On Windows 7 SP1 x64, all 3 executables (plain Dwarf Fortress.exe, "new df exe", and "df_xp_test.exe") started successfully for me whether or not the 2 DLLs are present (since I apparently already have the 2015 runtime installed), but they all crash on exit as follows:
Problem signature
Problem Event Name: BEX
Application Name: Dwarf Fortress.exe
Application Version: 0.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 5768197e
Fault Module Name: Dwarf Fortress.exe
Fault Module Version: 0.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 5768197e
Exception Offset: 018e65d4
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Data: 00000008
OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 0a9e
Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3: 0a9e
Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
[edit]
Looking in Dependency Walker, the following DLLs appear to be required:
msvcp140.dll
vcruntime140.dll
api-ms-win-crt-convert-l1-1-0.dll
api-ms-win-crt-filesystem-l1-1-0.dll
api-ms-win-crt-heap-l1-1-0.dll
api-ms-win-crt-locale-l1-1-0.dll
api-ms-win-crt-math-l1-1-0.dll
api-ms-win-crt-runtime-l1-1-0.dll
api-ms-win-crt-stdio-l1-1-0.dll
api-ms-win-crt-string-l1-1-0.dll
api-ms-win-crt-utility-l1-1-0.dll
I'm pretty sure the "official recommended standard procedure", when you aren't providing an installer package, is to instruct users to download and install the
Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2015 if they don't already have it - once they've installed it for a single application, they never need to install it again (and I think Windows Update will keep it up to date for them going forward).
In fact, it's
always been like this, even with Visual Studio 2010 - the reason it's usually not a problem is that most people install at least one program which requires the runtime and installs it for them.