Dolphin, the GameCube and Wii emulator - Forums

Donkey Kong Country Returns (tested version: NTSC-U)




General Settings

- Dual Core: Enabled
- Idle Skipping: Enabled
- Framelimit: Auto
- HLE the IPL: Enabled
- CPU Emulator Engine: JIT Recompiler or JITIL experimental Recompiler (try what works best for you; it seems that on 32bit, JITIL is faster while on 64bit JIT is faster)
- Lock threads to core: Enabled (disabled can be faster, however, it can make the game freeze when loading the world map)


Direct3D (DX9) Settings

- Pretty much everything at default is fine for this game, but have EFB Copy to Texture and Safe Texture Cache set to Fast!
- for better image quality you can also check "Force Bi-/Trilinear Filtering" (especially for 2D stuff), "EFB scaled Copy", 16x Anisotropic Filtering and, if you have a strong machine, SSAA 4x or 9x. VSync can also help against scroll jerkiness.
- if you're struggling for speed, you can try disabling Fog, Native Mips, Pixel Lighting and CPU->EFB Access, as these don't seem to be needed for the game. Gaining speed in exchange for some visual quality is also achieved by setting EFB scale to x2 or x1.
One more setting that seems to give some extra speed is Enable Block Merging in the game properties (right-click on the game in Dolphin's game browser). However, if you don't know what you're doing, don't fiddle around with the other settings, you you might get issues and later not know anymore how to get rid of them...


DSP (HLE) Settings

Configure to your liking. However, DTK sound doesn't seem to be needed for this game, so you might want to disable it due to the sound issues. (that won't fix the issues, but it seems to be to make it a bit better)


Wiimote Settings

The game is can played with Wiimote and Nunchuk or Wiimote (horizontal) only. (Since with the horizontal wiimote style the only wiimote-typical movement necessary is a bit of shaking, I'm sure this could be easily configured to work with a Controller, too)


Known Issues

- Core: The game has been broken between revision 5699 and r6460, has been fixed by skid in r6461, so use a revision earlier than 5699 or after r6461.
Another issue is that the game randomly freezes. Especially when the world map is being loaded (that diving-through-the-clouds-sequence doesn't even start). This doesn't seem to happen if "lock threads to core" is enabled (which however, can slow things down for some (especially those with Hyper-Threading CPUs)).

- Sound: This is the most problematic part of the emulation of this game...music and sound effects DO work, however, there's annoying noise being produced when 1. a FMV plays and 2. a level is loaded. This noise can be gotten rid of, though, by pressing the HOME-button on the wiimote (so be sure you have that one bound to some button if you use a controller). Other than that, sound effects tend to cut off randomly. Sometimes they reappear again, but it seems very random.
Update: Since r6480, the sound cutouts are mostly gone! Also XAudio2 doesn't crash the game anymore.

- Graphics: Garbled text is fixed by enabling Safe Texture Cache (fast). The low-res Donkey Kong is fixed by using EFB to Texture. What remains are some minor glitches: the good old bloom offset issue, which is only really obvious in the beach levels (World 2) and the loading screen being red. Also, some 2D sprites (like the control help by that piggy thing) are kinda greenish. Looks like a typical case for Safe Texture Cache but that doesn't fix it here.note: the loading screen issue got fixed around or shortly after 3.0.
On revisions after r6461 I am also having some glitched textures on the wrecked ship on the save game selection screen. <-- this can be fixed by disabling "Display List Cache"
If you want to get rid of the offset bloom issue (the "red glow", especially in the beach levels), here's a patch: http://forums.dolphin-emu.org/showthread.php?tid=13347 (you have to choose the DKCR Projection hack); here it is compiled into a recent build: http://electrodexs.net/dolphin/default.htm (r6495, {Requested} r6505 with DKTOS, MH3v2, and FifoBsy patches)

- Input: This issue only affects older revisions; it's gone after r6461: There's a strange issue concerning the wiimote (or any input, i.e.): Randomly the wiimote doesn't seem to get recognized by the game. This seems to be especially the case with using JITIL and when either the game or a config window has been opened before. So your best chances to get your wiimote recognized and working are setting whatever settings you want/need (and of course don't forget to pair your wiimote), then CLOSE Dolphin. Open Dolphin, and load the game (without opening anything else first). If it didn't work, close Dolphin again, start it again, load the game again...etc. about 50% of the time it works for me.


I'll add stuff if I find or hear about anything else.


Overall (Dolphin r5697)

The game runs well, I get 90 to 100% speed most of the time with my machine (see sig). The game appears smoother with VSync, so try it out. I guess for fullspeed at all times, you would need a dualcore with 3,6 - 4 GHz.

I cannot say yet if the game is playable all the way through. (should someone finish it on Dolphin, please tell; without any spoilers, though!)

The game in its current state is playable and enjoyable (and it looks muuuch better with Dolphin than on the Wii), but the sound issues are quite the funspoiler and in the end makes playing the game on the Wii more preferable, I guess...let's hope someone can get the sound fixed for this exceptionally fun game


Some Screenshots at my native res 1920x1080, for your viewing pleasure with 4xSSAA (with 9xSSAA my card or Dolphin seem to refuse to render anything -_-)



Thanks to iNeXuS for this video:

How about posting the link to the issue report on google code so people can help the devs to solve the problem?
Donkey Kong Issue report
Also, r5698 is not avaliable on mamario's site. People will keep asking "where I can find r5698?". Besides, r5186 is the best revision to play the game right now until the FIFO issues get solved.

Anyway, good layout you did here.

Aye, I also tried r5186. Cannot say if there would be another faster one but that one works pretty fine.
Got my post updated.

Good^^ I would say r5186 is a safe choice. Don't know if it's the best one 'cos I'm too busy playing to bother testing another revisions right now. Already tested enough yesterday to make sure it was a FIFO related bug. That's why I reported the issue already in google code. And I think that issue is not gonna be fixed so soon.

Now back to gaming. Pretty fun game. Waited so long for it.

The game works 99%. The only issue is the GFX sound, that does'nt work properly sometimes and sometimes disapear. The music and some GFX works 100% ok.
The speed is 55~60 fps all the time like you can see in the top left corner of images.
I've played for at least 10 levels and no bug so far. NO BUGS!!!!

My Specs:
Core 2 QUAD 3.4 Ghz
4GB Ram
Windows Vista 7
Xbox 360 controller
Dolphin 2.0 official release

Below, my configs to help:

I've tryed all revs and configs from this topic and i cant get past 60% game speed, too slow!

my specs

AMD Phenom x4 9850 (2.5gh)
4gm ram
hd5770 1gb
win 7

Any idea? i want to play this game so bad..

version 2.0 work nice but sound sucks

(11-23-2010, 06:43 AM)vmaster Wrote: [ -> ]version 2.0 work nice but sound sucks

How it sucks? Here only the GFX (other sounds than music) don't work properly. The music works 100% ok, with no bugs. There's no other sound bugs too, except the missing GFX.

I don't have the game, but do you like it?

@ Diathorus: Did you play and like the old DK games? If so, you'll surely like this, too. Or if you like well made platformers.

@ andreyand: actually, if you listen closely, music is also not 100% perfect sometimes... I had it cut out for a second or so...or getting quieter...I dunno...it's not a big issue, though.