DCEmulation.com seeing an update !

January 1st, 2007, 23:36 Posted By: Christuserloeser

The classic Dreamcast homebrew website DCEmulation.com is finally seeing an update!

Here's what Darc wrote about the plans for the update:
A new front site is being created, because the current one is in hideous disrepair. souLLy and I will be working on that.

Once the site is done, everything will be moved over to a new server, free from ZTNet's problems.

At first a new logo has been created by Melancholy:

removed

Basically, I want to do away with all the clutter. The ads, the rotating sigs, the hideous pure colors. My intention was to break apart the essense of the site and create clean shapes to emphasis a rejuvenation. A return to why we play the Dreamcast in the first place. So I took an element I felt that best related to this:

The power light.

The power light is where it starts. It didn't start with the homebrew. It doesn't matter what kind of system specs sit inside. It all started when we first hit that power button. I want to return the feeling of the first time they put that disc in, started it up, and seen that bouncing logo on the screen. That's where I feel we need to go. People started coming here because they loved their Dreamcast. And that dream started with the first blink of that orange light.

The logo tries to remind people what it was like when they first powered up the Dreamcast. The symbol in the bottom left represents the action of putting the disc in the machine and turning it on. The curves try to not only mimic the lid, but the movement involved with CDs. The white oval where the DC swirl should be is intentionally left blank. I will get to why I decided this later. The top right represents the bouncing ball on the startup screen of the Dreamcast. I made the ball orange to match the power button because I still want it to represent the fact that the system is still on. And the dropped 'E' on 'Emulation' represents the bouncing effect the ball has on the startup screen when the ball hits a letter. In short, the bottom left represents the physical aspect startup whereas the top right represents the visual aspect.

As for the colors, I know that it is a big argument with many on which Dremcast swirl color to put on the page. Here in the US, it's red, and in the UK, it's blue. So instead of picking one, I thought we should do some site colors to represent both. The orange reflects more on the US version, but at the same time does not outright say it. And if some hints of a light blue were added to the site, it would make a nice cool contrast that would relate to the UK swirl. That is why I left the DC swirl off of the logo. I felt that it should not be up to the logo to pick a side, so it instead opts to pick neither and leave that decision up to the visitor.

Using Mel's artwork, Darc also made an IP.BIN MR logo you could use with BootDreams:
http://www.dcemulation.com/files/IP.BIN-dcemulogo.rar


SouLLy posted his design for the front site, so you can get a good impression on how the site will look like:
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/1...ulationxm6.png


The DCEmulation.com forums have been moved to a new server and temporarily are located at a new URL:
http://www.pspemulation.com/dcemulation/phpBB/


Seems 2007 will be a new start for DCEmulation.com and a very good year for the Dreamcast !

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