
Dolphin Progress Report: December 2019 and January 2020 - karlding
https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2020/02/07/dolphin-progress-report-dec-2019-and-jan-2020/
======
StephanTLavavej
> Microsoft says that VS2019 runtimes are forward and back compatible with
> VS2015 and VS2017, however, it turns out that is not always the case, and we
> definitely encountered one of the incompatible scenarios.

The binary compatibility has documented limitations. As
[https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/porting/binary-
compat-2...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/porting/binary-
compat-2015-2017?view=vs-2019) explains, "The Redistributable your app uses
has a similar binary-compatibility restriction. When you mix binaries built by
different supported versions of the toolset, the Redistributable version must
be at least as new as the latest toolset used by any app component." This
allowed us to add VCRUNTIME140_1.dll as part of the "FrameHandler4" work that
the compiler back-end team did. This decreases the size of exception handling
info on x64 for compiled programs, sometimes significantly.

(I work on the Visual C++ team, on the STL. We regularly build Dolphin with
our development toolset to prevent shipping compiler/library regressions, and
to provide advance notice of source-breaking changes. I've had to report a
couple of breaking changes to Dolphin and have been astounded at their prompt
fixes - they are a wonderful team!)

~~~
daurnimator
The zig project was also plagued with issues around VCRUNTIME140_1.dll. See
[https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/3391](https://github.com/ziglang/zig/issues/3391)

------
GuiA
_> [...] We have ample proof that Avalanche Software was already upset about
homebrew and emulation thanks to a crude message found hidden in the data of
2007's Meet the Robinsons, however it's very unlikely that this is anti-
emulation behavior._

Can't find more about this by Googling around... anyone knows what the crude
message was and where it was hidden?

~~~
ddtaylor
> I'm a H4X0R b3c4us3 I l0ve c0ck

[https://tcrf.net/Meet_the_Robinsons_(GameCube)#Dev_Message](https://tcrf.net/Meet_the_Robinsons_\(GameCube\)#Dev_Message)

~~~
eganist
tcrf.net fails on the latest version of Firefox due to lack of TLS 1.2
support. Neat - first time I've seen this TLS error too.

[https://i.imgur.com/CnwV3bn.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/CnwV3bn.jpg)

[https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=tcrf.net](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/analyze.html?d=tcrf.net)

~~~
eternalny1
It doesn't fail on 72.0.2 which is the latest stable.

Do you mean on nightly?

~~~
eganist
You're right; forgot I was running 73 beta.

------
nullifidian
>However, unknown to any of us, it turns out that PEXT is extremely slow on
AMD Zen and Zen 2 architectures.

Is it because of some patents? Anyone knows?

~~~
gioele
While on the topic, I always hope that HW manufacturers could start being
explicit about what is _supported_ and what is "supported".

We have this problem with CPU manufacturers stating that something is
supported, when it is instead emulated (hello checks on CPUID). Disk drives
acknowledge writes before they actually write the data to the disk (hello
layers of unreliable fsyncs). Network cards claim that packet have been
shipped while they never left the circular buffer (hello bufferbloat).

Please HW manufacturers, stop lying to us.

------
photonios
Emulator development is not my cup of tea and I only once tried Dolphin, but
the progress reports are always a fantastic read. The Dolphin code base [1] is
also fun to read.

Thanks for all the enjoyable reads!

[1] [https://github.com/dolphin-emu/dolphin](https://github.com/dolphin-
emu/dolphin)

------
chungy
The progress report linked to Dragon Quest X ([https://wiki.dolphin-
emu.org/index.php?title=Dragon_Quest_X:...](https://wiki.dolphin-
emu.org/index.php?title=Dragon_Quest_X:_Mezameshi_Itsutsu_no_Shuzoku_Online))
and I'm impressed to find an aspect of the Wii library I didn't know existed:
a game that expects to be installed to a USB drive to be played.

I honestly thought every game would just be playable directly from a disc, but
I guess this one was too large for a single disc.

~~~
fredoralive
Dragon Quest X is a MMORPG, so the ability to patch things is also quite
useful.

