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Dreamcast News - The Latest in Emulation and Homebrew is a News and downloads site for Sega Dreamcast, Sega Saturn and Vintage Sega Consoles like the Megadrive, Master System and 32X, We have all the latest emulators, hack, homebrew, commercial games and all the downloads on this site, the latest homebrew and releases, Part of the
DCEmu Homebrew & Gaming Network.
THE LATEST NEWS BELOW
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March 8th, 2008, 07:25 Posted By: Christuserloeser
via http://www.gianas-return.de/?p=130
Dear visitors,
We want to keep it short - we need a Pixel Graphics Artist for Giana’s Return to get things finished. We can not pay anything, we can only offer you fame (aka credits) and donations shares (if there will be any). Please keep in mind that this project is HOBBY & FUN for the team, nevertheless we want to see it in good condition and fully finished the next few weeks.
Your job would be:
* Cleaning Pixel Graphics
* Drawing minor objects
* Adjusting GFX Sets to match a theme
* Able to deal with color limitations
As the engine is already done, you wont have too much freedom (but a bit).
If you want to help, please write an email to the project organizer at shahzad(DOT)sahaib(AT)web(DOT)de - preferable with some sample work, or a link with sample work.
Thanks a lot!
Reply here: http://www.gianas-return.de/?p=130
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March 7th, 2008, 21:55 Posted By: JKKDARK
via The Escapist
Interview: Cryptic Allusion on Keeping the Dream(cast) Alive
by Howard Wen, 4 Mar 2008 3:11 pm
The Dreamcast was the best and last console Sega ever made. Its short life of less than three years on the market (originally released in November 1998) was marked by good reviews for the console itself and many of its games. None of this was enough to make a difference, especially against the onslaught of the PlayStation 2.
In the aftermath, a cult following for the Dreamcast grew, and rapidly alongside it came a homebrew development scene determined to give this still technically powerful console a second life.
Cryptic Allusion helped pioneer and foster the Dreamcast homebrew scene. The founder of this firm, Dan Potter, was influential in creating KallistiOS, an unofficial toolkit that helps programmers write code for the game console. (Today, KallistiOS is maintained as an open-source, free software project by a team of volunteers.)
In 2001, months after Sega officially stopped selling the Dreamcast, Cryptic Allusion put together a disc of Dreamcast games and demos created by themselves and other homebrew developers. This disc, titled DC Tonic, was given away at that year's E3 to critical acclaim.
In 2003, Cryptic Allusion released the game for which they became best known: Feet of Fury, a Dance Dance Revolution clone developed with KallistiOS. Its professional-level production values helped to extend interest in the Dreamcast's afterlife among the homebrew community.
image
But from that point on, Cryptic Allusion gradually shifted away from the Dreamcast. Activity within the entire Dreamcast homebrew scene was declining, as well. Though Cryptic Allusion is still presently working on a new Dreamcast title, a remake of an Amiga platformer featuring a Samurai duck called Donk!, they have been focusing more on making games for the Mac and Windows. Apparently, developing for dead game consoles isn't that profitable.
Potter runs Cryptic Allusion from Austin, Texas, with his business partner, Roddy Toomim, as an independent game development company that comprises of just the two of them.
The Escapist: What are your technical backgrounds? What do you guys do for a living?
Roddy Toomim: I'm a techie by nature, but I couldn't code my way out of a wet paper bag in a Gulf Coast rainstorm. Dan's the man behind the code, but we've taken on a couple of coder interns in recent months to help us complete Donk!, as well as a couple of art interns.
In real life, I'm a software tester for a company that creates and markets slot machines. I suppose that puts me in the "gaming" business, but not exactly where I want to be just yet.
Dan Potter: I began working with computers when I was about 6, when my dad brought home the "first pieces" from the TI employee store. I haven't really stopped since then; I've been working in the industry professionally for about 14 years now.
My current job is in the transport and analysis of flight data for commercial carriers - think "black boxes" - for accident prevention and procedural improvements [like] more comfortable flights, less fuel usage, etc.
TE: What's the appeal of the Dreamcast for you guys? Basically, why have you even bothered with making games for this dead system that wasn't all too popular to begin with?
RT: [It's] the last Sega-made console. Ever. It's got too much appeal as a piece of gaming history to just let it die, you know?
Dan was mostly responsible for the reverse engineering of the machine. He likes to tell people that he had minimal involvement in the project to figure out the guts of the Dreamcast, but he's a smart guy. Smarter than me by far. At least as far as math/code goes. Don't let him tell you different!
DP: Let's not distort the record here. I actually had very little to do with the reverse engineering part of it. I tried really hard on a few areas and just didn't really get anywhere. There are some even smarter guys, mostly in Sweden, who did most of that. I helped nudge it along in a few places - by friendly competition, if nothing else. But they did the bulk of the work. My main contribution was to put it all together in one place and make a friendly package to let people get in there and use the knowledge. After awhile, I was really only stewarding that effort.
The most modern version of KallistiOS includes a lot of code from my hands, but I'd bet about half of it was contributed by [others in] the community. If you include all the add-on libraries, my contribution shrinks even further.
RT: I may have to butt heads with you here about the popularity of the system. I believe it was successfully marketed to a burgeoning demographic of core gamers. In that sense, it was a great console and a successful launch, which was only helped by being released almost a year prior to the PlayStation 2.
Sega's focus on the hardcore player made them a failure in the general marketplace, though, so most people see the console as a complete flop. I suppose that means it depends on how you view the console's place in the genealogy of gaming to determine its position in the grand scheme of multimedia. I won't go into this any further; I feel like I'll be talking politics, attempting to defend something that doesn't really need to be defended. The Dreamcast can just "be" for now, and I'll be OK with it.
TE: How would you describe the current state of the Dreamcast homebrew scene?
RT: I'm a little embarrassed to answer this question: I don't really keep up with the homebrew scene. That's Dan's job! I just focus on what needs to be done to complete our projects, and if we need to communicate with people, I take care of keeping those lines open.
DP: I don't particularly keep up with it either. As far as I can tell, though, there's not a whole lot left of it these days. The most active discussion goes on with some of the forums like DCEmu, but I don't know how much practical output those produce. Most of the more hardcore discussion takes place on mailing lists, like the KOS Development List, and there's just not a whole lot of life there these days. A few questions pop up now and then, but it's not like it used to be.
TE: So how much access to the Dreamcast hardware did this community manage to figure out? Can you guys pretty much program a game that is as technically good as the kind that commercial developers made for the system?
DP: In some ways we are more advanced than the commercial development kits, but given my limited knowledge of what they can do, I can't answer too definitively. Someone inside Sega once told me some of the Dreamcast engineers had looked at the [KallistiOS] code and were pretty impressed with it.
I think there's certainly enough low-level tools to do a decent game now. But it comes down to the normal bottlenecks for developers on any platform: access to resources and just using the tools to push something out.
TE: What tools do you guys use in homebrewing for the Dreamcast?
DP: These days, we actually make a lot of use of standard PC development tools - Visual Studio on the PC side of things, Xcode on the Mac. Most of the code work is done with a toolkit called Tiki, which is the result of factoring out a lot of pieces of Feet of Fury and porting them to be more modern C++ and focused more on a PC-ish environment. I had written this thing to port Feet of Fury actually, and someone ported it back to the Dreamcast, so now we use that for most things. It's much easier to develop and debug on a PC.
When we actually build for the Dreamcast, we use a free software tool chain from GNU along with KallistiOS, which includes a ton of ported extras, like Xiph's Ogg Vorbis libraries.
Tiki has actually been picked up and ported to a lot of platforms now, including the Dreamcast, GP32, Nintendo DS, Windows, Linux, Mac. It's worth looking at if you're looking for something simple to get going, because it serves the purpose of something like SDL, but without a lot of the bureaucratic overhead I think of when I think of SDL.
TE: What do you think is the biggest challenge about programming the Dreamcast?
DP: The biggest challenge these days is, oddly enough, acquiring parts. The best tools to work with are a brand-new Dreamcast and a broadband adapter. Both are nearly impossible to obtain these days. Thankfully, I have a big stack of Dreamcasts to cannibalize as pieces if others die. [The Dreamcast] was a neat little machine, but - I hate to say it - not very durable in the long run.
At one time, I had built a "Frankenstein Dreamcast" with flash ROM, an IDE interface, and hooks for an ISA network adapter, though I never quite got around to building all the logic for that. It was a really neat project, but it just got to be too much of a time sink for me to really justify it for its own sake, especially as how I doubt anyone would've picked it up and mass-produced it for other developers.
From a technical standpoint, it's a pretty powerful machine with some great tools out there now, but if you're not up to par on your debugging and other hackery, you won't get very far.
TE: Could you share some advice - technical or otherwise - with others who are interested in homebrewing for the Dreamcast?
RT: Learn C++!
DP: Yeah, that and, really, just get in there and do it. There's no amount of book learning or studying that is going to prepare you for it. The more experience you have outside the cushy sandbox that is modern PCs, the better.
TE: What do you think is needed now to help advance the homebrew scene for the Dreamcast?
RT: I don't see the homebrew scene really opening up unless Sega decided to get involved with KallistiOS to help it along, filling in the gaps and, in the process, recreating it as a true dev-kit. I don't see this happening in the near future, but I suppose an old Dreamcast engineer could pop up somewhere. I want to point out that I do not know of anyone out there even considering this. Don't think of it as a rumor.
DP: I don't think even Sega getting involved with KallistiOS would help much. What would advance the homebrew scene for the Dreamcast would be a revival of the Dreamcast itself, and I don't see that happening for another 10 years or so. At that point, it'll be retro and, thus, cool again.
Most people who are interested in hacking on consoles just to hack on consoles have long since moved on to other things.
TE: So would you like to see Sega return to the hardware scene, or see the Dreamcast return in some form?
RT: I would personally love to see Sega return to hardware, but I don't think that will happen for another two or three generations, if at all.
The Dreamcast is technically still "out there" in the few arcades that still exist in this country: You'll find classics like Crazy Taxi, Capcom vs. SNK, and tons more. The NAOMI is the arcade version of the Dreamcast, and it's just a souped-up version of the home hardware. This was Sega's biggest missed opportunity, in my opinion. They could have done what Nintendo was attempting with the Mario Kart arcade game, or Sony's Tekken series, when taking into consideration arcade/home connectivity.
DP: Sega is no good at marketing hardware anymore. Sorry, guys, it's true. The Saturn was a total flop outside Japan, and, while the Dreamcast did pretty good, it got trounced by Sony's PlayStation 2 marketing.
Old consoles had a lot of very custom hardware in them, and you really had to re-learn how to code in a lot of instances. Look at today's console lineup: basically, all PPC cell processors with various combinations of off-the-shelf video hardware and such. Modern arcade boards are more or less just a consumer console crammed into a JAMMA form factor.
So, in that sense, no, I don't expect nor would I like to see Sega return to the hardware scene. I like them doing what they did during the Dreamcast era: making fun games. Hardware is just not all that interesting anymore.
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March 5th, 2008, 20:11 Posted By: wraggster
Im a few weeks late with this but im stunned to hear the very sad news that Heliophobe who was one of the nicest and most talented coders to hit the Dreamcast scene died a few weeks ago.
Heres the post from the SMS Power forums:
We regret to inform you, that
Nick Warren, aka Heliophobe, long time member and supporter of our community, passed away on thursday, january 29 at the age of 29.
Despite being active here, Nick was sick since a few months, and went to the hospital in january. You'll probably remember him for the quality, intelligence and sense of humor in his contributions. Additionnally, it isn't a well known fact but Nick generously handled hosting fees of the site for many years, which permitted our community to stay alive all this time.
More important parts of Nick's life are unknown to us, and I'm certain that his friends and family have more and better reasons to miss him. Our sincere thoughts goes to them.
His close friend Genevieve has setup a simple remembrance page here (page closed by Genevieve since then).
Shall I add some of the things that he created:
Nine Pixels (2006),
SMS Power 7 (2004),
Copyright Violation (2002),
SMEG (SMS Emulator for Dreamcast) (2001) + Interview,
Damiana (Y2Kode 2001 competition),
Tetracycline (2000),
Good Advice (2000),
Sprite (2000).
RIP.
This is very sad news for the Whole Homebrew Community and my tears go out to his friends and family. To die at such a young age is heartbreaking.
RIP
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March 5th, 2008, 16:15 Posted By: JKKDARK
The Giana's Return team need your help. Maybe you can do it or you know some pixel graphics artist?
From the official site:
Dear visitors,
We want to keep it short - we need a Pixel Graphics Artist for Giana’s Return to get things finished. We can not pay anything, we can only offer you fame (aka credits) and donations shares (if there will be any). Please keep in mind that this project is HOBBY & FUN for the team, nevertheless we want to see it in good condition and fully finished the next few weeks.
Your job would be:
* Cleaning Pixel Graphics
* Drawing minor objects
* Adjusting GFX Sets to match a theme
* Able to deal with color limitations
As the engine is already done, you wont have too much freedom (but a bit).
If you want to help, please write an email to the project organizer at shahzad(DOT)sahaib(AT)web(DOT)de - preferable with some sample work, or a link with sample work.
Thanks a lot!
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March 4th, 2008, 10:30 Posted By: Christuserloeser
via DCEmulation
fackue released his new port of Wolfenstein 3D for Dreamcast:
I figure with the release of openTyrian I'd go ahead to release what I have thus far.
This is the first release of a the newest Wolfenstein 3D port, Wolf4SDL\DC.
VMU code is based on c99koder's DreamZZT and OneThirty8's sdlWolf.
Credits goto Antioch for the LCD graphics.
It currently features:
- Sound
- Controller
- Keyboard
- Saves
Controls are:
Dpad - movement
A - shoot
B - strafe
X - open
Y - run
Bugs:
Figure 'em out 
DOWNLOAD:
http://dchelp.dcemulation.com/downlo...-DC_public.zip
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March 4th, 2008, 09:39 Posted By: JKKDARK
What's going on with the Sega Dreamcast emulator for Linux.
From the official website:
Updated the CD-Rom image code to handle the various read modes (Bug #59), including raw reads (using libedc to generate the EDC/ECC data on the fly), as opposed to the old code which really only handled mode 1 and mode 2 form 1 sectors - CD-Roms are much more complicated beasties than one typically imagines. I haven’t validated it yet, but I don’t think I’ve broken any of the cases that previously worked either *crosses fingers*.
In other news bhaal22 has contributed an ALSA sound driver which is now in svn, along with some initial (long overdue) work towards tidying up the audio subsystem.
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March 4th, 2008, 06:39 Posted By: Christuserloeser
indiket ported OpenTyrian to Dreamcast:
I just have ported OpenTyrian to Dreamcast, and here I publish my first "alpha" version.
OpenTyrian 0.1 DC (alpha)
- From svn revision 719 classic.
- Game is "playable", I think it goes a little slow.
- Pad, mouse and keyboard should work.
Known problems:
- Instruccions section doesn't work and produce a crash...
- Sound and music work, but also they play badly. It would be great to implement an optimized sound routine (like gp2x version). Any ideas?
- Load and save doesn't work yet (have to implement vmu routines).
Controls:
- Analogic or digital stick to move spaceship.
- Start: Like enter button
- A: Fire
- X: Fires left secondary weapon.
- B: Fires two secondary weapons.
- L: Like escape button
Downloads:
Selfboot CDI:
http://iberdc.dreamcast.es/ports/ope...yrianDCcdi.zip
Plain Files: http://iberdc.dreamcast.es/ports/ope...yrianDCbin.zip
Source Code:
http://iberdc.dreamcast.es/ports/ope...TyrianDC01.zip
Big thanks to fackue for the news!
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March 3rd, 2008, 19:17 Posted By: JKKDARK
More progress on the Sega Dreamcast emulator for PC.
From the official site:
- AICA cleanup: done
- Puru Puru Pack (vibration) support: done
- Render to texture: done
- Fixed (again, and for good I hope) missing sound in Project Justice
- Spent 4 hours playing Elemental Gimmick Gear on Makaron 
Force feedback was tested on Soul Reaver and seems to work. Did I ever mention this game is one of the reasons I moved from simple SH4 recompiler project to full-blow Dreamcast emulator? I simply adore whole series.
http://pics.livejournal.com/dknute/pic/000a4z68
Now this is actually Saturn conversion, that's why the graphics look a bit dated. Don't let it fool you into thinking it's old and boring - it's quite the opposite. Runs rock solid too, I've played it on full screen and never had a single problem whatsoever.
http://pics.livejournal.com/dknute/pic/000a5z4x
And this isn't a game at all, just a movie demo disc - GD though, so Dreamcast exclusive. Kinda sucks they didn't remove the interlace - looks pretty bad on PC monitors. Nothing can be done about that now, it's MPEG stream.
http://pics.livejournal.com/dknute/pic/000a6t1y
And this apparently is Makaron exclusive for now I've only played Interlude for several minutes (can't read kanji, so...) but I've noticed there's lots of nice backgrounds. Plenty of spoken dialogues as well. It's 2003 game so I guess quality is higher compared to similar games for Dreamcast (why, even compressed the image is still almost 1,2G).
http://pics.livejournal.com/dknute/pic/000a7x1x
I am so sick & tired of cutting every screenshot I make to size... I need a good and free screen capture program. Any suggestions?
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March 2nd, 2008, 19:30 Posted By: wraggster
Sega console fans rejoice, as an extremely rare item has just appeared on Shop Goodwill. A brand new Sega Dreamcast with an extra controller are among the latest lots on the charity auction site run by Goodwill Industries. Everything was factory sealed upon arrival, and Goodwill employees at the Indianapolis store where the items are located only opened the boxes to ensure everything was inside and completely sealed. The opening price for the lot was $3, and that has since risen to $30.36.
This is a phenomenal deal. The Dreamcast was originally released in 1998, and this brand new item is not only a pristine collector’s piece, but also a fully functional console. All you need to do is then find some games. Fortunately enough, there are five different lots of Dreamcast games available on Shop Goodwill.
This is a great deal, and I wish I could bid. However I know I’d be outbid on this beauty. This collector’s item is worth far more than $30, and I’m sure some loving fan is going to scrape together the funds to procure this piece of gaming history. The auction began February 29, 2008 and is set to end on March 7, 2008.
http://www.gamertell.com/gaming/comm...ega-dreamcast/
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March 1st, 2008, 14:37 Posted By: JKKDARK
More news on the upcoming homebrew game for Dreamcast.
From the official site:
The organizer and the coder were catching a flu the past week. Both are almost recovered, but now the coder has gone on vacation for around one month.
In the meantime he fixed minor problems, basically details.
Something else which just came to our attention is this:
http://www.amazon.de/Giana-Sisters-u...4372120&sr=8-1
Seems someone gained the permission for an official Giana’s Sister PC sequel,
which brings up the question if the word of the trademark owner is still vaild
and we can still release Giana’s Return. In worst case, we just rename the 2 girls
and change the titlescreen musix remix.
Anyone got more info on that sequel/remake?
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March 1st, 2008, 02:49 Posted By: wraggster
News/release from the ScummVM Site:
ScummVM continues to leap forward in a leap year, and we are pleased to announce the next shiny bugfix release of the project.
As usual, it holds a number of improvements, it's more stable, and it should bring you even more fun than 0.11.0.
We fixed the digital iMUSE system (better COMI experience), King's Quest 4 bugs were squashed, and support for fanmade AGI games has been improved; Lure of the Temptress, Inherit the Earth and I Have no Mouth all work better since we fixed several crashes, lock-ups and all such buzzwords.
As a special bonus we are glad to announce the return of the BeOS port and the deeply missed Playstation 2 port.
ScummVM is a program which allows you to run certain classic graphical point-and-click adventure games, provided you already have their data files. The clever part about this: ScummVM just replaces the executables shipped with the games, allowing you to play them on systems for which they were never designed!
Some of the adventures ScummVM supports include Adventure Soft's Simon the Sorcerer 1 and 2; Revolution's Beneath A Steel Sky, Broken Sword 1 and Broken Sword 2; Flight of the Amazon Queen; Wyrmkeep's Inherit the Earth; Coktel Vision's Gobliiins; Westwood Studios' The Legend of Kyrandia and games based on LucasArts' SCUMM (Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion) system such as Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam and Max and more.
Heres whats new:
Ports:
- Revived the PS2 port.
- Revived the BeOS port.
SCUMM:
- Improvements for Digital iMUSE subsystem. This fixes several glitches in The Curse of Monkey Island.
- Fixes for cursors in HE games.
AGI:
- Fix for zombies in King's Quest 4.
- Fix for changing palettes in fanmade games using AGIPAL.
Lure:
- Fixed some conversation crashes in the German version.
- Fixed operation of the optional copy protection dialog in the German version.
- Added saving of conversation flags as to whether a particular conversation option had been previously selected or not.
- Fixed glitch that could cause transformation sparkle to happen a second time.
- Fixed behavior of Goewin when you rejoin her after meeting the dragon.
SAGA:
- Fix for rat maze bug in Inherit the Earth which made game not completable.
- Fixes for Inherit the Earth and I Have no Mouth game startup on a number of platforms.
- Reduced the number of simultaneous open files in I Have no Mouth, to allow it to run on platforms that can keep a limited amount of files open (e.g. on the PSP).
- Fixed graphics glitch in Inherit the Earth with simultaneous speech.
- Fixed palette glitch in Inherit the Earth when looking at the map while at the docks.
Download the Dreamcast Version and Give Feedback Via Comments
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February 29th, 2008, 21:07 Posted By: JKKDARK
From the official site:
Yuki swamped me with GDs again This time I'm going to take it slow and test just a few games a day - it takes way too much time otherwise.
http://pics.livejournal.com/dknute/pic/0009ywt9
There's a BGM player in Super Robot Wars. And guess what, I found tunes from Gundam W and Evangelion on the list
And this little bugger is known as Soukou no Kihei - Space Griffon. Gave me some trouble, trying to execute a write past end of VRAM. That kept crashing Makaron and I had hard time figuring out the cause.
BTW - if you haven't noticed, there's VMU LCD display support now. See, that's the reason why you should wait patienly rather then press me into releasing stuff. Now you'll have to wait for T10 to get that
I need to finish GDMT (it's really breaking games now), re-structure AICA a bit to allow for DSP in future, make render to texture work and perhaps add vibration/force feedback. Not to mention DMA engine still has some issues...
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February 26th, 2008, 20:21 Posted By: JKKDARK
MKFro's first version was released today. MKFro is a frontend for Makaron, the Dreamcast emulator for PC.
note:
To use MKFro you need .Net Framework 3.5.
Download it from here
Download and give feedback via comments
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February 26th, 2008, 19:53 Posted By: JKKDARK
New update of the Sega Dreamcast emulator for PC.
Download it from here.
Info:
If you have any problems with it, go back to T9/1. This version is pretty broken (lots of unfinished modifications) but I want to know how badly
Again, too many changes to list. Some bug fixes (to SH4 recompiler as well). PAD plugin now enforces 5% dead zone in analog stick center position - this should cure "cursor keeps running away" problem in some games. New AICA/ARM code (back to interpreter for now) sounds much better, no DSP yet. More messages will now appear in English, in future it will be possible to support many languages (via translation files or something like that).
There's new system of identifying GD-ROMs and MIL-CDs - it's main purpose is to enable MMU where necessary. The database is far from complete though, so some GDs will not be recognized. Please report those, but do make sure to provide proper title, MD5 sum computed by Makaron, region, and whether it is Windows CE game or normal one. DO NOT REPORT PIRATED SOFTWARE. I will ignore/delete such reports on sight. Same goes for dubious ones, with spelling errors and such.
If you happen to stumble upon WinCE game that is not recognized you'll need to enable MMU manualy in the ini file. And let me repeat that again - MMU requires a damn fast CPU. 2,4GHz Core2 Duo is the absolute minimum - the faster the better.
The multi-threaded GD reading is not yet finished. You might want to enable it anyway, see GDROM.ini for that, but be advised that some games will refuse to boot or hang with this option enabled. Most should work.
Download and give feedback via comments
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February 25th, 2008, 16:37 Posted By: JKKDARK
More progress on the Dreamcast emulator for Linux:
Real Life(tm) has been a little bit hectic lately, so there’s isn’t much to report for last week for lxdream. The render split is mostly done now, and will probably be merged back to trunk this week (as soon as I reintegrate the trans poly sorting). Unfortunately I didn’t really get any performance improvements out of it (well, I was probably a little hopeful there), but at least I didn’t lose any performance either, and it was worth doing for other reasons. Once that’s merged I’ve got a few small non-render issues to sort out, and then I’ll get back to the annoying rendering bugs…
In other news, dclinux 010605 is now hosted locally (as long as the bandwidth holds out), including a self-booting NRG image (thanks to The Gypsy), check it out on the wiki. Note that you’ll need the latest svn trunk to boot the nrg image properly.
And finally, I see that MAME now has a mostly complete AICA driver, thanks to ElSemi, kingshriek, dknute & R.Belmont. *jaw drop*. That… will _really_ help ^_^.
Trunk Changes
* Fixed a couple of d’oh-level SH4 bugs (thanks to dknute for pointing them out)
* Quick hack to get the dclinux nrg booting. Full update to follow soon.
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February 22nd, 2008, 20:42 Posted By: JKKDARK
News about Giana's Return, the upcoming homebrew game for Dreamcast.
Stuck with Diamonds
A funny thing happened yesterday… we found one out of 10 bonus holes, which actually did not have an exit defined. If we would imagine the game has gone public with that bug, urghs We could have probably renamed the game to “Stuck with Diamonds” then
Lava World Update
well… we are currenty working heavily on world number 4, which is also know by “lava world” at the moment. there were improvements in the tileset again. we now have a prefinal lava world, with one level converted. if everything goes straight, we have a new video next week.
Boss 1 - Decide a name!
We are in need of a name for our first boss, which you can see above in the bottom right corner. Any ideas? Let us know!
Lava World Screenshots
Screenshots of World 4 (Lava themed) with pre-final graphics.
Boss 1 - Name suggestion - The collection
Here are the names which were suggested by our visitors so far…
Zoieka
Harvey
Apollo
Brawnchik
Birdy
Mr. Dirb
Growlpick
Squirll
Cheesy
Rooster
Chicky-Bit
Hulsbeck
Henrique Eaglesias
Early Bird
Kentucky Fritz
Uhm… well… There are some interesting word games like “Henrique Eaglesias” but probably not the name we are looking for…
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February 22nd, 2008, 20:35 Posted By: JKKDARK
The latest news about the Sega Dreamcast emulator for Windows, Linux and Mac.
Rendering WIP
I’ve started fiddling with the vertex shader, which has been fairly educational. It hasn’t actually fixed any of the bugs yet, but I’m hoping it will eventually give much better rendering accuracy. (Thanks to dknute for some good suggestions on the z-buffer problem) Unfortunately turning on the VS (even with a trivial program) gave me a big performance hit on my (admittedly relatively old) hardware, so it remains to be seen whether this will be viable for said hardware.
Also did some work to get osmesa support up and running, which is mostly done now but doesn’t quite work correctly (there’s some weird texture bugs, as well as the occasional projection matrix screwup). Unfortunately it’s also _really_ slow on any kind of real scene, so I’m not sure how much effort it’s worth spending on it at the moment[0].
Currently I’m working on reworking the renderer to use vertex buffers (or client-side arrays in the absense of VBO support), which are purported to be outrageously faster than immediate mode. We’ll see if that’s true, but even if there’s no big difference, the resultant data structures should be a lot easier to work with for processing purposes (saves traversing the tilebuffer repeatedly).
After the dust settles on that, the next priority is to fix the known outstanding blatant render bugs:
* Bug #29: Texture coordinate problems.
* Obviously wrong colours in some scenes
* Issues with misplaced (or incorrect geometry) in some scenes (the pre-render data is demonstrably correct in these cases, so it’s either a misread of the scene data (probably), or cases that need to be handled specially).
* Various hw specific issues with certain texture types (my favourite thus far is a scene that breaks on both ATI and NV but in quite different and distinct ways…)
And then on to shadow volumes (interesting), RTT (easy), pixel-level transparency sorting (hard) and all the other fun stuff ^_^.
[0] It should be possible to take just the sw rasterization engine out of mesa, and blow away the front end more or less completely. This would be a fair bit faster than it is currently, but it still probably won’t be fast enough. It also looks to involve quite a bit of work as well.
Looking for linux (in all the wrong places?)
It turns out that the lc2000.iso link that was posted (btw, thanks for that! ^_^) is an earlier version of linux-dc (it identifies as running the 2.4.0-test8 kernel) than the one I’d been testing with, and it exposed a few issues that needed fixing. These are now fixed in svn, except for the keyboard issue, for which source [0] would be very helpful if anyone has it?
Unfortunately this does mean I’m still looking for the original dreamcast-linux-010605.tar.bz2 (and the associated pre-built CDI and NRG images) - so if anyone has them, or knows where to find them, please let me know. I’m quite happy to host them locally, at least until the bandwidth runs out ^_^.
Btw for the BSD fans, there was supposed to have been a live netbsd disc floating around somewhere (the link from gxemul is dead) - has anyone seen it?
Edit: Nevermind, the NetBSD 3.1 image is actually included in the main netbsd mirror… having a look at it now.
Changes
* Fix LDS/STS FPSCR/FPUL instructions to raise FPU disabled exceptions (wasn’t very well documented in the original SH4 manual)
* Fix IDE dma read looping forever if the disc was removed or failed in the middle of the operation
* Fix crash when changing maple peripherals (this one was just boneheaded)
[0] The image itself does have quite a bit of source on it, but I can’t find the associated linux-sh-dc kernel patches against 2.4.0-test8. Which, of course, is the bit I actually need…
Updated 13 Feb: I don’t need the 2.4.0 source patch anymore - turns out its not a bug, that version was just hard coded to expect the keyboard on the 4th maple port, and I had it on the 3rd. Although, it would still be good to see it for the sake of the history.
Render rewrite still going
Still working on the render rewrite which is now in the lxdream-render branch (which may or may not even compile, and certainly won’t work at the moment).
The frontend stage to extract the poly+vertex data out into a nice array format is working now, and it runs in just about negligible time. Current task is to execute the rendering from the vertex buffer, which should be pretty straightforward. So… once this is done we should have a renderer which is a) much cleaner/extensible, b) much faster, and c) about the same or even less code.
If only all software engineering was like that ^_^.
Trunk Changes
* Fix inverted mouse button sense
* Fix incorrect error response size for maple get_condition buffers
* Fix keypad keycode translations
* Fix SLEEP timing fubar introduced in 0.8.3
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