genplus

[nodew]

when i start up my dc it gets to the game list but when i click on a game the screen goes black except for some up in the top right corner anyone know whats going on? oh yeah im using genplus

[BlackAura]

Corrupted or damaged ROMs, maybe?

[abydos1000]

You might want to tell us what method was used to make your disc.

[nodew]

this is exactly what i did

Download Selfboot from Consolevision. Install it to C:\selfboot.

Create the directory genplus on your c dive (C:\genplus).

Download the Genesis Plus / DC Plain FIles, extract the zip.

Put the 1st_read.bin, ip.bin and the games and genplus folders into C:\genplus.

Put your Genesis roms into the "games" folder. Yes, your roms can be zipped.

Click on selfboot.exe. Browse to C:\genplus and click OK. Click the DiscJuggler button to create a cdi image, click the NERO (tao) or NERO (dao) button to create a NERO image.

Once the image is made, start up your burning program of choice & select burn image

[cagmere]

Speaking of Genplus, did you get a new DC Blackaura or have you abandoned the project?

[BlackAura]

The answer to both questions is "No".

My DC is currently working OK, for the time being.

I have not abandoned the project.

However, I have a lot of work to do. Four large assignments due soon (a major scientific graphing applicaiton group project in C#, with regular deliverables every couple of weeks, and virtually the entire thing riding on me, an individual Java component technology assignment due next week, an individual Java research / report assignment the week after that, loads of Haskell code which I find utterly incomprehensible), classes, tutorials, exam revision (mid-semester exam tomorrow, another next week), in addition to everything else that's going on around here...

Unfortunately, we don't get a mid-semester break - we already had it after the second week of term (which is too early - we hadn't even started doing any work yet).

Maybe when I get some free time, I'll get around to releasing the thing.

[nodew]

ok i got it some idiot labeled the roms i got as genesis but thier only master sys lol

[cagmere]

Sounds like a lot of fun BA. If you need any funding for a better Dreamcast just let me know, I can help out.

[dr apocalipsis]

Just a silly suggestion:

Can Blackaura add screen borders emulation to the emu?

In the older games (At least in PAL region) it was usual that game use differents colours instead of plain black. Other games that also uses that old feature are Gunstar Heroes or Sonic 2.

It could be fun to have an option to enable/disable that.

Don't you think so?

[BlackAura]

That's only noticable if you're running in PAL mode. At the moment, GP/DC can not run in PAL mode - there are a few timing issues with the emulation, the sound code, and the frameskipping code that prevent it working in 50Hz mode at the moment. In 60Hz mode, the borders are completely off the top of the screen.

Anyway, it should already be drawing coloured borders, but you can't see them.

[impact135]

well i just hope for the next version.. that the vertical letterboxing is fixed.

on games like air buster there are black lines on the side of the screen.. i dont recall the real game doing that..

other then that its a great emu so far.

[BlackAura]

well i just hope for the next version.. that the vertical letterboxing is fixed.

Should be. The old renderer wasn't really well suited to rendering in different modes. The entire vertical letterboxing bit was just a hack to be able to display 256x224 screens, while still using the rendering code for the 320x224 screen resolution, and without displaying garbage on the screen. The newer renderer is built quite differently, and can actually have separate code paths for different rendering modes. So, 256x224 mode will work and be displayed full screen, although it might look a bit stretched (it has to be stretched out to 640x448 to fit the screen).

Hopefully, the new renderer should allow me to get interlaced mode working, and have raster effects fully supported in all modes. As long as I can get the speed up enough, of course...

on games like air buster there are black lines on the side of the screen.. i dont recall the real game doing that..

If that's not the same as the vertical letterboxing, then I'll need to investigate that further.

(Adds Air Buster to test-these-games list)

[dr apocalipsis]

Should be. The old renderer wasn't really well suited to rendering in different modes. The entire vertical letterboxing bit was just a hack to be able to display 256x224 screens, while still using the rendering code for the 320x224 screen resolution, and without displaying garbage on the screen. The newer renderer is built quite differently, and can actually have separate code paths for different rendering modes. So, 256x224 mode will work and be displayed full screen, although it might look a bit stretched (it has to be stretched out to 640x448 to fit the screen).

Hopefully, the new renderer should allow me to get interlaced mode working, and have raster effects fully supported in all modes. As long as I can get the speed up enough, of course...

Rasters... Whoa...!!!

About 256x224 resolution. In others emulators such as that, er..., 'unnamed' one, this resolution, although full screen is bad looking because of a pretty bad strech. Probably it would be difficult to filter in some way for a better looking and mantain full speed. In fact I prefer non strech options on emulators such as WGENS becuse of the inacurate of the filtered modes. Besides, games like shining force looks better in 512x448 without strech, in it's native resolution. Probably it would be nice an optional [no]full screen mode for these resolution. Could it be?

[BlackAura]

Could it be?

Actually, I was thinking about that earlier today. The full-screen stretching will look like poo no matter what I do with it, so an option to disable it would be nice. I'd certainly leave it disabled for most games.

Filtering is a bad idea. It actually looks worse (because the tiles are blurry, but the borders between tiles are sharply defined, so you can actually see the tile grid).

The only other option is to somehow get the DC to output 512x448 (and maybe 640x448) natively. That'd neatly solve the whole stretching thing by making it unnecessary.

[Quzar]

Could it be?

Actually, I was thinking about that earlier today. The full-screen stretching will look like poo no matter what I do with it, so an option to disable it would be nice. I'd certainly leave it disabled for most games.

Filtering is a bad idea. It actually looks worse (because the tiles are blurry, but the borders between tiles are sharply defined, so you can actually see the tile grid).

The only other option is to somehow get the DC to output 512x448 (and maybe 640x448) natively. That'd neatly solve the whole stretching thing by making it unnecessary.

from my understanding you can tell the PVR to go into any resolution you want by manipulating the registers with different values (i think any value between 320x240 and 806x600) but KOS only has built in sets for a few of those values. Supposedly (bluecrab was talking about this before for all the different odd video modes the saturn has) it wouldnt be very difficult to make 'custom' modes by modifying kos' built in ones.

[BlackAura]

But I could only test those new modes on a PAL Dreamcast and TV. They may not even work on an NTSC system.

It'd also make my code a bit more complex, because I'd need to completely shut everything down and re-init everything whenever a game changes video mode (which happens quite a lot).

On the plus side, using ???x448 would allow me to use clipping regions to kind-of simulate windowing modes when the normal method (modifier volumes) is unavailable (being used for palette shifts).