Duke 3d for Dreamcast released

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

A port of Duke 3D to the dreamcast has been released. It's supposed to be quite stable as well. As per usual, Bero ported it (that guys a machine! Tell him to get a GP32!!).

Well, now that it has been ported to C, anyone interested in bringing a port to the GP32?

www.dcemulation.com

 

[Tobriand]

DC almost certainly has an FPU since its a 3D console. So it'd still need to be re-spelled in fixed point; unless someone's already done that too.

 

[Makenai]

Damn.. that title threw me for a loop. I someone had already ported Duke to GP32.

 

[Tobriand]

Not yet - someone claimed the job, but didn't know what a compiler was, so it's prolly going to be a while before we hear of any progress at all on that front. Basically, it needed the ASM portions re-spelled in C (which is what the DC port does) and it also needed to get all the floating points re-done as fixed - as GP32 is notoriously slow dealing with floats.

There's supposed to be a code that's had the fixed point conversion done out there, but still has ASM, and the DC one will have ASM to C done (harder, methinks) but since its a Next Gen system it'll almost certainly have an FPU - so will use it, I suspect.

Still, C conversion makes it easier to work on than it might otherwise be. For a coder at least (not me, therefore )

 

[Sonic-NKT]

we could all collect mony for a gp32 and send it to him , we could get awesome ports..
but i dont have time now... have to play duke

 

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

I beleive the Dreamcast uses an SH4. Its actually a kinda shitty processor, so I'm not completely sure if it has an FPU or not.

 

[Swiss_Cheeseman]

It does after a quick google, but it seems that its very weak.

 

[true karma]

Apparantly the dreamcast has an FPU capable of about 1400 Gflops. Note: The N64 does about 100. So any port would certainly need to use fixed point binary

 

[Sonic-NKT]

i think it has a powervr ship or something like that...
so all videooutput has to be rewritten i think... but what about the linux port?
Is this easier

 

[Tobriand]

Linux port might well not need x86 ASM respelling...

But if a DC port would be using fixed point then that might make it marginally more possible - those are the two Big Mountain tasks associated with DN3D, since no ASM and no floats. After that, I imagine its comparatively simple. Compared, that is, to what it would have been before. Still a mammoth task though - hope someone takes it up