A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Sylverant is a homebrew open source server for Phantasy Star Online. Dreamcast users still play PSO online with this server even today! This is the official forum for both the online game server as well as the open source project itself. Feel free to post and get a gathering started online! We can also show you how to get connected!

Moderators: BlueCrab, Aleron Ives

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68kdude
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A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Post by 68kdude »

Hello Sylverant server users,

I'm new here, very new. I am a Dreamcast user and I have been over at Schthack for a while but have been unable to connect to there server recently. I changed my Dreamcast DNS server IP to the Sylverant one and all seems fine.

I have a couple of questions:

1.) Having connecting to the server I have since found the "Register a new Dreamcast Serial Number and Access Key" page. Where it says

"If you have already been on the server with this copy of the game, you cannot use this form to register your account. Please send an email to the server administrators to register your account."

Have I now made my first mistake or am I still good?

2.) I see a few ships listed. Are there any specific ones I should use or avoid? I'm thinking about any incompatibilities between PSO versions, e.g Dreamcast and PC playing together.

3.) I see there are some Offline quests available to download. Some are ones I have but there are a couple of new ones there. Is there any info about them?

Many thanks in advance

68k
PSO Character:

Electron - lvl 172 RAcaseal - GC# 13874
Kasworon - lvl 144 HUmar - GC# 13874
Yucchan - lvl 130 FOnewearl - GC# 13874
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Re: A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Post by BlueCrab »

Welcome to the server. We're always glad to have new faces around. :)

Now... Onto answering your questions...

1. You're still fine. Just send me a PM here with the username you signed up on the site with, along with your guildcard number (look at the My Card thing in game when online), as well as the serial number, and access key from your disc. I'll assign that set of information to your account once you do that.

2. Well, each ship is run by a different community, and thus might have different quests or cater to a slightly different clientele. All ships run the same software (although potentially different/slightly older versions thereof), which is compatible pretty much with every version of the game to an extent, so you shouldn't have to worry about any incompatibilities between versions. As long as the ship shows up on whatever version you're using, you should be fine.

As for the communities associated with each ship, here's that information:
Altimira is run by Aleron Ives and is associated with the PSO Palace community. They focus on DCv2/PSOPC, and some quests are slightly different there than on other ships. This ship won't show up for PSO for Gamecube or PSO Blue Burst users, as they wish to stay focused on v2/PC until a point in time where I can enable bug-free cross-platform play between the Gamecube and Dreamcast versions.
Vega is run by the crew from DC-Talk. This ship should have pretty much all of the official quests available, as well as one or two unofficial ones, albeit only in English. All-in-all, a pretty normal ship.
Palmacosta is run by the Portuguese-speaking PSO community. As far as I know, they don't have any special quests. Generally, go here if you want to speak Portuguese in game. :wink:
Iselia is my ship. It is pretty much Grand Central station for whoever wants to play on it. There's only one special quest here (Global Warming), which I made myself when I had a bit of free time on my hands. This ship also should have most languages available on most quests, so you might see people speaking different languages around.

The rule of thumb seems to be to go where others are at though. We're all nice people around Sylverant. 8-)

3. As for the additional offline quests, those are mostly Aleron Ives' projects (along with some others). If I recall correctly, they're mostly ports of quests from later versions of the game. I'll leave those to Aleron Ives to talk about though. :wink:

Again, welcome, and I hope you enjoy playing on my server. :mrgreen:
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Re: A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Post by 68kdude »

Hello BlueCrab,

Thanks for the awesome reply. I'll get onto that immediately.

P.S I was on a second ago and my Dreamcast did a reset. It's the first time it has done that.


68k
PSO Character:

Electron - lvl 172 RAcaseal - GC# 13874
Kasworon - lvl 144 HUmar - GC# 13874
Yucchan - lvl 130 FOnewearl - GC# 13874
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Re: A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Post by Aleron Ives »

68kdude wrote:I was on a second ago and my Dreamcast did a reset. It's the first time it has done that.
You mean your DC motor spooled down, the screen went black, the motor spooled up, and your system automatically went back to the initial Dreamcast logo? I haven't heard anyone report RSOD problems. :oops: Can you describe what you were doing before it happened?

The extra downloadable quests are projects I worked on from PSOBB source material. Hero & Daughter is a compilation of the unique maps from the various "Government" quests on BB; it's similar to playing through the whole game, except you mainly have to clear one "large" room in each area.

Garon's Scheme is a quest Cranberry and I translated into English from JPBB and sees you helping Alicia Baz (from Forest of Sorrow) to find a Rappy's egg for the greedy Garon. It provides a way for DC and PC players to get upgraded versions of the items from Sunset at the Secret Base (which is a JP DC quest). DC players can do both quests, but you can only get items from one of them per character and difficulty setting.

Triad -Maximum Attack- 3 is a revised port of Maximum Attack 4th Stage -C- from JPBB and gives you something more challenging to do when you're offline. TMA1 and TMA2 are online quests that you can play with a group on Altimira. They're all similar to Famitsu -Maximum Attack- in that you have a limited number of minutes to defeat a large number of enemies.
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Re: A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Post by 68kdude »

Hello Aleron Ives,

If a RSOD is as you described then Yes that's exactly what happened. Twice.

I shall describe what I did before it happened.

I had connected and chosen a ship. While in the lobby I was checking out my Guildcard number via the "MY Card thing" :) so as to send the info to BlueCrab. While looking at the number it reset. I checked again and the same thing. I think I lost 999999 Meseta along the way as I'm now showing 0. :( . Not to worry I'll soon get that back.

I don't really feel like doing it again for fear of corrupting my VMU. Is that likely to happen?
PSO Character:

Electron - lvl 172 RAcaseal - GC# 13874
Kasworon - lvl 144 HUmar - GC# 13874
Yucchan - lvl 130 FOnewearl - GC# 13874
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Re: A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Post by K_I_R_E_E_K »

1st and before you decide on doing any sort of gameplay, backup your data, the server has comands for you to use, please use them.
/restorebk -- Restore your character data from an automatic backup of it. This functionality was added in r572 to the ship server. Basically, every time you join a game, the server saves a snapshot of your character data. Think of it like an automatic /save functionality. The server will store one copy of each of your characters (where individual characters are determined by a unique <guildcard, name> pair).
/enablebk -- Enable automatic character data backups for the current guildcard. The user must be logged in (with the /login command) in order to use this command. Once enabled, the user doesn't have to be logged in to have their data automatically backed up. Note that this does not enable backups for all guildcards on the account, just the one that is in use when running the command.
/disablebk -- Disable automatic character data backups for the current guildcard. Works just like /enablebk, but in reverse.
Each ship has it's own collection of custom quests, to make the quests more appealing they sometimes have more spawns and custom rewards, they are targeted for the players that want them, but keep in mind certain ships use a more strick legit checker, if someone does a game and enables the verification, it is likely that you will be unable to enter.
Still nothing to worry about as it is rarely used, some players simply lock the games to prevent flaws that the system has and undesired players who escape the checker.

If you feel that you lost anything, i can easily restore it, just PM me and i'll try and give the stuff lost, however, severe data loss that i cannot restore, so remember to backup.
I may be persistant, but trust me, it happens, sometimes players don't backup because "they are on pioneer" and then..........bam.

I am actually suprised someone still tried to connect to schtserv, it didn't have a proper connect guide for years, i have no idea if the codes still work, has no patchers, autoconnect disks were "bad", alternate connection methods didn't exist or were tossed out the door, staff didn't show interest.
But eventually players do find other servers.
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Re: A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Post by 68kdude »

Hello K_I_R_E_E_K,

Thanks for the info. I'll take a good look at it and do as it says. I've taken some time to get where I am with this game. So far all progress has been made in offline mode. Be it the main game or downloaded quests. Speaking of downloaded quests, I'll put in a fresh VMU and get the ones from the server in a moment.

P.S. So far all my items have been gathered in offline mode so there shouldn't be any items of concern. I want to keep it that way.


Many thanks

68k
PSO Character:

Electron - lvl 172 RAcaseal - GC# 13874
Kasworon - lvl 144 HUmar - GC# 13874
Yucchan - lvl 130 FOnewearl - GC# 13874
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Re: A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Post by Aleron Ives »

68kdude wrote:I had connected and chosen a ship. While in the lobby I was checking out my Guildcard number via the "MY Card thing" :) so as to send the info to BlueCrab. While looking at the number it reset. I checked again and the same thing.
Were you able to see your Guild Card number, or does the game reset the moment you open the MY Card page? If it resets instantly, that would indicate to me that your Guild Card file is corrupt somehow. Have you played online much before? Have you received any Guild Cards from other players on SCHTServ? If you haven't played online much yet and you don't have any Guild Cards, you could try deleting your Guild Card file. If you browse your VMU in the Dreamcast BIOS, it should have a PSO_GCD and a PSO_SYS file. The SYS is your character, and the GCD is your card list. If you delete the GCD file (which will cause PSO to create a new one), that might solve the crashing.

Before you try that, though, I suggest that you remove this VMU, insert only a new VMU with no saves on it, make a new character, go online, and see if you can see your Guild Card number. If that works, it would confirm that your card list is corrupt. If you still RSOD, then something else is seriously wrong.
68kdude wrote:I don't really feel like doing it again for fear of corrupting my VMU. Is that likely to happen?
Your VMU won't corrupt unless the game freezes while it's saving, which doesn't happen in the lobby. The problem is that once you enter a team, if anything happens that prevents you from quitting and saving normally, all of your unequipped items will be deleted. You only lose your Meseta if you crash in the lobby before entering a team, which is what you've experienced thus far. I highly recommend that you don't enter any teams online until we figure out what's going on here.
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Re: A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Post by 68kdude »

Hi Aleron Ives,

I'll finish my beer and save where I am. Then I'll dig out a some VMUs and make a fresh character.

I'll be back in a few minutes.

...
PSO Character:

Electron - lvl 172 RAcaseal - GC# 13874
Kasworon - lvl 144 HUmar - GC# 13874
Yucchan - lvl 130 FOnewearl - GC# 13874
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Re: A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Post by 68kdude »

OK I'm done.

It took a while to make a new character. I had to enter my PSO ver.1 serials then PSO Ver.2 serials which I had to find. Any way, done now.

It looks like my Guildcard file on my original VMU might be the problem. I have not witnessed any RSOD yet. I'll risk it and put my old VMU in and see if it happens again.

...
PSO Character:

Electron - lvl 172 RAcaseal - GC# 13874
Kasworon - lvl 144 HUmar - GC# 13874
Yucchan - lvl 130 FOnewearl - GC# 13874
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Re: A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Post by 68kdude »

Strange. That seems to be ok now. hmmmmmmm.

Has another beer to think it over ......
PSO Character:

Electron - lvl 172 RAcaseal - GC# 13874
Kasworon - lvl 144 HUmar - GC# 13874
Yucchan - lvl 130 FOnewearl - GC# 13874
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Re: A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Post by K_I_R_E_E_K »

Maybe the pin connection inside your dc was weak at the time and with some random loading the console just gave up and restarted on it's own
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Re: A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Post by Aleron Ives »

There are instances when internal PSU connectors aren't secure and will disconnect when the DC gets hot and expands, or so I've heard. If it starts happening randomly, that's probably the cause.
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Re: A new Dreamcast player with a few questions.

Post by 68kdude »

I spent a few hours online yesterday. I had a normal mode blast then my first go at battle mode. I can report there were no problems. I have sorted out logging in and enabling the character backups. Hopefully there should be no more issues. The Dreamcast I'm using is my main one and is well maintained. I have a dozen I think that are all functional and serviced. I have a couple more in triage at the moment. What the issue was I do not know. Strange how it only happened on the guildcard screen. Anyway, I'm off for a bit of single player to iron out some button fumbling.

Many thanks again

68k
PSO Character:

Electron - lvl 172 RAcaseal - GC# 13874
Kasworon - lvl 144 HUmar - GC# 13874
Yucchan - lvl 130 FOnewearl - GC# 13874
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