DC port from DoctorN?

[MisterN]

A PSP port will come out when a Dreamcast port does

[SplinterGU]

A PSP port will come out when a Dreamcast port does

I don't think so... PSP have more chance of come out that DC port... I think... because DC is obsolete... PSP is active...

[MisterN]

lololol you said DC is obsolete, go look at all the game communities out there for dreamcast. Whenever a new dremacast game comes out, thousands of copies are made and they are all sold out by time the pre-orders arrive. Try finding a second hand Dreamcast in Japan lol.

[handsource-dyko]

The problem is that the DC (but also gamecube and some other consoles) have rediculously little ram to work with. Bennu is a kind of virtual machine with certain conveinces, this requires more memory then programs that are specially taylored for these systems. I've read sometimes that developers find it challanging to develop for certain systems because of the limitations.

[josebita]

lololol you said DC is obsolete, go look at all the game communities out there for dreamcast. Whenever a new dremacast game comes out, thousands of copies are made and they are all sold out by time the pre-orders arrive. Try finding a second hand Dreamcast in Japan lol.

The main problem here is that we need the hardware. I know this has been spoken before but programming for an emulator is much harder than programming for real hardware because when issues arise it's REALLY hard to tell apart programming bugs from emulator glitches.
Seriously, if you want to try porting it yourself, I can guide you but you'll have to do the research and the port yourself.

Also, as handsource-dyko points out,, the hardware on the DC is limited so you shouldn't expect the performance to be good: think that in a Wii @ 640x480 32bpp feels sluggish, and it has more resources than a DC.

[SplinterGU]

lololol you said DC is obsolete, go look at all the game communities out there for dreamcast. Whenever a new dremacast game comes out, thousands of copies are made and they are all sold out by time the pre-orders arrive. Try finding a second hand Dreamcast in Japan lol.

you said commercial games from SEGA or homebrew games?

[handsource-dyko]

Exactly! The limited resources is a reason why malvado is mainly a pc game. Although it should be able to run on a wiz/cannoo, it needs at least 25mb of ram. And to be on the save side, I recommend  32 mb or more. Back in the days of the amiga/snes/megadrive similair games where programmed differently and in a more memory effecient way. They where mostly written in machine code (or with parts in C) and used tile graphics /midi/mod music and most of the resources where in rom so they did not occupy any ram. The nes only has 4k of ram!  :o   And quite a lot of games used on-cart memory expansion chips. So, that puts things a bit in perspective. O, pc versions of snes./amiga games with similair audio/visual fidelity often needed at 386/486 and 8+mb of ram. ;)

[FreeYourMind]

NES don't need to load the game, the game runs directly from cartridge  ;D

[SplinterGU]

NES don't need to load the game, the game runs directly from cartridge  ;D

you are right! ;)

[SplinterGU]

My point is about the ironic comment of DoctorN...

A PSP port will come out when a Dreamcast port does

He is thinking that we have the duty to make a DC port before that any other port... He is wrong... and if he think that with pressure he'll to get your port then he is very wrong...

I need to that you all understand... this is a no commercial and free project... we are work and share it because we love the free spirit, we don't have duty with nothing and with anybody... we are do this because we wish... but don't pressure us, you'll don't obtain nothing with it.

[tmoney]

If DoctorN wants a DC port, he can make it himself.

[MisterN]

the specs of a dreamcast are equivalent to the specs of a naomi arcade machine (which is why games like marvel vs capcom 2 are 100% perfect arcade ports and some games like soul caliber are actually better on the dreamcast). They arent officially liscensed by sega but the NG:DEV team has a sega dev kit. I have all the software needed for the dreamcast, i just need some info on porting. For exmaple, this "monolithic build" that ive heard of, what is it? where is it? is it a source code? what? and since fenix can compile on the dreamcast, would bennu also compile? Other things.

How about this, I give you the tools, you help port it. Emulators work fine in this case.

[josebita]

the specs of a dreamcast are equivalent to the specs of a naomi arcade machine (which is why games like marvel vs capcom 2 are 100% perfect arcade ports and some games like soul caliber are actually better on the dreamcast). They arent officially liscensed by sega but the NG:DEV team has a sega dev kit. I have all the software needed for the dreamcast, i just need some info on porting. For exmaple, this "monolithic build" that ive heard of, what is it? where is it? is it a source code? what? and since fenix can compile on the dreamcast, would bennu also compile? Other things.

How about this, I give you the tools, you help port it. Emulators work fine in this case.

The monolithic branch is a version of BennuGD I created for porting it to the Wii. It bundles all the "dll"s inside a single binary and is specially suitable for embedded platforms (such as consoles).
You can find all the code here.


I cannot mantain a new port, specially since the iOS and Android ports still need work before they're fully working and since right now I'm working around 12hours/day.
The "only" thing you have to write are new compilation scripts (makefiles) and probably minimal code patches. Try it: you'll probably learn a lot and the result will be rewarding.


If you want I can guide you, the rough steps you need to follow are:
* Locate SDL, SDL_mixer & vorbis for DC. Other libraries are also required, but they're extremely portable.
* Find a working SDK for DC.
* Understand how packaging is managed in the DC.
* Use the SDK to create an initial "Hello World!" application: One that only displays a line of text in the screen and get it running on the DC.


I cannot help you with those as they're platform-specific for DC but I'm sure there must be tutorials for that over the internet for that. Once you get that running we'll probably be able to help you get the port working.


Again, please give it a try yourself. The best way of making sure something gets done is doing it yourself, specially when dealing with open source.

[MisterN]

The sdk for dreamcast is kos, the sdl stuff for dreamcast is here: http://chui.dcemu.co.uk/sdl.html, i just need a code that searches the root cd for "autorun.dcb" (that is, if .dcb is still used by todays standards for bennu); it should not be that hard seeing as how the dreamcast handles many things like windows (the unreleased but leaked Half-Life is a prime example, its almost a direct port aside from being packed into .wad files) and that homebrew is very easy to make. I think C is the code used correct? If not maybe it might be C++ but im sure a search and load code would be very similar/easy to produce.

Now can you guide me what to do :3?

[MisterN]

Ok so the DDRE4.cdi when mounted will actually install everything needed (from sdl to the program to the IDE if needed). That is downloaded from dcemulations website and you need daemon tools to mount .cdi files. So I am assuming this is a pretty straightfoward process lol.

UPDATE:
Well the release candidate one (im assuming is the latest) compiled just fine from your website in kos, so now I have 2 .elf files which I shall convert into 1ST_READ.bin and then I shall create ip.bin. It truly was not that hard, NOW IF IT DOES LOAD, even if I cannot load a game (for I didnt add any controls or anything) and the dreamcast system does not crash (it would go back to the start menu), then it works. But at that point someone should help me with the rest lol.

UPDATE2:
couldnt run, it compiled so its gotta work somehow. I posted help here: http://dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=101456