Dreamcast emulation takes a step forward

[BlazeHedgehod]

You may remember that sometime ago, an emulator named Chankast made the scene. It featured decent compatability and decent speed, and people anxiously awaited more releases. None ever game, despite the developer posting a message a couple years ago that he had improved the speed in Chankast by an amazing 70% and was even formulating an Xbox port.

And so, Dreamcast emulation sat in waiting. Until today.



The uninspiredly named demul was in development apparently before Chankcast, but work stopped on it once Chankast was released as the coders saw no point. With the total silence on Chankcast since it's release, the coders have picked up the project again and made their first release.

So far, compatability is very good. It doesn't emulate quite as perfectly as Chankast did, but I'm getting a full 5fps faster framerate than I did when running games in Chankast (I get 22-25fps in demul, I got 10-15fps in Chankast).

Thus far I have tested Crazy Taxi 2, Dead or Alive 2: LE, and the unreleased port of Half-Life.



CT2 had numerous graphical bugs and froze upon picking up the first customer.

Dead or Alive 2 seemed to run with some minor visual issues, but nothing so major the game is unplayable.

Half-Life crashed the emulator outright. Upon booting it up it identified the game as the original Crazy Taxi and shortly after the "LICENSED BY SEGA" screen, the emulator went kaput.

Even so, this is a very strong release considering the emulator is only at v0.1, and I await future releases.

Demul can be downloaded here, but remember: you need a Dreamcast BIOS file to run it, as well as bootleg copies of Dreamcast games; most normal CD disc drives will not read from Dreamcast GDroms, so an ISO or a copy of a game burned to a CDR is required.

[Robert]

A shame he didn't just realize the Chankast code and let someone else pick up on it. I do remember Chankast being very good, though. And I usually got better framerates if I recall... actually, my current computer was built based on benchmarks for Chankast with the hope I'd be able to emulate Dreamcast at a decent speed. That of course was back when I was sort of planning to write code for Dreamcast, but that time seems to be long past the general populous interest. (Is it?)

[BlazeHedgehod]

I'm still interested. Dreamcast is the only console I can homebrew on easily.

[diablohead]

Its interesting, is there any way to force resolution like epsxe yet?

My old but working dreamcast still gets used by me.

[BlazeHedgehod]

No, no resolution change options yet, though there is an option to smooth textures out using a 2xSai filter (you know, the sort of filter you use in SNES/NES/Genesis/whatever emulators to make the game appear less pixelly).

[Admin]

blazehedgehog said:

most normal CD disc drives will not read from Dreamcast GDroms

How about DVD drives?

[Robert]

admin said:

blazehedgehog said:

most normal CD disc drives will not read from Dreamcast GDroms

How about DVD drives?

Not likely. GD-ROMs are sort of "compressed track" CDs. I don't think they really fit either spec of CD or DVD. Interesting Blaze said "most normal"... are there drives reported that read GD-ROMs, or was that just a blanket statement just in case there's an oddity?

[BlazeHedgehod]

There are some CD-ROM drives out there that will, infact, read data from a GD-ROM, though they are extremely rare and I think only one or two models exist. I know one was made by Yamaha (who helped design the GD-ROM), can't remember what brand the other one was.

There was actually a whole project out there at one point dedicated to seeing which drives could and could not read GD-ROM data.

[diablohead]

The GD-rom was so high tech back in 1999, a whole gig on a cd sized disc was amazing at the time.

I still see them as pretty cool today, even with dual layer dvd's out there.

[InstantSonic]

Propeller Arena works on it, although it freezes like crazy

[BlazeHedgehod]

I never did get Prop Arena to burn properly. Same goes for that leaked version of Bleem! for the Dreamcast that plays like, a couple hundred PSone games.

[GagaMan]

The Bleem disc is great. Rare Japanese games that would cost you £100 or so seem to work best on it, but the old cheap game from a boot sale works too. It really does the graphics of some games justice, like Rakugaki Showtime, which really cleans up the pixels so you can appreciate the artwork and animation they have put into the sprites better.

[diablohead]

Gagaman, still got the iso at all? and / or a list of compatable games?

[GagaMan]

Here's a list I've been building up: dreamcastjunkyard.wikispaces.com/Bleem_for_Dreamcast_Beta
As for the ISO, I think I may have it backed up somewhere..

[Merry Smindmas]

I too would appreciate said iso. Mine disappeared a good few years ago.

[王泥喜]

I'd apprecaite a few nicely-working Bleem! Games. All the ones I got so far are "ok", but not necessarily "perfectly emulated", nor are they games really worth playing.

[Merry Smindmas]

I have a few built in Bleem games, the best of which is by far Strider 2. I tried to get Parappa to work because apparently that plays perfectly, but I always had issues trying to burn it :S

[GagaMan]

Parappa doesn't work perfectly, but close enough. The in game looks perfect, but it occasionally crashes at the cut scenes and the menus are rather transparent looking.

[Piers]

Quite like to run a FF psx game on the tv through bleem/dreamcast (if ever thats possible since I got the dc working after so long)

[GagaMan]

Not a chance. Cut scenes never work on Bleem, and you wouldn't be able to save it anyway.

There is, however, another PSX emulator in the works for the Dreamcast called PSX4all, in which they are working on getting both saving and FMV footage to work..