Dreamcast emulation

[shmokes]

Does anyone have any good news regarding the state of Dreamcast emulation?  

I've got a dreamcast and a bunch of great games, but the idea of keeping the discs around and swapping in and out for my cab really turns me off.  It takes away from the whole cab experience.  Is anyone aware of significant progress being made on a Dreamcast emulator?

[Magnet_Eye]

I was wondering the same thing....

I heard of Dreamu but it doesnt emulate commercial games..yet.

[SNAAAKE]

*yawns*

....

DC emulation will never happend,emulating console games is probley really tricky and no one is interested(prove me wrong).

Those of you don't have one,GET IT NOW.Its only $15 anyway and games are like $5-$10.
there is always the "free" way to get teh games

There are too many quility arcade style games for Dreamcast.Just too good.Fighting games for example,dc version of capcom vs snk 2 is accurate/better then xbox version.

[shmokes]

What the hell are you talking about Snake?  

Anyway, I have a Dreamcast.  I think I made that clear in my original post.

[abrannan]

I think what he's talking about is that you don't need a Mod chip to run backups on a Dreamcast.  The only copy protection they had was the fact that the GD-ROM discs couldn't be read in a CD-ROM drive.  That's what makes the Dreamcast freeware scene popular, people have written fighting games, and DDR clones and the like that you can download and run for free, without opening your DC.  

[Dave_K.]

Does anyone have any good news regarding the state of Dreamcast emulation?  

I've got a dreamcast and a bunch of great games, but the idea of keeping the discs around and swapping in and out for my cab really turns me off.  It takes away from the whole cab experience.  Is anyone aware of significant progress being made on a Dreamcast emulator?

I believe this feeling is a side effect you get from playing Mame roms.  You have so many games to choose from, and its so simple to just switch to a new game, you kinda develop this ADD type personality where you are constantly switching to a new game every couple minutes (at least this is what happens to me when I play MAME).  I consider THIS a turn off (and as such rarely play Mame on my cabinet anymore)! I like to "get into a game" and play it for a day or two before switching to something new.  Relax and ENJOY playing something rather than swapping games constantly.

But more to the topic at hand, I imagine the DC will get fully emulated soon enough (give it another year or two).  I've seen one emulator still in early stages of development (off dcemulation.com) and it looks promising.

But until then, why not come up with some other creative solutions like hacking together a Dreamcast with a cd changer/jukebox!    You don't have to wait to try this out now.

[shmokes]

Dave_K has hit it on the head.  It's not that I have a problem with getting games.  I already have a decent library of good dreamcast games, but I want my arcade cabinet to be an arcade.  I like guests to be able to walk up to it and choose what they want to play, a la MAME.

I also haven't hacked any controllers, and would just as soon not, if I don't have to.  I guess the N64 emulators, and to a lesser degree the PSX emulators appeared so fast that it seems to me that Dreamcast would have been done by now.

Regarding hacking a Dreamcast with a CD changer, that's not even an idea I would entertain, let alone a project I would undertake.  My skill levels, from electronics, to the programming that would be required, are not even remotely close to what they would need to be to come close to success with a project like that.

[TalkingOctopus]

N64 emulation and PSX emulation are no where near perfect.  As much as I would like to see a dc emulator, I would not underestimate the technical challenges that the developers face.  

[Rawker]

N64 emulation and PSX emulation are no where near perfect.  As much as I would like to see a dc emulator, I would not underestimate the technical challenges that the developers face.  

n64 and psx emulators run perfect on my cab and i'm working on a slot load for my dreamcast, i'm going to mount in on the front of the cabinet so you just slide the disc in.



































now wouldn't that be saweeeet!

[shmokes]

That sounds cool.  A slot load wouldn't be too bad at all, and I even have a slot load DVD-ROM that recently quit reading discs, though the load/eject mechanism works perfectly.  I would still have to hack controllers and come up with a way to switch video inputs, but it's a better solution than any current alternatives.  If you have the time, you should put together a tutorial.  I'm sure a lot ob people would find that extremely useful (especially since you can pick up a Pioneer DVD-116 slot load DVD-ROM to scavange parts from for nothing).

The picture I have in my head, though, is an incredibly complicated mod requiring skills that the average person cannot immitate with a tutorial alone.

By the way,  I just saw an Xbox emulator which is running Turok almost perfectly at full speed (no sound or network support yet).  I can't help but feel like Dreamcast emulation is coming along painfully slowly.

[pmc]

My DC (it's one of the black ones) makes you push the CD media down onto the hub pretty hard. It's held in place pretty tight. I can see that being a difficulty for slot loading.

You could consider removing the door and flush mounting the DC vertically inside the cabinet with the exposed CD reader facing out. Add a door to the cabinet and you could simply open the door, push the CD onto the hub, and close the door.

Maybe.

[JoeB]

Maybe mount it in the front of the cab where the coing bucket should be? You open the door and instead of a coin bucket, you'll find the DC??

Then again, it's hard for me to decide if I'd want to hack my DC to my mame cabinet.  Lets face it, a nice widscreen TV vs a 25" 15khz monitor..  

not the same.  

[Dave_K.]

Then again, it's hard for me to decide if I'd want to hack my DC to my mame cabinet.  Lets face it, a nice widscreen TV vs a 25" 15khz monitor..  

not the same.  

Well depends if you want the "arcade" expierence: standing in front of a cab using a real control panel....or the console expierence: kicking back on the couch playing on a widescreen TV with console pads.  There are a certain games that are better suited to the latter, but the arcade ports are worth playing in the cab.

[Makanic]

would love to see a Dc emu that works on a X box...

[SNAAAKE]

would love to see a Dc emu that works on a X box...

How well do you think it will do ?
It will be pure crap if someone even tried.Console games are much harder to emulate. I would rather take 5 seconds to load a game and play the "perfect" version then crappy emulated version running at 40fps with glitchs and missing graphic,sound,etc.

[shmokes]

I'd be really surprised to see a Dreamcast emulator running on the Xbox, just because it's so weak.  But hell, a 1.6 Ghz P4 can emulate PSX just fine.  Surely a 3 Ghz could accurately emulate a Dreamcast without  all the sacrifices Snake is worried about.

[abrannan]

I'd be really surprised to see a Dreamcast emulator running on the Xbox, just because it's so weak.  But hell, a 1.6 Ghz P4 can emulate PSX just fine.  Surely a 3 Ghz could accurately emulate a Dreamcast without  all the sacrifices Snake is worried about.

Emulating a 200 Mhz, 64-bit, RISC based processor may be a bit difficult, even on a 3.0 Ghz 32-bit processor.  Not taking into account the other features of the Dreamcast that tend to be a bit processor intensive, like alpha blending.

By contrast, the Playstation had a 33 MHz, 32-bit RISC based processor.  

You'll see an Xbox emulator *long* before you'll see a Dreamcast Emulator.

[pointdablame]

would love to see a Dc emu that works on a X box...

In the world of "when will xxx be emulated and when will we be able to play xxx on our MAME machines, I can GUARANTEE that this will never happen. Ever. Not ever. Not a chance.

You should really research a bit on what goes into emulation, I learned a lot by looking online. You need a lot more horsepower compared to the emulated system and that's not even taking into account the fact that you have to create a way to trick this system into thnking its the emulated system.  

As for the DC emu, there are very early stages as was said, but it is a long ways off.  It doesn't seem like we'll be seeing a working DC emu for a long longggg time.

[kevin]

Icarus is looking pretty nice so far. Of course, the games likely run at unplayable speed right now. And then, there are always the conspiracy theorists that claim it's all an elaborate hoax...

Anyways, you can find links to some videos of two different dc emus here. I found them when checking up on Icarus' progress after seeing this thread.

-Kevin

[MadEditor]

There's a pretty advance DC emulator coming out soon (should come out this week-end)

It's called CHANKA

Some screenshots here : http://www.dreamparty.gratishost.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=93&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

You can see the framerate on the screenshot ...  Looks promising...

Lets hope they release it as they said ....

[abrannan]

There's a pretty advance DC emulator coming out soon (should come out this week-end)

It's called CHANKA

Some screenshots here : http://www.dreamparty.gratishost.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=93&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

You can see the framerate on the screenshot ...  Looks promising...

Lets hope they release it as they said ....

Kudos to them if it works.  Of course, getting those last 20fps is going to be a challenge.

[tom61]

If that turns out to be a dud, there's the DCEmu project on sourceforge, it already has a few homebrew games running, and is fairly active (on the CVS at least).

http://sourceforge.net/projects/dcemu/

[MadEditor]

Some news of the DC emu "CHANKA"

http://www.dcemu.co.uk/chanka.shtml

Supposedly to be released Tomorrow  

[Yander]

Im suprised no one has posted about chanka yet. Tried it out yesterday and it is great except games run a little slow on my PC. I tried soul calibur and I am getting 40 frames per second.

[SNAAAKE]

Im suprised no one has posted about chanka yet. Tried it out yesterday and it is great except games run a little slow on my PC. I tried soul calibur and I am getting 40 frames per second.

See how cool I am,I knew it would run at 40fps before the thing even came out

[kevin]

See how cool I am,I knew it would run at 40fps before the thing even came out

DC emulation will never happend,emulating console games is probley really tricky and no one is interested

But you also predicted that...

Still, for such a short development time Chanka getting games to a 'playable' state is pretty impressive. They've even got atleast one NAOMI game working, which I find more interesting than DC anyways. But yes, a real Dreamcast is dirt cheap and easily worth the purchase even if only a few of the games interest you.

-Kevin