send me a link where I can find these settings?
Really thanks.

The "sound being really bad" is likely simply because it can't keep up with 100% emulation speed - so it finishes playing each audio buffer before it's got the next one ready, causing it to cut out and stutter. Unfortunately, Apple have decided to abandon their OpenGL implementation, which dolphin currently* uses, so that's often the limiting factor, as it doesn't expose extensions dolphin pretty much requires to render stuff efficiently, even on fast hardware that could easily support those extensions.

* There's a work-in-progress Metal graphics backend that /should/ avoid many of those problems, but it's not complete and not yet usable for anything but development.

EDIT: Apparently this is caused by MacOS not supporting an opengl extension required for correct rendering (not *just* performance). Unfortunately that means there's no possible workaround, other than not using MacOS.