Newb: Getting into Dreamcast homebrew

[NaokiS]

Hi all.

I recently had a Sega obssession on eBay (oddly enough from listening to Sonic 3D's Saturn soundtrack) and got a boxed Saturn and boxed Dreamcast. I've been having a small play at the DC and seeing some of the games and thought about homebrew for it. I know there's a bug in the Mil-CD(?)-thing which allows DCs to boot regular CDs. Being in the UK I was in luck since I read all PAL DCs have this exploit. I'm not a newbie to homebrew in general as I've soft-modded by mine and my friend's original XBOX and softmodded my Wii aswell including my step-dads. The thing is while I've had an interest in the DC for a while and done some thing with emulators and such, I really have no clue where to start off.

As far as I know about DC stuff, I've gathered you need to use CD-Rs, have to have a selfbooting CD to play on the DC without a disc loader and that's pretty much it. Ultimately I'd want a universal app disc with all programs I'm likely to regularly use with built in roms/vids/mp3s/what have you so as to keep it all in a orderly place and to save on CDs, and while I've read about SBIs and such, I have no clue what tools I need, what software I should use nor how to go about it. I also read you can add a logo to the SEGA screen on the sticky here, but all links to the programs are redirected or dead.

In short, I'd want to learn what tools are needed, why and which is the best of each to use. Gather said tools and setup in a recomended way and then have a little guidence on this Multi-app CD. Any knowledge of why stuff is needed or works is also nice since I like learning new things.

If a list of apps is needed for any, the main ones are:

• DOOM (gotta have it everything XP)
• Some type of multimedia app for video, pics and music (which is the best?)
• Emulators for SNES, NES and Mega Drive (again, best?)

I did want to clarify I did read the FAQ sticky first before asking.

Thanks and a pre-emptive thanks to anyone who helps.
Nks

[RyoDC]

Well, I'm not that good in Dreamcast programming, I must said, not good at all points, and I wish if someone of the pro's will leave an answer in your topic, but, because you accept any information, that could help somehow, I'll answer, and I hope that would encourage you somehow.
Ok. As to your question.
What you need to develop with Dreamcast:
1. Flash card adapter or coders cable connected to serail port of Dreamcast or BBA to upload your programs directly into Dreamcast, without burning a CD each time when you need to test a new feature.
2. Linux or Linux-Like environment (if you're using Windows and wann't deal with Linux install) - for example, Cygwin or MinGW
3. Instruction, how to install KOS (it's pretty simple), if you wanna develop with KOS,
or search for Katana and WinCE SDK's on the net. But if you decide to use Katana or WinCE, you wouldn't be able to receive any help there, because of their illegality.
So KOS, probably, is your choice.
KOS reads as KallistiOS, it's a tiny pseudo-operational system for DC. It's free and follows open-source licence, any can contribute their code to that system.
4. You can download DCdev CD revision 4. Despite many stuff on them became obsolete, you can find many useful tools on that CD and it contains simplex step-by-step installer, so you can try to start from it. Anyway, it's recommended to use the latest version of Cygwin and it's libraries, the same with KallistiOS.
5. What about multi-program CD's, I can recommend Katana lib Ginsu (KATANA\Docs\PDfs\Ginsu.pdf), but, owing to rules of this board, we shouldn't discuss it there.
If you have any questions, related to the Dreamcast programming, you can ask without any fear.
But I warn I'm not a pro at this, and my knowledge may be inaccurate or even erroneous, I'm saying only from my understanding how the stuff works and my only tiny experience with that.

[Ayla]

He's not asking about how to write homebrew.

About the multimedia app, have a look at DCPlaya and DCMC. For SNES emulation, snes4all is the best one available; for Megadrive, I'd say GenesisPlusDC, and Nester DC SE for NES.

[Christuserloeser]

If a list of apps is needed for any, the main ones are:

• DOOM (gotta have it everything XP)
• Some type of multimedia app for video, pics and music (which is the best?)
• Emulators for SNES, NES and Mega Drive (again, best?)

1. There's Chilly Willy's Doom for Dreamcast: http://dcemulation.org/?title=Doom_for_Dreamcast (also search the News forum), and BlackAura's nxDoom.
2. DCplaya was nice. Alternatives were DCDivX, uDCDivX, VC/DC, and ToEleven (or what it was called) which used the VMU's LCD as screen. There's a new media player in the works if I am not mistaken (check the Development forum).
3. NES: Nester DC v6 is still my personal favorite NES emulator for DC, but NesterDC SE is excellent as well.
SNES: DreamSNES v0.9.8 used to be the best SNES emulator for Dreamcast but it's not quite full speed. There's a recent release of SNES4All by Chui that seems as fast if not faster than DreamSNES.
MD: Genesis Plus still is the best MD emu we have right now: http://dcemulation.org/?title=Genesis_Plus_DC but GensDC is currently still being worked on and I have to say that it looks rather promising.
Other good emulators: Neo4All (full speed Neo Geo CD emulator) SMSplusDC (Master System & Game Gear), SCUMM VM (point 'n click adventure games, i.e. Lucas Arts' Monkey Island)

[NaokiS]

Thanks guys for the recomendations, really appreciate it. Could soomeone explain the SBIs and was it DreamInducer? I'm guessing that's the first place to start with the progs.

Thanks

[RyoDC]

He's not asking about how to write homebrew.

My fault, I read post skipping lines.

[NaokiS]

I've tried to read various solutions to my first foray, but almost all the tools I've tried to get have gone (dead links) and the different info confuses me. Is what I want even possible to do?

[Stryfe]

MD: Genesis Plus still is the best MD emu we have right now: http://dcemulation.org/?title=Genesis_Plus_DC but GensDC is currently still being worked on and I have to say that it looks rather promising.

Yep. Unfortunately, my hopes were too high at the point I tried the latest preview version of GENS4All from a sdiso. The only thing it has going for it at this moment is a better interface, and save support. GenesisPlusDC is better for games that didn't require cartridge battery saves.

[Ayla]

GenesisPlusDC can save, too.

[Stryfe]

If GenesisPlusDC had an option to remember the last settings used to load the games, it would have made it a little more user friendly. As it was, it required that you change the options on the fly each time you loaded up the emu. If I remember correctly, there was a specific option that need to be enabled for in-game saving. One of the CPU cores...?

Unfortunately, that setting was the slower (laggy) setting for about 80-90% of the known working games. And even worse was that in almost all of the games you would really care about saves in like rpg, adventure, strategy, etc., this setting prevented them from loading.

If someone could update GenesisPlusDC with save state support to SD card, this would completely nullify that issue. If they could add a file browser, and loading roms directly off the SD directory, well then they'd be ...

[ace]

Don't forget Quake!