Saturn Emulator?

lca806 · Post by **lca806** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 12:34 pm

I have not been on this site in a long time, so I took some time and was reading some articles that were scanned in about the site. While reminscing, I came across a quote that said a saturn emulator was in the works. I searched for a little while for past board discussion, but I came up with 1043 hits. So i thought it easier just to ask how it was coming, or if it is just not possible to do. I would so like to play my dragon force game again... I sold it foolishly to get my DC

skar · Post by **skar** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 12:43 pm

well as far as i know

-there isn't a saturn emulator for dreamcast so far
-the chance that there will ever be one that runs smooth is about zero. Even on highend-pcs saturn emulation is still a problem...

abydos1000 · Post by **abydos1000** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 12:48 pm

The faq will tell you which systems emulators are not being developed for.

Saturn. Probably never. Tricky piece of hardware. If you are kicking yourself for selling your Saturn (much like I do), you can find them and the main stream games cheap on ebay. Unfortunately, I had expensive things like Dragon Warrior, so my hope of getting back my old collection is zero.

jessman · Post by **jessman** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 3:48 pm

I'll just tell you what they told me when I was a n00b....

never gonna happen...

sorry man. i wish it was a possibility.

Post by **Quzar** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 4:51 pm

hehe "back in my day there was might long talks about saturn emulation, half of um saying its like n64, no way no how, other half saying maybe maybe" pfft. Odds are it wont happen. Although the more i think about it, the more i see that it may be possible. Since the Sh4 runs so much faster than the SH2s of the saturn, it would be easy for it to emulate the 2 sh2 chips (since the instructions are compatible) and then the only huge problem would be getting the pvr2 to emulate the 2 vdps.basically the way to do it would be to reform the way the saturn hardware is emulated. Instead of 4 discrete processors, only emulate one of each, but running at 2x the clockspeed. the main processors wouldnt be that bad, the biggest problem would be the vdps.

oh but yes, impossible! Impossible!!!

Post by **BlueCrab** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 5:43 pm

quzar wrote:Since the Sh4 runs so much faster than the SH2s of the saturn, it would be easy for it to emulate the 2 sh2 chips (since the instructions are compatible)

The problem there is the endianness of the processors. The SH2's of the Saturn are Big Endian, the SH4 of the Dreamcast is little endian. While, it would be trivial to reverse the byte ordering of the instructions, it would be quite difficult to get anything working in this fashion, as far as I can tell.

Post by **Quzar** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 5:58 pm

hehe endianness.

yea, but there should be some sort of very non-intensive dynamic 'endian reversal' process that already exists... maybe?

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 7:00 pm

http://www.xsorbit2.com/users/chronotri ... 1085465937

Zeenbor wrote:I'll let the other team members speak for themselves, but this is my first home-brew project being released to the public.

I've done other personal projects that never saw a public release, like:

- SH-4 interperter on an unannounced DC emu back in 2000
- DC ip.bin Win32 tool
- Saturn emulator for the Dreamcast
- Gekko disassembler (Can't release this)
- Partial work on UltraHLE OpenGL port (WAY back before it was announced)
- FFIX for N64 (Just the 2D part that you see when it boots up)
- Chrono Trigger for N64
- lzEngine cross-platform engine for N64, DC, and PSone

Don't ask for screenshots because I dont have the source or assets to any of these project anymore, except the most recent ones (Gekko disasm, Saturn Emulator). The rest of these projects are ANCIENT.

Post by **Quzar** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 7:26 pm

yea he was working on it. that dosnt mean that it worked at all. Just means that it was worked on.

MetaFox · Post by **MetaFox** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 7:28 pm

* MetaFox mumbles something about "Saturation" and walks away.

Post by **Quzar** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 7:40 pm

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 7:58 pm

Yeah, I should have written some comment to my post. Of course that doesn't mean anything. If it would have worked somewhat playable then maybe we had seen a release of it.

Chris

Wsttrollboy · Post by **Wsttrollboy** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 8:56 pm

quzar wrote:?

It was a very bad play on words (I think) was it?

Post by **Quzar** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 9:05 pm

Thats what i thought but then i thought maybe its some sort of attack on unfinished or nonworking projects, was just wondering which of the two it was...

Post by **Christuserloeser** » Thu Jun 17, 2004 10:04 pm

...maybe Meta works on an top secret Saturn emulator for DC and I / we? made him somewhat angry? Chris bites his lips and wishes that would be true somehow : P

Chris

Alexvrb · Post by **Alexvrb** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 1:28 am

quzar wrote:and then the only huge problem would be getting the pvr2 to emulate the 2 vdps.

That isn't likely to happen, because the two VDPs are very different in nature from the PVR chip in the DC.

abydos1000 · Post by **abydos1000** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 7:49 am

To switch endian modes, I think it has to be built into the processor. Otherwise sol.

Ian Micheal · Post by **Ian Micheal** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 7:56 am

Fully playable version will take some doing. Lot of problems geting it to work as people have stated.

sappel · Post by **sappel** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 12:50 pm

hmm, there is not even a saturn emu that works for PC, you think someone can create one with its magic stick?

even giri-giri, which was made by SEGA still doesn't work proper, first I thougt that my 1Ghz PC was way to slow for saturn emulation, but when I tried this emulator again on my dads new PC (athlon 64 3000+) it still didn't work on full speed.
Most people are forgetting that speed is not the only problem, just think, there is not any saturn emu that can run more than 50% of all the games till the end.
Idont wanna destroy any dreams, but IT NEVER GONNA HAPPEN, NEVER
forget it! just ike Jaguar emulation, the Jaguar is even worse that the saturn...

Ex-Cyber · Post by **Ex-Cyber** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 1:26 pm

even giri-giri, which was made by SEGA

GiriGiri was not made by Sega. It was coded independently and then licensed.