Emulator

Game Name - Kirby's Return to Dreamland

Game ID - SUKE01

What went wrong - When Frame Skip is set to 1 or higher, the game fails to render many frames, with frames turning blank, solid light sky blue in colour. Some frames still render correctly.

What did you expect to happen instead - Naturally I'd expect frames that are not skipped to be rendered as normal. Every other Wii and Gamecube title I have tested not does not have this issue with frame skipping.

What steps will reproduce the problem?

1. Boot the game
2. Enable Frame Skipping of 1 or more (can be done prior to booting the game)
3. Frames are now failing to render, it can happen as early as the Wii Remote safety screen, on the title screen, and in actual gameplay.

It is curiously possible to fix the frame rendering issue by simply opening the Graphics Configuration whilst the game is running. Once this is done, frame rendering issues vanish, a simple open and close with no changes made to configuration.

Which versions of Dolphin did you test on - Dolphin 4.0.1

Which version of Dolphin used to work - As far as I'm aware, this frame skipping issue has been long standing for Kirby's Return to Dreamland. The issue remains in 4.0.1.

What are your PC specifications (example: Operating System, CPU and GPU)?
Desktop - Windows 7 32bit, Intel Core 2 Duo e8600 @ 3.6Ghz, ATI Radeon HD4850.
Laptop - Windows 7 64bit, Intel i7 2640m @ 2.8Ghz, Intel HD Graphics 3000.

64 or 32 bit Operating System - 32bit on desktop, 64bit on laptop.

64 or 32 bit Dolphin - 32bit on desktop, 64bit on laptop.

Rendering failure occurs on both Direct3D11 and OpenGl backends.
Issues persist with XFB disabled, or enabled with either virtual or real, regardless of texture cache settings, EFB copy set to RAM or texture, internal resolution default or increased. The only way to resolve the issue until next boot is to simply open the graphics configuration.
Further testing showed that simply opening the graphics configuration isn't enough, but that XFB is also disabled. If XFB is already disabled when the graphics configuration is opened, the rendering issue gets resolved.