Dreamcast Development Article on Gamedev.net

[anothrguitarist]

Is there anyone who could read through my article on introduction to Dreamcast development, so that it's more polished when I submit it to gamedev.net?

I'd appreciate it.

[Quzar]

The only discs that work with a Dreamcast are GD-ROMs and CD-Rs. Since GD-ROM burners are not easily obtained, CD-Rs are the only realistic option. Additionally, the CD-R must be burnt with a special format. In order to boot properly, it must contain an audio track on the first sector of the disc.

Although these two comments may be hyper-technical: 1) one cannot burn a GD-ROM just as one does not burn a CD-ROM. One may burn a GD-R with a GD burner, and even so, the same tools and libs can't be used to boot material off a GD-R 2) The term sector refers to a specific thing on a CD, and a track does not fit in a sector. "In order to boot properly, the disc must have an audio track before the main data track" or something like that?

Testing on Hardware with a Broadband Adapter – Another option is to use a broadband adapter or serial cable to communicate with the Dreamcast directly. The toolchain comes with software to accomplish this task, but coming across a broadband adapter for a low price is difficult.

You sort of just skim by the mention of the serial cable, which (if you can find one) is much cheaper than a BBA. Also, there are many very simple schematics for wiring up your own if one is technically inclined (which is not the case for the BBA[there are only extremely complex schematics ]).

The program scramble is included with KOS. ( kos/utils/scramble ) I'm not sure that it's different from what is on marcus' site (it is certainly based off it if it's different) but it's also surely more recent, standard, and would require slightly less dependence on sites staying up.

Other than that looks good. You might want to do something like provide general links to places like here, and/or give links to development on windows and mac for it (we have sets of tutorials for each here).

[Ex-Cyber]

The only discs that work with a Dreamcast are GD-ROMs and CD-Rs. Since GD-ROM burners are not easily obtained, CD-Rs are the only realistic option. Additionally, the CD-R must be burnt with a special format. In order to boot properly, it must contain an audio track on the first sector of the disc.

Although these two comments may be hyper-technical: 1) one cannot burn a GD-ROM just as one does not burn a CD-ROM. One may burn a GD-R with a GD burner, and even so, the same tools and libs can't be used to boot material off a GD-R 2) The term sector refers to a specific thing on a CD, and a track does not fit in a sector. "In order to boot properly, the disc must have an audio track before the main data track" or something like that?

More to the point, it's actually that the disc needs to have 2 sessions. Whether the first session contains a data track or an audio track is not all that vital.

[BlackAura]

"In order to boot properly, the disc must have an audio track before the main data track" or something like that?

It's not tracks - it's sessions. The disc must have exactly two sessions. The first session can contain anything, including any number of audio tracks or even a data track - it's completely ignored by the Dreamcast's BIOS. The second session must contain one data track, with the IP.BIN bootloader inserted in the right place, and the 1ST_READ.BIN file present and scrambled.

This was based on the MIL-CD discs that were briefly available in Japan, consisting of an audio CD that was bootable on a Dreamcast. The scrambling was likely basic copy protection, intended to stop people from using the MIL-CD format to boot pirated games or homebrew. Obviously, it didn't work.

Oops... Ex-Cyber beat me to it...

One other glitch - the instructions linked to in the article for burning a CD are either out of date (MC's page) or somewhat incorrect (the Curmudgeon Gamer page). MC's instructions won't work with cdrecord 2, and the Curmudgeon Gamer instructions ignore the output of the -msinfo line and use 0,11702 (which usually works, but won't necessarily).

The correct instructions would be something like:

Code: Select all

dd if=/dev/zero bs=2352 count=300 of=audio.raw
cdrecord dev=0,0,0 -multi -audio audio.raw
MSINFO=`cdrecord dev=0,0,0 -msinfo`
mkisofs -l -r -C $MSINFO -G IP.BIN -o tmp.iso cdimage/
cdrecord dev=0,0,0 -multi -xa tmp.iso

I used to have some instructions (and a script, possibly) that did that automatically, in addition to being able to burn the discs on the fly instead of using .iso images. I think it was on these forums somewhere, but I can't remember exactly where.

[nymus]

Nice work and idea posting to gamedev.net. Does it have to be approved or is it guaranteed to be accepted?

[nymus]

More feedback:

Perhaps you could mention the specific host/target platform (eg KOS+linux) and that there are options for developing in Windows/NetBSD. As an aside, I was under the impression that the DCDev ISO was the de facto starting point these days....

There was another two-part article published on gamedev.net back in the day that might be useful:

GameDev.net -- Making Games For The Dreamcast Using Standard GNU Tools

[anothrguitarist]

Great, great, great ideas!

Let me work on those changes and upload the next draft.

In regard to getting a spot on Gamedev.net, yeah it's pretty much been approved. I've been speaking with Drew, one of the staff members, for a while now.

EDIT: Erm, I should mention that while this will be advertised on the front page with the other articles (I believe), it's going into the wiki.