New Demul progress Update: 8/4/14 (Star Wars and Nascar graphics improved)

[SegaOutrun]

UPDATE 8/4 :You may have noticed that the floor looked funky in the earlier screenshots. That because its was rendering the floors in low res. According to the devs this has been fixed. Nascar had the same issues and it has been fixed as well.




Update: 7/29/14- Star wars is now fully functional.  Now we wait patiently for a release.





http://i67.fastpic.ru/thumb/2014/0729/45/f3ffdeac52bdc6e6b5dad3c294572b45.jpeg

Update:7/27/14 -Even more good news coming from the Demul team. Star Wars Pod Racer has been finally properly dumped and it could be coming to the next version of demul. It is currently not working properly but it expected to be running soon. (next few days according to Mameworld)

http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=328758&page=0&view=expanded&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1





in none racing news, even more games are being added to playable.
Manic Panic Ghost
Touch de Zunou
Mazan -Flash of the blade



Older: The demul guys have been posting some updated screenshot of their emulator and hopefully this mean a new release is around the corner.

non racing related. new dumps of touch de uno and rythym tengoku are playable. i believe rythym tengoku has not found its way into the internet yet.



Racing related. Preliminary Naomi Multiboard support! F355 and F355 look to be playable now




F355 Deluxe (triple screen)


I cant wait for the new update. Demul went from being my most hated emulator to my favorite emulator once i got the hang of it

[MrThunderwing]

Cool, I'm really hoping they get the Hikaru Star Wars Racer arcade game running at some point in one of the updates, I can't remember ever seeing one in an arcade back in the day and I'd really like to give it a go.

I cant wait for the new update. Demul went from being my most hated emulator to my favorite emulator once i got the hang of it

I was a bit late coming to the DEMUL party as well, I've still got my Dreamcast so I couldn't initially see the point in giving it a go (I didn't know about the Naomi, Atomiswave and Hikaru games at this point). Then I realised I could use my PC steering wheel with it to play Daytona 2001 and I wouldn't need to suffer from the horrible DC pad controls anymore. Awesomeness.

[twistedsymphony]

Maybe it's because I didn't get into DC emulation until last year but I never understood the absolute disdain people seem to have for Demul.

it seem to be more resource intensive than the alternatives, and the recent graphics enhancements require DX11,  but other than that I've yet to find anything that it doesn't do as good or better than the alternatives.

[BadMouth]

Maybe it's because I didn't get into DC emulation until last year but I never understood the absolute disdain people seem to have for Demul.

it seem to be more resource intensive than the alternatives, and the recent graphics enhancements require DX11,  but other than that I've yet to find anything that it doesn't do as good or better than the alternatives.

People were playing Dreamcast games using chankast on budget builds almost 10 years ago so I can understand why those same people would think the system requirements for Demul are a bit much.  I never used it because it seemed to be a PITA to set up with front-ends.

When I first got into emulation, NullDC was the standard.  It supported command line options, so was front-end friendly.
It took no time at all to set up.  I'm still using it for Dreamcast because I don't want to redo everything in my front end.

Until v.5.6, Demul did not support any command line options so was useless if you wanted to incorporate it into a front-end.
Even after they were added, you were still required to press ALT+Enter to go fullscreen after the game had launched.
Because I wanted the NAOMI gun games on my setup, I made autohotkey scripts as workarounds (and the guys over on the Hyperspin forums came up with their own workarounds).  For Dreamcast, NullDC was still the much easier way to go IMO.

Once upon a time there was also emu-drama between the Demul and MAME devs over sharing of information.
That's all water under the fridge now.

Learning how to set up emulators soaks up a fair amount of time, so people like to stick to what they learned the first time around and are reluctant to move forward.  Trying to keep all your emulators up to date for minor improvements will drive you mad.  I wait until it makes a difference in a game that is important to me.  That usually only happens every couple years.

EDIT: I probably wouldn't bother keeping up if it weren't for having a driving cab.  Each driving game added is a big deal.  The standup cab already has thousands of games I haven't played, so a few new games aren't such a big deal and aren't worth going through the hassle of updating emulators for.
When you only have 60 arcade games that work perfectly on a cab, getting one more is worth the effort.

[MrThunderwing]

Yeah, likewise, there's normally got to be some pretty major changes in an emulator in order for me to consider it to be worth the hassle of setting up a new version. Again, any new racing games that become available (not sim racers though), tend to be quite a big motivating factor to update a pre-existing emulator. Most of the arcade racing games I'd like to see come out now are mainly the ones that are already operating on PC hardware (Like Chase HQ 2), so I imagine it'll be years and years before any decently emulated versions of those appear.

[twistedsymphony]

Interesting

I own several Dreamcast consoles so I never had any real interest in emulation. I only became interested in NAOMI emulation around Demul .57 and I was using HyperSpin as a front end so setup was a breeze.

I tried Makaron and I spent several days trying to get it working right and I couldn't figure out why everyone sang it's praises.

[BadMouth]

I tried Makaron and I spent several days trying to get it working right and I couldn't figure out why everyone sang it's praises.

Again, I think it comes down to when you jumped into emulation.
If someone were coming into it now and their PC is capable, they should just use Demul.

The state of NAOMI games in Makaron was way ahead of Demul for a while.
It could also be launched fullscreen via command line so was front-end friendly.
It was the only way to play the arcade version of Marvel Vs Capcom 2 for a long while.

Makaron is weird in that it wasn't really ever made for distribution.
The dev just shared it on his blog every once in a while in whatever state it was in at the time.
Sometimes it wouldn't include all the files, sometimes the .ini files were only partially complete.
You almost had to be following along with his blog throughout the development and have used the previous version to know how to set it up.
My Makaron romset is a weird collection of .bin, .dat, & mame zips from the time.  The mame zips work for some games, others require the .bin
Someone made an unauthorized UI version of it, but I didn't try it because it set my anti-virus software off.

I use it for a fair number of NAOMI games that my PC falls just short of running full speed on Demul.  (mostly shmups that experience occasional slowdown in demul)
IIRC it doesn't have any screen rotation so if you don't have a rotating screen, you'll be playing them sideways. 

He doesn't post as often as he used to, but his latest project might interest you.
http://dknute.livejournal.com/

[hiljak]

What is considered a capable PC for demul?  My driving cab is an i7-4770 3.4, 8GB RAM, and GTX-560ti 1GB.  Will that cut the proverbial mustard??

[MrThunderwing]

What is considered a capable PC for demul?  My driving cab is an i7-4770 3.4, 8GB RAM, and GTX-560ti 1GB.  Will that cut the proverbial mustard??

I've got a core i5-2310 @2.90GHz, 8 Gb RAM and an Nvidia GeForce GT530 -1GB and it runs the Dreamcast, Gaelco and Atomiswave stuff without issue. Likewise, the Naomi games run ok too if I keep them at a lower resolution, but I may get an occasional frame-rate hiccup. The Hikaru games seem to need a fair bit of PC horsepower though. I can only get Sega Nascar and Planet Harriers running at about 50 fps, which speedwise doesn't actually look too bad, but it does distort the audio horrifically. I could actually get them both running at closer to 55 fps in the previous DEMUL build. I've seen a video on YouTube though of someone running Sega Nascar at full speed though, without the mangled audio, so it can be done. All the latest DEMUL builds (I think 0.58 and onwards) won't play the Hikaru (and I think Naomi as well) games if your graphics card doesn't support DX11.

[SegaOutrun]

ive got two computers. one has a 550ti and it can run the games at low resolution with a few hiccups here and there. I get better performance using the dx10 plugin instead of the DX11 in some games. The other computer has an overclocked 7850 and it run all the game at 2x native smoothly with a rare exception here and there. I have 7950 coming at the end of the week so hopefully demul will run like butter once it arrives. It be even better once this new version get released with the assumption that they have made improvements to the backend as well as multiboard support.

[dkersten]

I'm running a first gen core i7 with a GTX285 and the few games I play on Demul work just fine.. well, I don't think any of them are perfect, but pretty darn good.  I run the fighters with it, like DOA2 millennium.  I have a couple others going, although I can't think of them off the top of my head at the moment. 

BTW, that card is dx10, not 11, and while it will launch and run with the dx11 plugin, it is SLOW, like runs at about 50% normal speed.  WIth the DX10 plugin it runs smoothly.  The only glitches I have had so far are rendering and sound glitches, nothing related to performance or framerate.

[SegaOutrun]

Update:7/27/14 -Even more good news coming from the Demul team. Star Wars Pod Racer has been finally properly dumped and it could be coming to the next version of demul. It is currently not working properly but it expected to be running soon. (next few days according to Mameworld)

http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=328758&page=0&view=expanded&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1





in none racing news, even more games are being added to playable.
Manic Panic Ghost
Touch de Zunou
Mazan -Flash of the blade

[MrThunderwing]

Ooooooh, colour me excited! Also, looks like there's more news to come. Quote from one of the DEMUL dev guys over at MAMEworld

more VERY good news expected later today. about Hikaru in general.

[SegaOutrun]

also, I've started working on InitialD/ClubCart/Derby card reader/printer, with
moderate success, but atm its far from normally working.

 

here is some more tidbits from today

I think there are "slightly" more bugfixes/improvements:
- VF4 sound/volume glitches
- Atomiswave internal conrols system fully reverse-engineered (Bass Fishing trackball emulated, lightguns now fires without gllitches), need get time to write English docs and submit this to MAME.
- Atomiswave serial touch screens emulated.
- Hitachi SH4-based sensor board emulated (ManicPanic/Pokasuka, Touch Zunou)
- "Mazan flash of the blade" sensor boards emulated
- Capcom VS SNK 2000 intro was fixed.

I hope, I'll have enough time and will until end of summer to finish this crap.

The new Star Wars dump gave them a new way to look at Hikaru and they think they may have figured out some of the protection issues. first up is air trix that seem to be running well now. As for Star wars it self, actually its ~fully working, but lacks some YOBA functionality like "Internal resolution scaling", pixel shader filters, so if we make release right now "AS IS" - users will be completely pissed off, especially Russian ones...

[SegaOutrun]

Update: 7/29/14- Star wars is now fully functional.  Now we wait paitently for a release.

[twistedsymphony]

this has me excited because it means we're one step closer to Virtual On Force being emulated.

I don't think it's ever been dumped but one was up for sale on YAJ for about $800 recently lol

[SegaOutrun]

EDIT: I re-read your post and I think you meant VON 4, which is hikaru. If so then yes, it has not been dumped.

youre a lil late to the party. its been playable for a long time. the only thing is the controls are hard.
Player 1 Arcade Digital UP/DOWN/LEFT/RIGHT are mapped to the left stick.
Player 1's PUSH2 is Left Weapon, PUSH1 is Left Boost.

Player 2 Arcade Digital U/D/L/R are Right Stick.
Player 2's PUSH2 is Right Boost, PUSH1 is Right Weapon.

[twistedsymphony]

The game is called "CyberTroopers Virtual-On Force" the number 4 appears in the marquee/logo because it's a 4 player game (2 on 2) but it's actually only the 3rd game in the series and the 4 is not part of the games name. Known by people who play the game as "VOF" or simply "Force". It's actually popular enough in Japan that they still play it at the annual "God's Garden" tournament.

That same one that was for sale on YAJ is back up again... for some reason they raised the price; now it's a grand  http://page9.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/k174247189

The NAOMI based Virtual On (which is the 2nd game in the series) is "CyberTroopers Virtual-On Oratorio Tangram Version 2000" which yes, is playable. people refer to this as "VOOT"

The NAOMI release of VOOT is version 5.66 however earlier versions 5.2 and 5.4 were released on Sega Model 3 hardware and aren't completely playable either due to encryption that was never cracked.

The first game is simply called "CyberTroopers Virtual-On" and was released on Model 2 hardware. However the Saturn game in certain regions had a sub title of "Operation Moongate" so players often refer to this game as "VOOM" or "OMG"

I own the actual arcade hardware for every Virtual On game except for Force. 2 Model 2 PCBs, 2 Model 3 PCBs, and a Naomi Cart

----------

Emulation of VOF is interesting because there has never been an arcade perfect home port. Despite the game being released in 2001 the only home version ever made was an HD re-make for the Xbox 360 in 2010 and only in the Japanese market.

meanwhile OMG has received arcade perfect ports on the Saturn, PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 (only in Japan)
and VOOT received an arcade perfect port on the Dreamcast as well as an HD Re-relase on the Xbox 360 in all markets.

the PS2 also received a game called "CyberTroopers Virtual-On Marz" which is the actual 4th game in the series and never had an arcade release. the PS3 received an HD re-release of this game.

[SegaOutrun]

You may have noticed that the floor looked funky  in the screenshots. That because its was rendering the floors in low res. According to the devs this has been fixed. Nascar had the same issues and it has been fixed as well.

[hiljak]

Any news on when the new version will be released?  Never heard of demul before but installed version 0.582 WIP on my cab last night.  I downloaded the dreamcast version of Daytona and while it runs, it doesn't play nice with my A-pac setup (it's reading one of my joystick axis as having contact movement).  It was late so I didn't look into it too much.  Would love to play pod race on the cab.  I remember seeing that at the movie theater back in the day and only playing once or twice because it was like a $1 per race... lol

[SegaOutrun]

My guess would be September/October. Someone mentioned September on the internet in passing but, im not sure if he knowledgeable in the situation or guessing like me. Also one of the devs mentioned he would like a bug fixed by the end of the summer. it seem likely that this is a summer project for them and they probably have school to return to in the fall. Also the last release was july(0.58), aug (0.581) and oct (0.582) and the year before that (0.56) was sept, and the year before that (0.55) was oct.

[Howard_Casto]

From what I understood they were messing with the core again (joy) so that's the hold up.  We have to wait until the new renderer is done.

[feykro]

I'm very sorry to dig this topic but it's the only thing I could find that matches what I was looking for: Arcade Star Wars Racer emulation.
So first off: how do you get the rom that is used in the first post's screens ?
I looked for it for an hour or so but the only thing I can find is PC star wars POD RACER, the consol/PC port that wasn't as good as the arcade.
And once you have it, how do you run it ? I do have Demul on my PC to play shenmue but i'm not using the naomi feature, just the dreamcast one.

Once again i'm very sorry for the digging, if anyone could ansewer it would really help me !

( I couldn't send a message to the autor, the site told me I wasn't allowed...)

[PL1]

So first off: how do you get the rom that is used in the first post's screens ?

Please see #5 here.   

( I couldn't send a message to the autor, the site told me I wasn't allowed...)

Post a few more times and your Private Message system will auto-enable. (it's an anti-spammer measure)   


Scott

[feykro]

Thank you
So there is no way I can get help for such a thing I guess... Too bad !
Anyone played it ?

[Brian74]

 

[MrThunderwing]

Thank you
So there is no way I can get help for such a thing I guess... Too bad !
Anyone played it ?

I'm fairly sure that once this latest version of DEMUL gets released you'll probably be able to find Hikaru Star Wars in all the usual sorts of places that one normally finds ROMS. Until then I wouldn't worry too much about trying to find it, you won't be able to play it on anything anyway outside of this new version of DEMUL. And the only people that will have played it so far are the DEMUL team and (if they still use them) any of their Beta testers.

[feykro]

Didn't know it was still to be released .. Well thanks !

[POOTERMAN]

anyone know what the hold up is? I mean this 'news' was well over a year ago now and we're all still waiting for an updated release of Demul!!