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News Archive: May 2001

Thursday, May 31, 2001

bleem! Retaliates Posted by Stalin @ 0:12
I was reading Vintage Gaming (Dave's Classics for those of you that remember) and came across this humorous advertisement from bleem!.

Tuesday, May 29, 2001

Official DC Tonic Cover... Posted by TheGypsy @ 13:34
I somehow missed that there was an official CD Cover image included in the original DC Tonic release. I've added it to my ready-to-burn images for future downloaders. For those that already downloaded one of those, please do not download the entire archive again just to get the CD cover image. Instead, you can just grab it from right here:



The above I've converted to JPEG for convenience. The original PNG can be found in the User Tools section.

- John...

DC Tonic Cover... Posted by TheGypsy @ 12:53
NIGMA has done up a CD cover for DC Tonic for those wanting one. Note, of course, that this is not an official cover of any kind and wasn't endorsed/authorized by Cryptic Allusion or any of the other DC Tonic contributors. However, I'm assuming that they wouldn't mind (until I hear otherwise) and have it available here for those interested:



- John...

Friday, May 25, 2001

Sony The Juggernaut Strikes Again Posted by Stalin @ 15:43
Sony is trying to crush bleem! yet again according to this article: http://www.cloudchaser.com/cc/sega/news/49398.html

Wednesday, May 23, 2001

DISS - JPEG Slideshow/Viewer Released! Posted by TheGypsy @ 14:45
I know that many of you have been wanting an application such as this one for a while now... Dragyn has just released the first public beta (v0.80beta) of D.I.S.S. (Dragyn's Image Slide Show) -- a JPEG image viewer for the Dreamcast. It supports:

- Decoding of JPEG images (only)
- 24-bit color or greyscale
- images up to 5120 x 3840
- automatic scaling and centering
- disc swapping (reads from /images/ directory on separate disc)

You can grab DISS from the User Tools section. There are archives of just the files as well as ready-to-burn disc images in DiscJuggler (by Dragyn) and Nero (by me) formats. You can check out Dragyn's site directly at Dragyn.TheGypsy.com.

- John...

Tuesday, May 22, 2001

Space Invaders 0.3 Posted by CyRUS64 @ 16:03
D. Finck has released version 0.3 of his Space Invaders Arcade Emulator.

What's new in this version:
Backdrop artwork displayed during game
UFO sound repeats, as it should
A few other minor things no one will ever notice

You can download the various binary distributions (.bin/.srec/.cdi) from the Emulators section and the source from the Developer Tools section.

DC ADX Player Posted by CyRUS64 @ 16:01
Rks & Kotono have released the Vmaj Dreamcast sound Emulator v1.03, which is a plugin for winamp that allows you to play Dreamcast ADX sound files in winamp.
Read the readme.txt file included in the distribution which explains how you can also play .AFS sound files.

You can download this plugin from the User Tools page.

Monday, May 21, 2001

"DC Tonic" downloads now available... Posted by TheGypsy @ 22:13
As I mentioned earlier today, there are now ready-to-burn images (as well as the original files Zip) of DC Tonic available for download. You can find them in the User Tools section. You can get the original distribution as given by Dan Potter if you are familiar with making self-boot discs yourself. If not, or you just don't want to take the time to do it, you can just grab the Nero or DiscJuggler ready-to-burn images that I made. Do not download more than one of the distributions! They all contain the same files, just in different formats, so there is no need to waste bandwidth by grabbing more than one. Thanks...

- John...

Burritro v2 Demo released... Posted by TheGypsy @ 16:54
As mentioned earlier, the DC Tonic disc contained a new version of adk's Burritro demo. The ELF binary of that as well as the source code is now available in the Developer Tools section.

- John...

KallistiOS v1.0.0 released... Posted by TheGypsy @ 16:06
Dan Potter of Cryptic Allusion has released v1.0.0 of KOS. It appears to be what was used fairly extensively for the new demos on the DC Tonic release at E3. It is available for local download in the Developer Tools section or can be found at the Cryptic Allusion SourceForge project.

- John...

"DC Tonic" released at E3... Posted by TheGypsy @ 16:03
Several people/groups (Cryptic Allusion, Ganksoft, Moving Target, and adk/npm) put together a hobbyist demo CD to be distributed at E3. The disc includes several game demos, a remake of Dan Potter's Ghetto Pong, a new "Napalm-enchanced" version of adk's Burritro demo, as well as sourcecode to everything. I hope to have some ready-to-burn images of the disc available for download soon, as well as individual downloads of things such as the new Burritro demo for those that can't download the 70MB+ (compressed) disc image.

- John...

Sunday, May 20, 2001

PC-ngine Posted by CyRUS64 @ 10:46
Tubooboo has announced that he would still like to port a PC-Engine emulator and has posted these details on his site:

Cheer up all, ngine is far from dead :). I have personally decided on continuing to port a PC-Engine emulator, and after careful review of some sources, I would now really like to port HUGO over, a massively popular PC-Engine emulator by Zeograd. I have just mailed the author about it, lets see what comes out.


On another note I added the Hitachi SH7750 Hardware Manual to the Developer Docs section, in addition to the SH7750 Programming Manual which is already there. In the next few weeks I'll try and add lots of useful dreamcast docs and might even write up a few of my own...

DCSI 0.2 Posted by CyRUS64 @ 10:43
DCSI, a Space Invaders arcade game emulator, has had version 0.2 released. Here's what's new:

CPU cycle counting added for more consistant speed
color translucent overlay simulated
2 player mode now works
added semi-fancy title screen

You can download the various binary releases from the Emulators section and the source code from the Developer Tools section.

300+ Forum Members... Posted by TheGypsy @ 1:27
We've passed the 300 members mark in the forums! Nice to see some decent discussion going on now and then...

Also, Boob was recently mentioned in the UK magazine FHM.

"Welcome!" to any FHM readers visiting for the first time.

- John...

Wednesday, May 16, 2001

Daedalus! Posted by CyRUS64 @ 7:20
Daedalus 0.06b, a Nintendo 64 emulator for the PC, has been released! Head over to the Daedalus page for more information and downloads...

Counter Fixed... Posted by TheGypsy @ 2:48
I finally had time to fix the counter script today and sort through the logs to recalculate the total number of hits. As I write this, the hitcount is 971,691. Looks like we'll hit one million hits sometime this month.

Just wanted to let people know that were checking the counter at the bottom that it was finally accurate again.

- John...

Tuesday, May 15, 2001

Sonic Adventure 2 10th Anniversary Edition Posted by TheGypsy @ 17:50

This isn't really development (or emulation) related, but I'm going to mention it anyhow for those interested... All of this information comes from my (fairly poor) translation of Japanese, so note that it may be somewhat inaccurate -- but is correct to the best of my knowledge. Sega of Japan has announced that they are going to sell a special limited edition "10th Anniversary" version of Sonic Adventure 2 worldwide for only two days: June 23rd and 24th. The Limited Edition will come in a special 10th Anniversary package which will include a Commemoration Gold Disc (music CD), Sonic Gold Medals, and a History of Sonic book. It will sell for 5900yen (about US$47).

- John...

SMS Plus! beta 6 Posted by CyRUS64 @ 12:26
SMS Plus! beta 6 has been released...
Here's what's new:

- Should of fixed controller input request, but may of slowed down emulation due to its maple requests, i dont know yet!
- Removed "Updating video ... DONE!" debug info (flooded terminal)

Reports of tests on the new version say that most of the controller bugs are fixed out, but work is needed on the left and right trigger commands.

You can download beta 6 at the Devcast website.

Sunday, May 13, 2001

DBP Image stuff.. Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:41
Snoozy has released a new version of his DBP Image stuff. Here is what's new:

Transparancy (color defined)
Scaling
Preloading and caching images
Support for animation sequences
layers and buffering
(This new version will also work on other modes, besides 640x480 (it will autodetect you screensize))

The RAR-file also contains the menu-system of his chess-game.

You can download this release from the Developers Toolspage.

Saturday, May 12, 2001

SMS emulators Posted by CyRUS64 @ 12:53
Some news on recent SMS emulator developments:

A new SMS emulator for the dreamcast, titled SMEG has materialed. This seems very promising and a preview release has been made which runs the embedded rom Kenseiden, but at full speed with great sound.
You can visit his site for more details on what to expect before a full first release and the preview download itself!

Second news is on SMS-Plus!, which has seen a release of Beta 5. However I would hold off until some current problems have been fixed before trying this one out. The author has stated this on his site:
"its been tested by Sayten, and the results are in. It loads a GAME, starts the emulation loop, and loops around a bit till you press 'Y'. It seems that there are some Video / Controller bugs. As soon as I get my Coders Cable or BBA it should be fixed."

Good luck to both coders!

Sad PC-Ngine news... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:53
Tubooboo has announced that he has stopped work on the port of tgemu to the dreamcast :-(
Here is his explanation:

"Sad news for today.
I received a mail from the tgemu author, and he is asking me to stop my tgemu port. No reason was given. While I technically would not *have* to stop working on it, I am pretty dissapointed with his email, and do not feel like porting it over anymore. I know many of you were greatly looking forward to a quick release of this emulator, and I deeply regret his decision to ask me to stop tgemu for Dreamcast. However, I am looking into other possibilities of PC Engine ports. Yours,
tubooboo"

This must be extremely irritating for Tubooboo and I wish him the energy to peservere with further projects...

Friday, May 11, 2001

logotools Win32 binaries... Posted by TheGypsy @ 12:46
There is now a zip of precompiled Win32 binaries for AndrewK's logotools available in the Developer Tools section. It includes the pngtomr and logoinsert tools as well as the necessary support DLLs (cygwin1, libpng, and libz).

- John...

Wednesday, May 9, 2001

Posted by TheGypsy @ 14:14
Snoozy (Wauters Kris) has released a few things over the past week or so that I missed along the way. These include:

Shuffle - his first DC game (source and graphics available also).
DBP C Source - graphic manipulation source for his Dreamcast Binary Picture format.
DBP Toolkit - Win32 tool for converting BMP/JPEG/GIF to DBP format plus a DBP viewer.
Animation Sample - An SREC of a test/sample animation using his DBP code.

I've added them to their appropriate sections in the Developer Tools area for local download.

- John...

logotools (IP.BIN image inserter) released! Posted by TheGypsy @ 12:26
Since the release of Bleemcast which had a custom image in the Sega license image, people have been researching exactly how this was done. Well, as usual, AndrewK (now of Napalm) has not only figured it out but has released tools for converting a PNG image to the proper format and then inserting it into an IP.BIN. Developers doing releases should find this very useful for adding a disclaimer to state that they are not really "produced by or under license from Sega" (or just to add a fun logo). Great job, adk!

You can find the logotools package at AndrewK's site or, as usual, in Boob's Developer Tools section.

- John...

Tuesday, May 8, 2001

3D Rendering API (and more, with demo) released... Posted by TheGypsy @ 15:40
Mikael Kalms wrote some great routines in assembly last winter and has released them to the public to check out and learn from. The main feature is a groovy "3D donut" example/demo created using his 3D Rendering API (a ready-to-run binary of it is included in the archive). Also included for helping with your own development is a video memory browser, some cache management operations, exception handling code, 2D display hardware setup code, a matrix math library, and more. If you are an asm coder, this is some great stuff to check out (and, even if you aren't an asm coder, the demo binary is worth running!)

You can find the download in the Demos/Samples portion of Boob's Developer Tools section.

- John...

New IPSend Utility released... Posted by TheGypsy @ 15:15
Stuart Clement has released a Win32 frontend for AndrewK's dc-tool-ip command-line client. I still greatly prefer using the command-line tool directly, but some of you may prefer the GUI frontend. It is available for download in the Developer Tools section.

- John...

Ganksoft's IP Upload v1.2 released... Posted by TheGypsy @ 15:06
I've been a little slow in updates lately -- just busy at work and such -- I'll try to catch things up today...

Way back on April 22nd, Brian Peek of Ganksoft released v1.2 of their Win32 IP Upload utility. For those that don't know, it is a client to communicate with Marcus' IP Slave. Note that this is not for use with AndrewK's dcload-ip slave. Changes in v1.2 include a new screen layout, various bug fixes, and a "screen shot" feature (be sure to read the README on using it -- it is not a simple/automatic click-a-button-for-screenshot thing).

It is available for download directly from Ganksoft or from Boob's Developer Tools section.

- John...

PC-Ngine Posted by CyRUS64 @ 14:36
Tubooboo has updated his site with an update on PC-Ngine:


  • games load
  • processor emulation is fine apart from some endian issues
  • endian issues cause emulator to crash after some frames
  • its definitely running full speed!
  • display issues, the bitmap struct used by tgemu doesn't seem to get
    populated correctly (might be related to endianess issues)

Wednesday, May 2, 2001

A thread on Game Development/Programming Posted by Stalin @ 3:14
I thought I would point out this recent article on Slashdot about getting in the video game industry just in case someone who might like to read it that visits this page missed it. So here is the link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/05/01/1854217&mode=thread&threshold=0