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News Archive: December 2001

Monday, December 31, 2001

Wolfenstein 3D/DC released Posted by LiENUS @ 22:57
Well as a new years gift evidently the Wolfenstien 3d port to the dreamcast was just released in 2 forms, plain files for registered, and image with shareware. This great port was done by crt0. Be sure and download it soon!

[Local copies are now available in the User Tools/Games section.]

MrSiggler now hosted at B00B. Posted by TheGypsy @ 17:34
We would like to welcome MrSiggler as the latest developer hosted by B00B. His new site is MrSiggler.boob.co.uk. He just put up the alpha2 version of his "MegamanX: Odyssey" game which fixed a small problem with a missing file in the first alpha.

We wish him luck in his continued DC development.

- John...

Sunday, December 30, 2001

New Demo Posted by Stalin @ 17:42
ucore has released his port of a Mesa demo by David Bucciarelli titled Tunnel v1.5. It demonstrates the use of fog on the Dreamcast and GL_TRIANGLE_STRIPS hacked into KGL.

You will need a coders cable or BBA to try out the unscrambled bin located at: http://axlen.com/dc/DCTunnel.zip

Friday, December 28, 2001

JPEG Slideshow v1.0 Released Posted by TheGypsy @ 17:21
Jon Reeser has released his first version of "JPEG Slideshow", a basic JPEG image viewer built using KOS. Be sure to read the README for some important information on creating the proper disc with your images.

Local copies are available in the User Tools section.

- John...

P.S. If you are looking for a slideshow/viewer, don't forget to also check out Dragyn's Image Slide Show which was released back in May. Dragyn hasn't done anything on it in a while, but it is still a decent JPEG viewer that currently supports more than Jon's new viewer (although I'm sure Jon will continue work on his and we'll see new versions, unlike Dragyn's which probably won't be continued that I know of).

BBAs Posted by CyRUS64 @ 16:46
For those of you still wanting to get your hands on a BBA, it seems that lik-sang have them back in stock for $119 usd. (about £80)
You can follow this link to get to them.

Thursday, December 27, 2001

DevCast Closed Posted by CyRUS64 @ 20:55
It seems that ss_teven has shut down his site DevCast... seemingly yet another person who has lost their code. Congrats to him for all the dc releases he has made in the past, and I hope he can at sometime relaunch the site. You can still access the main site via this link though.

OpenGL tutorials Posted by CyRUS64 @ 1:54
The newly-reformed Hyper Gamer has ported the first 8 OpenGL tutorials originally written by NeHe. You can find them here and they should act as a useful resource for new dc developers.

Bomberman clone Beta Posted by LiENUS @ 0:31
crt0 has released a beta of his bomberman clone for the dreamcast pick it up here

His Description is as follows:

Start by pressing start, then pick Start Game, then use Left/Right on DPAD to pick a map, then 2 players can bomb each other to death (first to 3 kills wins, then you go back to title screen). You should be able to drop 2^10 bombs per game before it screws up worse than usual :P.

[Update by CyRUS64 - Local copies are now available in the User Tools section.]

Wednesday, December 26, 2001

Bomberman Clone Posted by CyRUS64 @ 12:15
Crt0 has posted some cool new screenshots of his Bomberman Clone running under Lrdcheese's Dreamemu.

Thanks to LyonHrt for the news.

Tuesday, December 25, 2001

C++ Patch for KOS Posted by CyRUS64 @ 13:08
Benoit Miller kindly posted to the dcdev list this patch "that will surely ease the ports of existing C++ code to use KOS."
Here is some info about the patch:
"- allows C++ support, *with* STL
- does NOT require to link with newlib or libstdc++
- includes Tobias Gloth's stdio additions (thanks man!)
- adds most function protos for stdio, stdlib, string (required for STL)
- adds wchar.h
- adds all ctype functions (isalpha...) based on BSD 4.0
- adds strcspn implementation based on BSD 4.0
- fixes "make clean" for addons
- other things too minor to mention here

Note, you need to add "-fno-exceptions" to KOS_CPPFLAGS in your environ.sh to make this work (sorry, no C++ exceptions).

You can get STL support by using STLPort.
- Make sure that stlport/stl_user_config.h file defines STLP_NO_OWN_IOSTREAMS and _STLP_NO_THREADS (you need to add the latter anually).
- In your project's makefile, define KOS_LOCAL_CFLAGS and add the include path of STLPort."

He's also in the process of porting his 3d engine to KOS and making KallistiGL more OpenGL compliant!

Update: Since Benoit's site has been down for some reason, he suggested I might want to mirror the file here, which I promptly have done :)

Links:
Local Downloads

Project64 Posted by CyRUS64 @ 11:13
This is completely non-dreamcast related, but after many years of hard work Zilmar and Jabo have released the final version of Project64, a Nintendo 64 emulator.
They have also released the source to the main exe, and the RSP (Reality Signal Processor) interpreter and dynarec engines. There is some pretty powerful code in there, and I'm sure that many dev'ers will find it very useful to learn from.
Anyhow, congratulations (and comisserations) to them both...

Update: Most interesting of all, this is actually the first emulator to have the option of low-level emulating the display lists via their RSP core. In the past every microcode has had to be individually reverse engineered by emulator authors and high-level emulated. Theoretically this should allow a game such as Resident Evil 2 to run... (RE2 has a v.complex mpeg decoder microcode)

Emulator releases Posted by CyRUS64 @ 10:41
Sorry about the late updates, but I've been busy and on holiday recently. Thanks to all those who have emailed me with news and please continue to do so! Also if any developers would be interested in getting newspro accounts at Boob! so that they can post news of their releases directly to the site, then please mail me or contact me in #boob/#dcdev.

Recent releases:

  • nesterdc-5.0-pre2
    +More stable (having changed the base coding language to EC++)
    +VGA support added
    +Changed "MMC2/MMC4 support" to "precision-emulation-mode". If you want to run MMC2/MMC4 ROMs (mapper 9,10), compile NesterDC with -D__PRECISION_EMULATE__.

  • FrNES 0.60 Final
    +Vastly Improved Scrolling / PPU Engine
    +Partial Assembly Language Implementation
    +AutoFrameSkip Added (Press Left at FrameSkip == 0)
    +Frameskip fixed (works the way it's expected to now)
    +Many More Options
    +Font customization
    +Source Release
    +Improved Mapper Support for mappers 0-4
    +Partial Mapper Support for mappers 7 and 9
    +Fixed Disc Swapping
    +More sound improvements

    I also apologize for not having made any releases myself recently, but hopefully some should come soon. Due to the nature of the project, Boob!cast has taken up a large amount of my coding-time over the last few months.

    Anyhow, Happy Christmas to all :)

    Monday, December 24, 2001

    MegamanX: Odyssey Posted by LiENUS @ 4:08
    Sorry for no posts being made here before about this but here it is, MrSiggler has released a public alpha of his game "MegamanX: Odyssey", so far it includes Zero and MegaManX selectable, one level which you can jump around in and climb up/down the walls check out http://mrsiggler.cjb.net/ for downloads and screenshots... btw looks like theres a secret area in the level...

    Saturday, December 22, 2001

    Christmas Updates Posted by CyRUS64 @ 2:14
    Check out the follow sites for some festive progress news:

    DreamSNES
    SMEG
    Devcast (ss_teven's site)

    Also as always the Boob! covers site has been updated often recently.

    Friday, December 14, 2001

    TuxNES-DC Released... Posted by TheGypsy @ 18:13
    Jim Ursetto has released v0.1 of texnes-dc, a port of TuxNES v0.75 to the Dreamcast. Features:

    - Sound is supported.
    - Almost all games run at 30fps.
    - Game saving is supported via dcload (but not to VMU at this point).
    - Full sourcecode released.

    You can check Jim's site here. Local copies are in the Developer Tools and NES Emulators sections.

    - John...

    Tuesday, December 11, 2001

    KOS Manual WIP Posted by CyRUS64 @ 13:08
    Dan has started work on a new KOS manual, of which you can view a preview here.
    Check out the Cryptic Allusion website for some info on the progress that has been made with this, and how you can help with the project.

    Monday, December 10, 2001

    DCGrendel updats Posted by CyRUS64 @ 16:15
    DCGrendel has updated his site with some progress:
    "I've spent a few days up-porting all of my projects from KOS-1.0.0 to KOS-1.1.5, and have posted the sources to JAM, jbombs, cdctrl, jcd (incomplete), all four jam screensavers, the jam window manager, my *new* texture ram mallocator, jset (similar to xset for X window), and lastly but certainly not least COLOR KOSH and COLOR jKOSH."

    I'll update our local downloads of these asap.

    Links:
    Offsite Link

    Sunday, December 9, 2001

    FrNES / Stella Posted by CyRUS64 @ 22:57
    FrNES has been updated a few times in the last week with progress news.
    Also a port of Stella, a Atari 2600 VCS Emulator, has had a first alpha release. You can get more information and the download from the official site.

    Monday, December 3, 2001

    Forums are back! Posted by TheGypsy @ 23:53
    Sorry for the delay with the forums being down. They are now up and working fine!

    - John...

    Sunday, December 2, 2001

    nesterdc-5.0-pre1 Posted by CyRUS64 @ 21:29
    A new version of Expanded NesterDC has been released. Here is what's new:
    VMU font driver
    Store Queue based video driver
    KOS library used updated to ver1.1.5

    As not seen on Boob! first - Thanks to LyonHrt for the news.

    Links:
    Local Downloads
    Offsite Link

    MRTool V0.2 Posted by CyRUS64 @ 14:26
    MRTool allows manipulation of the .MR format used to store images inside an ip.bin for display upon game startup. It converts to/from .BMP/.MR, and allows you to both inject and extract .MRs from IP.Bins. Thanks to the author for the news.

    Links:
    Official Site

    Boob! Clanwars site Posted by CyRUS64 @ 14:22
    Over the last few days, the Boob! Clan Wars site has been launched.
    There's not much to really say about it other than point you to the site itself. It basically involves online gaming competetions between the main dc "community" sites, so go do your bit and sign up for the Boob! team asap =)

    DCGrendel Updates Posted by CyRUS64 @ 14:09
    DCGrendel has updated his site with some "patches for enabling a (incomplete) kos service wrapper for lwip, a inetd & httpd package, a SLIP driver, and the Interrupt driven SCIF driver." He has also given a large status update on what will and will not be in the next Doom release, which I must say is sounding quite exciting.