For those interested in the web browser

fatheadpi · Post by **fatheadpi** » Sun Nov 24, 2002 2:37 am

Did you guys read the big ass how-to-burn guide I included?

If you can't get it to boot, just use the old boot cd method.

The project's official release is XDP3v4.

This means an XRips Inc. Version of DreamPassport3, specifically the fourth version released by us so far.

IF I ever Release an XDP4, it'll likely be illegal as all getout.

And as for DreamOnGen/Smashpack/etc, I don't care, I'll use them as I please. Don't ask me for help with them, however, as I get tired of dumbasses asking me how to back up their dreamcast games and use warez apps. If I actually know you, I might respond nicely, but otherwise you'll be getting a nice big flame.

law56ker · Post by **law56ker** » Sun Nov 24, 2002 5:03 am

Great job..I just tried the new version. Keep up the good work.

fatheadpi · Post by **fatheadpi** » Sun Nov 24, 2002 11:55 pm

What I was talking about there was first seeing how big your XDP3 directory was, then keeping that in mind while you made use of any extra space to create a custom audio cd, then going ahead and burning the data. Like it mentions early on in the guide, XDP3 can be used with multiple audio tracks. I thought this would be useful, if nothing more than a better way of filling a cd than with a dummy file.

And the fresh cdr thing was a reminder that you need to use a blank, fresh cdr disc each time you want to make a new Dreamcast CD.

fatheadpi · Post by **fatheadpi** » Thu Nov 28, 2002 4:10 pm

So what do you guys want to see the most?

1. A Guide to creating SOFDEC Movies and ADX audio files?
2. A guide on how to launch apps from XDP?
3. A hybrid XDP with Planetweb (XWEB) and DreamKey (XDike)?
4. A better guide on how to self boot XDP?
5. A hybrid XDP with Utopia, Vorlem, Internet Settings Adjustor, and DCLoad, with a sidekick toolkit for the PC sides of Vorlem and DCLoad?

fatheadpi · Post by **fatheadpi** » Thu Nov 28, 2002 4:13 pm

Whoops, sorry, forum bug told me "problem sending e-mail, didn't look to see if it'd actually posted.

ghettowb · Post by **ghettowb** » Thu Nov 28, 2002 7:47 pm

All I could really want most outta the browser is for the IRC client to work.

Would be nice if anyone had DPPP to work with on this project.

And, yes I understand the legal issues, still say it would be nice.

law56ker · Post by **law56ker** » Fri Nov 29, 2002 4:37 am

You make it hard to choose with all those good choices:)

ghettowb · Post by **ghettowb** » Fri Nov 29, 2002 3:10 pm

All i could want working outta this is the irc client that comes with this browser. Havent got it to log into a server yet. Just need it to log into one anyway.
Says sending info and then disconnects me everytime. Has anyone else tried the IRC Client and had any luck.

ghettowb · Post by **ghettowb** » Fri Nov 29, 2002 3:13 pm

Ha ditto, i posted one the other day and got same msg fatheadpi, and now today when i tried again i see it went through lol.

az_bont · Post by **az_bont** » Fri Nov 29, 2002 5:27 pm

fatheadpi wrote:So what do you guys want to see the most?

1. A Guide to creating SOFDEC Movies and ADX audio files?
2. A guide on how to launch apps from XDP?
3. A hybrid XDP with Planetweb (XWEB) and DreamKey (XDike)?
4. A better guide on how to self boot XDP?
5. A hybrid XDP with Utopia, Vorlem, Internet Settings Adjustor, and DCLoad, with a sidekick toolkit for the PC sides of Vorlem and DCLoad?

2. A guide on how to launch apps from XDP
5. A hybrid of XDP with Utopia, Vorlem, Internet Settings Adjuster, and DCLoad...

Sadly they're the two hardest to do, but SOFDEC is easy enough to encode, DreamKey wouldn't add a great deal to the browser and a guide isn't really neccesary. They'd be nice, but not as nice as 2 and 5.

Cringle · Post by **Cringle** » Fri Nov 29, 2002 7:43 pm

Fatheadpi,

Sofdec Movie and ADX audio creation guide:

This would be excellent, also it would prob'ly save you hours of answering the same questions like with DCDivX. I have been reading your posts on this board about Sofdec movies and it sounds good - I haven't tried the ADX utils yet, which sound like the key to smaller sound files. I'm almost at the stage of risking some CD's. I have an INI file on a Dreamcast disc that points to something called Ginxfer.bin and a couple of other binaries then to sofdec files, the point being that it had two sofdecs on the same disc. Everything else I have read about seems to only support one sofdec per disc.

So anyways I think that's maybe the key to having a test sofdec disc with a couple of files at different bitrates, now I need to have the guts to try it. PM me if you think I'm onto something or let me know if XDP already has this facility.

Guide on how to launch apps from XDP: this would be fantastic too.

Hybrid XDP: I'll leave this to peeps who use the DC as browsers to answer!

Newb question - is offline VMU management via the browser possible? I.e. can I create a disc with VMU saves and transfer them from DC to VMU without a net connection or that serial cable. If it only involves html or an ini file rather than programming, this would be a useful facility if you have the time.

P.S. Regarding TG16/Genesis emulation: whether it happens or not, just like to remind everybody who think that this is a bad thing that there are in fact hundreds of public domain homebrew TG16/Genesis games that DC owners may have missed out on. This would be a new and great showcase for their relatively unheralded efforts.

Cringle · Post by **Cringle** » Fri Nov 29, 2002 7:59 pm

Fatheadpi,

Sofdec Movie and ADX audio creation guide:

This would be excellent, also it would prob'ly save you hours of answering the same questions like with DCDivX. I have been reading your posts on this board about Sofdec movies and it sounds good - I haven't tried the ADX utils yet, which sound like the key to smaller sound files. I'm almost at the stage of risking some CD's. I have an INI file on a Dreamcast disc that points to something called Ginxfer.bin and a couple of other binaries then to sofdec files, the point being that it had two sofdecs on the same disc. Everything else I have read about seems to only support one sofdec per disc.

Now I need to have the guts to try it. PM me if you think I'm onto something or let me know if XDP already has this facility.

Guide on how to launch apps from XDP: this would be fantastic too.

Hybrid XDP: I'll leave this to peeps who use the DC as browsers to answer!

Newb question - is offline VMU management via the browser possible? I.e. can I create a disc with VMU saves and transfer them from DC to VMU without a net connection or that serial cable. If it only involves html or an ini file rather than programming, this would be a useful facility.

P.S. Regarding TG16/Genesis emulation: whether it happens or not, just like to remind everybody who think that this is a bad thing that there are in fact hundreds of public domain homebrew TG16/Genesis games that DC owners may have missed out on. This would be a new and great showcase for their relatively unheralded efforts.

OneThirty8 · Post by **OneThirty8** » Fri Nov 29, 2002 9:25 pm

I am getting a lot of use out of the browser the way it is, playing movies and Flash animations... just another reason why my DC is my favorite distraction from my schoolwork. For those of you reading that haven't tried it, the video quality of the built-in sofdec player is outstanding(way better than GypPlay) an if you have the right apps, converting from mpeg-1 to sofdec takes only a few minutes. And because it's a web browser it's easy to make your own menus so your movie discs can look almost like DVD's.

So, to get around to responding to fatheadpi's question, the only things I would like to see are guides on how to launch apps, and those hybrids you mentioned sound interesting, too.

Also, I think it would look cool if you had your own logo.mr. I always put one on my own selfboots and it impressed the hell out of my mom when she saw it.

Synlor · Post by **Synlor** » Fri Nov 29, 2002 9:50 pm

You must remember I haven't read through this post all the way, so it may have been suggested before. Now didn't krypt once write how to boot programs from the browser? Now if you had the webrowser boot up, then you could launch the Utopia boot CD from there, and from there load dream inducer to load all your homebrew stuff. I thought krypt once said that homebrew stuff can't access the cd when launched from a browser, so thats why you would need to load Utopia. I'm also not sure if this was for planetweb only though....

fatheadpi · Post by **fatheadpi** » Fri Nov 29, 2002 11:41 pm

Finally, some input.

Yes, you can have many sofdecs on a disc. I assume the ini you are referring to is a file called ginsu.ini. Would you be kind enough to post the contents of the ini file? My ripping resources are aimed at my cutsomied version of Vigilante 8: Second offense at the moment, so I am unable to rip my ODCM discs.

Offline VMU management is possible. The next release is going to be something special. I will include VMITool and Vorlem in the mix. With VMI tool, you put your .vms files into a subdirectory, and use vmi tool on them. It makes both the vmi files so they can be read by the web browser and the html pages so you can just link to htem and load up your saves. Vorlem allows serial cable users to back up their VMU saves, and I plan on including these two because they would be the easiest to implement, along with DCLoad.

Something that owuld really be nice owuld be if someone would go and download all the vms files from PlanetWeb and the few giant DC fan sites with web data banks, and grab all the cheat code files for codebreaker and gameshark, and use vmi tool to make a large archive of all the savegames which we could either include in XDP releases or put into a special XDP release.

Az, the Hybrid image is promising, but I've run into some problems, think I'vem entioned them earlier. My current Beta disc has Utopia launching, but the disc swap doesn't work. I need to look at how DP will launch it, then conduct more tests with the AppOS and AppDA commands, and see if we can add more Launcher Addresses. We are limited to nine right now, which means only nine apps per disc.

Snylor, the Utopia solution isn't too likely to work, it was one of Krypt's theories, but he stopped work on the original project a long time ago. I'm beginning to get an idea of how the launcher menu works, there's something to the idea of creating a subdirectory with all the app files, roms, etc. I'll let you know as things progress. However, it all may be tied into bins call Maigo.bin. If so, I need a Dreamcast Binary decompiler, and I'll soon have a copy of Katana, which will no doubt lead to endless bitching about the project app launching.

In general browser news, work has begun on v5. I have aquired a rip of DreamPassport from one of the old rip groups, and it has a few pvr files which are nicer than mine, so I will include them in the next release, and also try its mesage.ini, which seems properly written.

I have been examining the DPS files, which are large text files which tell DP how to lay itself out based on the pvr files. It seems to me that, using this file, someone could sit down and add more functions to all of the menus, assuming they had a pvr editing solution and a little willpower. If anyone is interested, post in the thread, I'll tell you what I've seen so far. Curtis, if you are still reading, post what you know. I know that you talked about customizing them in previous posts, and as usual, you know more than I do.

Also, the new boot kit may be able to be booted by bin2boot, eliminating the need for cdrecord and image releases, more on this soon.

I still need someone to make a legal Sofdec multiplexor. I now have legal solutions for making the Mpeg-1 and ADX stream, but I need a legal multiplexor. Also, it would be nice to have an app that would scan a subdirectory of files, and based off of their extension, write an html page using the proper x-avefront commands to launch them. This would ideally include support for .sfd, .adx, .mid, .wav, and flash files, and exentually the ability to append dp3.ini to launch binaries.

Once again, for future reference, DO NOT ASK about TG16 / Genesis emulation. This is being worked on in private, but it will not be available for some time to come.

- Fathead P.I.

Link · Post by **Link** » Sat Nov 30, 2002 8:17 am

Hi,

Ok, I would like to ask one question. Since we know that not all Dreamcasts will work with an Audio/Data disk would there be a way to modify the instructions to selfboot it in a Data/Data fashion? I am willing to try this whole manual selfbooting thing, but I need to know first if there is a simple way to make it Data/Data rather then having a 50/50 chance of it being burned correct and not working anyway. I hope the answer is good news.

Thanx

az_bont · Post by **az_bont** » Sat Nov 30, 2002 8:30 am

Link wrote:Hi,

Ok, I would like to ask one question. Since we know that not all Dreamcasts will work with an Audio/Data disk would there be a way to modify the instructions to selfboot it in a Data/Data fashion? I am willing to try this whole manual selfbooting thing, but I need to know first if there is a simple way to make it Data/Data rather then having a 50/50 chance of it being burned correct and not working anyway. I hope the answer is good news.

Thanx

As fatheadpi has stated earlier, he can't get it to boot properly when he uses the Data/Data method, nor can he get many games made with the official development kit to boot with it. I think we're stuck with the Audio/Data method, or waiting for a Nero/DJ image, which would still be Audio/Data.

Link · Post by **Link** » Sat Nov 30, 2002 8:36 am

Hi again,

I'm gonna ask a weird question. If the DJ image that I burned of the last release booted fine does that then mean that my DC can use audio/data? If so Could I draw the conclusion that I could use the selfboot method and have it work like the DJ image did?

Sorry if it's a stupid question. Btw Az, Love the new sig dude

az_bont · Post by **az_bont** » Sat Nov 30, 2002 8:44 am

Link wrote:Hi again,

I'm gonna ask a weird question. If the DJ image that I burned of the last release booted fine does that then mean that my DC can use audio/data? If so Could I draw the conclusion that I could use the selfboot method and have it work like the DJ image did?

Yes

fatheadpi · Post by **fatheadpi** » Sat Nov 30, 2002 11:59 am

If the last image worked, I guess you could be able.

Another way I suppose you could do it would be to burn the first track as a large data file. For example, when you use cdrecord, instead of audio dummying or doing one of these:

cdrecord -dev=x,x,x -multi -audio audio.raw

You could make a dummy first session by putting your dummy files into a subdir, and make an image like this:

mkisofs -C 0,0 -V XDP3 -l -o XDP3.iso XDP3

Then burn it like this:

cdrecord -dev=x,x,x -multi -xa1 speed=y XDP3.iso

Then proceed as usual. DO NOT EVER PUT THIS INTO A NORMAL CD PLAYER.

For those interested in the web browser

Are you interested in the web browser?

:P

:P

What would we like to see next?