Who is up to speed on Makaron, Demul, and Nulldc?

[SGT]

I am so confused.  I have been using an old version of Nulldc for Dreamcast for a long time.  Now I want to emulate both Dreamcast and Naomi games.   The problem is that I have a hard time finding UP TO DATE information comparing the Pros and Cons for how each of the three emulators run Dreamcast games and Naomi games.

Is there a web page that compares it all including compatibility, performance, minimum specs needed, etc...?  If not, can someone post the Pros and Cons of these emulators?   I don't want to spend weeks with one as a way to figure out what its strengths and weaknesses are.  I just cannot find RECENT comparisons on the latest releases.  Can anyone help?  I am sure it would benefit the whole community.

[ivwshane]

Information on makaron is very hard to find, at least in some easily digested format.

Makaron has been much easier for me to integrate into mala because it supports running games from the command line. The negative (which I believe goes for nulldc) is that there is no native game pad support (my setup is all usb joysticks) which means that a program like joy2key or xpadder is required.

Other than that, emulation seems to run smooth on my system (i920+ati 4870).

There are a couple of kinks I need to work out for my setup but for someone with your experience you should have no problems setting it up.

See this thread for more info including some links that I found useful.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=87698.0

[SGT]

I have been getting bits and pieces about the most recent release of demul.  Can you or anyone compare Makaron and Demul?


http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php?Cat=&Number=199531&page=1&view=expanded&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1

[ivwshane]

I couldn't get demul to run for me (other than mvsc2) and from what I saw the emulation wasn't as good as makaron.

Demul does seem to have some good things going for it though:
1: native gamepad support (very easy to setup for arcade cabs).
2: you can have it rotate the screen (good for games like ikaruga), although I'm not sure if it's a feature you can enable through the command line.
3: it supports dreamcast, naomi, and naomi 2, all in one emu.

Things I'm not aware of with demul:
1: Can you run it from the command line?
2: I don't know how to enable full screen support.

It looks very promising though!

[Finchbyrd]

I've tried them all, they're very confusing and I gave up. The only one I can get working is Makaron T12 and it's slow.

[bigster]

I just did a search and found this thread, did we resolve the controversity?  I am looking to add naoami to my cab but just don't know which emu works best.  I run maximus arcade and I have nulldc set up for dc games.

Also any got a trackball to work with monkey ball?

[Hoopz]

There's a recent thread about the new version of NullDC.  I haven't tried it yet but others have had good luck with it.

[shateredsoul]

ok at least for me I've found these are the best emulators for each game type. This is just imo, but I don't like demul or nulldc for naomi games.

Nulldc => Dreamcast
Makaron => Naomi (pretty confusing to configure keys)
Demul => Atomiswave


There is actually a special version of demul out there that just focuses on emulating atomiswave, I can't link you because they also host the roms 

For me the advice I can give you based on my experience...
 
1. For nulldc I had to install Visual C++ 2010 Runtimes (available on their google page), i used the same bios I was using on the older nulldc and it worked like a champ

2. Make sure your bios are named correctly (they all use differently named bios)

3. Make sure your games are in the format that works with atomiswave and makaron.  I think both run mame roms now, but Makaron can run .dat format roms.

4. I guess it wouldn't hurt to make sure you have the latest direct x

[DeLuSioNal29]

While we're on the subject of NullDC.  Anyone know if there is a way of running it on a vertical monitor?  I'd like to run Horizontal games on a vertical setup if possible.  (Games like Mars Matrix for example).

Currently, the only way I know of rotating is withing the game itself (if the options supports it).  For example Ikaruga.

D

[shateredsoul]

you might want to look up djvj on the hyperspin forums or chillinwater. Djvj developed an autohotkey script  to rotate the screen for naomi emulation through demul. It works with both ati and nvidia cards.  I'm not sure whether it works for on board graphic cards. I have to be honest, I haven't actually tried the script myself. I've only read about the script and seen them discus it.  He posted the script on the forum as well.

[ptinolv]

Nulldc is very good for dreamcast.

Makaron has a very good emulation, but has more tearing than demul and is a little more complicated to configure (i use it with xpadder).

Demul 0.5.6 has a little less good emulation (i have sounds issues with mvc2), but can rotate the screen (the screen turns automatically if the game is in the list), has no tearing, play atomiswave, and have different nvram files (saves) for each game. Also if you want to be able to run decrypted roms in demul you need to select a bios (untick select bios automatically). I also have more emulation issues when i enable multithread and i recommend the opengl plugin. To switch to fullscreen it is alt+enter and the command lines works in demul but doesn't launch it full screen.

I recommend to use both according to the game you want to play.

[zorrobandito]

Does anyone know the minimum specs for the Dreamcast emulators?

* NullDC

* Makaron

* Demu

Also the Saturn Emus:

* Satourne

* SSF:
Minimum: Windows, CPU SSE(1/2?), MMX, FPU, 256Mb RAM, DirectX9.0c
Optimum: CPU - Corei7 / Core i5 / Core 2 Duo / Phenom II / Penom V, 512Mb RAM
Obtained from the Japanese text file - could be wrong

* Cassini

Some of these will run on my Intel Core Duo T9300 2.5Ghz laptop but some crash immediately. None of these run on my actual arcade machine box which is an AMD Athlon XP2800 +  2Gb RAM. I can run the Playstation emulator without a problem but the Saturn and Dreamcast seem to be a bridge too far... 

[Celsius]

the dc and naomi emulators have about the same requirements (processor must have SSE support, graphics card must be at least Shader Model 2.0 compatible,...) you'll find some min requirements in google. But the DC and saturn emulators are def more demanding than psx emulation. They didn't run (or really slow) on my old amd dual core...last week i updated my cab pc to a amd phenom x4 965 with a ati 4890 and surprise!!! everything works now

[highholyme]

I dunno about the other ones, but I can say that Makaron runs MvC2 as well as CvS1 & 2 PERFECTLY on my rig, which only has a gig and a half of ram and is a dual core. Had to tweak the emulation clock a little bit.

Was never really interested in Atomiswave, and nulldc always worked fantastic for my Dreamcast games.