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''28th March, 2008'' Posted by: [http://dcemulation.org/phpBB/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=29699 Maturion]
''28th March, 2008'' Posted by: [http://dcemulation.org/phpBB/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=29699 Maturion]


Giana's Return team has updated their blog again. They informed us about bugfixes and they also said that they have created a group called "Giana's Return" on the German social network "StudiVZ" ("meinVZ"). You can ask the beta testers there. To all Germans here: Join this group. ;)
Giana's Return team has updated their blog again. They informed us about bugfixes and they also said that they have created a group called "Giana's Return" on the German social network "StudiVZ" ("meinVZ"). You can talk to the beta testers there. To all Germans here: Join this group. ;)
   
   
  Today we thought to keep you updated about the ongoing bugfixes and  
  Today we thought to keep you updated about the ongoing bugfixes and  

Revision as of 04:19, 27 March 2008

Welcome to DCEmulation!

The site is currently under renovation. We have moved to a private-wiki-based system and we all are working hard to present you a renovated DCEmulation. The majority of the pages here still has to be written and the content of the old site from years ago has to be transfered to our new wiki.

Please bear with us here.

In the mean time, you may go to our forums and find lots of information and help there. The site has been based on the forums for years, anyway.

News

We keep you up-to-date with Dreamcast scene news.

Giana’s Return (Beta) (26-03-2008)

28th March, 2008 Posted by: Maturion

Giana's Return team has updated their blog again. They informed us about bugfixes and they also said that they have created a group called "Giana's Return" on the German social network "StudiVZ" ("meinVZ"). You can talk to the beta testers there. To all Germans here: Join this group. ;)

Today we thought to keep you updated about the ongoing bugfixes and 
improvements.

*First of all we have extended the time limit from 99 seconds per level to 120 
seconds. A bunch of people who were able to play a preview complained about 
“lack of time” as they prefer exploring levels and collecting as many items as 
possible. Those 120 seconds should be now really more than enough for 
everyone, even for “explorers” and “diamond collectors”.

*We have two types of wall bricking now. As you know if Giana has her curly 
hairstyle she can destroy bricks - depending on her power there are two ways 
the brick disappears. If you have the energy-ball and you are bricking a wall, 
the brick get’s dissolved. As soon as you get stronger and have shooting 
ability, your “energy” level raises too and if you destroy a brick it splits 
into 4 parts as you know it from the preview videos. This is more like an eye 
candy and grant at least a little bit of difference during gameplay.
  
*Here comes something we have shameless stolen from “Super Mario”  If you 
destroy a brick, you will get one extra score. This might be not a lot, but 
the main goal is not to destroy as many bricks as possible. Maybe as soon as 
the game is out some ppl might be worried about “who has the highest” score, 
so adding this ability to bricks, will be an important factor for score 
hunters. One point might be not a lot, but see everything in bigger 
dimensions. We might raise the amount of points you get from 1 to 5 or 10, but 
we are pretty unsure about that. After all you get 50 points just for 
squeezing an regular enemy  

*The whole intro stuff is done - Credits, a “special inspriation screen”, 
language selection and then it goes over to the titlescreen from where you can 
start the game - just finetuning left there.
Last but not least, our coder fixed something which is of internal matter, the 
test mode shows everything animated now - which is a lot more comfortable when 
testing things 

Source: gianas-return.de (1)/gianas-return.de (2)

Makaqu 1.3

28th March, 2008 Posted by: Maturion

I'm posting this a bit late, but anyway: Manoel has released version 1.3 of his QuakeMod Makaqu. It can be downloaded from here. Visit the forum thread for a changelog and more information.

Source: DCEmulation forums

Makaron WIP - Time off

28th March, 2008 Posted by: Maturion

dknute has posted news about Makaron, his Dreamcast emulator.

I knew there was a good reason for not touching the GD-ROM code. But I did, 
and as it stands now it's pretty broken - I will need to redesign it quite a  
bit.
There are several major problems to solve, all tied to multithreading. 
Unfortunately I don't really know how to fix them. Or rather, I do, just 
haven't come up with an idea I feel like implementing. I'd rather spend some 
time thinking about it and do it right (well, mostly) than throw a ton of 
nasty patches in. I might actually have to pull out a drawing block, some 
pencils, and start designing it on paper first. This is a bit new to me, not 
being able to easily cover for all possible cases in my head. I guess that's 
MT for you...

I hope to release something in the first week of April. If the new GD code is 
not ready by then, I'll revert to the old one. I want to see if vibration 
works for other people too. By the way, I haven't done a single thing during 
holidays  I blame Knurek. And Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call he told me 
about. But mostly Knurek.

Source: dknute.livejournal.com

Giana's Return WIP - GFXxXx & more!

26th March, 2008 Posted by: Maturion

The Giana's Return-Team has updated their blog.

Earlier this morning (1am) [thUg] came up with a fixed tileset of World 1. It 
is looking a lot cleaner than the one we used before.

Some of you might think, why do you guys need to clean and detail pixel things?
It’s pretty easy to answer. The graphics are optimized for 320×200 pixel 
screens, this also keeps us the possibility open for a MS-DOS port. If we have 
“dirty” pixelgraphics and resize this to native solutions of other systems, 
things would look a bit rubbish. With this clean-pixel task we try to improve 
the quality for fullscreen stretching on any machine, while keeping the retro- 
style.

Due to the professional repixeling the amount of colors are also reduced a 
lot, which ensures we can save some RAM  This might not be relevant for new 
systems, but we want to have this game running on many beautiful (retro) 
systems such as GP2x, Amiga AGA, Dreamcast, Playstation Portable, etc…
  
Also some gossip about Giana’s Return GP32: As our music is available as .xm 
this willl eat lots of CPU speed, it might be a special difficult task to 
manage this game on a GP32, which does not mean it will not happen. We are  
currently discussing what to do and if it’s possible at all. Our musician 
op3rator took the old MOD’s and improved them and added more channels, which 
turned out in 8 channel .xm’s. His base music is basically available as .xm 
only now (specially the new composed tracks) and we wont give him more work 
with “backcomposing” to .mod. So either we can get Giana jumping on a GP32 or 
not… the chances are 50:50.

Also there are still thoughts which platform we should support first. 
Initially we have thought about a GP2x release, but it’s unsure at this time, 
if this will really happen first. There are severall reasons for this… we will 
just track the homebrew scene, follow comments and behaviours of users and our 
decision will be positive for the “most helpful and thankful” community.

With today we are one stop closer and many more steps will follow. While the 
tileset adjusting is not fully done, we are working on many “minor” engine 
improvements - specially eyecandies. Our genious french coder is working very 
hard to get the bugtracker empty and add improvements, which should work out 
really well for the final product.

Source: gianas-return.de

lxdream WIP - A distinct lack of time

26th March, 2008 Posted by: Maturion

There's new progress on the Dreamcast emulator for Linux.

I apologise for the lack of updates recently - unfortunately I have not had a  
lot of time to work on lxdream lately due to real life conspiring against me. 
I’ll try to update when I can, but for now there probably won’t be a lot to 
report until at least the end of May.

The good news is that lxdream-render is pretty close to mergeable now (doesn’t 
seem to break much now), and I’ve spent a bit of time trying to track down the 
irritating “geometry” bugs I’ve been seeing (It looks like bad geometry on 
screen, but the same data renders just fine on the DC). The bad news is that 
thus far, I haven’t really gotten anywhere with said bugs  .

Source: lxdream.org


New interviews

23rd March, 2008 Posted by: Maturion

I added 4 interesting interviews to our interviews page. (An interview with GPF, Dan Potter, DJGeki and Sin.) All those interviews were previously unreleased or had gone lost. We hope you enjoy reading them!

ScummVM and the Quest for Code: Join the Google Summer of CodeTM

21st March, 2008 Posted by: Maturion

The ScummVM project is participating on the Google Summer of CodeTM. Since ScummVM is one of the most interesting projects in the Dreamcast-Scene, some of you might be interested.

Do you know what a fabulous time we had last year participating in the Google  
Summer of Code? OK, you don't have to answer that, it's a rhetorical question. 
Fact is, it was fabulous! So fabulous we thought we'd apply again. And Google 
is so fabulous that they've elected ScummVM to take part again. Fabulous. 
(overuse of some words purely intentional). 

So, where are you going to spend this summer*? Again some exotic beach? 
Perhaps this year on Monkey IslandTM? 

Well if you are a student and want to make a buck this summer (more accurately 
$4500 US of them), Google is organizing the absolute Open Source recruitment 
drive, also known as the Google Summer of Code! The program is designed to 
create an incentive for students to participate in Open Source projects, by 
providing guidance and economic support. What's more, your favorite project 
ScummVM is proud to be participating! 

Think about it. Have you ever thought about contributing to a large Open 
Source project like ScummVM but were intimidated to do so? With the Summer of 
Code opportunity, you can put your skills at work under close cooperation with 
our mentors. They'll help you ease in the team, plan the task ahead of time 
with you and guide you all along. 

To get things started, you have to pitch us your idea. Take a look at our Open 
Tasks page for some suggestions. Then visit the Google Summer of Code website, 
read up on the FAQ and check out the application guide. 

Now, hurry up! You've got until March 31, so get cracking!

*: Summer in the northern hemisphere definition :-)

Source: ScummVM.org

StealthQuake v1.1 released

20th March, 2008 Posted by: Maturion

Tyne has released a v1.1 patch for his QuakeMod "StealthQuake".

Stealth Quake v1.1 Patch Released
Extract and overwrite all the files in the /Stealth/ (or /StealthWQ) directory.

Darkplaces ver,
http://renegadec.digitalfunk.org/Quake%20Mods/StealthDP11.rar

WinQuake ver,
http://renegadec.digitalfunk.org/Quake%20Mods/StealthWQ11.rar

Source: DCEmulation forums


VERSION 1.1 CHANGES
-------------------
* Version is now displayed at start up
* Chthon is harder
* Balance tweaks
* Pistols do not remove in E2M6 and E4M7, fixes incompletion bug
* Minor bug fixes
* Updated Readme file
* Intermission fixes
* Fixed collision for Winquake and find() for AI point markers
* Fix LightAffect flag not disabling at times allowing monsters to see you
  even though you're hidden
* Fix cycleweapon commands, mainly concerns console Quake players


Stealth Quake released

19th March, 2008 Posted by: Maturion

Tyne has updated his Quake mod that works on Xbox and Dreamcast.


Grab it here:
High-end Darkplaces version:
http://renegadec.digitalfunk.org/Quake%20Mods/StealthDP.rar
Text:
http://renegadec.digitalfunk.org/Quake%20Mods/StealthDP.txt

Low-end Winquake version:
http://renegadec.digitalfunk.org/Quake%20Mods/StealthWQ.rar
Text:
http://renegadec.digitalfunk.org/Quake%20Mods/StealthWQ.txt

I've tested the Winquake version on Xbox which uses nearly the same engine as 
nxQuake, so it should work on Dreamcast; it'd be nice if someone can test it 
for me to be sure though.

Source: DCEmulation forums