Why does everyone say the Dreamcast's power is limited?

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Why does everyone say the Dreamcast's power is limited?

Post by ssj4goku128 »

I was wondering why people think so? Have you programmed for the Dreamcast? Have you ever tried even using free tools available for programming for the PS2 and Dreamcast and just compiled the same code and see which version runs faster on either system? Until you do... please refrain from bashing the Dreamcast. I hear things like "Dreamcast cannot emulate a PSX" or "Dreamcast cannot emulate a Nintendo 64". Well... A Dreamcast can emulate a Nintendo 64 with the smaller Roms, no problem(Talking about Mario 64 and Roms of that size). If you guys want as well, the rom can be split(a HUUUUUGE amount of work), but it can [within a year or 2] be split such as the first half of the game is one file and the second half is the other, and that when it is done with the first half, do a save at that exact point, clear the rom from the memory, and then load the second half. Only problem now would be going back in a level as in Mario 64 one must go back to certain areas of the castle. Just a couple of ideas of an unstable yet maybe do able N64 emulator.

As for the PSX emulator, the Pocket PC has a port. Its CPU does not run as many Billions of Float point operations per second and Dreamcast has faster memory bandwidth[not to mention, more video RAM for textures]. If Bleem can do it, perhaps, some1 with the Windows CE devkit, such as SIN[im assuming you have it since your emulator requires the Windows CE libraries] can port PCSX or GPSE. Just my 2 cents.
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Post by anal=probe »

The guy that had made bleemcast had 20 years of programming experience. He also made one of the best psx emu's for pc, so he was allready very familiar with the hardware. He was able do dedicate lots of time to it because it was his job. It's going to be very hard for someone to make money selling any homebrew software for the dreamcast anymore since sega abandoned it. Even if they were possible, no one else has the combination of talent, motivation, and time on their hands to make N64/PSX/Saturn emus that are on par with the quality of bleemcast.
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Post by Nyarlathotep »

uh... people think the DC is limited, because it *IS* limited; theres hundreds of things the Dc can't do. Like play DVDs or do my washing up for example. :?

Have you programmed for the Dreamcast? Have you ever tried even using free tools available for programming for the PS2 and Dreamcast and just compiled the same code and see which version runs faster on either system?
Have you?????????? :o I think you'll find if the DC could emulate the N64 "no problem" as you seem to think, it would have been done by now.

ROM "splitting" for an N64 emu? uh... no... not going to happen. *EVER*. If you are genuinely *DESPERATE* to see an N64 game running on your DC try my DREAMINDUCER THEME - its probably the closest you will ever get...

Theres always Heliophobes favorite "THERE ARENT ENOUGH BUTTONS ON A DC CONTROLLER TO EMULATE AN N64 ANYWAY!" argument as well...
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Post by |darc| »

For the last time, you cannot split or stream a ROM.
anal=probe wrote:The guy that had made bleemcast had 20 years of programming experience. He also made one of the best psx emu's for pc, so he was allready very familiar with the hardware. He was able do dedicate lots of time to it because it was his job. It's going to be very hard for someone to make money selling any homebrew software for the dreamcast anymore since sega abandoned it. Even if they were possible, no one else has the combination of talent, motivation, and time on their hands to make N64/PSX/Saturn emus that are on par with the quality of bleemcast.

You explained it damn well, man.
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Post by perry »

Nyar, That was a beautiful answer.
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Post by ssj4goku128 »

Yo.... i'm not sure if you guys have noticed... but there is a port to the Pocket PC of GPSE which is FPSE rewritten completely in C! And it runs 2-d games at frikken half the frames per second! Maybe once the GPSE source is released, I (and one of my friends from SJSU) can take on this port and prove that the Dreamcast can easily emulate the PSX.
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Post by Nyarlathotep »

I don't think theres any doubt Playstation emulation on DC is possible - Rand Linden showed us all it was :D - but we're saying N64 emulation is certainly not easy and might well actually be impossible.

If you think about how a Playstation (which only had 2MB RAM I believe) works, by loading data off the CD at specific points *written into the game* you'll see why theres a difference between N64 emulation and PSX emulation. All Playstation games are actually written with a certain amount of data in mind for each 'area', with hooks so that when you leave the area the playstaion knows to load in the next 'area'

The N64 is completely different to this - because its a cartridge theres basically instanteous access to any part of the cartridge (no CD loading time) so the games arent programmed to load, say one level, then wait for the next level to load when thats finished.

Very basically, on a Playstation, you would have to have textures, sounds etc for every 'area' - an N64 can just have like a folder called textures or sounds which every 'area' accesses at the same time... The N64 is also a more powerful machine than a Playstation - the DC just doesn't have enough RAM to keep a ROM, an emulator, and the N64 4MB RAM requirement going at the same time.....

I would be more than happy to be proved wrong on this by the way :P
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Post by az_bont »

Nyarlathotep wrote:I would be more than happy to be proved wrong on this by the way :P
Somehow I don't think you will be - and definately not by ssj4goku128!
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Post by dcemuler »

Nyarlathotep wrote:I don't think theres any doubt Playstation emulation on DC is possible - Rand Linden showed us all it was :D - but we're saying N64 emulation is certainly not easy and might well actually be impossible.

If you think about how a Playstation (which only had 2MB RAM I believe) works, by loading data off the CD at specific points *written into the game* you'll see why theres a difference between N64 emulation and PSX emulation. All Playstation games are actually written with a certain amount of data in mind for each 'area', with hooks so that when you leave the area the playstaion knows to load in the next 'area'

The N64 is completely different to this - because its a cartridge theres basically instanteous access to any part of the cartridge (no CD loading time) so the games arent programmed to load, say one level, then wait for the next level to load when thats finished.

Very basically, on a Playstation, you would have to have textures, sounds etc for every 'area' - an N64 can just have like a folder called textures or sounds which every 'area' accesses at the same time... The N64 is also a more powerful machine than a Playstation - the DC just doesn't have enough RAM to keep a ROM, an emulator, and the N64 4MB RAM requirement going at the same time.....

I would be more than happy to be proved wrong on this by the way :P
You're not wrong on this .

We're never gonna see a n64 emu on dc . So stop complaining

And start saving money for xbox :)

Cause i'm sure we're gonna see wonderful things on this console
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Post by Wasgo »

Yah really. Even assuming N64 emulation on DC is possible, it's far more likely it would be done on Xbox instead. Not a lot of programmers capable of doing an N64 emu are likely to be wooed to DC now that Xboxes can be chipped.
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N64 rom spliting is a no but, Neogeo is a major.

Post by clessoulis »

The "P" ROMs contain the 68000 code
The "S" ROM contains the 8x8 tiles for the fixed "front" layer (used for credit/score displays among other things)
The "M" ROM contains the Z80 code
The "V" ROMs contain sound smaple data
The "C" ROMs contain sprite graphics (Neo-Geo does all its graphics with sprite banks except for the front layer)

Ok this is the mix and match theory

The C and the V must be broken into parts. Which can be done but the V aka sound mite be hard to do.

C/ = a splited graphic file
V/ = splited music file

where working with kof98 here to

EX
Ok you need the C/ + V/ + M + P + S, name this kof98/1.rom
Next you need to edit these roms by adding searchs for other roms in it. This tom will contant the title screen, character select and one stages music and graphics. When the rom calls for a sertant stage it will now also call for a serant rom instead.

EX: Load stage "Sukken Ship" = Load Stage/rom "kof98/finalstage.rom"


Each rom would contant titlescreen, character select and 1 stages music/graphics. In total you'd have about 8 roms. This is the most pratical way to do these files spliting and load groups.

Also when go from stage to stage a temp save must be made on the vmu to carry the updated S value over to the next rom.

Ya it could be done but then again we'd need money power to get people willing to do this to work on it.

Also theres some games that doing this wouldnt be pratical for like kof95.
Its 15 MB and doing all this to get it down to about 8MB is stupid.

Just simply edit the rom and cut down on some of there over animated people so make the graphic rom smaller. Also rerecord the sound at a lower quality and then convert it bad into a rom.

kof95 could be about 6MB once this is done.
Last edited by clessoulis on Sun Jun 09, 2002 12:13 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: N64 rom spliting is a no but, Neogeo is a major.

Post by ZacMc »

clessoulis wrote:Wait a minute I need to got check a file before I make sure on this.
:o Ok, Im waiting..

What am I waiting for?
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Post by clessoulis »

Go look now. its up.
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Thanks to Reaper2k2 also for showing interest into WSC emulation.

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Re: N64 rom spliting is a no but, Neogeo is a major.

Post by Number11 »

clessoulis wrote:Just simply edit the rom and cut down on some of there over animated people so make the graphic rom smaller. Also rerecord the sound at a lower quality and then convert it bad into a rom.
"simply"!? :lol: I like the way you think but this is just too impractical ( not impossible but ... ). To make a long explanation short , you would have to do so much reverse engineering, disassembling, and hacking that you might as well port KOF95 to Dreamcast. Which would take more talent/time then anyone with the ability to bothered with.

You know NeoGeo had a CD version. ( Quick search via Yahoo - http://home1.gte.net/res002b4/neogeo/cdsys.htm ) It had some 8 megs of ram and the games were likely programmed in kind of the way you wanted to do. http://www.playthegames.com/neogeocd.html <-- List of most the games released for NeoGeo CD.

Emulating the NeoGeo CD system is practical. Hacking , hell damn near porting NeoGeo cart games isn't.
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Post by Number11 »

On a side note EVER SYSTEM has its limits. Personally I would rather write software for a more powerfull system. Dreamcast has a kick a55 video system but there is only so much that can do. I agree their is many thing the DC can emulate to a useable degree. It take lots more CPU power to emulate complex/powerfull systems as you have to mimic lots of things then deal with the "other stuff" too at the same time.

Cart based system have more then just the data on the cart to worry about. There is the actually system ram ( video , sound ,bios ...) then you need ram for emulation over head , tables, plus the emu code itself. That stuff adds up quickly. If I remember correctly SNES9x needs ~7-9 Megs of ram just for emulation not counting ROM, system ram, ... I don't even want to get into what N64 would need. :lol:

CD based systems ( non-super powered :wink: ) have a better chance of being emulated via another CD drive based machine as there are already programmed to use limited ram space but then again I don't recall too many CD based systems besides PSX emulated on the Dreamcast :o .
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Post by |darc| »

Even if we did find a successful way to split up the ROMs, where would we find them? DCEmu, Consolevision, and boob! would'nt host ROMs, normal ROM sites won't host them because they host normal unhacked ROMs. The only sites that might host them are DC ISO sites... Then when newbies ask why they can't use their ROMs, etc. we would have to tell them to find a DC ISO site with them on it........
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Post by reptilezero »

i think splitting up roms is kinda stupid myself, but as for distribution, there's always newsgroups and irc. i didn't even think that people used actual "sites" for getting games anymore! with p2p making it so easy, the whole idea of storing gigabytes of games on a server shouldn't even be considered anymore :)
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Post by clessoulis »

I'm Thinking Neogeo Cd emulation or saturn(yes I know its god hard to emulate but still I want it) on Dreamcast should be the final systems emulated after WSC.

Personally I never could disided which was better cart or cd even DVD over cart is a hard desions for me.

Cart Advantages: No loads, Use of Special Chips
CD Advantages: More storage, Cheaper to make than carts

I always liked Saturn for having a Cart Slot and a Cd drive.

If I ever make a system I'll make each game use cd and cart you'll simply get the best for games.
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Post by Nyarlathotep »

clessoulis wrote: If I ever make a system I'll make each game use cd and cart you'll simply get the best for games.
I'm sure thats reassured everybody waiting for your system to get released :P
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Post by 404NotFound »

Nyarlathotep wrote:
clessoulis wrote: If I ever make a system I'll make each game use cd and cart you'll simply get the best for games.
I'm sure thats reassured everybody waiting for your system to get released :P
what would be the point of a cart? a simple bit of ram would solve the problem of load times... just have the cd pre-load while u play.
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