Links for Those Wishing to Develop for the Dreamcast

If you have any questions on programming, this is the place to ask them, whether you're a newbie or an experienced programmer. Discussion on programming in general is also welcome. We will help you with programming homework, but we will not do your work for you! Any porting requests must be made in Developmental Ideas.
ZacMc
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Links for Those Wishing to Develop for the Dreamcast

Post by ZacMc »

Toastman posted...

For all of those wishing to begin coding on the Dreamcast or the PC, here are some links to get you started. I've tried to keep them seperated by subject/content. If you have any more, just reply to this message with the link and a short description. I'll check back every now and then adding the links to the post and deleting the replys to keep this topic short.

===Compilers===
http://gcc.gnu.org/ - GCC homepage - Massive, free, multi-platform C compiler.
http://www.cs.princeton.edu/software/lcc/ - Free ANSI C compiler, much simpler than GCC, not usable on the Dreamcast.
http://www.hangar-eleven.de/ DEAD - Setting up cross-GCC and an example
http://www.mingw.org/ - MinGW, the Minimalist GNU for windows
http://www.delorie.com/ - Home of DJGPP

===Libraries===
http://www.allegro.cc - Allegro Game Library site.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cadcdev/ - KallistiOS
http://www.libsdl.org/ - SDL, great cross-platform (including DC) programming library (included in KOS).

===DC Specific Resources===
http://mc.pp.se/dc/ - MC's Dreamcast Programming page
http://gamedev.allusion.net/ - Cryptic Allusion Gamedev, the people who made KOS.

===General Resources===
http://www.cprogramming.com/ - C/C++ programming tutorials / reference
http://www.gametutorials.com/ - Game programming tutorials, mostly 3D.
http://www.planet-source-code.com/ - Good For examples
http://www.programmersheaven.com/ - Lots of junk, programming info, code...
http://www.gamedev.net/ - Game development resources, some is useful
http://nehe.gamedev.net/ - OpenGL tutorials
http://www.opengl.org/resources/tutorials/ DEAD - Links to OpenGL tuts
http://www.strath.ac.uk/IT/Docs/Ccourse/ - C Programming
http://www.lugod.org/presentations/sdl-talk-1/ - Beginning SDL
http://www.lugod.org/presentations/sdl-talk-2/ - Intermediate SDL

============================================
Thanks to (in order of appearance ;) ):
BlackAura
BlueCrab
Bombshell
neoak
for contributing links.

This topic was messed up (some people couldn't see it) and when I was trying to fix it I think I deleted it on accident :oops: l So now we are left with a bunch of posts by me.. Feel free to flame me in PMs :twisted:
Last edited by ZacMc on Tue Feb 18, 2003 6:57 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by ZacMc »

reaper2k2 posted..

HERE's a great link for SDL has every function and how to use it i find it very helpfull


ITS a nice looking site some may have this but i like how its set up

http://www.wlug.org.nz/SDLManPages

IT's from NZ lol not australia
Last edited by ZacMc on Tue Feb 18, 2003 6:28 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by ZacMc »

404notfound posted..

You forgot my fav free compiler: Dev-C++

Also avalable in Pascal flavors.
Last edited by ZacMc on Tue Feb 18, 2003 6:16 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by ZacMc »

Toastman posted..

Ack, j00 made the w0rds linkz j00 h4x0rz. How c4n 1 c0pi-p45t3 th4+?????///?

You broke my (implied) format rule
I guess I'll clean the thread tomorrow when I'm off.

To Do:
Add reaper's and 404's links.
Add respective names to the contributers list.
Last edited by ZacMc on Tue Feb 18, 2003 6:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by ZacMc »

RenoRulez posted..

I want to beginn with programming on the DC, but I don?t have any idea where to start!
Has sb. a step-by-step-tutorial?

thank you!
reno
Last edited by ZacMc on Tue Feb 18, 2003 6:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by ZacMc »

OneThirty8 posted..

I found a "for dummies" style guide for sdl on http://www.gamecoding.org.uk DEAD that looks very easy to follow and I think you can download the source code for the examples they walk you through, so you can see what it looks like. But first check the links further up the thread, from the actual DC coders first because they know more than me... and grab KOS and a good book on C or C++.

Of course, coding anything is a long hard process when you're starting out. Even writing Basic programs on my Dad's old PC jr. took me a long time to learn besides

Code: Select all

10 PRINT "Hello World!" 
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more links

Post by q_006 »

If you are a programmer but relatively new to 2D programming then you should check out these links first, especially the first and last ones.

these are links to 2D Dos Game Programming

http://www.geocities.com/siliconvalley/ ... torial.htm
/*check out the wyog.zip in the link above, very complete!*/

http://www.brackeen.com/home/vga/unchain.html

http://www3.telus.net/alexander_russell ... uction.htm


Now if you have Visual C++ 6 (any edition will do) you can go to the The Pern Project and this ConsoleVision link. This is an alternative to Cygwin and MSYS setup. Although those have been known to work better than the setup/IDE above, it is much easier to setup.

Enjoy!
Last edited by q_006 on Tue Apr 08, 2003 11:15 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by phowells »

I have been looking into developing for the Dreamcast for a few weeks and I have found many references to the Windows CE Toolkit for Dremcast. The Dreamcast DirectX port could be very useful to an experienced DirectX programmer. Has Microsoft succeded in making this toolkit completely unobtainable?
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Post by BlackAura »

Not completely unobtainable, but they aren't exactly easy to obtain. And it's probably not worth the effort, since KallistiOS can probably do most of it anyway. You'd just have to learn how to use it.
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Post by Mask of Destiny »

Is there a site with information on the sound system like the ARM memory map and information about Yamaha's chip?
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Post by Ex-Cyber »

Some documentation on the AICA can be found here, courtesy of the ever-spiffy Hitmen.
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Post by Mask of Destiny »

That's the best documenation I've seen so far, but it is lacking in the area I'm most interested in. Is there a document with a description of some or all of the opcodes for the DSP?
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Post by Quzar »

Was drudging through these forums and found this thread that i think may be helpful to programmers that have never made a program with sound.

http://www.dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=8409

is old, but gives example code for playing ogg sound.

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Post by ETR »

Know what would rock? A BitTorrent torrent for Sh4_Arm_Tools_win32.rar

I've been unable to find it, or an explanation of *what* it is. And if I can't find it or a replacement, I TI my programming class. And then I don't graduate.
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Post by dave13 »

Can I use Dev C++ 4 to program on the Dreamcast?
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DCFreeDev / Dev-C++ compiler setup

Post by q_006 »

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Post by pnpbios »

Are there any good tutorials on KOS, or am I just going to have to dig through the source and documentation?
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Post by OneThirty8 »

pnpbios wrote:Are there any good tutorials on KOS, or am I just going to have to dig through the source and documentation?
There's not a whole lot in the way of documentation, sadly. Your best bet is to look at the KOS examples and the header files. There are plenty of tutorials on SDL all over the interweb, so you might want to give that a go first. You'll need to have KOS set up for SDL to be of any use, but with it you can ease into DC development since the same code should work on the PC and DC with only minor changes.

Also, BlackAura has a few KOS tutorials on his website. http://files.frashii.com/~sp00nz/Doom/f ... ura/tutes/ Those are definitely worth reading, especially those by BA and BlueCrab.
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Post by pnpbios »

OneThirty8 wrote:
pnpbios wrote:Are there any good tutorials on KOS, or am I just going to have to dig through the source and documentation?
There's not a whole lot in the way of documentation, sadly. Your best bet is to look at the KOS examples and the header files. There are plenty of tutorials on SDL all over the interweb, so you might want to give that a go first. You'll need to have KOS set up for SDL to be of any use, but with it you can ease into DC development since the same code should work on the PC and DC with only minor changes.

Also, BlackAura has a few KOS tutorials on his website. http://files.frashii.com/~sp00nz/Doom/f ... ura/tutes/ Those are definitely worth reading, especially those by BA and BlueCrab.
thanks! I'm a little hesitant to do anything that uses SDL on the Dreamcast though, I heard that the implementation was unusable, but that was from some time ago. Are things better than that now?
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Post by OneThirty8 »

You'll need to apply a few fixes to SDL for the Joystick to work, and last I knew stereo sound still wasn't working right. (could have been that I screwed up my SDL when I tried to fix it, though.) For sound, KOS sound is just as easy to use anyway.

As far as being unusable, that's not really true. The timer needs to be fixed or many programs will run slowly - I don't have my SDL source handy at the moment, but a couple of us have posted our fixes/hacks for the SDL timer at dcemu.co.uk. I think GPF posted his, and I posted mine, which was essentially the same thing. The other thing is that it really only works well if you use a 320x240 screen surface. 640x480 works, but it's generally too slow. There's not really a fix for that, but you can still do some cool stuff with a 320x240 screen.
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