Dolphin switches to official Gecko code handler

[biolizard89]

Good news for hackers who want their codes to work in Dolphin: Dolphin has scrapped their crappy emulated code handler in favor of the official GeckoOS 1.9.3.1 code handler.  This means that it is no longer necessary to deal with the emulated handler's ASM code type quirks; Gecko codes should now "just work" in Dolphin.  So, to all the code hackers out there: if someone with Dolphin complains about your codes not working with the emulated handler, tell them to upgrade to the latest Dolphin.

Props to the Dolphin developers for implementing this!

[toonlink444]

That's good news. I can now test codes away from the wii.

[shadowofchaos]

Oh thank goodness. Time to throw out my excel "calculator" spreadsheet for Radiant Dawn.

[shadowofchaos]

Sorry for the necropost, but since it's a forum announcements topic anyway...

What version exactly did they implement this?

Because I've been getting complaints that people have actually upgraded and codes for Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn supposedly don't work because the locations in memory are still offset by a certain amount?

Has anyone else tested it for other games?

[Arudo]

Sorry for the necropost, but since it's a forum announcements topic anyway...

What version exactly did they implement this?

Because I've been getting complaints that people have actually upgraded and codes for Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn supposedly don't work because the locations in memory are still offset by a certain amount?

Has anyone else tested it for other games?

Isn't the thing with Fire Emblem the whole 'screen settings' offset between 4:3 and 16:9?

[shadowofchaos]

Isn't the thing with Fire Emblem the whole 'screen settings' offset between 4:3 and 16:9?

Despite that, I checked the offsets when it's on Dolphin for my version. That's not the difference.

But I guess this is a derp moment for me. I never asked those people complaining to me if they were on widescreen mode on Dolphin as well.

[biolizard89]

Sorry to drag up an old thread, but I was just hacking around with Dolphin (a rare occurrence for me, since I have a crappy CPU), and noticed that they seem to execute the code handler differently from an actual GameCube or Wii.  GeckoOS normally hooks a specific function in the game, and the code handler runs whenever that function runs.  I can't be sure, but it looks like Dolphin is just pausing the game ~60 times per second, running the code handler in whatever context happened to be present, and resuming the game.  Obviously, this results in different behavior than GeckoOS for some codes.  Most likely the best way to fix this (short of Dolphin doing proper hooks) is to use C2/D2 codes instead of RAM write codes.

Hopefully this will save other hackers some grief.

[Macopride64]

The new code handler is garbage. It doesn't seem to be the same Gecko's. When using string write, Dolphin writes more than the entered amount. Has anyone else had this problem?

[biolizard89]

The new code handler is garbage. It doesn't seem to be the same Gecko's. When using string write, Dolphin writes more than the entered amount. Has anyone else had this problem?

I can tell you that the Dolphin code handler is identical to the debugger 1931 handler in NeoGamma.  (Same size and same md5 hash.)  Any difference between their behaviors is probably a result of the context in which they are executed (as I said above), or maybe an emulation bug (less likely).