How Do I Create Vmu Animations?

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Dreamcastfreak2004
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How Do I Create Vmu Animations?

Post by Dreamcastfreak2004 »

Hey yall, so anyways i was thinking about making a vmu animation, but here is the thing how do i make a animation for the dreamcast vmu?
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ThePerfectK
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Re: How Do I Create Vmu Animations?

Post by ThePerfectK »

This question can be parsed in a number of ways. Do you mean how to animate the screen of a VMU that is currently attached to a Dreamcast controller, through a homebrew dreamcast title? Do you mean how to create a stand alone VMU application, and manipulate the VMU screen to produce an animation? Or do you mean how to create an animation in the old .LCD format that requires Dream Animator? All have pretty different answers of varying complexity.
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Re: How Do I Create Vmu Animations?

Post by Dreamcastfreak2004 »

ThePerfectK wrote: Tue Mar 29, 2022 8:38 pm This question can be parsed in a number of ways. Do you mean how to animate the screen of a VMU that is currently attached to a Dreamcast controller, through a homebrew dreamcast title? Do you mean how to create a stand alone VMU application, and manipulate the VMU screen to produce an animation? Or do you mean how to create an animation in the old .LCD format that requires Dream Animator? All have pretty different answers of varying complexity.
I mean how do I create a animation because I need tools on how to do that.
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Re: How Do I Create Vmu Animations?

Post by rpk »

You can write a program for the Dreamcast that draws a bitmap to the VMU LCD, waits briefly, draws another bitmap, and so on. Drawing a bitmap to the VMU is something I did when working on NesterDC-standalone - maybe that would be a useful reference?

Loading BMP:
https://github.com/kilgariff/NesterDC-s ... ils.c#L330

Drawing to the VMU:
https://github.com/kilgariff/NesterDC-s ... n.cpp#L917

The KoS Function to use:
http://gamedev.allusion.net/docs/kos-cu ... 82ee8302ca

The code for loading the BMP is a bit hacked together as I assume a fixed size header and just skip ahead (it only had to work for one image for that project). BMP is a simple format though, so it shouldn't take long to fix that up or use an existing BMP loader.

By the way, this project uses an old version of KallistiOS so other functions may have changed in the latest version.

Hope that helps!
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Re: How Do I Create Vmu Animations?

Post by Dreamcastfreak2004 »

Hey, so anyways I want to also make a vmu game but how do I also do that for my vmu?
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Re: How Do I Create Vmu Animations?

Post by ThePerfectK »

Making stand alone VMU applications is exponentially harder than even writing a dreamcast application to control the VMU in-controller. You'll either be writing it in LC86000 Microprocessor assembly, or you're going to write it for an embedded ARM Cortex M32 emulator (https://dmitry.gr/?r=05.Projects&proj=2 ... %20Hacking).

You've been having trouble compiling the normal KOS example applications, I'd strongly suggest you walk before you run. If you're dead set on creating a VMU application, the easiest route would be to embed the ARM Cortex M32 emulator and write a C program for the VMU that way, although you are only afforded a hobbyist license for doing so by Dmitry Grinberg. The alternative would be to follow Marcus Comstedt's Tetris example here: http://mc.pp.se/dc/sw.html

Again, this is much less documented and much more complex than merely writing a Dreamcast application is, so I would suggest not beginning your dreamcast programming experience by tackling a VMU application. Despite it's appearance, its not an easier platform to target at all.
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Re: How Do I Create Vmu Animations?

Post by Dreamcastfreak2004 »

Update: so anyways i want to create a .lcd animation for the Dreamcast VMU, so how do i get it up and running in 2022?
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