September 1st, 2005, 17:26 Posted By: Christuserloeser
After three months of silence from the BoR scene, this is the first new mod released and it makes use of the new features the OpenBoR project offers, like ...running!
Other than Double Dragon Extreme, this one is mainly based on the GBA remake of Double Dragon.
Did you ever run out of backup memory?
Did your backup memory cartridge every died?
Have you ever wondered why some files are so big that you can't get them out of the backup memory cart?
Did you ever want to upgrade your Action Replay's firmware without burning a seperate CD-R for each type?
Did you ever think the Saturn built-in file manager is too slow in handling?
Did you ever want to load save games from CD?
Of course you did!
- a full featured file browser
- a save game compressor (using BZip2 compression)
- an Action Replay reflash tool (using arflash by ExCyber)
- much more than any other similar tool on Saturn
A core feature is the usage of faster virtual drives which are not limited in number and size (only by Saturn RAM).
The very efficient compression BZip2 is used and because of it's memory requirement it's a little wonder to have it run on Saturn. It uses almost every byte of RAM available in the Saturn, even external RAM carts.
Have a look at bucanero's VMZip app for Dreamcast, which implements the save game compression idea, too.
Patbier (the programmer) informed me about the advance of the Alice Dreams project on MSN, project currently developed with Poche (the graphic designer).
The major feature added since the last public demo was to establish a new font management to make a better visual result.
Also a texture reorganization, to be able to manage future enemies.
Indeed the project is very slowed down. Poche has much job, and it shouldn't be forgotten that this project is a "free time"... Done when it's done !
The next improvement is to manage videos.
The project should restart soon at 100% when the job is less important... Patience, our friends don't like nonsense !!!
The GP32 has a List of Emulators that will impress all and now its big brother is coming in the next month to challenge both the PSP and the Nintendo DS but the new GP2x is a powerful beast with a screen thats has big as the PSP and one major factor it beats the PSP on is the fact that Gamepark have made the system open and embrace Homebrew and amateur coders, the system is a 2x 200Mhz behemoth and although it wont beat the PSP or DS in the Commercial arena it will be awesome for emulators and Homebrew.
Long time Lik-Sang readers may recall that just over two years ago we revealed the "Treamcast" to the world, a portable Dreamcast console mass produced and sold here in the shady streets of Hong Kong. Alas due to legal reasons we weren't able to sell it, but that didn't stop one of our readers, David Kaplish, who decided if he couldn't buy one, he'd build one.
Prior to this, David had admired the console hackings of Ben Heckendorns, who in 2001 had his own 'PSP', and since then made portables out of many more machines, including just finishing a Neo Geo, in addition to publishing his own book earlier this year. Inspired, David read everything he could find on the subject, got to work, and soon had his own portable PlayStation. This was featured in a mod contest shown on Tech TV, and later donated to the Special Olympics auction at CGExpo. More keen to innovate rather than follow however, next he created the first, and still the only till this day, portable Jaguar. All jokes aside as to why it's still the only portable Jaguar today, we have to admit it was an impressive achievement.
Continuing his voyage into un-charted technical waters, David set his sights on a much larger console, the Sega Dreamcast. This wasn't an idea others hadn't thought of doing, but while reading on different forums, David found the reason no one actually went ahead and did it, was they didn't know how you can power a portable DC. While David maintains it was easy sailing after selecting dual 7.2v rechargeable batteries, his handheld Dreamcast was still far from simple, being made from the parts of three different systems, the DC, a GameCube, and a PlayStation!
Starting from the beginning though, as even the designers of the real Dreamcast would have done, David sketched possible ideas of what he wanted the console to look like, which was followed by a clay mold, then a plaster cast of it. The next step involved taking a 14" x 18" sheet of plastic, and heating it up. Once that's softened up, it sits on top of the plaster cast while a home made vacuum chamber (instructions on how to build one can be found here) sucks all the air out from around it, making it fall into the shape of the cast. The only problem with this method however, is he can only do it once because he has to break the plaster cast to get it out of its new snuggly fit plastic case.
Having the case ready, the next step was to fill it up. After changing the position of some motherboard items to help keep the portable Dreamcast down in size, David had to keep track of the 50 separate wires that gush out of the motherboard and connect to the GD-Rom drive. Extremely relived to see it still worked after such extensive surgery, he packed everything inside of the case, including a 5" LCD screen and built in 16 meg memory card, and wrapping up 40 hours of work, topped it all off with a coat of paint. The two rechargeable batteries lasted 1 1/2 hours, which is not bad at all considering the Dreamcast firmware was not made to be portable in the first place. For long road trips however, just grab yourself a car to AC adapter and you're set.
Looking around the Dreamcast, the fan resides on the rear, along with the power switch, while on the front an earphone socket and AC port can be found. The game discs themselves spin on the back of the machine, protected behind a cover, which while attached with magnets gives the back a very clean look. So there he had it, the world's first home made portable Dreamcast. Games like Quake 3 Arena, Sega Rally 2, Half Life, Crazy Taxi, NFL 2K... all playable on the go. Without a controller port, there's no way to play certain games like Seaman, but then again talking out loud to a smart ass human-fish hybrid is probably something you shouldn't be doing outside of your own house anyway
Currently David is building a version with a VMU slot in it, so it won't need the in-built edition, and has already chosen his next challenge, the Nintendo GameCube. He also had about 20 portable systems ready to sell at the CGExpo, held this August in San Francisco. The line-up included Dreamcast, NES, PlayStation, Jaguar and N64. For those who didn't make it to the event however, you could visit David's website, http://www.portablesystems.net/, and along with photo diaries of his many handheld creations, lies his email address welcoming any orders.
- FAME Motorola 68000 CPU core.
- A lot of code improvements.
- Throttle modes for speed up.
- Autoframeskip.
- Multi-disk support.
- Around 75% compatibility.
Here you go, I released "Street Fighter Quake Final", prequel to Street Fighter 2 Quake.. and is horribly embarassing! However you may have some fun with it. This was made when I was 13 years old!
I also released "Codename Corporal: Complete" edition! Which was talked about for awhile and then never saw the light of day. It included many cool features (Grenades, new death sequences, better overall gameplay, laser sight, and more) and some neat stuff planned and includes the source code ..
However Codename: Corporal Complete died too with Codename: Envenom (Sequel) and The Ascension of Vigil moving it to the back bench (and with good reason).
Hooka who has just about interviewed the whole of the GP32 scene has now turned his powers towards Chui who has you know has just released a new version of his Amiga emulator for the Dreamcast and has so many great projects that he works on includiing Fenix for both GP32 and Dreamcast.
Heres an excerpt from that interview:
Hooka: Did you ever think of integrating some of the idea's from GPAdvanced into VBA32 or vice-versa? or recompiling VBA32 with your new SDL port?
Chui: No, I think that fgb32 is a perfect GameBoy emulator for GP32. I will use VBA32 for Dreamcast and GP2X in the near future.
Hooka: What ever happened to the Vorton project? Did you feel it was complete?
Chui: No of course not, it needs a good set of graphics and complete code. I hope to have time in the future for continuing it.
Hooka: Why did you decide to start working on DC? (good system for homebrew I have to admit)
Chui: Dreamcast has the best open development toolkit: KallistiOS. Also it has lots of hardware capabilities and it's scene needs help, GP32 scene has a lot of coders and projects.
Who remembers MR-TOOL, the MR files management tool created by kRYPT_ ?
For information, a MR file's an image with reduced dimentions (320x90 maximum), for to be injected in IP.BIN file. With this tiny tool, you can insert personalized logos in the bootstrap file (that IP.BIN). You'll see the logo when launching the disc, at screen "Licensed by SEGA Enterprise Ltd".
And well I downloaded the v0.4 source, I understood and I corrected it. Then I release the v0.5 version ! At this moment it's the command line version, but the GUI should follow.
Changes :
- Fixed a bitmap size bug in the method Compress.
- Fixed invalid bitmap & mr files detection
- Fixed BMP write.
- Fixed many mini-bugs...
- Code cleaned
September 7th, 2005, 01:57 Posted By: Christuserloeser
In association with NESdev.com DCEvolution.net proudly presents you another great release of our DreamEmulation Project series: This time it's our ultimate tribute to NINTENDO's classic 8-bit system and the incredible scene that takes care of keeping our childhood memories alive.
The image has been in development for a very long time and got support from many people of the Dreamcast and the NES scenes. And it shows: After downloading and unpacking you get an image filled with 370 MByte NES goodies bringing back those nostalgic feelings.
There's really no disc space wasted, certainly not with what it's filled with:
- High quality image menu system (artwork by Mikey242)
- Background info on the NES, its homebrew scene and more
- 32 original classic NES TV commercials
- 57 MP3 tracks, including five complete records
- 180 free NES games and demos, lots of them previously unreleased!
- 230 NES Music ROMs featuring original compositions & remixes
- FSL Menu Theme Selector and six different NesterDC themes to choose
- 110% compatible for browsing the image on your PC too!
But this release is not only a tribute to the NES, it's also our definite tribute to NesterDC: With this release we say 'Good Bye' to Takayama Fumihiko's greatly improved port of Nester, that served our needs for exactly three years now, and 'Hello' to NesterDC SE, the forthcoming update of everyone's favorite NES emulator by Scherzo.
Wait no longer and rush to this page, with more info, screenshots and the download of 324MB (found at the right menu).
Sam Steele has released a new version of his DC Squares game, heres what he posted:
DCSquares 2.0.1 is out! This minor update fixes a few bugs with the Dreamcast build, as well as the problem causing score codes to occasionally not be generated.
DC Homebrew which is the biggest archive of Dreamcast Ports, Games, Demos and Multimedia has been over hauled, to the naked eye not much has changed but i went through 269 pages of html and removed all tables and old template code and now the site uses CSS and can be changed totally in the matter of minutes.
The site uses the news feed from DCEmu UK so we have a centralisation of news for 2 sites.
The site now has a good bandwidth protection installed above that of what ZTnet installed, meaning no more leeching.
The site has also gone back to the more orange theme and looks better for it.
Man-Jimaru sent me this email last week (my apologies for not posting earlier, my workload is overpowering at the moment)
"Hi !
I am the webmaster of the french dreamcast portal Dream-storming.com, we decided to create this section at Dream-Storming : http://senko.dream-storming.com ; it contains the very first part of our action to ask G-Rev for the adaptation of Senko No Ronde on Dreamcast !
we would need your support by applying your banner to this petition as you own the most important dreamcast website existing, it would be a real advantage to convince G-Rev to adapt this game on our beloved system. G-Rev has been informed that the petition was launched.
Thanks a lot for your precious help "
DCemu UK and DC Homebrew will both display the banner and help the Dreamcast scene out all we can. (once i get the banner )
Cydoca (formerly Cyberdog Castle), Dreamcast Scene, BlueCrab and also the DC Evolution Network will all be represented at the Dreamcon 2005 convention. It is held at the East Coast Gaming Expo 2005 on Sunday, September 18th, 2005 at The Inn at Reading in Wyomissing, Pennsylvania.
Curtiss Grymala we be there on our behalf. There will be a setup of several Dreamcasts and on the convention you can play with almost every image we made! If you like an image you can even get a complete disc with original covers to take home for free.
In addition to unveiling some really cool new stuff that will see its first public release at the convention, we also hope to breathe even more new life into the Dreamcast community by showing all of the ECGX attendees just how much can still be done with the DC.
If you live nearby, please take a visit. Hope to meet you there!
The DC Evolution Team.
Shame i cant be there but its a little far to travel.
Chui, Fox68k and Franxis are going to release a new Snes Emulator for the Dreamcast , heres what Chui posted in his hosted forum:
Today, i will compile first prototype of SNES4ALL under Dreamcast!!!!
A new project of SuperNintendo emulator for Dreamcast and GPX2 by Fox68k, Franxis and me. It's a remix of last snes9x and snes9x Zaurus port (SDL video). Also, i convert Unix ioctl audio to SDL audio. Now, it's compile under Windows and GNU/Linux.
What do you think about another SuperNintendo emulator for Dreamcast?
The FreeSCI site has seen some new updates of late, it doesnt mean much to be (being a non coder) but there may be something of interest to FreeSCI fans.
Got a special news article for those wanting to buy a <a href="http://www.gbax.com/main.pl?indexgp2x.html" target="_blank" >GP2X</a> before the rest of the world can get their hands on one.
For those that dont know theres a new contender of the Future King of Homebrew Consoles and that console is the GP2X, the console itself is basically a Portable Linux Machine with Dual Cpus running at 200Mhz Each, one of the amazing things about this machine is that Gamepark Holdings have made the Console fully Open Source so that means youll see lots of Emulators and Homebrew on the GP2X from the word go. Some of the Emulation scenes best programmers have already said they are working on it and that includes people like LDChen (PSone Emu), Chui (Snes and NeoCD Emus) theres already a Gameboy emulator running on the console and with the backing of a mass of Developers you will have the ultimate console without the unfair obstructions that Sony and others force on us.
Heres some details off the site:
To sum up the GP2X:
It can play games. It can play your Movies. It can play your music. It can view photos. It can read Ebooks. It runs on just 2 AA batteries - And it can do all this in the palm of your hand or on your TV screen.
Yes that's right, this handheld can connect to the TV, console style. Watch your DivX movies on the TV. Play emulated classics on the TV. Try big screen Quake. Or just play them all on the GP2X's large 320*240 backlit screen. You get the best of both worlds.
It runs the free Linux operating system. This means a whole world of Games, Utilities and Emulators are at your disposal. Quake, Doom, SNES, Megadrive, MAME, Media players and Applications to name just a few.
It's powerful - Two 200mhz CPU's with 64meg of RAM, custom graphics hardware and decoding chips. Takes SD cards and has 64M of NAND memory. Plenty to play with. One of the most powerful and advanced handhelds today.
That means it can play movies without any re-encoding. Just put them onto an SD card. Any size. Any resolution. No messing about. The GP2X scaling chip will resize to fit the screen. No other handheld can do that.
Thanks to LyingWake, i release MR-TOOL v0.6 based on kRYPT_ source.
Changes :
- Fixed : Renamed '-scan' command to '-sega'. It scans a BMP image to check if it'll convert to a MR image OK meaning, being able to "fit in a normal IP.BIN" and it being within the size, resolution, and depth (24-bit BMP) limit, as well as check how many colors there are in the image.
- Fixed : Use '-scan' switch to check BMP image to check if it'll convert to a MR image OK.
- Added : Relative paths are allowed now (such ".\HELLO\MYFRIEND.BMP", or "..\..\DC\GOOD\").
Max the webmaster of the awesome Dreamcast Scene website posted this on our forums:
Yet another topic about the Dreamcast Demo Disc #01 which was almost as often delayed than Duke Nukem Forever.
First of all, the DDD#01 release will still happen. I'm going to be honest why it was delayed for almost 2 years and hope you don't feel that disappointed after all. We had the concept of the DDD#01 in 2003, and wanted to produce 2.000 pieces and give it away for free at Lik-Sang. After we contacted a lot of DC scene intern programmers and asked if it's okay to add their game / application / emulator to this disc, we wanted to wait to give them a bit more time for a new version and some even to release brandnew content, which need time as you know. After months and months of waiting, almost nothing happend. Some projects were even cancelled without telling us a single word. And then the crappiest thing happend. Legal issues.
Yes, we indeed had some issue with... legal questions. I can't tell you more than this, but believe me that the last months were a pretty busy and expencive time.
Now, 2005, we finally want to finish it, although it's "just" a compilation of the best DC scene production and mostly designed for collectors and beginners. Beginners in that way, that we want to get new interested people in this subculture due this disc who were never connected to the DC scene before (like Japanese gamers, retro gamers, ...).
Now I want to ask you, since we would have to publish the CD all by ourself. Would you agree that this would be a good idea, would you even buy a copy for US$2.50 - 5.00 to have the "best-of-collection" of the DC scene in your shelves or would is it just worth a download?
The CD version would offer you:
* CD jewel case
* Front and backsheet in color
* Small manual
* Professional pressed CD with color print on top
We were about 10 people working this last week end on what became morback
You can find a beta version there for those of you having a coders cable (can maybe be run with demomenu or dchakker after converting to bin, not tested)
That's some tic-tac-toe with an 8x8 grid you must align 5 tokens to win
Options don't work for now
The IA is rather dumb, well it can maybe challeng a 10 year boy
The game board and tokens are skinnable
Heres a release that no one spotted it seems (Shame on some of you) over at Consolevision, heres what ZMaster Posted:
Hey,
I've been working on a Lumines like game for the DC over the past few weeks. The game takes the basic idea from Lumines and is called 'Block Smash' but I don't know in what extent you can call it a clone of Lumines because I never played the original one However, all the artwork and content has been created by myself or under permission of the respective owner and is not stolen from anywhere. The game features 12 Levels/Skins, Sound FX & Music and VMU support (to save your Highscore and current level).
I would also appreciate some feedback, if anyone feels like he/she has to give any
For over a year now we've been assured by a message from a directing manager at G.rev that Senko No Ronde would be release for Dreamcast in late 2005. After some time passed, no one is sure anymore if G.rev will be releasing the title on DC [...]
So with great expectations, we bring you the "SENKO NO RONDE DREAMCAST PETITION". We've petitioned with success to G.rev before, and it can happen again. I think everyone will agree that even if Senko No Ronde is the last title to come out on DC, it will be worth it. So let's go all out this time, cause it's all or nothing.
Show your support and print out the Petition and send it as soon as you can to:
Dreamcast-Scene
P.O. Box 4062
Elmira, NY 14904
United States
To those of you who have never visited we have a channel on efnet #dcemu for discussion of not only Dreamcast but every console going including PSP, Nintendo DS and infact any console.
- Overscan bottom border render.
- Stored queues improvements.
- Medium resolution fixed.
- Some input fixes.
- Atari ST video 50/60 switch support.
- No CRC calculation when cache not present.
- Multidisk support.
- General improvements.
CGRemakes released a new version of OpenBoR a few days ago. Since OpenBOR was last reported here, the ability to walk on obstacles has been added. This new version fixes some problems with the last version:
- removed the check to make sure the player was facing the enemy before doing a grab. The author wasn't too happy with how it felt
- The seta command should be how it was before, so things like projectiles can have custom "a" values
- Entities now fall into holes like they are supposed to
- Stars now only spawn the 3 they are supposed to
Tursi posted news on the Harmlesslion forums that he sent in the second release candidate to Dan Loosen of The GOAT Store for approval for a commercial release. He stated that it contains everything he wanted in the game, so all that is needed now is Dan Loosen's approval, and the game will be sent to be pressed and then sold commercially.
!!!
"
