drkIIRaziel has released the first public release of his Dreamcast Emulator for Windows thats now being talked about as the best Dreamcast Emulator so far:
nullDC v1.0.0 BETA User Manual
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1. What is it?
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nullDC is a plugin based Dreamcast emulator for x86 based computers running Windows Operating Systems.
2. Recomended System Requirements:
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- 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).
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
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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.
"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
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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
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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
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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
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- 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.
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.
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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.
The Dreamcast Scene today has heard the news officially that we dreaded, Sega have finally ditched the Dreamcast, whilst we knew it was coming its of great sadness that a last minute reprieve wasnt granted especially with the recent sucesses of Dreamcast Commercial games, Last Hope, Karous, Trigger Heart Exelica and Under Defeat
SPREAD THIS NEWS
The News was posted yesterday by our DCEmu User Jkkdark and today CVG posted further confirmation:
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...
The Dreamcast Community will not go away but a sad day for all.
A new version of IP.BIN Writer has been released by fackue of Dreamcast Help.
Here are the changes:
What's new:
- fixed date overwrite bug
- improved the core, faster, progress bar
- removes ECC stuff from extracted IP.BINs
- generate device info CRC (required by IP0000.BINs)
- make IP0000.BIN
- context menus have been removed
- strip, add, extract MR logo from IP.BINs
- extract MR logo from CD images
- extract Sega and TM MR logo from IP.BIN and CD images
April 6th, 2007, 13:18 Posted By: Christuserloeser
As some of you might know, the most recent OpenBoR v2.0691 build for Dreamcast had a few problems. Here's what SamuraiX wrote about solving the issues at the LavaLit Forums:
When I read this, I thought it would be a good idea to ask the entire community for donations so Sam could buy a BBA.
In my opionion he would deserve it. There are so many incredible things he achieved for the Beats of Rage / Dreamcast scene since he started maintaining the OpenBoR code back in 2006. Here's just a short excerpt:
- Much improved performance
- Highly optimized and reduced memory usage
- Auto Memory Cleanup
- Sprite Database Management
- Fully functional 4 player support
- PAK File Selector
If you enjoy playing Beats of Rage mods and are interested in contributing, please transfer your donation to Sam's PayPal Account.
April 6th, 2007, 14:26 Posted By: Christuserloeser
segadreamcaster started a campaign to save the European PSO servers:
SPREAD THE WORD FOR THE DREAMCAST SCENE
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!
Here is the Developer release of DragonDC. Includes last Dreamcast port formed by binary and source.
DragonDC is a Dragon 32/64 & Tandy Color Computer emulator and is created on a preliminary port of Quzar, based on Ciaran Anscomb's XRoar 0.11.
It needs a GUI like DCider urgently and a few adjustments. Works fine on all emus of DC. A good idea is to enable the GUI included with the XRoar orignal source code.
- For those of you having problems to use the command-line based Convertneo.exe, we have uploaded the Windows frontend ncGUI by DrCacho to our cFiles Downloads:
Get it HERE and extract it to your \AES4All\Windows\Convertneo\ folder (or wherever Convertneo.exe is located). Then copy your zipped ROMs into the same folder and click on ncGUI.exe to start the .ZIP to .AES conversion.
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
One of the long time allies and good friends of DCEmu UK and a very talented coder, GPF has today seen a relaunch for his hosted site here at DCEmu, the site uses the new template, with new news/release forums for all the systems he codes for which are Dreamcast, Nintendo DS and Cellphones and soon once he finishes playing games PSP devving.
April 16th, 2007, 10:37 Posted By: Christuserloeser
I.M. Weasel released a new version of his Mac Dream Tool for Mac OS X users:
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.
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!
Better late than never! The Limited Edition release of Last Hope has finally reached us today, about two months later than initially expected. There have been a couple of push backs to due manufacturing issues, but we are glad that this has been sorted out at the end.
The Limited Edition release of this Dreamcast™ compatible shooting game contains a Vinyl CD soundtrack album (with 9 tracks) and an extra soundtrack leaflet, bundled with a copy of the game in a white color double disc jewel case. This release is strictly limited to only 500 units and each copy of the game contains a hand-written number printed on the back of the spine card.
The Last Hope [Limited Edition] was originally pre-sold at Play-Asia, but the delay has apparently led to a number of cancellations. In other words, we have around 80 copies left in stock now, selling at US$ 79.99 as long as supplies last.
As an apology to all customers for the long waiting time, each preorder will ship with a FREE Dreamcast Visual Memory Card as well as a Last Hope sticker.
- read\extract IP.BINs and extract MR logos from CD-ROMs (low density GD-ROM also supported)
- bugfix: extracting a MR from a non-supported CD image format; sector size selector
- implemeneted save as (finally)
With all the next-gen news of late (and flurries of name calling based on leaked stats, manipulated figures and plain nonsense) the phrase “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics”†, appears to be more on the mark than ever.
But sometimes statistics can throw up some truly intriguing information. The ‘Many Eyes’ project’s findings regarding average game review scores for last-gen systems including Xbox, PS2, GameCube and Dreamcast, present one of these moments.
According to its ‘visualisation’ (pictured right), which is based on data from the Metacritic review-score site, both the Xbox and the PlayStation 2 are beaten by GameCube and Dreamcast in terms of games receiving the highest-scores.
Very little other information, aside from the raw data is given. So, for example, we don’t know over what period the information derives from (although Metacritic began business in 1999). However, what it does tell us (or in this case show us) is the following:
Of games rated between 97-100 points (from 100), the Dreamcast caught three while the Xbox and PS2 attracted two and one respectively. At the lower end of the scale, games that rated at less than 29 points appeared five times on the PS2, six times on the Xbox, twice on the GameCube; no Dreamcast games rated that low-down.
The number of review ratings used by the data in total is 2,913. This breaks down as follows:
What is also made clear by the stats is that the media likes to be 'nice', with the bulk of the review scores (2,077) appearing between the 57 to 84 point range.
The Many Eyes project is part of the part of IBM's Collaborative User Experience research group – and there’s a vague chance that you could take it seriously. However, the more you drill into the stats, the more questions need to be asked, including: with more than 2,500 PS2 games released in Europe, why only 1,147 reviews in this sample? Why so few Dreamcast games - 142? Which sites did Metacritic use?
So, once again, while looking over the lovely graph, bear in mind that stats are only as good as the information supporting them.
A news post and forum topic from Senile Team announces more new screen shots for Rush Rush Rally Racing, showing a car selection screen as well as multiplayer and more! Here's the news post from their forums:
And here we are again. More screenshots, including some of the multiplayer mode.
This mode is still under development, though. These screenshots may not reflect the final product.
They are nonetheless very impressive! The three-player mode seems as though each player gets their own vertical "tate" display, as with the popular scroll shooting genre. I'm sure that is the best way to utilize the screen (especially in widescreen), while I imagine that four-player will utilize the screen in a familiar fashion to those with multiplayer N64 and Dreamcast games.
The cars have headlights.
(Driving when it's dark is tough, headlights or not... but it does have a particular feel, not to mention look really cool.)
For the half dozen Sega Dreamcast owners out there who haven't burned or bought themselves a boot disc nor had their Saturn-successor professionally modded, what the hell are you waiting for? The console is rich with fantastic imports from all regions, meaning a single-region Dreamcast is an unrealized potential Dreamcast.
If you're the kind of gamer who likes to get your hands a little dirty, why not try out the simple, do-it-yourself region switching mod? It requires little more than a soldering iron, some wire and a CD-burner. I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but it's still worth mentioning if you're tired of disc swapping prior to sessions of Ikaruga or Shenmue II.
The process looks fairly straightforward, simple enough to warrant a back-up Dreamcast purchase and an hour of your time.
It's been a couple of months since I reported on this project, so I thought I'd post a small update on goings on for those interested.
I've been very busy helping to open a new restaurant (details at http://www.bigboy.com/RestaurantImag...April%2024.pdf) and haven't had any time to work on the game. Therefore, it's currently on hiatus. I have every intention of returning to the project once I settle into a less-than-80-hours-a-week schedule, but for now I just don't have the time.
Due to lack of interest in Dreamcast Fenix, I've also closed down the technical site. I have other plans for the address in which it was located and didn't see the point in leaving up a dead site that no one was interested in. I still have the html if anyone wants it. Just drop me a line at webmaster@orubin.com.
Curtiss Grymala wrote: There seems to have been a serious issue with our server over the last week or so, which rendered the DreamZone boards completely inaccessible.
I have set up a new installation of YaBB on a different server, and restored as much of the original information as possible.
This copy of YaBB does not currently include any of the modifications that I had installed on the DreamZone boards initially.
Please feel free to use the forums again as you normally would. However, please also realize that there are some features that are no longer available on the boards due to the missing modifications. Until I have a chance to look back over the modifications and attempt to install some of them (which will probably be a few weeks at minimum), you will not be able to use the phpBB-style themes. Those include subSilver, subBlack and subTrail.
In depth featured games:
Trigger Heart Exelica
Radirgy
Bangaioh
Last Hope
Twinkle Star Sprites
Under Defeat
R720 - (Bonus game from Segagaga)
Karasu (Karous/Crows)
XOP - World exclusive work in progress DC version
Other featured games
Border Down
Chaos Field
Gigawing
Gigawing 2
Gunspike
Mars Matrix
Psyvariar 2
Rainbow Cotton
Shikigami No Shiro II
Trizeal
and
Zero Gunner 2
