News Archive: September 2002

Monday, September 30, 2002

Epitech Console Laboratory Games and Iris Posted by CyRUS64 @ 17:55
From Olivier Chatry:
'It tooks lots of time but we have finally released the students
games made this year at the Epitech Console Development Laboratory.

Four games are available (either in Nero format, or raw files):
- Wadagaza, a party game.
- System rebellion 2042 (Dream'On), a space shooter game.
- Fantasy force, a beat them up.
- Chicken chase, a party game.

These games have been made by students in terrible conditions and
with no graphics people at all, so be very gentle if they're buggy
and/or unfinished :).

I've also released a new version of Iris (3-D engine for Dreamcast).
Lots of things were optimized and corrected.

I've included more samples (like the little beginning of a game I
had released a while ago), which would be certainly useful for people
willing to learn to use Iris.

If anyone want to contribute or have any requests, feel free to
contact me, it would be a pleasure. We're open and would be happy
if Iris could be used for other Dreamcast projects.

You can get the games and informations about the laboratory here:

And for specific Iris needs go here.

Regards,
Olivier Chatry & the rest of the team'

Wow, sounds like some plentiful additions to the DC homebrew game archive =)
We'll start mirroring these latest releases locally soon. Many congrats to the Epitech/Iris team on their dedicated work!

Here's a screenshot to tease your appetite:

MD2/3ds loader + KGL-X 0.2 Posted by CyRUS64 @ 17:43
Heinrich Tillack has released both a Quake MD2 and 3DS Model loading and drawing class with Quaternations. You'll need KGL-X as an addon library, which also has just had a Version 0.2 release, adding support for glColor3ub() and bugfixes to glTexCoordPointer() and glDrawElements().
Thanks to wraggster for the news.

Links:
MD2/3DS Loader
KallistiGL-X

Friday, September 27, 2002

PVR Dma module Posted by CyRUS64 @ 17:13
This enables the use of pvr texture dma in KallistiOS 1.1.8 for copying data (continuously) from system ram to vram. It is the first time the use of pvr dma has been available in homebrew software. By default any calls to pvr_txr_load will instead use pvr texture dma as opposed to store queues.
YUV420 dma support can also be added simply, and with some rearranging within kos, dma could also be used for sending display lists to the pvr2.
You can download it from the developer tools page.

SDL ported to Dreamcast Posted by Hollywood Hasney @ 11:45
Bero, the man behind the Quake, Doom and other FPS ports for Dreamcast has just made his DC port of "Simple Directmedia Layer" avaliable. What is SDL then?:

Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library designed to provide fast access to the graphics framebuffer and audio device. It is used by MPEG playback software, emulators, and many popular games, including the award winning Linux port of "Civilization: Call To Power." Simple DirectMedia Layer supports Linux, Win32, BeOS, MacOS, Solaris, IRIX, and FreeBSD.

SDL is written in C, but works with C++ natively, and has bindings to several other languages, including Ada, Eiffel, ML, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby.

And here's what Bero said about it:

- work with kos-newlib (bit modify kos)
- thread, timer don't tested so much.
- not support OpenGL

You can read about SDL here, visit Beros own site here and download the beta of the SDL here

Bero also reports that prboom ports without any code change.

Thursday, September 26, 2002

Atari800 Posted by CyRUS64 @ 23:03
Christian Groessler has released version 0.72 of Atari800DC. Changes for this version are:

Use Atari800 cvs code base as of sep-17-2002

Changing CDs should now work more reliably

load and save (VMU) state now display "please wait" messages and report if the save failed.
This version can be downloaded from here.

B-Movie v1.2 Posted by Hollywood Hasney @ 22:52
Rockin-B has just sent this to me:

I released B-movie;)v1.2, a new speed improved, bug cleaned and more comfortable version of my movie compression solution for the SEGA Visual Memory.
Additionally, I got new and amazing demo movies powered by an improved demo player for download via Dreamcast and PC.

Yep, an updated version of the VMU movie toolkit B-Movie;) out now!

And you can download it from here

Rockin-B Homepage

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

Source for KOS Lightgun Driver Posted by Hollywood Hasney @ 13:42
Warmtoe has just made his source for the light-gun driver available. Here is what he said about it:

I've pulled together the current lightgun driver source. This is ontop of the KOS 1.1.8 source level. I don't know how to use cvs so it's just the modified / new parts in a zip file...

The code is definitely subject to change and I'll submit it to KOS some time - but I just wanted to get it out there for you all to use...

-W-

You can get it from the developer tools page.

Monday, September 23, 2002

Bulldog Stadium Quake mod out now Posted by Hollywood Hasney @ 9:49
Ajay has completed Bulldog Stadium, a Quake mod for PC Quake and Quake DC. It is a game where you have to run from one end of the map to the other without being killed... and there are no guns for you!

You can download it at Ajays Quake Site here (Click enter then cover CD on the left hand side to find it)

Wednesday, September 18, 2002

Lightgun KOS Driver Posted by Hollywood Hasney @ 15:09
Warmtoe has made a test app available for his KOS Lightgun driver. heres what he said:

I have written a lightgun driver for KOS - it is a complete mess code-wise and needs a lot of tidying up before I can actually submit it to KOS but I do have a preliminary test that you can run...

I would appreciate any feedback on whether it works or not.

Note: it only supports 1 gun at a time currently.

You can download it from the Developer tools page.

Psychedelic Voxel Demo Posted by CyRUS64 @ 4:21
This is based upon the 6 degrees of freedom Voxel Landscape engine by Andrey Serba (http://immerse.km.ru). Most voxel renderers only allow for 4 degrees of freedom, and were initially software rendered. This however utilizises KallistiGL for Hardware rendering of the raycasts used to draw the landscape, and produces decent framerates on the dreamcast due to extensive use of the sh4 fpu. Hopefully proper mipmap texturing can be added, and some more fruitful fun can be made with this. If anyone wants the source to have a play with or to possibly use in a game/demo then just email since I mainly was just interested in seeing how this kind of engine would run performance-wise. Note this has only been released in unscrambled binary form, and is not really worth a cdr, but if someone wants to make a dj/nrg image, then feel free to submit one. In this release you can basically roam/fly around a virtual (psychedelic-coloured) landscape or set the computer to 'auto-pilot' mode.

You can download it and obtain instructions / a screenshot from the Demos page.

Tuesday, September 17, 2002

Latest version of Cool Herders stand alone build Posted by Hollywood Hasney @ 9:07
The quite amazingly addictive multi-player game Cool Herders that was first featured on DCTonic now has a stand-alone build of last months version. This version was updated 27th of August 2002.

The page is here

Files will be mirroed locally soon.

Thursday, September 12, 2002

Doom, Hexen and Heretic ports out now Posted by Hollywood Hasney @ 14:25
They're out with all the features below

Grab them:

Doom
Heretic
Hexen

Beros page on these ports is here

AICA Posted by CyRUS64 @ 13:39
Yamato has released his Yamaha AICA Sound System Hardware Reference. It can be found here.

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

Bero now porting Doom, Heretic and Hexen Posted by Hollywood Hasney @ 16:15
Yep, these 3 games are all being ported to DC. Info:

support mouse,joystick,keyboard
support sound
support music with GUS patch
save to Visual Memory with compression

You can read about and see some screens from here

Sunday, September 8, 2002

nxDoom beta 2 Revision 1 Posted by Hollywood Hasney @ 15:31
The only change is VMU saving! But what a great change that is.

Get it from here and the official site is here

Saturday, September 7, 2002

nxDoom Beta 2 Posted by Hollywood Hasney @ 5:45
This version of Doom for DC had an update with the following:

Fixed support for Final Doom
Fixed Doom skymaps
Fixed Doom 2 -warp command
New WAD loader
More compatable
Loads mods a bit faster
More DeHacked stuff
MOD music
Sound volume fixed, and soundsystem improved
Sounds compressed, so downsampling is unnecessary
Changed controls, so you can now select Nightmare mode

To hear music, you need to download a music pack. We currently have packs for Doom 1, Doom 2 and TNT Evilution. Just unzip them to the same place that the Doom WADs are stored, and nxDoom will load them automatically

You can get it from here

Thanks to Shade for telling me about it.

Friday, September 6, 2002

Robot Finds Kitten Posted by Hollywood Hasney @ 19:30
I don't think that this has ever been posted about, but if it has then here is a reminder of a very odd game. Your a robot (#) and you have to find kitten... and it's very bizzare and ASCII.

Shots: here
Download (Source and .ELF file): here

And check out the robotfindskitten website here

Thanks to crt0 for bringing this to my attention

Descent Beta Posted by Hollywood Hasney @ 13:30
Bero, who has ported Hexen II, Quake and Quake 2 to the DC now has an early beta of Descent playing. It is an 8mb Nero image and contains the demo files. From Beros site:

based on D1X
It is VERY EARLY STAGE. starting demo only works. It support keyboard only

You can download it from here

Cheers Peddy

Thursday, September 5, 2002

QNX on the Dreamcast Posted by Stalin @ 14:15
As reported at OSNews the QNX operating system has been successfully ported to the Dreamcast. It is not a complete port yet but it does boot and run the distributed.net client.

For more information see http://www.astranetwork.com/~jeremy/qnxdc/.

DCBlap 0.9 Posted by CyRUS64 @ 10:22
Sam Steele posted to the dcdev list that he has released a new version of DCBlap, 'a 3D pong game featuring several different modes of play (classic pong, foozball, and soccer)'. He has also written a tutorial on creating your own DCBlap levels using WorldCraft or Valve's Hammer Editor. Note also that sound has been removed just for this version.
Visit site for the downloads/tutorial.

libmidi Posted by CyRUS64 @ 10:13
Bero has released a MIDI player library along with a test binary. Note:
- currently supports GM only, not bank change.
- doesn't support envelope of GUS patch, so sound is bit noisy
He has tested it with Hexen II and Descent.

Links:
Local Downloads
Bero's dcdev

Monday, September 2, 2002

Maple Bus pdf Posted by CyRUS64 @ 19:11
Mathieu Legris recently submitted a PDF he had compiled of all the diagrams and figures from the Maple Bus patent. This can be downloaded from the Developer documents page.

LinuxDC VMU support Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:59
Adrian McMenamin has written a VMU memory driver for Linux. For those interested it can be found in the LinuxDC cvs.

Sunday, September 1, 2002

KGL-X Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:54
KGL-X, which is a modified version of KallistiGL with support for GL Displaylists, GL Arrays, and NEAR_Z clipping has had a small bugfix update for the GL_TRIANGLE_FAN striptype. Thanks to Wraggster for news on irc.

Links:
Local Download
A128 homepage