Dreamcast News - The Latest in Emulation and Homebrew

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.

This current version is version 3.0.57. It has so many updates to it, its hard to list them all...

Thanks to damadfiddler, signofzeta & retrogeeks for beta testing. Please report any bugs to the email address contained in the readme file. Or post them here.

Download: http://dcemulation.org/?p=tools/pc/mac/main

Version 3 Update Notes:

Inducer updates
*-Added Inducer theme addition, Theme Files identified with same icon as original SBI files
*-Removed 'Done' dialog boxes, Using audio notification instead
*-Added sbi 4.0 zip comment support
*-SBI list auto-resizes results, prevents renaming /reordering of tabs

Feature -
* Integrated Tools folder into main bundle
* SBI-2-SB now uses the main Inducer folder
* Isos get renamed burn 1st & 2nd,and moved to desktop instead of home
* Added error check for requested file type in several features
* Selfbooter - New layout & simplification of features
* More & better error handling

Bug Fixes
Double Clicking SBI Files-Will no longer launch a second instance of MDT

P.S. - This version is also known (by me) and somewhat labeled as version 'UO'. Which , stupidly, stands for 'Unix Overdrive'. Half of the code was re-written into unix script, to make it harder, faster, stronger & better. Well thats it, this will pretty much be the last version of MDT. But i wont completely stop working on it till i've implemented cdrecord/cdrecord support. Thanks again for supporting the DC scene everyone!

Yes, we've said it before, but we're going to say it again: We're releasing something new! Trust us when we say it this time; I promise we mean it.

---

We're really going to release something. In fact, we have to. We've got interns and they expect us to do some real work! Heck, we expect the same of them. Yours truly is working up tons of SFX at the moment, and almost all of them are finished and ready to be integrated into the game. We had announced Donk prior to this, but there you go. As official as it gets...front page and all.

Here's some info to keep your appetites whet:

1) it's a platformer
2) it was released a LOOOOONG time ago in a land far far away (from the U.S. anyway...it's at least a 6 hour flight from New York)
3) PROFIT!
4) Amiga32CD
5) It's not Bonk
6) We currently have a schedule to release this gem of a game during this summer, most likely during June.
7) Oh, and it'll be on the Dreamcast on a pressed MIL-CD with fun art and hopefully some extras.
8) and here is Dan's original post on the subject: http://www.cagames.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=6676#6676

That's enough for now. Keep your eyes peeled.

Convertneo had a stupid bug, please download newest fix:
http://chui.dcemu.co.uk/releases/aes4all-beta2-fix.rar

Hi all,

Ok, if anybody here wants to help in an attempt to save the official EU Dreamcast Phantasy Star online server, listen up!

As you may be aware the EU Dreamcast Phantasy Star online server went offline a few days ago, as a result I am running a campaign to try to persuade SEGA to either re-instate the server, or give the Dreamcast community a chance to pay for the servers ourselves. Obviously we do not know the cost of the latter at this stage, but the opportunity would be a start. (Please note: this is not a request for money)

Here is a run down of the current situation:

First things first, I know this has little to no chance of being successful, but whilst there is any glimmer of hope I am willing to try and I hope you are to.

This all started when I decided to do a bit of research into the IP address of the EU PSO server. The upshot of it is, I found out where the servers are located and who has control of them, its a company called NTT Europe who are based in London and NOT SEGA, sega have a contract with NTT Europe for a number of different things, including the EU Dreamcast PSO servers.

I then contacted NTT Europe and was put in contact with a guy who seems interested and eager to help and has said he will look into it personally. The upshot of the conversation was that he could not currently say with any certainty that they hosted the server, but he did say that SEGA definitely have an account with them and that they DO HOST servers for SEGA.

After I had told him the story of what has happened he seemed very intrigued and interested, including a comment about how impressed he was that I tracked them down....lol (not that hard). Anyway, he said he had contacts directly with SEGA-europe and that he would contact them to see what is going on...he also said he would talk to the tech guys to find out what is happening with the server. Unfortunately it seems there will be no progress on this now until after Easter, but hopefully there will be some movement soon after.

So...whats next? Well I await his response, but in the mean time I have decided to start a letter campaign, so that I can put together a pack of letters to send into Sega-Europe straight after Easter

WRITE YOUR LETTER:

Guidelines:

Include an explanation on why you would prefer to play PSO on the Dreamcast hardware as opposed to other hardware platforms.

If you played PSO online for your Dreamcast before, please recall some of your fond memories of playing online.

If you have never played PSO online before, please write about why you would like to play it online.

Add any addition comments you might want to include on your own.

Include your full name, regional location, and email contact. A home address is not required. Just include your City, State/Province, and Country. (If you are outside of Europe/Australia it may be better to make this part up )

Please take care in writing your letter! Do not just scribble 1 paragraph, and do not make a long-winded tail. Aim for half a page to 2 pages.

Please email all "Save PSO" letters to: savepso AT blueyonder.co.uk

Please make sure you include your username and the boards you are from in the E-mail.

Get going guys, can't promise this will work, but we'll try it....

DEADLINE FOR LETTERS: 9th April 2007 (9pm GMT+1)

I am having to enforce this very early deadline as time is not on our side, please support this campaign!

Sega's Dreamcast repair service, which has continued to operate despite production of the console having been halted in 2001, will cease from September 28, hammering the final nail into Dreamcast's coffin.

This news comes after production of the GD-ROM, Sega's proprietary discs used for Dreamcast, having been aborted in February. This puts an end to the few Japanese releases which, oddly, still snuck out from time to time, Trigger Heart Exelica and Karous being two released this year.

This could also mean the end for Sega's Dreamcast-based Naomi arcade machines, which also use the GD-ROM format, although it is suggested that developers may be able to continue using ROM boards as an alternative on the machine.

This also marks a complete end to Sega's involvement in the hardware market. We're wiping a tear from our eye...

PSO Server Closure Update!

The closure of the official servers has not gone as expected.

As scheduled, Sega did close servers yesterday at 9:59:59 AM EST, but not all of them. Only the Japanese servers were closed. At present the EU servers are still online and fully functional.

---

Players who were fortunate enough to be present during yesterday's closure got to see the largest turnout for PSO in years, as the number of players online peaked at around 700!

So far today there has been a consistent minimum of ten players online at any given time on the two remaining EU servers.

nullDC v1.0.0 BETA User Manual
------------------------------

1. What is it?
--------------

nullDC is a plugin based Dreamcast emulator for x86 based computers running Windows Operating Systems.

2. Recomended System Requirements:
----------------------------------

- CPU: AMD Athlon XP/64/Turion at 2GHz or Intel Pentium 4 at 2.6GHz or equivalent.
- Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 4 TI or ATi Radeon 8500.
- RAM: 512MB
- Operating System: Windows 2000/XP/2003
- December Redistributable of DirectX 9c

The above requirements are considered as the absolute minimum in order to run the emulator as it was
intended to run. The emulator might be able to run on systems that do not meet these requirements
but with issues (like slow speed, GFX errors or Sound errors).

Notes:

- Some games have higher requirements than the rest and have speed issues even on systems that meet
the recomended requirements. In that case a faster CPU is necessary to reach full speed.

- Pentium 4 CPUs perform some tasks slower than other CPUs, thus the clock speed of 2.6GHz is needed.
On the other hand, Pentium M CPUs perform the same tasks much faster
(A Pentium M 750 at 1.86GHz should be enough to reach full speed).
Intel Celeron and AMD Duron (and probably Sempron) CPUs are slow and it's expected to perform worse than the rest

- Nvidia Geforce 4 MX video cards are worse than the TI series and they do not meet the minimum requirements.

- DirectX 9c has many redistributables. It's common to have an older version installed that misses certain necessary
files.
Be sure to download and install the December redistributable or the default graphics plugin will fail to Load.

- nullDC will run on Windows Vista. However, hardware requirements will be a little higher than the ones mentioned
above and there will probably be sound related issues (as with many other applications running on Vista).

3. Preperations/Other Requirements
----------------------------------

Before running the emulator make sure that you have the necessary Dreamcast BIOS and Flash files dumped from your
Dreamcast.
The BIOS must be named "dc_boot.bin" and the Flash must be named "dc_flash.bin". Both files must be placed in the "Data"
directory which is in the location where you installed the emulator.

The emulator will fail to run any game or software if you don't have these files.

Please note that original Dreamcast discs (GD-ROMs) are special discs that cannot be accessed by common PC DVD/CD drives.
Because of this it is not possible to run these discs directly on an emulator. The only way to run such a disc is
to make a backup copy (a dump) of it using some "special" methods either by using a Dreamcast or a modified PC DVD/CD drive.

4. Usage
--------

When you run the emulator for the first time you will be asked to select the plugins you are going to use.

Here is a list of the plugins that come with the emulator:

-PowerVR (Graphics) Plugins:

"nullPVR" is the graphics plugin that was made by the nullDC team.
"Chankast's video" is a port of the PowerVR (graphics) core that was used on Chankast (another great Dreamcast emulator).

-GDRom Plugins:

"Image Reader" is used to run images of discs (ie: cdi, mdf/mds, nrg).
"zNullGD" is used to run discs directly from the PC DVD/CD drive.

-AICA (Sound) Plugins:

"nullAICA" is the sound plugin that was made by the nullDC team.
"Chankast's AICA" is a port of the AICA (sound) core that was used on Chankast (another great Dreamcast emulator).
"Empty AICA" is an audio plugin that produces no sound. It has reduced compatibility but is faster than the rest.

-Maple (Input/Saves) Plugins:

There is only one available maple plugin available that covers all the maple related functions. It has 2 divisions.
Its first division handles each controller port and its second division handles the expansion slots of the peripheral
connected to each controller port. Each division has various states. Divisions and states are explained below.

Controller Division:

"nullDC Controller [WinHook]" connects a normal dreamcast controller using input from the keyboard.

"nullDC Controller [WinHook.NET]" connects a normal dreamcast controller using input from the keyboard but for
NetPlay usage.
*Refer to the NetPlay section for more information about NetPlay.

"None" acts like no controller is connected to the port.

Expansion Slots Division:

"nullDC VMU" declares that a VMU (memory card) is connected to the expansion slot of a peripheral.
"None" acts like nothing is connected to the expansion slot of a peripheral.

In case the above looks confusing... Imagine a Dreamcast, it has four ports, you connect a controller (peripheral)
to a port, then a memory card to the controller (the Dreamcast controller has two slots for memory cards etc.).
Maple uses the same structure. See? Simple.

-External Device (Modem/Broadband Adaptor) Plugins:

"nullExtDev" acts like no modem or broadband adaptor is connecter to the external device slot of the dreamcast.

After all the necessary plugins are selected and the "OK" button is pressed the emulator window and console will appear.

5.1 Menus
---------

Here's a brief explaination of the menu options and their usage. Whenever a menu option has an arrow next to it it will
expand revealing more options. If it doesn't have an arrow then clicking on it will pop up a configuration/message box.

Clicking on the "File" tab will reveal 5 options.

"Normal Boot" boots a dreamcast disc or an image (depends on the delected GDRom Plugin).

"HLE Boot" boots a dreamcast disc or an image using hight level GDRom emulation.

"Open bin/elf" boots a dreamcast homebrew/development application/demo.

"Load bin/elf" loads a dreamcast homebrew/development application/demo into memory.

"Exit" exits the emulator... maybe.

Clicking on the "System" tab will reveal 3 options.

"Start" starts emulation.

"Stop" stops emulation.

"Reset" resets the emulator.

Clicking on the "Options" tab will reveal 7 basic options.

"nullDC Settings" has the core options of nullDC. It expands revealing options to enable/disable the Dynarec and CP pass.
Clicking on the "Show" option will open a configuration box with the options and more information.

"Select Plugins" opens the plugin selection box.

"PowerVR" contains the available options of the selected PowerVR (graphics) plugin.

"GDRom" contains the available options of the selected GDRom plugin.

"Aica" contains the available options of the selected AICA (sound) plugin.

"Maple" contains the available options of the selected Maple (input/saves) plugin.

"ExtDevice" contains the available options of the selected External Device (Modem/Broadband Adaptor) plugin.

Clicking on the "Debug" tab will reveal the "Debugger" option which opens the SH4 debugger.

Clicking on the "Profiler" tab will reveal 2 options.

"Enable" enables the profiler.

"Show" shows the profiler.

Clicking on the "Help" tab will reveal the "About" option which opens the about box.

5.2 Plugin Specific Menus
-------------------------

Each plugin can add its own menus to the interface of the emulator. These options will appear as an extension of the
corresponding option that each plugin has under the "Options" tab.
For example, if you run the emulator and go to "Options"->"PowerVR" you will notice some available options.
Now if you select another PowerVR plugin and go to "Options"->"PowerVR" again you will see that some options
are changed, added or deleted.

Most of the options of each plugin do not need explaination but there are specific options with results that the
end user cannot understand. Section 8 covers cases where changing some options can affect performane and graphics/sound.

6. NetPlay
----------

NetPlay (unfortunately) didn't make it in the initial release. It's in very early stages at the moment and many
necessary checks for it are not yet implemented. Using different plugins and different versions of the same game
on each machine leads to synchronization loss and to faulty NetPlay. Thus it's missing from the initial release.
Expect it to be implemented soon however.

In case you wonder, every thing needed for netplay comes with the current release... Apart from the Server application.

7. Known Problems and Possible Solutions
----------------------------------------

- If the VisualC++ 2005 SP1 runtime is missing you may get the 'This application has failed to start because the
application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem..' message.Just download
the setup package , it includes all the runtimes needed.

- The console that opens when you run the emulator displays some vital information which will help you report possible
problems that a game may have. However, on some cases it may stay open and make the system slow even after you close
the emulator. Minimizing the console before running a game will fix that.

- There is no way to exit fullscreen mode at the moment apart from pressing Alt+F4.

- nullAICA syncs audio to match the speed of the rest emulator parts. If a game runs below 100% its real speed, sound
will be choppy and will have occasional "clicks". It would be better to use Chankast's AICA on that case.

- Some games run slower and some others run faster than they should even if they report that they run at 100% speed.
Disabling speed limiting will boost the speed of "slow" games if your system can handle it but if a game runs faster
than it should then not many things can be done.
("Dead or Alive 2le" is an example of games that run slower than normal. "Resident Evil: Code Veronica" is one of the
games that run faster than normal.)

- The emulator might crash sometimes when trying to close it.

- If you are asked to enter the date and time every time you try to run a game then the flash file might got corrupted.
Try going to the "data" folder and deleting the "dc_flash_wb.bin" file. This will probably fix the problem.

- If the emulator init fails once , nullPVR will lockup on second try.This will happen if you do run, select cancel on
image selection , and press no in the "Do you want to boot..." messagebox.It affects only nullPVR.

- Some games may have problems if the Constant Propagation optimisation pass is enabled.Soul Reaver and Toy Commander
are known to be affected.

8. Hits and Tips
----------------

- Systems below recommended requirements will get a speed boost with the "No AICA" plugin and might get better graphical
results with Chankast's video PVR.

- Some games have problems with specific plugins. Using a different plugin might fix some issues.

- nullPVR has an option called "Versioned Textures". Enabling this will result in better graphics on some games
(ie: Soul Calibur) but it will make some other games too slow (ie: Guilty Gear X, Virtual On).

- nullAICA has options to enable frame limiting and adjust the sound buffer size. If you get constant "clicks" while
running a game and the emulator runs at or above fullspeed try enabling the frame limiting and increasing the
sound buffer size.
Using a 60Hz screen refresh rate and having V-Sync enabled from the configuration of your video card can also produce
"clicks". Disabling V-Sync will fix that.

- Chankast's Video PVR has two options called "ZWrite" and "Alpha Test ZWrite". Enabling or disabling them can make
some games look better when some graphics appear in front or behind things they shouldn't.

9. About
--------

Credits :

drk||Raziel : main coder
ZeZu : main coder
GiGaHeRz : plugin work/misc stuff
PsyMan : Mental support, managment, beta testing & everything else
Xant : www & forum, beta testing

Beta testing : emwearz, Miretank, gb_away, Raziel, General Plot, Refraction, Ckemu

Many thanks to : Jim Denson, Flea, Jupi, Chankast team and everyone else we forgot.

Cool Herders For The Nintendo DS

Alten8 is pleased to reveal the first title for the Nintendo DS to be released by Alten8 during 2007. Working closely with Harmless Lion Studios , Alten8 is bringing this title to the market which will appeal to a wide variety of players of all ages , and genders. With bright colourful characters , and good game play , lead your flock of sheep to safety , protect them from dangers , and don’t just follow the herd…!!

Four player wi-fi action will feature in this great game , which is based on its creators original Dreamcast version but with all new features for the DS . It is a perfect first market entry for Alten8 as a publisher , to launch itself into the console market. Full details will be released over the coming weeks of both this , and the other future console titles from Alten8.

Alten8 has a range of ten , DS games in production and confirmed . This number is set to grow over the coming weeks with other further games in discussion. Some of the games under development will also cover PC and Wii versions as they progress , giving Alten8 various multi-format title releases.

Alten8 will both publish these games itself in some regions , and in partnership with other interested companies , for regions not yet covered or signed. Alten8 welcomes interest from third parties in this future DS range , or other content or business services it can offer.

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Sega Nail the Dreamcast Door Shut - Sad Day for Our Dreamcast Community

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Sega no longer repairing Dreamcast units

Yuji Naka -- life after SEGA and Sonic

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