A question about Dreamcast emulation

[TheAmericanNomad]

I remember back in the day when the DC was still some what viable some company was trying to basically run a PSOne emulator on it. But what ended up happening was basically a few games got ported with updated graphics.

Since DC emulation seems to still be unknown I was wondering if someone with far better skills than I would be able to hypothetically do the same thing with individual DC games? The DC wasn't powerful enough to emulate the PSOne, but managed to emulate some games if enough work was put into them.

I'd imagine that, if some skillful coders just started getting the most popular games ported one way or another, if that would be just as good as any kind of emulator we are going to get.


I'm certainly not requesting such a thing, I realize that it would be untold man hours to get such a thing done, I'm just throwing the idea out there as a out of box approach for for someone who wants hand held Shennmue and Crazy Taxi as much as I do, and just wondering if it would ever be possible, hypothetically.

 

[Prometheus]

I hope you don't mind, but I've split your question off into its own topic, as it probably wouldn't get noticed as well in the thread that it was formerly in.

Welcome aboard, by the way.

 

[fragglerok]

That would be bleemcast your thinking of, i know they did one for metal gear solid and tekken 3

 

[Mofokubik]

I remember back in the day when the DC was still some what viable some company was trying to basically run a PSOne emulator on it. But what ended up happening was basically a few games got ported with updated graphics.

They were not ports, but emulators tuned up for that specific game. They did this because compatibility was low and they needed to squeeze every ounce out of the dreamcast for this to work.

They had a regular version of bleemcast in the works that could load up any psx game (or any one that worked) but they were sued not long after and forced to halt production. The only copies of this floating around are beta versions, but yes they do exist, and yes they work amazingly well.

Since DC emulation seems to still be unknown I was wondering if someone with far better skills than I would be able to hypothetically do the same thing with individual DC games? The DC wasn't powerful enough to emulate the PSOne, but managed to emulate some games if enough work was put into them.

I'd imagine that, if some skillful coders just started getting the most popular games ported one way or another, if that would be just as good as any kind of emulator we are going to get.


I'm certainly not requesting such a thing, I realize that it would be untold man hours to get such a thing done, I'm just throwing the idea out there as a out of box approach for for someone who wants hand held Shennmue and Crazy Taxi as much as I do, and just wondering if it would ever be possible, hypothetically.

There is a DC emulator, you don't see one on pandora because it's most likely a dirty port with some neon and arm-specific optimizations, and not yet finished. I don't remember who was supposed to be working on one, isn't there a arm version of nullDC in the works?

 

[mcobit]

There is a DC emulator, you don't see one on pandora because it's most likely a dirty port with some neon and arm-specific optimizations, and not yet finished. I don't remember who was supposed to be working on one, isn't there a arm version of nullDC in the works?

There is an arm version and it runs on pandora as seen here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXJ0WtWGRLE

But I don't know if anyone is still working on it.

Edit: http://drk.emudev.org/blog/ Here seems to be the blog of the dev but I think I remember, that he doesn't work on the pandora-version right now.

 

[Prometheus]

I'd imagine that, if some skillful coders just started getting the most popular games ported one way or another, if that would be just as good as any kind of emulator we are going to get.

My apologies for not noting this earlier, but it's impossible to port a game unless you have the source code in your possession. To my knowledge, none of that console's library is open source, so porting cannot be done. (As Mofokubik points out, the PlayStation stuff was emulated, not ported. )

 

[nutki]

My apologies for not noting this earlier, but it's impossible to port a game unless you have the source code in your possession.

It is not strictly true. With enough effort it is possible to disassemble a game and port from assembly source. This was done with Rick Dangerous (xrick). Grated this was a simple game. However it usually should be enough to reverse engineer and rewrite graphic/audio routines, the logic can be interpreted with a CPU emulator. One can argue if 'port' is a good word then, but if the result is the same, how does it matter.

 

[TheAmericanNomad]

My apologizes I was not aware of how the Bleemcast worked (and thanks for reminding me of the name). However, if emulators were created for individual games to get them to run on DC, could not the same thing be done for this?

My Dreamcast died long ago, I'd love to play Shennmue again.

EDIT: Also, I did know about the nullDC emulation, but it seems to have stalled. During my research before this post last night I think the creator said something to the effect that he wasn't working on it at the moment but not to worry because he would get back to it eventually.

 

[Exophase]

Bleemcast working as well as it did for some games doesn't mean that a similar approach would be as successful for Dreamcast emulation on Pandora.. it's quite an apples to oranges comparison.

You could theoretically do all kinds of things to improve performance for one specific game. Relax timing, make valid assumptions about things the code won't do in recompilation (like assume all functions follow some ABI for instance), not worry about setting certain kinds of flags or other side effects, etc..

And you can take it to a greater extreme and do something more like what nootkey was talking about, by replacing emulated code with native code. I guess you'd want to profile the most common clusters of basic blocks and rewrite them by hand to accomplish the same sort of thing, then make them linked to directly.

You just don't generally see emulator authors doing things like this because it's a whole ton of work just for one game, and most emulator authors care about running as many games as possible and aren't obsessed with any given one. The only time you really see this happening is when there's commercial incentive, like with Bleemcast or when games are rereleased for other platforms; I've guessed that the Chrono Trigger and FF rereleases for PS1 took approaches like this.

 

[Gruntfuggly]

My Dreamcast died long ago, I'd love to play Shennmue again.

Why don't you just buy a Dreamcast off eBay? They go for peanuts...

 

[TheAmericanNomad]

I might, but I have already had two die on me, I'd rather just get something more stable that I could play on the run and at home on my big screen.

 

[Pleng]

I might, but I have already had two die on me, I'd rather just get something more stable

The Pandora can hardly be considered stable...

that I could play on the run and at home on my big screen.

...still no word on the TV out cable.

 

[Prometheus]

My apologies for not noting this earlier, but it's impossible to port a game unless you have the source code in your possession.

It is not strictly true. With enough effort it is possible to disassemble a game and port from assembly source.

Oh, I know this, but fair point. It just seemed, to me, to be an unnecessarily complicated thing to explain in addition to the point I was trying to make.

 

[TheAmericanNomad]

The Pandora can hardly be considered stable...

Well I simply mean something that isn't going to break on me.

...still no word on the TV out cable.

There is no cable I could buy from somewhere else that would work?

I have to say, that will be a deal breaker for me, I want something that I can play games or watch movies on when I'm out and then hook up to the TV and finish when I get home.

I understand its all homebrew so things may take a while to get stable, and DC may never come, but I would be satisfied with everything else, but if I'm not going to be able to get it on my TV I might as well get something cheaper.

 

[typs lik dis]

If worse comes to worst (OP goes out of business before shipping any TV-out cables), you will probably be able to get the connector somewhere and make your own cable. Assuming you get your Pandora before OP goes out of business, if it does.

 

[TheAmericanNomad]

Is it really that close to going out of business? I'm still in the decision making phase, but if its that close to going under perhaps I should just give up and wait for a second hand one on ebay?

I really don't want to plunk down that kind of cash for nothing.

What kind of port is the TV out anyway?

 

[typs lik dis]

Where did you read that OP was close to going out of business?

TV-out is over the Pandora's EXT port, which also has at least line-in/out. It uses, I believe, a weird but not original connector. There's at least one diagram of its pinout somewhere.

 

[Pleng]

The Pandora can hardly be considered stable...

Well I simply mean something that isn't going to break on me.

umm that's what I meant too. I'd imagine percentage wise the amount of failed Pandora's whoops the amount of failed Dreamcast's buttocks.

If worse comes to worst (OP goes out of business before shipping any TV-out cables), you will probably be able to get the connector somewhere and make your own cable.

easier said than done...

 

[Prometheus]

Is it really that close to going out of business?

Not that I have heard.

 

[WizardStan]

easier said than done...

It is "easy", as long as you don't mind getting 100 of them