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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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May 5th, 2008, 22:09 Posted By: JKKDARK
Progress on the Sega Dreamcast emulator for PC.
I've got good news and bad news.
Bad is I've not touched Makaron sources for weeks now. Guess it needs to ripen some more  I got to the point where I have two or three ways to solve a problem, and each has it's pros and cons - and I just can't decide which one to pick. But I will get to it, eventually.
The good news is Yuki bought some VMUs with games on them and it got me pretty interested. I'm going to try and emulate standalone VMU now. Just think, since it's rather simple and low-spec I could easily use SDL to make it work. Hell, ScummVM uses SDL. I'm somewhat familiar with the API too (my old MOD player used SDL for both sound output and visualisation).
That would make a VMU-on-PC emulator. But guess what, there are SDL ports to Dreamcast available too! So the project could be made to compile and run on DC as well. And at this point it would run under Makaron of course. I mean, how do you say no to VMU-on-DC-on-PC emulator? :]
The main problem right now is VMU BIOS. Apparently it's not possible to access ROM memory directly while running from FLASH, so no easy way to dump it. KATANA dev kit comes with VMU BIOS but I'd rather not rely on it. You know, copyright stuff and all. Also, I'd like to have an English one from one of my own VMUs.
Just yesterday I've came up with a plan to hijack one of the system calls to read the BIOS area for me. This is a fragment of BIOS disassembly:
1966- 61 00 | L1966: PUSH ACC
1968- c1 | LDC
1969- 13 66 | ST VTRBF ;write to work RAM
196b- 71 00 | POP ACC
196d- 73 00 | DEC ACC
196f- 61 00 | PUSH ACC
1971- c1 | LDC
1972- 13 66 | ST VTRBF ;write to work RAM
1974- 71 00 | POP ACC
1976- 73 00 | DEC ACC
1978- 61 00 | PUSH ACC
197a- c1 | LDC
197b- 13 66 | ST VTRBF ;write to work RAM
197d- 71 00 | POP ACC
197f- 73 00 | DEC ACC
1981- 61 00 | PUSH ACC
1983- c1 | LDC
1984- 13 66 | ST VTRBF ;write to work RAM
1986- 71 00 | POP ACC
1988- 81 07 | ADD #$07
198a- 53 02 d9 | DBNZ B,L1966
198d- a1 03 | SUB #$03
198f- a0 | RET
See, by calling 0x1966 with my own TRL, TRH, B and ACC I could use it to LDC any BIOS area into work RAM. The only problem here is I'm assuming the BIOS that is going to be dumped has this procedure at this very address. Seeing how listing comes from 1.004 version and my VMUs are 1.005, it might not be that simple...
By the way - calling into any arbitrary place in ROM is easy, the hard part is getting out But that can arranged as well. Included below (may not be so obvious at first glance) is a public syscall entry for FLASH write routine. It's unused, as it does exactly the same as 0x0100 syscall:
0108- 20 2e c5 | writeFlash2: CALLF L2EC5
010b- b8 0d | NOT1 EXT, 0 ;execute code in other bank
010d- 21 01 0b | L010D: JMPF L010B
What I need is to push 0x010b address on stack and JMPF to 0x1966 while switching banks to ROM. The BIOS procedure will then read ROM memory, store it in RAM and RET to this NOT1 above, effectively switching back to 0x010b in FLASH, where I'll be waiting for it It's brilliant! IT'S SCIENCE
The other way to do things is to go HLE. There are only several public entry points in BIOS code, so it's rather easy. Calling anywhere else is pretty risky so I'm betting no game will ever try that.
So far I've determined that Yuki FLASH dumps are good and working, so I can start with that right away.
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May 5th, 2008, 18:17 Posted By: JKKDARK
http://www.hucast.net/blog/index.html
You can now pre-order DUX for Dreamcast.
Here you can see DUXs cover art. The final may looks slightly different but all in all it will look like this. When pre-ordering you will receive an bonus poster that shows the cover art.
DUX will also runs region free on every DC build before 2001 which are the very most of DCs ever build.
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May 2nd, 2008, 19:06 Posted By: JKKDARK
Progress on the upcoming homebrew game for Dreamcast.
Uh, is there a bonus cave in front of me?
Can I mange to jump over this ground? I am scared!
This bridge was for sure not stable…
The first boss… will I survive to save Maria?
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April 30th, 2008, 12:07 Posted By: JKKDARK
Progress on the upcoming homebrew game for Dreamcast.
Yesterday the storyline pictures were converted to look as good as possible in 240 colors only, as this will still allow us to use another additional 16 colors for a font, to display the story. We used the original material first (where pictures do have more than 1000 colors), but the SDL downscaling possibilities are rather limited and looked pretty poor. We hope that at least the storyline is optically in better shape now and will go on with more tasks soon!
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April 29th, 2008, 19:56 Posted By: JKKDARK
Progress on the upcoming homebrew game for Dreamcast.
We decided to increase the amount of levels per world from 7 to 8, due to having two music tracks per world and we did not know how to split up in a fair way. So we have a new music track every 4 levels, along with seperate boss music.
If all our plans go well… we have a total amount of 56 instead 49 levels. This is more than enough for 2-3 hours of entertainment.
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April 29th, 2008, 18:18 Posted By: JKKDARK
via Kotaku
The Dreamcast is dead? Don't tell the production crew of new martial arts flick Forbidden Kingdom. Siliconera's Spencer just finished up a viewing of the Jackie Chan/Jet Li epic, and says that while the film's littered with gaming references, one stands above all others:
However, the best reference is also the most subtle. In the first five minutes of the movie, after Jason wakes up from his dream, you can see a Dreamcast on the left hand corner of the screen underneath his TV.
Sounds pretty blink-and-you'll-miss-it, but then, so was the Dreamcast.
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April 27th, 2008, 12:01 Posted By: wraggster
News/release from ron/Dreamcast.es
DeathChase is a classic for Sinclair ZX spectum, recently ported to Amstrad CPC, and now we have it available on Dreamcast.
Based on SDL and vector graphics now posted the first release 01 for alpha test. At the moment is a version WIP and is in its early stages. Do not expect a juegazo since it is as I say a very primitive. The same will evolve to make it a frantic game of deadly persecution of motorcycles.
The author of the original computer code is Paul Robson.
By eliminating motos Enjoy your opponents, the game manages to pad the traditional way. The trigger is right Escape.
Update by Indiket: Unloading corrected and added some sound effects 
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April 26th, 2008, 19:42 Posted By: JKKDARK
An interesting article posted by the Giana's Return team at the official website
The organizing team just recieved an email from someone who pretends to know more about a commercial “Giana Sisters” remake, which is in the works by the german company “bhv Software GmbH”. If we can believe Amazon Germany the game should be out in shelves on 15th May 2008. We are really looking forward to have a talk with the guy who has details.
Actually this is something which scares some of us off.
I might repeat a part of the story again, for those who don’t know:
The history of ”Giana’s Return” has begun as Giana 32k (DOS), a Giana Sisters clone with 7 levels, coded in less than 32 kilobyte. Later on, he wanted to make a full game out of it and was looking for a leveldesigner, this is where Kojote, the current organizer of Giana’s Return came in.
To shorten it a bit, Myth was working on a Windows version (Giant Worlds) which was published on a computer magazins cover CD. From this moment on he had the attention of the copyrightholder Armin Gessert, who tried to sue him, but after a chat on the phone, he dropped this.
Myth was too scared to continue development, but Kojote had plenty of new levels left, which were now without use. Considering building a level and testing etc takes more than some would believe, he took the project into his hands, now as “Giana’s Return”. Due to Myth complaining about his poor code and not giving the relevant parts, we had to start from scratch.
“Giana’s Return” was now born in 2001/2002. With the help of a console coder known as Christian Nowak, we have gone pretty far and were able to release a 0.90 beta version to the public, mainly for Dreamcast, GP32 and Windows (32-Bit). Due to unkown reasons, CHN dropped the work on Giana’s Return and left the console scene in general.
There we were… an almost done game, but with some minor bugs which destroyed the gameplay - and the best part - no source code.
It came what had to come…
The whole game required a new team and a new code base. In 2004 we pulled our head in an iceblock and started over again, with a NEW team.
Of course the organizer tried to get in touch with the responsible people, specially Armin Gessert. It turned out into a real pain, as Armin seems to hide himself pretty well. We have sent a written statement to him, CHN at the beginning of the project, as long as the project organizer. Without direct response from Armin. We didn’t take it too serious as we know he has to earn his bread as well, but we did not gave up. We even tried to ring up Armin Gessert at his company “Spellbound AG” in Germany - all we reached was talking to Mr. Speer, who said he will talk with Armin. No direct response from Armin again at all - up to now.
Considering “no answer” is an answer too and the word of Mr. Speer (see E-Mail above), we accepted his silence as “Do what you want”. After all we had no money intensions and just bring a worthy sequel of Armin’s great game. We have also been in touch with Chris Hülsbeck, who allowed us to use his original .SID files (the e-mail is still in our hands) and Manfred Trenz allowed us to redo all of the levels one by one. Of course the last two don’t have too much to say, as the copyright holder is still Armin, but having support from two people who were involved as well, nothing could have gone wrong.
Regardless to this, we want to point out again that no profit money has been made from this project, a four digit Euro sum has been invested by the organizer up to this day. Not to mention the hours and hours of work, provided by all team members.
Depending on the conflict which turns up now (no one is interested in getting sued for something), we either change the name of the game (as already announced) or we will limit the release to platforms which are comercially dead such as the Dreamcast and GP32.
The situation is more than disappointing, specialy after the progress we made recently and still do.
Well… let’s find out how limited the license of “bhv Software GmbH” is, maybe they just have the rights for a Windows version - and the Giana’s Return Team can easily avoid a Windows release, to keep everyone happy.
Time will tell…
Giana’s Return Organizing
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April 23rd, 2008, 17:27 Posted By: JKKDARK
via the Giana's Return blog:
As we are currently waiting for more graphics and have time in between, due to this we started the work on our runner up project “LB”. It’s going to be a Jump’n'Shoot game with a sciene fiction topic. We will use the Giana’s Return engine, this also grants, that this game will be available on multiple platforms.
The team will be slightly different from the original Giana’s Return team, so we can assure a much faster release Give us your thoughts!
Possible platforms of release: GP2x, Dreamcast, PSP, maybe others…
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April 23rd, 2008, 01:14 Posted By: wraggster
News/release via Dreamcast.es
As know, our friend Chui has recently drawn bookstores
SDL + OpenGL (partial) for the use and enjoyment of staff xD
Indiket wanted to try them first with a jueguecillo and here is the result:
T-SIM 0.1
This "game" (by calling game, rather is an attempt simulator) allows us to fly
Our helicopter in a world created entirely 3D.
We recommend, if you are going to test, use a keyboard since there are many functions that are not
Can be simulated with the pad.
Pad: Arrows moves the helicopter
Start: Quit Game
L: Interior view
A: Outside view
A: Accelerating engine
B: Reduce engine
X: Move collective top
And: Moving collective below
To take off: Hold A + X few seconds.
For more information on the checks with the keyboard, letting you Web original author:
http://igwe.vub.ac.be/ dost thou bring ~ / t-sim /
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April 21st, 2008, 21:22 Posted By: JKKDARK
New information was added in the HUCAST website, talking about the gameplay of their upcoming homebrew commercial game for Dreamcast.
Hello and welcome to the DUX news blog.
I am René Hellwig and as you may already have heard I'm currently developing a 2D shooter for the Sega Dreamcast to be released this year on a physical disc.
I choosed the horizontal memorize type of shooting as personal preference and because the Dreamcast could easily need more of them. Border Down and Last Hope is just not enough. Speaking about Last Hope, you may know that I'm actually part of the NG  EV.TEAM and that our next Neogeo shooting game is still in progress, so it will hopefully get an relase next year.
So let's take a look at DUX.
These screens showing an early development status of roughly 65%.
As shown DUX will completely consist out of CGI to use the advantages of Dreamcasts 2D capabilities. So the game features high-resolution to allow some super smooth graphics in 60fps. Also notices, the game is still in development but the screens present the games overal look pretty well. The final results will look much better.
As the screens also hopefully show, this is going to be memorizing shooting. So it will be necessarily to memorize some parts of the game here and there, but there's still a focus on action. When you never have heard about memorizing in shooters then you probably never heard of R-Type. Yet DUX won't be just a clone of mentioned classic, but rather a modern and standalone game inspiried by the games within the same subgenre. By saying modern I mean this memorizer will take the advantages of recent shooting games to combine it with an undying gaming concept. Accessibility, highly-visible bullets and a lot of those simultanesly on screen, are one of the advantages - just to name a few of them.
To shoot yourself through the space alien scum you will need following arms. Depending on the games situation you can change the actual wep by picking up the individual item since all of them has strong and weak points.
Hyperbeam
Maximizes the power of the on-board shots including hyper charge beam. This shot is very helpful to get read of a bunch of enemies at the same time and it also makes more damage on boss enemies.
Potency: Does a lot of damage to boss enemies, and takes many enemies to death on one blast.
Weakness: Slow to load.
Bouncinglaser
Warps two lasers with bouncing effect onto the environment. This bouncinglaser can be quite powerfull, when it's used right. Especially cannons on the roof and ground will fear this laser. Not so recommend for boss encounters.
Potency: This shot can do a lot of damage to enemies when bouncing along the walls.
Weakness: Doesn't harm boss enemies too much due to the 45° shooting angle.
X-Ray
Fires a strong x-shaped laser onto the screen and has a minor bouncing abillity depending on the active power level. Use the enviroment with this x-ray shot to make this weapon even more dangerously. Maybe the strongest weapon in the game but seldom to find.
Potency: Very powerfull, especially with bouncing abbility active.
Weakness: Relative low shoot frequency and saldom to find.
Additionally to this fire power, you can get upgradable rockets and bombs. All in all this selection of weps in this is pretty straightforward and increases efficiency when used properly.
Next time some enemies will be introduced.
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April 21st, 2008, 04:33 Posted By: ron
DCiberia.net Dreamcast.es and have merged with a new portal dedicated exclusively to the Sega Dreamcast and continue to disseminate all the information together in Spanish.
This portal can find all the information officer of Sega Dremacast Scene and the whole undiluted.
Sign up and works with us, we hope.
We're Online!
The long-awaited FUSION is already today reality. From now have a new portal Dreamcast that covers everything related to the World Scene and Dreamcast in Spanish.
We are already operating DCiberia is in no way ReadOnly and will be updated today onwards. Will be kept operational purposes repository for information and to update our new website.
All news related to the Scene and the Dreamcast Original can be found from here today, update your bookmarks, the new URL is: http://www.dreamcast.es
As a first advice is to go registering, the previous accounts to other pages do not work anymore, not take anything and of course is free.
Dciberia.net is currently accessible only by the subscribers, if you want to enable an account, both because they want to help overturn the information as if you need to see something, put a comment in this press release and you send your data login to your private courier on the web. The forums are also accessible means of consultation.
Although at the moment this new web portal contains no information, we are working to be adding all that (previously filtered) can be useful for the community, and make this portal is # 1 on information Dreamcast speaking Spanish.
The new Staff consists of: NaOnaK, Ron, Neoblast, Melovampire, Timofonic and Indiket (for the moment), as partners Puch666 and diegomr.
As always, appealed to all, we are open to collaboration and support of all to complete our contribution to the spread of the Dreamcast and Scene, all we can. We believe that this Time Lucky
Thank You
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April 21st, 2008, 00:55 Posted By: JKKDARK
Progress on the Sega Dreamcast emulator for Linux.
The good news is that I now have regular access to a mac again, and it’s actually fairly up-to-date (ie it’s running 10.5). So as a result, I have to say I’m stunned that other people have managed to get as far as they did - as far as I can see, Apple seems to have broken GLX pretty thoroughly[0]  .
So I’ve done 3 things:
* Fixed the crashes at least, with glx, and generally fixed up the configure script for 10.5. I’ve probably broken it for 10.4 though. Which raises the question - is anyone actually trying to use lxdream on 10.4?
* Added support for the native GTK port w/ NSGL. This actually works fairly nicely. Unfortunately the only binary I can find for GTK/Quartz is provided by macports, and the font support is broken at the moment (ie completely missing). If anyone actually manages to build it from source… do let me know
* Started implementing a (fairly minimal) native cocoa UI. Well I was always going to do this eventually, I just hadn’t been planning to do it _now_.
In unrelated news, pulseaudio support is now in, along with spanish and italian translations (thanks to segnini75 and ghost22)
[0] So far I’ve noticed: It’s restricted to 16-bit depth buffers, has various other regressions from 10.4, creating a context with fbconfig crashes the app, glSecondaryColorPointerEXT fails if given a size = 4 (and lead to a crash), not to mention the libGL link cycle issue…
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April 20th, 2008, 15:25 Posted By: smspower
Based on James Howell's request of tools/programmers for the Segagaga translation, I've gathered a teams of guys who are working on this.
http://forums.insertcredit.com/viewtopic.php?t=10100
James' has been not helpful so far (busy etc) and we need actual translated data to progress, right now the guys will likely be halted. In the past weeks they made toolset to extract all game text, inject it back (in separate file or in executable), stored as Ascii to save memory, code modified to manipulate and convert Ascii text, code modified to scale font size as requested by James, etc.
Does anybody knows the original programmer on this project?
Can anybody provide translation data so we can evaluate memory consumption of english data?
Anybody interested in doing work on this would be welcome.
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April 17th, 2008, 18:41 Posted By: JKKDARK
Progress on the upcoming homebrew game for Dreamcast.
…and declared as almost bugfree. There seems to be a bee which does not behave as it should, but with some modification, everything should go, or fly, it’s way
As soon as we have the modified clouds, we _might_ consider taking a video, but the chance of “more screenshots” is slightly higher.
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