A feature i did a few years ago and one im going to repeat now is the DCEmu Interview, a unique idea in which questions are asked by me to the Whole DCEmu Community its a way to learn more about each others and find out what our interests are and much more
Todays Question is What Emulators are the Best In the Console Scene ? What im asking is which system has the best emulalator for eash console.
Say for example the PSP has the best PS1 Emulator on any console, congrats Sony :P, now we just repeat the process for snes, n64, gba etc etc etc Give your Answer via Comments.
Remember to check out our DCEmu Interview Site to catch up on previous DCEmu Interview Questions
Hopefully from today Onwards we will be seperating news feeds on sites where we had them joined together
So from now on the GBA, Gamecube, Nintendo 64 sites will only have that console news on those sites, before now i had it so that GBA news would show up on the DS Site and Gamecube and N64 would Show up on the Wii Site (Also the xbox/xbox360 sites), this confused some but with certain scenes growing so massively it is time for seperation..
All Homebrew/Emulation Coders once we verify them (and i spot them) have the ability to post in all our Console News Forums and the news automatically shows up on not only the site to which that news forum belongs but also on the main DCEmu Portal Site. We always like to have an onsite mirror but gladly welcome the linking to your own site.
DCEmu can be used by coders to become their release centre and with the Homebrew Scene across so many scenes being so massive now you can quickly get noticed by a lot of sites including mainstream networks.
Now with the News forums, normal members cant start topics in them but you can reply to any topic, Normal Members can post as Normal in any Non News forum. I get so many emails asking why he/she cant post in whatever forum.
And heres one for people using private messages to ask Questions, Please Use the forum to which the question would be easiest to get an answer as quick as possible. I get so many and i just ignore all of them (not to mention i have a massive amount of work anyhow). Also the users on DCEmu who use homebrew every day are tons better than me for remembering how to do homebrew on that particular console.
How Can You Help DCEmu
This site like any site is a massive undertaking and we need help on every console scene. No site in any scene is 100% perfect on what they cover and totally up to date. In homebrew methods change all the time and only you the users can help others join in the fun.
We are always in the need of Tutorials and Guides not only for Homebrew but for hacking and Development and even just for gaming on consoles.
Our DCEmu Reviews Website is also in the need of reviews of both Hardware and Games Reviews so please review as much as possible.
Newsposters are always in need especially for WIP and Release News of Emulators, Homebrew etc and across many languages, i am English and to be honest the the translation apps on the net are crap, but the more help we get the better we can become, ive also no doubts that there are releases in places like Japan, China and Korea etc that never reach the likes of DCEmu and others because of language barriers.
Retro Homebrew/Translations News
Another change thats going to happen is that our Console News site will now post as much retro homebrew and Game Translations as possible, bringing much needed coverage to those communities.
The DCEmu Homebrew and Gaming Network
To those of you who are new to the DCEmu Homebrew and Gaming Network our Network Covers all these consoles.
As you can see theres quite a few consoles we cover
But thats not all we cover we also have a range of websites that arent totally Homebrew Related.
DCEmu Interviews - http://interviews.dcemu.co.uk/ - Interviews with Coders from many Homebrew and Emulation Scenes and Home of the DCemu Interview, join in the biggest public interview
DCEmu Guides & Tutorials - http://tutorials.dcemu.co.uk/ - This is the place to submit any and all tutorials and Guides for any scene and they can be homebrew and gaming related. Once we verify them they will show up across our network.
DCEmu Reviews - http://reviews.dcemu.co.uk/ - This is the scenes biggest independant collection of reviews and is the place for both hardware and Software reviews. Get your reviews noticed by submitting them to DCEmu reviews
DCEmu Console History - http://console-history.dcemu.co.uk/ - This is where you can find Dark Watchers Collection of Console History, a great place to catch up on old consoles
PC Gaming & Homebrew - http://pc-gaming.dcemu.co.uk/ - Our PC Gaming site covers PC, EEEPC and PC Homebrew and Emulators.
DCEmu Blog - http://blog.dcemu.co.uk/ - This site covers anything that doesnt fit above and is our rant/current affairs/funny stuff site, all the off topic stuff goes in here.
Harry Potter News - http://harry-potter.dcemu.co.uk/ - Hey im an Harry Potter book/film fan, not homebrew related but we all have our vices :P
Cross & Taylors Chefs - http://personal-chef.dcemu.co.uk/ - This site for all those who wonder is my brothers site who is a top chef, again not homebrew related but he cooks a mean meal :P
DCEmu Developer Sites
These are sites where we have some of the Homebrew scenes best coders release their emulators, games etc to the world:
I think thats all, one last thing is to say thank you from everyone here to all the visitors, guests, coders and staff who make DCEmu what it is today.
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.
Flavor has revealed in an interview with Gamesetwatch about his translation project of SNK Vs. Capcom: Card Fighter’s Clash that he is near to finishing his Dreamcast port of RACE the Neogeo Pocket Colour emulator.
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.
To summarize everything in couple of words -- project is in hold now. Here are the details:
3do-scene.com --- the guy who was responsible for site design and info convertion got a new job and has no time to deal with it anymore. We're stuck here
FreeDO 2.0 -- was in works till a february -- now i don't have a time to work on it. Emulator coding requires great deal of free time, which i will not have now.
FreeDO for GP2X -- same status as above
FreeDO for MacOSX -- it's complete, but for PowerPC platform only -- it runs painfully slow on intel macs with rosetta.
FreeDO for DC -- buggy, and silent... alas -- no sound emulation.
FreeDO in Verilog (FPGA) -- video portion is buggy -- lack of transparency. CPU and DSP are running well. Requires original Toshiba VRAM (for now)
IDE/USB-OTG for FZ-1 and others -- initial software and hardware prooved to be working, however i still need to code advanced GUI for the console itself....
The biggest problem is lack of time and lack of help. Right now i'm also single dad. That means -- i will not have enough time to dedicate to the project to move on. Considering all that i'm thinking about releasing the sources.
Please -- don't forget to comment your votes... it will help me to decide.
Two different road to choose from in the beginning (ROAD OF DRAGONS, featuring the King of Dragons chars; ROAD OF KNIGHTS, featuring the knights of the round chars).
Multiple paths in each road.
Multiple endings.
47 music tracks.
8 playable characters, plus 2 secret chars that you will unlock during the game (if you find the right path Wink)
Now every character can guard (behind + attack button), plus they all have new special moves (see the HOW TO PLAY to see the char's list of abilities.), be careful to use them, they consume mp points.
31 different enemies
Comments:
With this demo, the game is 2/3 completed, consider it like the first and the second episode of a trilogy Wink
in the final episode, all the chars from different games will be together to face the final threat!
I tested it until the v2.1823, but I'm pretty sure you can play it even with the last version of OpenBOR.
Anyways, Thanks to ALL OF YOU members of this great community for help and feedback, expecially (in no particular order) bWWd, lbf, Bloodbane, Orochi_X, Damon Caskey, Fightn Words, MCW, Mr.Q® for their help in my latest problems, i've visited many forums in my internet life, but no one is like this! cheers! cheers!
…but not for the public. Considering we still have almost daily betas, the public release is getting closer and closer. Lot’s of tweaking and eye-candy stuff is going on, but yet we are still missing artwork from our new graphics guy thUg and minor SFX and jingles from our musician operator. Once the graphics part is done, we can go on converting and adjusting levels. From current view, we hope to be done in two to three months.
Tectoy (they used to be Tec Toy officially), which is the Brazilian Sega-affiliated company we like to cover, has a new poll on the main site asking which console consumers would like to see Tectoy re-release. The choices are Game Gear, Dreamcast, and Pense Bem (think well) - a children's computer from the 80s. Anyone can vote. The stats right now are:
Game Gear (5.3%)
Dreamcast (91.0%)
Pense Bem (3.7%)
Dreamcast is a clear favorite here, and people are already speculating about what a Tectoy Dreamcast would be like. Tectoy's usual MO is to take a console like the Master System or Genesis and shrink it down, put a bunch of games on flash ram, and sell it as a stand-alone unit. However, when they re-released the Saturn and Dreamcast before, they just put them out straight (unfortunately those pages are down, but I talked about them here). So this re-release could really be a re-envisioning of the console - or it could be a re-release. My money would actually go toward a slimmer Game Gear, especially if I were the guy choosing the games to go on it! The Tectoy blog only has a cryptic statement "What should we release? Hmmmmm." So, a Dreamcast re-release of some kind seems likely, if they're going by the stats. It may not be soon, but it may be interesting!
Also keep in mind that Tectoy and AtGames have a relationship as well. What Tectoy is to Brazil, AtGames is to China, meaning the company has the rights to release OEM hardware with games based on any Sega console in the region. What's more, the portable Genesis from AtGames that went on sale a few months back is actually Tectoy's portable Genesis. The form factor and games are exactly the same. So, if Tectoy releases an OEM Dreamcast, we may see it with an English manual before long. Keep your eyes peeled! Thanks to Fernando M. for pointing this out.
I put my ideas to the test and created a BIOS dumping tool for VMUs. Big thanks go (again) to Yuki who helped me out and run it on several cards.
So far I've collected three BIOSes for J-VMUs: 1.001, 1.002 and 1.005. No luck with my own E-VMU though, I suppose the procedure address is indeed different.
Actually, even J-VMUs have the code shuffled a bit depending on the BIOS revision - luckily the tool worked, more or less, in all cases. Dumps for the oldest versions came out corrupted but were still useful in finding out the correct entry point for the second attempt
I'm going to experiment some more on my VMU, but my chances of finding the right address are about 1/16000. No way am I doing an exhaustive search
Ron of Dreamcast ES - The Spanish Hub of the Dreamcast Scene has today released PentagoDC, heres the details:
Pentago is an abstract strategy game created by Tomas Flodén and marketed by the Swedish company Mindtwister.
The pentago is played on a 6x6 board divided into four parts of 3x3. Each player, in turn, should put one of its chips in an empty box and then turn 90 degrees one of the quadrants.
He earns the player who manages to align five of its chips (diagonally, vertically or horizontally), whether he succeeds before or after the rotation.
If you come to occupy the entire board without having achieved the goal, the game is on tables. It handles with PAD. Experimentally works in FULL PAL resolution to 768 * 572 pixels.
The Yabause team is happy to bring everyone a new release today. 0.9.5 has many bug fixes, and other code changes. This time though, I actually had a chance to put together a Dreamcast release too, and there are a few Dreamcast-specific changes this time too. This release has an entirely new CD core for the Dreamcast that is written in hand-optimized assembly. Sadly, optimizing the CD core doesn't do much for speed overall, but it was good practice.
As for what has changed, here's the ChangeLog:
Yabause 0.9.5 can be downloaded from http://yabause.org/download/ . Currently, binaries for Dreamcast, Windows, and Linux are available for 0.9.5, with the Mac OS X version soon to follow (hopefully).
