Well has already passed the hangover of the Euro and we have also dismissed with very good humour celebration of the 25 anniversary of the MSX system.
The download is now ready to add that the only tengais ROM or DSK into folders created for this purpose and goals to bootdreams to make a CDI autoboot.
Most games are supported, practically all work with the pad of the Dreamcast. Even the games extended to MSX2 as abbot of the crime and many others.
Cruceta = Cursors
X = Menu
A = Select
And Button = Joy MSX
B = Esc / Back
Start = Enter
Y + B = Select Player 1
The emulator is still at very early stage of development as it is a fast port, operates at full screen with sound, supports the Dreamcast keyboard and what you can already begin to taste, all testing and help is welcome.
Uguru let me know via PM tonight of a release of a new MSX Emulator for PSP, Windows, Linux and Dreamcast.
Heres the translated release details;
uMSX is an emulator-based MSX fMSX of Marat Fayzullin. The Gui and other changes have been implemented by Uguru.
Current Status
Emulation functional
Save and load states of game
Cheater
Scaling screen
To do
Enable sound. -- OK!
Integration of all options Gui.
Integrators emulator options in the Gui.
Implementing the virtual keyboard. -- OK!
Change drive for the games multiple discs.
Versions for other platforms.
Clean and climb to SVN source.
Documentation under construction
Download the Dreamcast & PSP Versions and Give Feedback Via Comments
DKnute has released a new version of his Dreamcast Emulator for Windows. heres the release info
I think I've finally got the DMA code working. Well, for me at least It needs to be tested further on variety of hardware - and that's where you people come in. Expect T10 soon.
Some loose thoughts I feel like voicing:
1) T10 might be a bit slower than T9 series. It'll most likely affect only low-end systems as there isn't really much of a difference (if any) on my E6600.
2) WinCE games usually crash when emulation speed drops below certain treshold. In other words, if you got fast system you should get stable performance.
3) Due to changes in GD-DMA code loading times are back. It's considered normal behaviour since this is how Dreamcast works. Thanks to those changes compatibility has improved and following titles should now boot and work:
- all Dream Preview discs
- original MIL-CDs
- Street Fighter Zero 3
- SEGA Tetris Online
- Tetris 4D
4) CD-DA (audio tracks) will play, but still use the older method of fetching data. This might cause Makaron to crash but it's very unlikely as data reads and playing audio are mutualy exclusive tasks.
5) There are some minor changes in full-screen setup code (the debug window will be hidden and not forcibly refreshed). No 16:x aspect ratios yet.
6) Changes to sorting/drawing code broke shadows in Virtua Fighter 3tb. I'm not planning on fixing that anytime soon though, as it would break many other things. Late T9 versions have this problem too, by the way.
7) Makaron now disables screen saver when run. It's only going to be a problem if it crashes, as it might not re-enable it on exit. Just so you know.
8) If you manually enable MMU the recompiler will not switch to address translation mode until it's actually requested, so there's no speed penalty in BIOS and most games. Some however (like Ikaruga) use only partial translation and this can be emulated without full-blown MMU support. It'll work either way but will be a lot slower with MMU enabled. Some WinCE games are automatically recognized (this works only for GD images) and MMU will be turned on when necessary. In short: keep it off unless Makaron complains about it.
UPDATE: Few more notes:
There were some last-minute cleanups in the code, I hope I didn't break anything
MT version is the one I actively develp, the other is just dumbed down not to support threading. Not tested much so your mileage may vary.
As always, make sure you backup your own INI files if you want to keep them. For GDROM.ini though you should comment out the GDMT setting, or choose one of the following:
-1 is immediate mode. This will block emulator and allow the read to complete. In short: worst performance, but should always work. This is also the default mode for non-MT version.
0 is deffered mode. The read still blocks, just not right away but rather outside SH4 main loop. It might provide smoother emulation (if it works at all
1 is threaded mode. Disk reads are scheduled to separate thread for another core/CPU to take care of. Best speed, smooth emulation, should now work with every game. This is the default for MT version.
Threaded mode can't be selected for non-MT version of Makaron - deffered method will be used instead. This limitation was introduced on purpose, and might be lifted in future. Note that unless you have multiple cores/CPUs it will work just like deffered mode anyway.
I'd also like to remind you that there's a frontend to Makaron called mkfro. Highly recommended for people who can't work my INI files.
UPDATE2: If you experience random crashes while in-game movies play (or are about to start), or from time to time CD/GD image refuses to boot (but works most of the time) - report this. Give me the title and your PC specs.
Since the banda sonora de DUX composed by Andre Neumann is already complete, can now hear a preview several minutes.
DUX Medley (5:32 min./MP3)
Here is a note by the composer himself:
"For me it was important to achieve a banda musical sound a bit like the shooters from 80 and 90 and that in turn combine it with some new electronics / orquestrales, to adapt to fresh style and atmosphere of the game. From a point Technically, I used the sequencer Fruity
7 Loops with some virtual instruments. I added sound effects in some of the additional tracks to improve the harmony of sound. In Level 2, a cave full of water, you can hear some effects of water bubbles. In Level 5, Radiax's Den, the Geiger counter adds to the atmosphere radiated by atoms.
I hope they like the result!
Greetings
Andre Neumann "
If they like what they hear, they can also pre-order the CD from the OST (banda sonora original) HUCAST.net DUX at the store. The launch will take place in August / September.
The German publishing company redspotgames, which also published Last Hope and will do the same thing to the upcoming game Wind&Water, has re-opened their website. They now have a shop and an overview of their games on their site.
In cooperation with Redspotgames, a publisher for self-developed Dreamcast titles, we are currently giving away three copies of the extremely rare Dreamcast game "Last Hope". "Last Hope" is a classic horizontal space-shooter in the style of "R-Type."
DKNute has posted more news of his impressive Dreamcast Emulator for Windows:
F355 Challenge works again. Turns out it was indeed SH4 recompiler bug - one that crept in with the introduction of MMU support. In short: right now all SH4 modules use common framework for interrupts and exceptions, and while converting TRAPA instruction to use that framework I've made a small mistake. Fixed.
The Skies of Arcadia bug is still there, unfortunately. Sometimes I can go in and out the game menu dozens of times (in rapid succession too) and it works. Then I restart the game, and it hangs on the very first try... You know, this might actually be a game bug, it just never manifests itself on Dreamcast due to much tighter corelation in timings on real hardware. Current PCs are faster but all operations exhibit a certain amount of lag (or should I rather call it "processing overhead") - well, only sometimes, but it happens every now and then and there's no control over it. It might take just a milisecond somewhere, when OS decides to switch threads at different time to balance CPU usage better for example, and there it goes. So... still looking into it.
I've came to belive that the same timing problem plagues GD code. It works for me (most of the time) but breaks horribly for other people. I've spent some time trying to determine the cause and I found out that SoA usually works, but will almost always crash at boot if I lower SH4 speed to some 150 MIPS. Curious, isn't it, especially if you consider GD-DMA speed is now tied to SH4 speed - so why does it even matter how fast it goes?
After a while I've noticed that in MT mode GD buffer becomes empty every now and then and this causes problems. Now, this is very unscientific explanation but my guess is BIOS booting procedure is kinda broken. Oversimplified. Maybe because it had to be short to fit all the code in cheaper and smaller ROM?
Anyway - a real GD drive isn't all that fast but once it starts reading, the data is being constantly streamed from disc to it's internal memory. And from there to Dreamcast main RAM via DMA. Think "hourglass" - constant stream of sand goes through. Now, on a PC it's more like a guy with shovel loading a truck. He can do way better in terms of quantity of sand moved but it's no longer a constant stream. If the truck is full it can supply us with all the sand we want but once it's empty it has to go back to the guy with shovel. If at this point we need more sand we either wait (that's blocking emulator for the read to complete) or go empty handed (DMA will finish later then usual and this might cause crash).
If you're smart you already see two ways to fix that. Either wait, as explained above, or... make the truck so big it will never become empty at the wrong time. In other words, make the GD data buffer at least the size of Dreamcast RAM, which is 16MB. And that's what I did yesterday and that really helped
This method isn't 100% fool-proof, as a real GD starts streaming data the moment the first read sector lands in its buffer. In our case loading some few MB might take longer and still fail because of that. This however wasn't a problem so far (or else the whole "offloading to thread" thing would not be possible) and let's hope it stays that way.
Marionette Company boots now, though there seem to be some geometry missing because I don't get text in dialog boxes at all... It's a WinCE game so maybe it's the Sort-DMA thing again?
And c'mon people, new version of Makaron isn't always going to be better than the last one. This is why I call my releases "Test", you know. So that you could TEST things, like new code and such. And report your findings back, maybe? Some people do - and I thank them for that.
Just because I'm not all over your problems when you report doesn't mean I disregard them. Still, I've no intention of answering each and every comment that shows up - this is a place in which I brag about how great I am, not a help desk.
Pixel perfect port with typical Dreamcast features such as VMU, Joypad and Arcade Stick support. Production: Offset printed traycard, offset printed booklet, spinecard, jewel case, professional CD pressing, full colour 12 page booklet
We will put the game on stop, till we recieve the promised beta tests from the “volunteers” who wanted to help. Probably they were just greedy about the beta.
Demul 0.4.1 WIP is an emulator created by a Russian group Dreamcast processor-based Hitachi SH4 allowing emulate the Sega Dreamcast console and the plate Recreational Sega Naomi.
A couple of days ago was released a version with the novelty of a role for autodetection of the region.
The unloading is on the wire Demul 0.4.1 WIP (in Russian).
When you arrive at the Japanese headquarters of one of the world’s leading games companies, you half-expect to be assaulted by employees wearing primary colours and bouncing off the ceiling. The first sight of Sega’s Tokyo HQ is encouraging: in the lobby there’s a statue of Sonic the Hedgehog, the company’s emblem since 1991, when he first appeared as the “cool” rival to Nintendo’s lovable Mario.
When I first came here, in 1992, Sonic was at the peak of his popularity. The first game had sold 4 million copies worldwide, and the sequel would go on to sell 6 million. I remember meeting the people who were then designing the games I would play a year later with something approaching awe. They mirrored this with embarrassment. Their office was just an office, they explained to me, no different from the one I worked in. The workers came in, did their job and went home. It was like banking.
These days, there’s more of a sense of a mission around the building. The interior decor is still a functional beige, but the basement now features a relaxation room, alongside a smoking area set beside an inclined Japanese garden. The intervening years have not been kind to Sega. In the 1990s it sought to capitalise on the booming home games market by releasing a slew of new machines without decent games to support them. In 2001, it withdrew from the console market, leaving the field to Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony. These days, Sega makes games for all three of its once-deadly rivals.
“I think the entrance of Sony and Microsoft changed everything,” says Masanao Maeda, Sega’s corporate director. “But in a good way. We were the first company to offer a portable colour video console, the first to bring 16-bit graphics, the first to offer internet play on a console, but I think we did new things a bit too early. We now have an advantage in software in that we develop all over the world for the international market.”
The big game under hush-hush development today is Sonic Unleashed, which will be released on high-definition consoles later this year. In these drab offices, the walls piled high with computer equipment, a small team led by a remarkably cheerful Yoshihisa Hashimoto has been reimagining Sega’s blue mascot in 3D in adventures that will take him across the world. The pressure must be on? “Well, I was really happy to get the chance to reimagine the game in the way I want,” he says, “but as the news comes out that you’re in charge, the pressure mounts as you realise how many people are hoping you do a good job.”
As the deadline approaches, work on a game can involve days or even weeks of sleeping in the office (there are bunks for the purpose), followed by several months off as a reward. “I work so hard at this because it’s also my hobby,” Hashimoto says with a smile. I do hope he’s still smiling in four months.
I’ve ended up spending a lot longer on the OS X port than I would have liked - the worst culprit lately has been the native CD-Rom support (but that’s a rant for another day). The only major bit outstanding now for OS X is the preferences dialog, which I’ll get back to shortly after I spend some time on other things.
Changes
Add CoreAudio support (OS X dependencies are now down to glib + gettext)
Finish making the OS X bundles self-contained (ie distributable)
Get the OS X native cdrom drive to a ‘mostly working’ state.
Fix a couple of minor translator buffer issues
DEMUL is a new Sega Dreamcast and Sega Naomi Emulator for Windows and was released in a new beta version today.
Quote:
Sound now almost perfect.
Emulation speed much slower in this build especially on slow machines.
Yesterday was corrected sound, now all semply and music should be on the ground wherever they were not. FREE advise you to use integrated pomoschnee because the kernel in the current build slowed on weaker machines may stall before stuttering sound. We want to hear about those games in which not Heard (Heard bad) any sounds that were at drime or other emulsion, as well as those in which music plays incorrectly - set incoherence sounds. Stuttering and infinite loop of sound may be, if you have a machine with a weaker Core2Duo.
The error in opkode NEGC rekompilyatora. Ready2Rumble Round 2 shows a normal screen copyright. This may be correct errors in other games.
This one is actually WinCE game but should work reasonably well on systems slower then my E6600 - there isn't that much processing going on. It gave me some trouble as the Sort-DMA needs to handled in a special way to get correct visuals - but I've managed to make it work.
What's interesting, the USA version screen mask (borders around play area) seems to be somewhat simplified when compared to Japanese original. Well, maybe this depends on the character you choose to play with - but that caught my eye.
I've tweaked my GD code even more and now it seems stable at last. There was also a race condition (found by sheer luck BTW) in the cyclic buffer I use for GD data transfers. I tried to make it safe for one producer/consumer pair but it didn't work out that well, so now it's just blocked via critical sections where necessary.
ARM7 recompiler got fixed too. It was long due, I simply forgot to carry the changes from interpreter and, as luck would have it, I've compiled T10 to use the broken code
Oh, by the way - I found out that Evolution does not boot if there's less then some 11 blocks free on VMU at PAS1. Curious. I'll have to see how my DC will handle situation like this.
UPDATE: Seems like all WinCE games report VMUs as having 0 space left. More work for me I guess...
I still got over 200 GDs form Yuki to sort through, so I'm not going to post screenshots from each and every one - but here's a few, I know you like them :P
Evolution will not boot (black screen right after SEGA logo) if there is less than 8 free blocks on Port A/Slot 1 VMU. It's not a bug in Makaron, it does exactly that on my Dreamcast too. Interestingly if you remove the VMU completly at this point it'll unfreeze and show a warning (about there not being enough space to save) and let you continue. On Makaron the only way to avoid this situation is to make sure there's enough space left on VMU before you launch the game.
If you get that Skies of Arcadia bug where it hangs once you leave the in-game menu, it's probably damaged FLASH. Unfortunately Makaron can damage this file as well - this is a bit complicated and so I'll spare you the boring details. Point is, if that happens you need to replace it with a good dump. I consider FLASH image safe if it's not been used with any emulator, so there's no chance it got corrupted. You might still need to set the date & time, mind you, but that's normal and should work from there on.
By the way - I'm always talking GDI images, unless otherwise noted. In this particular case I'd like to remind you people that there are various problems with Echelon's rip of SoA on Dreamcast, and that stays true for Makaron as well. It's not as bad, as Makaron GD emulation is still faster than the real hardware, but you should expects random lags (like those in intro sequence), maybe broken sound and even more graphics glitches.
I've been playing SoA for several hours (and not just me) and not a single hang Right now I'm trying to implement VMU sounds - if there's anyone out there who could explain to me where exactly SoA makes use of that, it'd be great. A save file would be even better.
And one more thing - if everything goes well there will be something interesing to show at the end of this week. Stay tuned
The coder is on vacation soon, after that the project organizer is on vacation. The project will be delayed by 12 weeks. Release Q4/2008 or Q1/2009. This might be the last news before release anyway.
Speaking with SEGA of America president Simon Jeffery earlier today he noted that the iPhone is about as powerful as the publisher's console the Dreamcast. Jeffery said the company is delighted with how their iPhone version of Super Monkey Ball has been received by the phones many owners and detailed how the developer plans to take advantage of what he calls an upcoming and potentially major new platform for gaming.
Well, this isn't the surprise I was talking about but it's still better than nothing.
Makaron Test 10/1 is out. You know the drill.
T9/4 and T10 were rather unstable but this time around I'm more happy with both GD and DMA code. It's not just bugfixes though, there are several new features in this version:
- support for VMU sounds
- improved Z-buffering
- fully functional DSP
- experimental anisotropic filtering
DSP is enabled by default. It might slow down things a bit, though (as usual) if you have a fast C2D you won't notice it. I'm really considering running whole AICA on separate thread now by the way, so it should improve in future for multi-core systems.
Please note that there's a slight slowdown noticable (in audio) when sequenced music is being played, in all Makaron versions released so far. This is sort of design flaw (and due to rather demanding hardware setup) and will be someday corrected.
Anisotropic filtering is too enabled by default, to 8x - it will be scaled down if your card can't support such mode. This will only be a problem for those cheap cards that support AFx8 but are very slow at it, in this case you might get quite a performance drop.
From Sega's official Chinese distributor AtGames comes another hot gadget that will bring all your fond memories of Sega's 16bit era back to life.
This official product contains twenty hot built-in Mega Drive games and in addition to this, the console is compatible with original Mega Drive Genesis games from Japan, USA and Europe.
This is made possible by the NTSC/PAL switch installed at the back of the console. Most US NTSC Genesis and Japanese Mega Drive games can be played via the consoles's NTSC mode, while European Games can be played in the PAL Mega Drive mode.
Please note that, however, newer titles which are region protected, such as Comix Zone are not compatible with the console and due to region encoding, incompatibility issues may also occur with some other titles.
Aside from your old collection, this console also plays so called RedKid catridges. These are specially designed carts, distributed by AtGames and fully licensed by Sega. New RedKid catridges and multi game compilations are currently being developed and will be made available in the near future.
The package contains two six-button joypads, an AV Mono cable, a multi voltage power supply as well as an instructions sheet.
The Twin Pad Player features standard Mega Drive joypad ports, so other official or third party pads can be connected in exchange of those ones that are supplied with this bundle.
Go back time and relive your fond memories. The Sega Mega Drive Twin Pad Player is in stock today, shipping for US$ 39.90 only in the following three colors:
Sega Mega Drive Twin Pad Player (Black) US$ 39.90
Sega Mega Drive Twin Pad Player (Blue) US$ 39.90
Sega Mega Drive Twin Pad Player (Green) US$ 39.90
List of built-in games:
Alien Storm
Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle
Altered Beast
Arrow Flash
Columns III
Crack Down
Decap Attack
Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine
Ecco
Ecco Jr.
ESWAT: City Under Siege
Flicky
Gain Ground
Golden Axe
Jewel Master
Kid Chameleon
Shadow Dancer
Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master
Sonic and Knuckles
Sonic Spinball
Last but not least, check out further interesting product released by AtGames.
Sega Mega Drive Portable Video Game Player US US$ 39.90
Sega Mega Drive Play TV Twin Pad US US$ 14.90
Sega Mega Drive Classics Play TV US US$ 19.90
Well, it’s become increasingly clear that I’m not going to have 0.9 ready in the next 2 weeks, or even in month after that. There’s two main reasons for this - I’m unfortunately finding much less time to work on lxdream of late than originally counted on, and the OS X work pretty much took a couple of months out of the schedule by itself. In any case, based on the remaining work and current rate of progress, I’m rescheduling 0.9 for October. We’ll see how that goes ^_^.
However having said that, there’s certainly enough changes to warrant a 0.8.4 interim release, especially for OS X and x86-64 users. I have a fairly short list of things remaining that need to go into that release, so that will be out in about 2 weeks. In the meantime, if anyone’s noticed any regressions relative to 0.8.3 or platform-specific bugs, please let me know as soon as possible so they can be fixed prior to release.
Changes
* Various automake fixes (eg out-of-tree builds and distcheck work now for the first time)
* Tag SVN binaries with the revision for ease of tracking/reporting
* Initial implementation of the sort-dma channel
* Fix alignment of 64-bit FMOVs
* Fix soft-reset from the emulator (lockup)
* Fix off-by-one in the translator recovery data (crash)
* Fix build when no translator is available
* Fix build against OS X 10.4 SDK
* General formatting and warnings cleanup
Ron has released a new game for the Dreamcast, heres the translated details;
Following along the lines of Blaster, this is another game we have ported to Dreamcast. In this type of games that move sprites and possess scroll is easier to appreciate the fluidity with which they move once they are compiled for Dreamcast.
WizarDC is handled like Blaster. (Cruceta + buttons). It has enabled the keyboard emulation, but both WizarDC as Blaster can connect and play with the keyboard of the Dreamcast.
Ron has released a new game for the Dreamcast, heres the translated details;
While the new libraries Allegro for Dreamcast covers by Chui finish cooking, we have been experimenting with games of the platform DOS / Windows / Linux and Mac.
Here is a quick port with the latest version in bookstores test / development Allegro for Dreamcast, based on the classic MSDOS and developed to operate under DJGPP. Fortunately for all, the Allegro of Chui and function perfectly compiled C + + and C.
Blaster is a classic game with scrolling, you must collect all hearts and remove your persecutors. It manages the crosshead and the B button to shoot.
See Brian try to talk the head of Sega of America into launching Dreamcast 2 to take on the Wii.
Dreamcast 2? Seaman 2? Shenmue 3? Hear Simon Jeffery crush all of your Sega wet dreams.
This is a quite unusual "scene" demo. As it is unusual in several aspects. It has a very uncommon style using lots of multilayered effects, nearly no 3d scenes and a it has only a "sound-background" instead of the usual, mostly techno-style demo musics.
The other very unusual aspect is that this demo is 100% system independent, it is portable. This was achieved by programming the demo in 100% ANSI C and using no hardware or OS-specific functions (special interrupts etc.)
The demo has been ported to Dreamcast by Marq/Fit.
The only Shell for the Dreamcast has seen an update on its russian page in the last week or so, cant tell you whats actually going on as google sucks at translation but heres a screen:
Ron of the Dreamcast ES website has released 2 new test releases for the Dreamcast Scene, heres the translated details:
Here we continue to rigorously tests and applying a few good tips that Chui has given me.
Accordingly continue to emerge many examples and games that are perfectly usable, for the moment I can tell that the level of portability is quite high, except Windows versions that are infumables.
Zelda and Pacman are two small games, Zelda is a version of 8 bit primitive and not as a remake of Pacman. Both are handled with pad / keyboard and the source is in each of them.
The idea is that you have contact with the source code in C and C + + libraries using Allegro covers by Chui and taking examples will always be easier to implement your ports and creations when bookstores are definitely not published hope that lengthening much in his first public release.
Download and Give Feedback via Comments
Will we see a Virtual Boy Emulator for DC using the allegro lib.
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. If your a specialist in any console area and you want to see all the news appear its a great way of making sure it happens.
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/Movies News site, all the off topic stuff goes in here.
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.
Ron who is one of the Dreamcast scenes most active coders has posted this on his site (translation is crap but you should get an idea of whats coming.
The Panera are some cherished kitchen where boxes are stored and saved the Bread. A Panera is a type of small cabinet in which rods are stored rolls or bread to conserve them. Fall somewhat into disuse today, their importance was significant for most of the time between rustic furniture. Fall somewhat into disuse today, their importance was significant for most of the time between rustic furniture.
The Pan Our daily in my parallel universe is put into Sega Dreamcast maximum number of computer and console emulators to be preserved. The Pan Our daily in my parallel universe is put into Sega Dreamcast maximum number of computer and console emulators to be preserved.
So I already warned you of my new emulators Commodore Vic 64 and Commodore 20 for Dreamcast. So I already warned you of my new emulators Commodore Vic 64 and Commodore 20 for Dreamcast. The Panera I will call DC, Panera 64 and Panera Vic20. The Panera I will call DC, Panera and 64 Panera Vic20.
Soon, very soon more info. Soon, very soon more info. I hope you like the Panera! I hope you like the Panera!
kelvinblue16 has posted a new Beats of Rage Mod for Dreamcast Fans, heres the full news from him:
Elfen lied (エルフェンリート, Erufen Rīto?) Is a Japanese manga created by Lynn Okamoto, as well as the anime based on it. Traffic on the race of diclonius, a mutation of the human being with horns, and their violent relationship with the rest of humanity. It contains scenes of nudity and a generous dose of blood, gore and psychological violence. The title of elfen lied, pronounced [ˈ ɛ lf ə No ː li t] comes from German and means "Song Elven", takes its name from the poem Elfenlied of Eduard Mörike.
The story begins with a young girl, named Lucy, escaping from a research facility on an island near the coast of Kamakura in Kanagawa Prefecture in Japan. Disarmed and naked, except for a full-face helmet metal that covers the head and hide their features, Lucy manages to leave the compound after dismembering and killing several guards and employees using, apparently, a kind of supernatural powers. Moments before escaping, a sniper shoots him in the head with a rifle caliber tank of 50, starting his helmet, causing slight injury and discovering two bony protuberances, like little horns off his head; after this, Lucy was unconscious despeña by a cliff and fell into the sea.
Lucy is not a normal human being, but a diclonius, a human mutation with two small horns on her head like ears of a cat. The diclonius have an extra-sensory perception that allows them to feel the presence of other diclonius. They also seem to have powers telequinéticos, although in reality it is their delivery systems, long arms invisible able to vibrate at a frequency that may come to cut hard materials such as metal or stone. The diclonius can reproduce the form of conventional or infecting a human vectors to insert these into your body. The future children of that person will be diclonius, a variant called silpelit; unlike the normal diclonius, silpelits grow twice as fast as humans and are sterile in the conventional sense, being able to reproduce only through their delivery systems.
if they have Xp
installs VDMSound 2.1.0 included in the zip
please elfenlied said that the icon and press the right button
As you will see a menu option that says
Run with VDMS
This is so that the sound goes well
Yesterday I fixed one of the few long outstanding bugs in TA/PVR core. You should have no problems discerning the "before" and "after" from pictures below
There's a new feature in T10/2: degenerated geometry. Usually that is something you'd want to avoid but in this case I'm injecting it into vertex streams on purpose.
Why? On Dreamcast the polygons have to be arranged in short triangle strips for TA/PVR to process them. Very short actually, one strip can have at most 6 triangles in it. If you need to draw something larger you must first partition the data, and then register it as a set of strips. It keeps PVR sorting lists short but for the emulator it means drawing each and every strip as a separate entity. For games with lots of 3D geometry details or objects (like Dead or Alive 2 or Trigger Heart Exelica) that means up to some 8000 Draw calls - per frame! This is very time consuming.
I modified my rendering system - it now creates additional triangles to connect the separate strips together, so they could be drawn all at once with single call. Of course those triangles can't be visible or else the whole scene would become a mess, so I make them degenerated. In the end there's more triangles to process but it all happens faster anyway
This scheme cuts the number of Draw calls down by factor of 2-2.7 for those most intensive 3D scenes. There are still almost 3500 calls per frame in some places but that's more managable than it was up until now. Any further optimizations would require some serious pre-processing of the data, tieing down CPU. I'll think about it but I suspect it's just not worth it.
As for the surprise I promised... here it is (along with some pictures of my new scope). I'd like to thank ElSemi for the help he provided, this would not be possible so soon without him.
Dee Dee Planet was planned for the Dreamcast back in 2001, but never saw the light of day. It was reportedly nearly finished, and developed by a web designer called Dori Dock. You can find an interview with the creator back here on the wayback machine, but more interestingly you can see some actual footage of the game. It's very indie styled, so I'm not surprised it never came out...still, quite interesting. The guy making it said he'd never played videogames before. Curious!
The Dreamcast version will feature a new package design, as well as an extensive manual with new artwork, in both English and Japanese! The final package will ressemble closely the pictures you see below:
It needs to be tested further on variety of hardware - and that's where you people come in. Expect T10 soon.
