Beginner Questions

[nikki]

Hello BlueCrab!

I have two Questions:

1. I am a beginner and I would like to play PSO Ver 2 on the Dreamcast. I ordered myself a Broadband Adapter. Is your Service, Server and Online Play free of charge? All I need is the PSO Patcher Disc 2.0 and the Game, right?

2. I think your Patcher Disc does not work with a japanese Dreamcast. I have no problem burning other Dreamcast *.cdi images but your Patcher Disc does not work. The Dreamcast will just boot into the normal Main Menu. I tried it several times, but I am almost sure it is not on my end. Can you provide a Disc that will work with japanese Dreamcasts or tell me what I am doing wrong?

Thank you very much in Advance and sorry for my noobish Questions.

[BlueCrab]

1. I am a beginner and I would like to play PSO Ver 2 on the Dreamcast. I ordered myself a Broadband Adapter. Is your Service, Server and Online Play free of charge? All I need is the PSO Patcher Disc 2.0 and the Game, right?

Yes, everything with the server itself is free. All you should need is the patcher disc, the game itself, and some way to connect to the Internet on your Dreamcast. All regions and versions of the game should work, for the most part (minus whatever bugs Sega missed before releasing the game, of course).

2. I think your Patcher Disc does not work with a japanese Dreamcast. I have no problem burning other Dreamcast *.cdi images but your Patcher Disc does not work. The Dreamcast will just boot into the normal Main Menu. I tried it several times, but I am almost sure it is not on my end. Can you provide a Disc that will work with japanese Dreamcasts or tell me what I am doing wrong?

I didn't make the CDI image myself, and I really don't know why it wouldn't work. You could try using the plain files and a program like BootDreams to make your own image (or just burn the disc directly from that program). Alternatively, if you're on a *nix-like OS (Linux, BSD, Mac OS X), you could use cdrecord or wodim to burn the disc from the terminal (that's actually how I do it).

[nikki]

Thank you for your fast reply.

Of course, there are more questions

So, do I need to set up an Account at sylverant.net to play online?

Do I just use the Serial Number and Access Key that came with the Game or do I need different ones?

Is there an Setup Beginner Guide somewhere? I am a little lost right now D:

BTW - using plain files and BootDream did the trick! Great. I have no idea why it did not work with the cdi image, tho...

[BlueCrab]

Thank you for your fast reply.

No problem.

So, do I need to set up an Account at sylverant.net to play online?

You don't strictly have to do so to play on the Dreamcast version, but I do encourage you to do so. There's one nice feature that can only be enabled if you have an account (namely automatic character data backups), and there are other features I plan to work on at some point in the future that will also be tied to having an account. Also, to play any other version of the game (PC, Gamecube, (and in the future) Blue Burst), you do need an account.

Do I just use the Serial Number and Access Key that came with the Game or do I need different ones?

Yes, just use the Serial Number/Access Key pair that came with the game.

Is there an Setup Beginner Guide somewhere? I am a little lost right now D:

Well, if you're using the patcher disc, I think you should have everything you need to know now. If not, feel free to ask. I don't have any sort of beginner's guide, as most of the people around (that I know of anyway) have played on other private servers in the past and have been through the whole drill with them. The patcher disc helps out with a few things too (like making it so you don't have to use any strange dns redirection or whatnot).

BTW - using plain files and BootDream did the trick! Great. I have no idea why it did not work with the cdi image, tho...

Glad to hear that worked. It could just be the way that image is formatted not agreeing with something in your cd burner or something like that. I don't actually ever burn anything from images, as I said in my previous post, so I just put up what people tell me works.

[Aleron Ives]

BTW - using plain files and BootDream did the trick! Great. I have no idea why it did not work with the cdi image, tho...

Original Japanese Dreamcasts reportedly won't boot data/data discs, which is how the CDI is formatted. Those Dreamcasts supposedly require the MIL-CD (audio/data) format. There is no universal disc format that you can boot on any system, unfortunately. We even had one person who required a third type of disc to get the loader to work.