News Archive: September 2000

Saturday, September 30, 2000

Boob!boy Posted by CyRUS64 @ 13:57
I am still working hard on Boob!boy, and the controller bugs are taking a while to fix because they only occur when using the dreamcast controller, not on the keyboard or n64 controller! However I have made some other advancements:

Added support for dreamcast keyboard.
Added fixes to the menu selection which could cause the selection cursor to dissappear off the screen. The gui is now pretty much complete for the first release.
Added a Loading Screen, a pic of which can be found below:

The cool gameboy cartridge was done by Lowlife...

Private Beta3 should be going out tonight, as long as i have time to sort it all out before then!

Friday, September 29, 2000

Selfbooting GypPlay Posted by CyRUS64 @ 23:25
Here is a slightly modified ip.bin, done by TheGypsy, so that you can make GypPlay selfbooting... to use it just overwrite the existing ip.bin file and follow the normal self-booting instructions. The file can be downloaded here.

Boob!boy Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:09
just a quick note to say that i implemented some frames per second code, and after testing it out on the dreamcast, i have found that black&white gameboy games run at about 38fps and colour games at about 18/19fps, and this is with no frame skip, so it shouldnt be too hard to get it up and running properly... as many people have said, the beauty of emulators on a console is that the author can work hard to get it running at a certain speed and knows that everyone who uses will have it running at the same speed!
*UPDATE*- got it running a bit faster via a simple trick but my main concentration is the controller bug, which doesnt occur on the pc keyboard or when using the n64 controller (via the adaptoid) but only on the dc controller!

Also a couple of people have designed new websites for Boob! and this is all much appreciated... basically ill probably just throw up one of the news designs every now and again!

Thursday, September 28, 2000

Mailing list... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 23:56
I've added a mailing list, which can be subscribed to if you scroll down to the bottom of the page!

Boob!boy Posted by CyRUS64 @ 13:34
I thought I might aswell announce this now because i am extremely pleased by the way all Boob! supporters (Boob!ers as some people have coined them!) have acted over the past few weeks... you guys have been extremely patient, and Boob! is now in a nice state of being a development site only! Anyway, a public release of Boob!boy will be occurring before I leave for university next tuesday whatever state i manage to get it in before that date... (obviously it will be a working one!)

Also, it seems like we will shortly be joined by a new updater, since Boob! reports on all dc emulation / development stuff, and this person will help out greatly!

We are in need for new developers / webpage designers / updaters etc... anything that YOU feel YOU could do to help would be much appreciated!

Kinda bad news from the gleam camp... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 13:13
The site, which can be found here, was updated with this info,
"Wow, its been a while since the last update.. Sorry, I havn't been working too much on it lately, but I have reasons: Because of the PSX2 launch in October, my manager where I work has gone to nashville for a company meeting, which basically has left 2 people running our store, so I've been working a LOT... And considering school started monday, and I finally fell for a girl this saturday, I've had really no free time... I'm kinda working on it, I'm kinda not.. Sorry, but it might actually be a while before I release anything :("

Still this is completely understandable, and we'll all still eagerly await any future releases! (The damn playstation2 pile of s**t.)

Wednesday, September 27, 2000

Snes9x - Ngine Posted by CyRUS64 @ 23:48
Tubooboo has just got Snes9x working with Ngine... here are some exclusive pics of it in action:





Looks like Tubooboo has almost won the race for Snes games on the dreamcast... at the moment it is incorporated and working in Ngine, he just needs to make sure it works on the DC aswell!
For more info about the Ngine project and the Snes9x port, visit the ngine homepage here. You can also find some more pics of it in action at our Emulators page.

boobboy Posted by CyRUS64 @ 16:18
"It seems to be alot faster and the controller seems to work a little better" was the feedback i got from a beta tester regarding the 2nd beta of boobboy...

New layout / gfx Posted by CyRUS64 @ 15:37
I must say a big thank you to triplesix for redesigning the Boob! website... i hope you all like it! Feel free to go visit his own site, which can be found here, although its not dreamcast related. Be sure to click refresh to make sure you see the site as it should now be seen!

Tuesday, September 26, 2000

update Posted by CyRUS64 @ 23:50
I had the first bit of time to do some work on Boob!boy today for a while, and after a bit of chatting with Tubooboo, who noticed that one of the functions was looking a bit suspect, I looked at it again and realised that i had been making it do the same line of code 57334 times, completely unnecessarily! I tested this version out on the dreamcast and it seems to be running Super Mario Land full speed, but on the other hand Who Wants to be a millionaire ran very slowly... although this was burnt to a 2nd session :-). I don't see why this should make any difference, since the roms are obviously loaded into memory anyway. Also, there are a few controller bugs that i've got to fix aswell that have been discovered... expect more progress soon!

Monday, September 25, 2000

Self-booting tool Posted by CyRUS64 @ 17:11
Here is a nice tool to allow you to make your wince apps selfbooting... this was coded by Chossy.
You can get the tool here

boobboy beta Posted by CyRUS64 @ 17:04
This is a quote from the current beta tester of Boob!boy:
"this is by far the best emulator out there. great work my friend"... steady on, but still its encouraging feedback, and makes me want to get the speed up and running properly!
Anyhow, I thought i would explain why there is only 1 beta tester at present. Since this is the first beta release, i decided to start off by only sending it to one person, but future beta releases will be expanded, culminating in an eventual public release. (hopefully soon) The current beta tester, who will remain unnamed, a while ago extremely kindly sent me some free cdrs, without which Boob!boy would never have existed.
Therefore I would like to publicly thank him for his support!

Sunday, September 24, 2000

Updates... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 23:26
Sorry about the lack of updates, but i have had a power cut and no telephone line for the last day or so! sadly, from now on, i am also very busy in the real world, but will still code whenever i get a chance...
I've sent off a first beta of boobboy to a beta tester, and expect some feedback soon... only drawbacks are that i havent done the speed stuff i mentioned a while ago and sound isn't working. If i fix some of the problems, i may well release a version to the public soon...
Remember to click refresh, since we are changing servers in the near future and you may end up viewing old news!

Friday, September 22, 2000

Boob!boy update... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:08
A busy week, but i managed to do a bit of coding on and off:

Bad news: I spent a fair amount of time at the beginning of the week trying to find the problem that is causing the dreamcast to crash when sound is enabled... but still no luck! I'll get there eventually.

Good news: Although directinput has been previously working there were a lot of problems with it and in-game support was very buggy and temperamental...
The directinput stuff has been redesigned and the following has been improved:- in the menus, i have added some timing sensitivity code so that, whereas previously you would move the keyboard/analog stick and the page number or game selected would move 10 pages/games or more and it would thus be quite an effort to select which game to play, i have now added in code and calibrated it to a suitable level so that the page or game selected will change at a suitable rate!
In-game controller support has been re-done so that it is much more responsive... to do this, rather than using up my v.limited supply of cdrs, i added in code so that i could test the analogue stick support using my nintendo 64 controller on the pc, and when everything was thus working right, i tested it on the dreamcast! hence pc adaptoid support (www.wishtech.com if u dont know what this) has been added...

my next step is to get speed suitably adjusted so that it runs at the same speed as a real gameboy. sound will still be worked on but its not the sort of thing that one can persist at for long periods... itll be on and off bug finding!

Here are a couple of pics of some new games running in the emulator and there are 3 more in the screenshots page. I have also updated the progress page.

Austin Powers - Oh behave!



Gameboy Basic (just in case you don't trust my programming skills)

Thursday, September 21, 2000

snes9x port by tubooboo Posted by CyRUS64 @ 13:33
tubooboo has begun work on the port of snes9x which is going to be incorporated into ngine... he has already got it to compile, but not link yet.
you may be aware that sin is also working on a port of snes9x, called sintendo.
These are seperate projects, and the race is now on, to see who will get snes games running on the dc first!

Tuesday, September 19, 2000

Time for a BIG announcement... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 13:52
You might have wondered what one of the other original coders of boob has been up to... well here's what:
A new emulation project is currently underway for your Dreamcast.
Actually, it is a bit bigger than that. The project is called
ngine, and is sort of a multiplatform environment for rendering 2D screens. It is easiest to be understood as taking DirectDraw one step further, as by
providing rendering to target operating systems/platforms as opposed
to different hardware on the same platform (like DirectDraw does for
Windows). The system currently supports GFX, File I/O, Input, and
Memory management functionality and is coded by tUbOobOo in C++. Current display / File / etc plugins are already available for Windows32, WindowsCE, WindowsCE for Dreamcast, and soon Linux. The first big project utilizing ngine will be a SNES9x port for the Dreamcast.
Want to learn more / try ngine for your own development? You can visit the seperate ngine homepage for more information...
We'll be updating here whenever significant progress is made.

MP3 player Posted by CyRUS64 @ 10:27
The wraggster informed that a new version of the Mp3 player has been released...
This is what is new in version 1.1:

Playlist/.m3u file support
File browser(subdirs)
Play/Stop/Next/Prev/Shuffle
New gfx by Aeg2K, bigger fonts
Noise/bitrate/samplerate bugs fixed

you can visit STRAT76's site here.

speed Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:41
thanks to a tip from Tubooboo (who is working hard on a project himself at the moment) i think i've solved all Dreamcast Speed issues. Sure enough, as soon as i changed all unsigned 16-bit integers with 32-bit ones, the pc version began to run at the same speed as the dc version previously was! i just hope that when i have time to test this on the dc, vice-versa will be true! (it will be) that means that from now on speed should not be an issue... as for the dreaded sound, the code is there but something is going on that the dc doesnt like much and causes it to crash still. i will hopefully get it sorted out soon.
i said that there would be a prize for the 300,000th visitor but suspiciously 2 people have claimed it! Could both those people email me again with details of the isp used and the time at which they were apparently the 300,000th visitor?

Sunday, September 17, 2000

search engine... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 12:19
ive removed the search engine box above since very few people used it anyway... no adverts on the main news page from now on!

Saturday, September 16, 2000

Gui pic... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 16:36
*UPDATE*
The gui pic below has been replaced with another one which displays the page scrolling for selecting a gb game which is fully working now. I've also implemented resetemulation stuff so that you can press a button on the dc controller and it will take you back to the main menu from where you can select another game to play.

Also here is a pic of Pokemon red for all you Pokemon fans:

*END UPDATE*

Here is a pic of the gui in practice:

Although this might not seem much different than that of the gui in the gdviewer tool, it has been completely reworked and rewritten.

The gui currently supports upto 1000 gameboy games (could be made bigger obviously, but 1000 seems high enough!), displaying 20 games per page from which the user can select one to play... up and down analog stick buttons will move up and down through the games (the game with the blue blackground in the picture above is the currently selected one) and left and right buttons will move between the pages of games!

Feel free to discuss what features you would like to see supported in Boob!boy on the message board... or request any games you would like to see pics of in action.

Boob!boy Posted by CyRUS64 @ 14:47
My work on the gui file routines is coming along nicely, and i've fixed some annoying bug that was stopping it from working right... you can now select a gameboy game from a list to play. ill post some pics once ive tested it out on the dc version to make sure all is working correctly!

Friday, September 15, 2000

ip0000.bin tool update... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 1:29
the tool does actually work... _joe_ sent in an email saying he got it to work with nfl2k1 and having taken a look at the ip0000.bin file using the dcinfo tool (u could use any other ip.bin proggie) it does seem to work... it comes up with the correct release dates and the fact that _joe_'s copy is USA version etc... i might try and incorporate the source code into my dcinfo tool eventually, but until then, you can use gonzo's tool to get info about any of your GD-ROMs, such as region code / game name / no.of discs / peripheral support etc... well done gonzo, and thanks to _joe_ for the email! remember this program might not work on your computer cuz it only works on certain os's at the moment...

*UPDATE* This was kindly sent in by Sonikku:
"Might want to post that the tool is not reading anything from the high
density track of the GD. Its just extracting the first 16 sectors of the low
density ISO9660 track."
Sorry if there has been any confusion...

Thursday, September 14, 2000

New tool by Gonzo Posted by CyRUS64 @ 22:06
Yesterday i posted a tool which reads the first sector from a GD-Rom and writes the included IP0000.BIN Informations to the HD. PLEASE NOTE: This does not seem to work on my computer at the moment and the author says he has got it to work on win98 only... if you alter the source code and/or get it to work please email me! Do not email me saying it doesn't work :-)
You can get the source code and binaries from the Tools page

super gameboy games... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 12:13
whereas the borders when playing super gameboy games were messed up before the directx rewrite, that has all been fixed and here is a very nice pic of Fifa 96:

Fifa 96 - Super Gameboy PIC

Boob!boy fullscreen... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 12:06
After a few questions about the screensize whilst playing games, these pics should make you all happy:

Here is a nice pic of Super Mario Land:
Mario Fullscreen

To do this i rewrote a lot of the Directdraw stuff, since it was pretty sloppy anyway, and this rewrite should fix some speed problems also... and it will allow me to very easily allow the user to select their desired screensize for playing games, and do other stuff like turn borders on or off for super gameboy / a few color gameboy games.

Oh, and there are also 2 other pics of WWF Attitude and NBA in the Zone 2k in the screenshots page.

Wednesday, September 13, 2000

New poll Posted by CyRUS64 @ 22:55
After a great response to the first poll, i decided a second poll was well overdue...
Anyhow to the question, "What system emulator would you like to be ported to the Dreamcast?", the results showed that N64 emulation was most sought after (29%), then pleasingly Snes emulation (22%), and Mame coming a close 3rd (19%). Ironically Gameboy Emulation which is a reality wasn't even an available option :-)
You can find the new poll on the left-side of the main news page.

Tuesday, September 12, 2000

emulator page Posted by CyRUS64 @ 22:48
i've updated the emulator page with boob!boy stuff... of particular interest to some of you will be the progress update page which can be found here. At present i'm rewriting the menu file io stuff...

Boob!boy Posted by CyRUS64 @ 13:20
Directinput on the dreamcast is now fully working... including analog stick support!

HuGo! Posted by worldrave @ 8:12
Well guys, it looks like HuGo! (a turbographix16 emulator for the PC) will be making it's way to the Dreamcast. Let's wish him luck on a good and painless conversion. I'm impressed on the author's work on the PC version. I'd imagine the Dreamcast will be just as good, but better on a fullscreen TV. Also, on the Gleam! site it looks like he has a cool compatibility chart now on the games that work with the currant version he's working on.

boob!boy... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:30
i havent done much work on boob!boy today, but ive made it a bit faster by removing some unnecessary if statements, since they are not relevant for the dreamcast (stuff like restoring surfaces if the displaymode changes arent needed)...

*UPDATE* - i said i hadnt done much work on boob!boy today, but its not about quantity, its about quality! basically, controllers on the pc version are now fully working (dc version just needs to be tested and since the main directinput stuff is done already it should work first time) and as an example i've posted a 3 pics of super mario land and zelda dx in the screenshots section.

Monday, September 11, 2000

more sad news (on top of ultrahle) Posted by CyRUS64 @ 20:02
I only today found out that a mod for half-life, which many have been eagerly awaiting, including myself, has been cancelled... imo this is a great disappointment since the work they had been doing thus far looked absolutely amazing. Some of the models by Austin are definitely worth checking out... although i dont know where they can be found :-(
if i understand correctly the mod team has split into 2 groups who are each working on their own mod??? The Existence mod, of which Austin is a member, can be found here

Sad news... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 2:03
Although this is non-dreamcast related, i feel it is still worthy of posting... it was announced today that ultrahle has been discontinued by RealityMan. It was a landmark emulator and substantially altered the emulation scene. However since its immediate legal threats from Nintendo, it never recovered and although RealityMan began work on a sequel it is yet to have materialised :-(

Regarding Boob!boy, you might have noticed some pics of NBA in the Zone 2000 which have been added to the Screenshots page. I also started work on in-game controller support and with about half an hour of work it accepts input from the keyboard... however it seems to only allow one button to be pressed and then doesn't register any more input - a bug or two to sort out, i'd expect!

Sunday, September 10, 2000

boards updated... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 18:55
thanks to a suggestion from stalin, i have spent time redoing the boards, so that it is now necessary to register before you are able to post any messages. I'm sorry that i'm forced to do this but it seems people can't handle free speech and accept that this a development website and not for posting requests for illegal dreamcast games! The new forum can be found here and we welcome all dreamcast development / research discussion...

GypPlay nfo updated... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:00
I've updated the GypPlay doc, which describes the features / current limitations / instructions on use for GypPlay 1.1
This doc was written by TheGypsy himself, and can be found here or on the Documentation page

Saturday, September 9, 2000

250,000 visitors! Posted by CyRUS64 @ 16:28
We recently had our 250,000 visitor to the site after about 1 month and a half! I'll try and think of some "prize" for the 300,000th visitor so take a pic if it happens to be you... (the counter is at the bottom of the screen)
Also if anyone has an incite into wince self-booters could they email me... it would be nice to be able release stuff in this format (as well as the normal utopia-bootcd style for all you anti-discjuggler-guys) and it would also save those precious few seconds whilst testing our work on the dc :-)

Screenshots... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:52
Rather than fill up the newspage with screenshots i've created a screenshots page which can be found here
I've added screenshots of the gui, the Gameboy color demo, and 2 of tetris dx all running on the dreamcast!

Boob!boy Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:24
it is still fairly temperamental but at this very moment i'm downloading some pics from my camcorder of it running on a tv for any of you doubters :-)
my current problem is that i try and be too clever and achieve too much between dreamcast tests, and the dc hangs on the menu screen if anything is slightly wrong. it also seems to take quite a long time to load the rom using the readfile function but at the moment i dont know why cuz the rom is only 500k.
ill update the emulator page soon with lots of info about this emulator.

Friday, September 8, 2000

3 pics of WWF attitude in action Posted by CyRUS64 @ 9:53
WWF 1

WWF 2

WWF 3

Click on the pics for a bigger picture... more later

****ing hell! it worked :-) Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:17
as i said i took a break from dc coding for about 2 weeks and finally returned to do some coding today!!! with a bit of playing around with directdraw surfaces, i was just about to go to bed and thought, "i might as well try it out again", and it worked! i have the nintendo gameboy color demo playing nicely on my tv :-)
although the sound isnt working (it cant be too hard to fix cuz it works on the pc version) and the in-game controller support hasnt been implemented (the menu controller support is done), i am in a VERY GOOD mood. im busy tomorrow during the day but ill be at it all night... and i might get some coding done aswell tomorrow :-)
screenshots soon.... expect a lot more - imagine being able to play every gameboy game on your pc, well its reality!

Thursday, September 7, 2000

yo Posted by CyRUS64 @ 0:06
You guys probably already know about this, but for those who dont, a dreamcast emulator has been released. At the moment it runs the Stars demo only but even doing this is a mighty achievement imo. More information can be found here (This site is in spanish but if you look down in the news you will find some info about it.)
At the same site they have posted some cool news of a Sega Saturn emulator for the pc, which now plays commercial games. There are pics of Daytona USA and Virtua Fighter, and i personally can't wait till the compatibility/speed improves! The emu is SSF and you can download the latest version here or visit the website (japanese) here.
Although neither of these emus are for the dc (it would be a bit stupid if the first one was :-) ) they are both noteworthy achievements.
I have had a break from coding, but i will get started again soon. Be patient and remember that the first release of Boob!boy WILL play all gameboy / gameboy color / super gameboy games... hopefully it is something to look forward to.
If any of you are coders and have written any software / tools / utils / other relevant stuff or are interested in helping out with Boob! email me, cuz all help helps. (if u understand what i mean)

Sunday, September 3, 2000

emulator... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 22:45
updated the emulator page with the sega saturn emu... thanks to all those who emailed me about this.
also the killer instinct arcade emu will eventually be ported to the dc, but i wont add this to the list until work on the port has actually begun.

Saturday, September 2, 2000

Emulator page... Posted by CyRUS64 @ 11:11
I've updated the emulator page with details about current emulators in progress for the dreamcast. Take a look, and if you know of any other dc emus in progress, send me a quick email!
Also, although i personally have been very busy lately (driving tests / work / holidays), we are all still working hard on our various projects... i'd also like to thank all the people who continue to send in great information, and keep it up :-)

Friday, September 1, 2000

Gleam news Posted by worldrave @ 20:35
In the Gleam news, looks like he rewrote the PPU handler gaining about 20-25% in speed. He said he started writing an asm core, but accidentlly deleted it. Great news for all!! Great job!!