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News Archive: March 2001

Saturday, March 31, 2001

Daedalus Posted by CyRUS64 @ 12:39
I created a Daedalus page which can be found here and I added 3 pretty impressive screenshots of a certain game, so be sure to check them out!

microsoft at its best... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:16
go here to read an interesting article about the Licensing Agreements for signing up to Microsoft Hotmail / Passport accounts...

I think its extremely disturbing that they are allowed to get away with setting up license agreements such as this.

Wednesday, March 28, 2001

KOS on Sourceforge... Posted by TheGypsy @ 15:26
Dan Potter has recently announced that he has set up a project at Sourceforge for mirroring the source for all of Cryptic Allusion's DCDev projects. The source is not available there yet, but should be soon. This should help the currently available source be much more convenient and up-to-date for the developers out there wanting to use the "latest and greatest" KallistiOS.

- John...

Dreamcast News... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 1:13
Firstly Boob! and Boob!boy were mentioned in an article in the Official UK Dreamcast Magazine. I'd like to know who wrote this article because the original dc development article in Edge Magazine by Keith Stuart was to be in OUKDM, but Sega refused to pass it. Hence this article is pretty much *bollocks* but still "all publicity is good publicity"! To say that "emulation is highly illegal" is utterly incorrect. Where they originally go wrong in the side column is to say "emulating other consoles and their games", since it is not the games being emulated but the consoles :-), and i sure hope that OUKDM's readers will be able to find their "own copy of Boob!"???

You can view scans of the article by clicking the links below:
Page 1/2.
Page 2/2.

In other dc news, a program entitled DCPaint, a painting program for the dreamcast, has been released along with source code!
You can download DCPaint here or in the User Tools section.

Also ngine snes9x 0.40 has been released! Visit ngine.de for more information and downloads...

Daedalus Posted by CyRUS64 @ 1:01
As Hypergamer recently pointed out on our forums, Boob! is supposed to be a dreamcast development site! Hence from now on only major news regarding Daedalus will be on the main news page... I have instead decided to have a seperate Daedalus page. Hence if anyone enjoys making webpages and would like to make a Daedalus webpage please email me, since it would save me much time and effort!

Also if anyone would like to make a Daedalus icon and logo please email me.

With regards to actual Daedalus progress Spinal has kindly agreed to be the official ini editor for Daedalus. Today I myself have been testing some of the n64 games i have, aswell as improving the ini-file support, which should be quite cool when eventually released. (As in anyone with little programming knowledge can have a go at making games work, without having to edit the actual emulator source code -> sort of like Ultrahle, but rather than cpu patches, the actual ucodes can be modified using the ini file).

During the my testing i have found that although a fair few games display gfx, since few ucodes have been thus far been implemented (0,1,4 have been done) a lot of games display garbled gfx. However it is very encouraging that the Goldeneye intro works at all, albeit with a messed up palette.

Great progress is continually being made by StrmnNrmn, so who knows what to expect in the future...

Tuesday, March 27, 2001

"CNN"... Posted by TheGypsy @ 1:56
Just to clarify before people get confused... :) That article is NOT actually at CNN. The people that released it (as a joke obviously) manipulated the URL to make it appear at first glance to be from CNN. However, if you look closely at it, you will see that it actually is not at CNN. For those interested, it is actually at a web hosting company based in Ontario, Canada. The "real" URL is:

http://centralhosting.net/new_010325/alert/breakingnews.html

Just FYI.

- John...

P.S. I realize that CyRUS probably already knows this -- hence his smilie face. However, I didn't want to deal with the people that didn't know asking about it -- so I'm "spilling the beans" from the start... :)

Monday, March 26, 2001

microsoft / daedalus news Posted by CyRUS64 @ 23:40
Read this article on cnn.com about Microsoft Patenting the numbers 0 and 1 :-)

Also, i've got the ini file support up, and hopefully ill be able to start testing some games tomorrow.

www.boob.co.uk! Posted by CyRUS64 @ 17:25
I have now stumped up the money for professional dns management, so although we are still kindly being hosted by TheGypsy, www.boob.co.uk is fully functional.
Hence if anyone is interested in being hosted (legal dreamcast-related projects only :-) ), then feel free to email me. Your site will be http://yoursite.boob.co.uk

With regards to Daedalus, the author, whose name is StrmnNrmn, has passed on the source to me and I am going to add in Ini-file support asap. This should improve compatibility a lot since at the moment almost all games try and run using the Mario64 ucode! There are also some problems with the directinput support and this needs to be "fiddled with". I'll update you on my progress soon... however i must say i personally love this emulator. It runs perfectly on Windows 2000 on my laptop and rarely the program even crashes, nevertheless lock up the computer, as Nemu (for example) does. It runs a fairly impressive amount of games with lots of gfx errors, which hopefully will be sorted out once the ucode stuff is done.

Thursday, March 22, 2001

the name... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:49
The n64 emulator is to be called Daedalus.
Explanation for this:
"Daedalus built the labyrinth for King Minos of Crete, which is kind of apt given the maze-like qualities of the code :-)"

Wednesday, March 21, 2001

Congratulations To The Gypsy Posted by Stalin @ 21:01
The Gypsy won the y2kode contest by Lik-Sang. Big ups to AndrewK as well for competing.

Ready-to-burn images of dcload-ip v1.0.0 slave with ip set to 0.0.0.0... Posted by TheGypsy @ 20:28
For the convenience of those having trouble burning AndrewK's dcload-ip slave disc, I have put ready-to-burn Nero and DiscJuggler 2 images of the latest dcload-ip (v1.0.0) slave in the Dev. Tools Section. The IP in these images is set to 0.0.0.0 -- so you'll need to use "arp -s <ip you want> <ethernet address>" on the client to be able to communicate with the slave. I've also put up a local copy of the Win32 dcload-ip client.

- John...

n64 emu Posted by CyRUS64 @ 19:49
I've created a screenshots page for the unreleased and unnamed n64 emulator. You can view it here.
I've added 4 new pics of Duke Nukem 64 and Tetrisphere :-)

Tototek... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 16:55
I'd like to reiterate what TheGypsy said a few days and recommend the Tototek dc-coders cable... i received mine today and had it running in no time at 115200bps. Lately i've been trying to port Boob!boy to use libdream, and although its quite a lot of hassle at times hopefully i'll get there eventually.

Congratulations!!! Posted by CyRUS64 @ 16:01
Congratulations to TheGypsy for winning the y2kode.com dc coders competition! Not only this but he also won the prize draw for the trip to Hong Kong :-)
You can check out the details by visiting y2kode!

GypPlay CD Covers... Posted by TheGypsy @ 15:00
Jello Warrior has done some great CD covers for GypPlay recently. I've put them in the User Tools section for those that are interested. Great job, Nic!

- John...

Tuesday, March 20, 2001

pics Posted by CyRUS64 @ 15:24
Hi, i've got a hold of a beta of this emu and although i dont currently have any commercial n64 roms to hand, ive taken a pic of Alleycat 64 running: (ill get some more pics later)



UPDATE: Super Mario 64 pics! I have also tested this early beta with ISS 2000, Perfect Dark, and Zelda 2, all of which unsuprisingly don't work... when i find my n64 roms cd, ill get a better idea of overall compatibility.



not worth it.. Posted by CyRUS64 @ 14:06
whoever just sent me that trojan, i'd rather you didn't try :-)

n64 emu update... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 13:27
NB: Before anyone gets too excited, this emu will only be useful for those interested in learning about n64 emulation. If you want to play pirated roms for free use nemu or ultrahle!

Here is some more info about the emulator:

"The emu plays many of the early games with few problems (Super Mario 64, Mariokart, Starfox, Wetrix, Tetrisphere, Waverave, Rampage, etc all work very well). Hardly any of the Rare games work well (they seem to abuse the hardware a lot!). There's a lot of games that are close to working smoothly (just a few graphical glitches to resolve).

Performance for the titles that work is great - in fact I need to add some syncronisation code to stop games like Mario running too fast on speedy machines (my PIII500 is just about the right speed. Anything faster would probably go too fast).

The user interface for the emu is a bit shite - there's hardly any support for configuring input/output. There's no sound support yet. Mempack support is there, but very limited. There's no support for UltraHLE or Nemu style .ini files.

Internally the emu is pretty advanced - there's a pretty substantial dynamic recompiler that optimises both the integer and floating point code. There's code to patch the OS routines (for doing things like switching threads and accessing hardware (this still needs a lot of work as it only works with Mario at the moment)."

As you can see the emulator does have much potential but is not in a user-friendly state as yet... however i should be receiving a beta tonight and will hopefully post some screenshots later! (if i can find my old copies of games)

non-dc related... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:33
I just thought i'd announced that i've persuaded an unreleased n64-emu author to release the emulator in the near future! (this is an emulator for the pc not dreamcast) He was previously worried about legality issues with regards to nintendo, but due to the demise of the n64 is less worried about this now... it is still behind ultrahle and nemu (not surprisingly), but since he has also agreed to release the source code, this could be very useful for those interested in learning about emulators and how they work! I'll have more info soon...

Monday, March 19, 2001

... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 10:49
I'd just like to apologize for the fact that I myself have'nt released much dreamcast software lately... there are several reasons for this occurrence:

1) I have had to spend a lot of time on real work at university!
2) I did have a nice Boob! Installer app near completion, which would have created self-boot disks for all dc software (emus included), but sadly someone passed me on a copy of Windows Whistler! I installed this but then i "Locked the Service Database" and could not boot my computer. After a lot of messing around i reformatted and now have a super fast and clean install of Win2k on my inspiron 8000 laptop. (but lost everything on it) This along with my dc coders cable should hopefully start producing some proper work! However does anyone know how I could set it up so that the display from the dreamcast is displayed on my inspiron 8000? At a really basic level i thought about creating serial software on the dc side to compress the output display and send it back down the serial cable to the pc, but this would take a fair amount of work to get working usefully. Note also that I don't have a tv card either...

I'm also playing around with some pc stuff, but I would advise anyone who has always been "thinking" about doing some dc coding, to go and do some now! Also feel free to send in any tutorials or apps you yourself have made, however basic, since everything can only help to increase the available resources in the dc scene. That's all for me, back to Laplace's Equation.

Friday, March 16, 2001

Coders Cables... Posted by TheGypsy @ 16:35
I've been hearing from people asking about where they can buy a premade Coders Cable for the DC since Lik-Sang appears to be out of stock. I just wanted to let people know that Tototek still appears to have them in stock and they are only $20. I checked out the Tototek cable and it is a decent quality cable that is working fine for me at 115200bps (and 57600bps, of course). Just wanted to pass that along for those still looking that aren't up to building their own...

- John...

Wednesday, March 14, 2001

NesterDC Version 2 Posted by Stalin @ 20:55
Ken has released a new version of his nester (a nintendo emulator) port. Here is a list of the changes:


  • The sound is much better, but still not 100% perfect.
  • Exit from a game to the main menu.
  • Save game SaveRAM to a vmu.
  • Save user settings to a vmu.
  • Mapper 24 support from nester public beta 4.


It can be aquired here

Monday, March 12, 2001

ngine-Snes9x Posted by CyRUS64 @ 23:03
Tubooboo has update his site with lots of information regarding the upcoming release. Sadly sound is not yet implemented but pretty much everything else is :-)
The ngine-snes9x v0.40 release should be in a few days or less!

A bit late... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 16:01
Although TheGypsy mentioned a divx example release, we never actually provided any links / info. The divx-example was coded by AndrewK and he has also released a jpg compression/decompression app.

The divx package includes full source code and is a simple test media player which utilizes the popular DivX codec. It is extremely SLOW, at best 5 fps with no sound. He has included full source, and invites anyone to take a stab at speeding it up, though he doubts a big enough speed increase is possible. If anyone does play around with it and gets ANY significant speed increase, feel free to email us with an updated version :-)

Downloads:
kos-0.80-jpeg-src.tar.gz
libdivxdecore-0.47.tar.gz

As per usual they can be found on the Dev-Tools page!

DreamSNES 0.9.4 Released Posted by Stalin @ 14:49
Marcus and crew have released a new version of DreamSNES. Here is the list of changes:


  • Support for C and Z button (as select and exit to menu)
  • Better keyrepeat handling in the menus
  • Fullscreen mode added (default, but configurable)
  • Translation to Swedish. And French (sort of).
  • Screen "blanker" in menu
  • New music by Jan Warnstam
  • Keyboard support: Press ESC for menu, Pause for "blanker"
  • Better support for third party memory cards
  • ROMs can now be placed in a directory "ROMS/" instead of in the root

Thursday, March 8, 2001

Game Gear Emulator Posted by Stalin @ 23:42
Jos Kwanten, author of DreamMSX, has written a Game Gear emulator. " At the moment only Gamegear emulation is supported, but this will be fixed in the next version, so stay tuned ;-)" By that he means there will be SMS support in the future. Here is a link to his page: http://www.geocities.com/joskwanten/

Wanted: "Game Labo" (Japanese) Magazine! Posted by TheGypsy @ 22:19
I am looking for the January and February 2001 issues of Game Labo -- a Japanese gaming magazine. If any of our Japanese visitors can locate either of those for me, please let me know. Thanks...

- John...

Ready-to-burn images of dcload v1.0.2d serial slave (115200bps)... Posted by TheGypsy @ 19:07
For the convenience of those having trouble burning AndrewK's dcload slave disc, I have put ready-to-burn Nero and DiscJuggler 2 images of the latest dcload (v1.0.2d) serial slave in the Tools Section. They are 115200bps images.

- John...

Wednesday, March 7, 2001

DreamPac Posted by CyRUS64 @ 15:38
Brian Peek, the author of NeoPockottDC, has released DreamPac.

DreamPac is a Pacman hardware emulator for the Sega Dreamcast and was written from scratch specifically for the Dreamcast platform. At the moment it plays the following games:

Pacman
Ms. Pacman
Crush Roller
All games run at full speed and have full sound. More games may be added to this emulator at a later date (either Pacman clones or completely different games).

You can download this release, at www.ganksoft.com!

Tuesday, March 6, 2001

IP Uploader v1.1 released... Posted by TheGypsy @ 15:21
Brian Peek of Ganksoft has released v1.1 of his IP Uploader client. It is a Windows client for use with Marcus' IP Slave. To be honest, I still prefer AndrewK's dcload/dctool over this -- but others may prefer the GUI interface of Brian's tool. A local copy is in the Tools Section.

- John...

DCMP3 v1.3 released... Posted by TheGypsy @ 13:53
Strat76 has released a new version of his MP3 player for the DC. New features in v1.3 include:
- "Wallpaper" (JPEG viewing)
- Playlist creation
- ID3v2 bugfix

It is available for download in the Tools Section.

- John...

Monday, March 5, 2001

GypPlay: Lik Sang Edition (v2.0) released! Posted by TheGypsy @ 20:22
I am happy to announce the release of the latest version of GypPlay! GypPlay: Lik Sang Edition was written for Lik Sang's y2kode competition. New features include:

- File Browser for manual file selection (a.k.a. "the pr0n feature")
- Improved auto-search
- Improved GUI
- Better handling of files with invalid codecs
- VMU output (of current filename)
- Slightly improved playback performance

You can download the new release, as usual, from the Tools Section. Note that MPEG-1 is still the only codec supported! The new readme/nfo contains additional details about the changes. A few screenshots (#1, #2, #3) are also available.

- John...

Burritro (AndrewK's y2kode entry) released... Posted by TheGypsy @ 19:55
AndrewK wrote an excellent DC intro/demo for the y2kode competition! You can check out a couple of screenshots of it here and here. The ELF itself is available in the Tools Section. Great work, Andrew!

- John...