Emulation on the Dreamcast [Archive] - Retrogaming Roundtable

Synergy

05-17-2007, 10:37 PM

InsaneDavid

05-17-2007, 11:09 PM

So I've recently been thinking about getting another Dreamcast, and I've also been looking up some info on how you can create selfboot emulation discs for it. If I end up buying one, I'd be VERY interested in playing NES games on it especially.

For anyone here that has tried this out, I have a few questions:

1) How well do the NES games work for you?
2) Can you play the NES Light Gun games such as Duck Hunt, Freedom Force, etc. via the DC Gun? (A friend who used to come into EBGames when I worked there claims you can, but I can't seem to find any information about it. Can anyone out there confirm this?)
3) What other systems can the Dreamcast emulate well? SNES? Genesis?
4) I also heard that CD-Rs can damage the DC's laser more. Confirm? Deny?

I appreciate the help and opinions as always, DP. ;)

To begin with first let me say I use NESterDC v7.1, I do not use the SE version as I don't like how it handles a few things, namely how it requires a massive download to set things up. Dunno if that still even exists, but when Schzero released it I didn't bother giving it a second look.

1) About 95% of the NES / Famicom library works near perfectly. There are a few emulation glitches such as how the road is drawn for games like Rad Racer and other titles that display the same. A few games flat out do not work. Speed is near perfect as is sound emulation.

2) As far as I know NESterDC v7.1b+ supported Dreamcast lightguns but I never did any work with that build. v7.1 displays a crosshair that is controlled by the directional pad, far from ideal but not entirely horrible.

3) NES emulation is where it's at. SMSPlus is a very nice Sega Master System / Game Gear emulator as well but aside from that nothing is as full featured as NES emulation. Gameboy / Gameboy Color (via DCGNUBoy) emulation isn't bad either. There is a very nice NeoGeo AES emulator in development but again, it's nowhere near as polished as NES emulation is on the Dreamcast.

4) Use decent quality media and you'll be fine. None of the emulators cause the Dreamcast to do a long or hard read any more than a commercial game would.

bangtango

05-17-2007, 11:25 PM

To begin with first let me say I use NESterDC v7.1, I do not use the SE version as I don't like how it handles a few things, namely how it requires a massive download to set things up. Dunno if that still even exists, but when Schzero released it I didn't bother giving it a second look.

1) About 95% of the NES / Famicom library works near perfectly. There are a few emulation glitches such as how the road is drawn for games like Rad Racer and other titles that display the same. A few games flat out do not work. Speed is near perfect as is sound emulation.

2) As far as I know NESterDC v7.1b+ supported Dreamcast lightguns but I never did any work with that build. v7.1 displays a crosshair that is controlled by the directional pad, far from ideal but not entirely horrible.

3) NES emulation is where it's at. SMSPlus is a very nice Sega Master System / Game Gear emulator as well but aside from that nothing is as full featured as NES emulation. Gameboy / Gameboy Color (via DCGNUBoy) emulation isn't bad either. There is a very nice NeoGeo AES emulator in development but again, it's nowhere near as polished as NES emulation is on the Dreamcast.

4) Use decent quality media and you'll be fine. None of the emulators cause the Dreamcast to do a long or hard read any more than a commercial game would.

All my emulation takes place on a PC, so I haven't tried NES emulation on a Dreamcast. I continually read statements on boards like this claiming CDR's wear out DC systems at a faster rate than they normally would. I take it the rumors aren't true then? You'd be the person to ask ;)

InsaneDavid

05-18-2007, 12:02 AM

I continually read statements on boards like this claiming CDR's wear out DC systems at a faster rate than they normally would. I take it the rumors aren't true then? You'd be the person to ask ;)

It depends really, CD-R isn't bad for the Dreamcast, but lower quality media and faster burns will of course make the laser work harder to read the data. That's the same as if a commercial game had a shitty pressing. Now some Dreamcast backups (as in bootleg duplicates - which I do NOT promote in any way) cause the Dreamcast to work MUCH harder to read the data (due to how it is set up) than it would if it was reading the commercial version. This isn't because it's a CD-R, but because of how the data is read off the disc. Also a few Dreamcast homebrews that have extremely long load times (DoomDC comes to mind) cause more wear to the Dreamcast than most commercial games, but that's because it has a much longer load time. NESterDC however only reads the disc when a game is loaded or the games menu is accessed after the initial load or loading the list after a game has been exited. In fact most of the time the disc doesn't even spin when using NESterDC as everything is loaded into memory once a game is running.

As I said in this thread (http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=99708)...

"Every instance of a Dreamcast not reading a CD-R I've bared witness to was either due to defective hardware or bad burns using low grade CD media. Most of the time it's due to the later - no matter how many times I say it one can't expect to get consistant results out of penny-a-pound Memorex CD-R's burned at 40x."

DefaultGen

05-18-2007, 12:08 AM

.....

OatBob

05-18-2007, 01:05 AM

1) Most of the NES games work for me. Some glitch out or run fast, but if you have a large ROM library, just choose another game.

2) The latest version of NesterDC does have light gun support, provided you apply the trainer. I never succesfully managed to get this to work. Building and burning most others is not terribly difficult. Even if you have Nero already, I would recommend DiskJuggler for .cdj images. Plus, the trial version forces you to burn it at the slowest speed anyways, which is ideal for performance in being accepted by the GD-ROM laser assembly.

3) Just about every one I've tried works pretty well. Try http://www.dcemulation.com. (http://www.dcemulation.com/) It has just about all you should need for emulators. Genesis and SNES are the highest graphic level that works on it. Though there are ps1 and n64 emulators available. The genesis and SNES run okay most of the time, but anytime there are "transparent" sprites or flashy things, some things might not work right. Other graphic intensive things like Star Fox are right out of the question. The NES is the best choice for emulation in my opinion.

4) Same stuff as said before. Also using anything that you have to swap is hard on the GD-ROM assembly. This includes boot discs for playing imports, and emulators which load and can take ROMs that are stored on a separate CD-R. Using a mod chip allows you to skip this process and allow your DC to last longer, but of course, its cheaper to buy a spare unit for when yours dies.

InsaneDavid

05-18-2007, 01:33 AM

emulators which load and can take ROMs that are stored on a separate CD-R.

Years ago that was the case but currently there's no reason why anyone wouldn't simply make all-in-one discs. NESterDC (after startup) has no such problem since if you aren't refreshing a menu or running a game the disc is not being read. If you open the disc lid while at the NESterDC root, nothing happens. Popping in another disc doesn't hurt anything, although you will probably need to refresh the game list as it has a tendancy of retaining the original one on the first return.

Sweater Fish Deluxe

05-18-2007, 11:51 AM

NES emulation is very good on the Dreamcast. NesterDC even has pretty good mapper support, so the weirdo obscure games and pirate originals that I like to play usually work. I agree with David, though, use 7.1b+, not NesterDC SE. SE doesn't have lightgun support and you actually can't play games that aren't in the official database. The actual emulation quality wasn't really improved much, if at all, anyway, it's mostly just a really slick frontend. 7.1b+ does support the lightgun and it works well.

Genesis Plus DC has gotten pretty good over the past year. It's pretty spot on including sound, though there's still bugs in a number of games. It still doesn't have a nice frontend, either, but hopefully that will be coming soon. I wouldn't bother with SNES, personally. DreamSNES is the better of the two available, but it just never gets fast enough, even with the sound off it doesn't get consitently above a 90% framerate in most games, which I consider unplayable.

Neo Geo is great though. I'd advise using the Neo Geo CD emulators rather than the AES build as more games are supported that way. If there's some games supported by the AES emulator that weren't released on CD, then use it, of course, but there's not much supported currently. With the Neo Geo CD emulator, you can actually burn the emulator together with the game on a single CD, so it's just like having native Neo Geo Cd support on the Dreamcast. Unfortunately, original Neo CD discs are not supported because of some disc-reading incompatibility in the homebrew devkit.

Stella for DC is also really nice and full featured if you're into the 2600.

While you're at it, you should also have a look at at least some of the best homebrew games, too. Alice Dreams, dRxLax, Joggle, Giana's Return and Shippy are probably my favorite original games and theres's some nice ports, too, like Super Mario Wars, Noiz2sa, Komi and RetroSonic.

...word is bondage...

bangtango

05-18-2007, 02:05 PM

The good news is, a worn out Dreamcast costs what? 20 bucks to replace every few years? :D

Buy it on Ebay and you could get one that is on its way out. Well, that could happen with one you pick up anywhere.

Reading what I've read, I'll stick to emulating NES on my PC. I only have the one Dreamcast unit and it is still in very good condition. I was the original owner and prefer to err on the side of caution. Now maybe if I had a backup unit, that'd be a different story.

RockOfAges

05-18-2007, 02:47 PM

Buy an Xbox for $70 and mod it. Perfect emulation of NES, GB,GBA, SNES, Atari, Intellivision, Coleco, Genesis, TG-16. Why bother with the DC?

Blitzwing256

05-18-2007, 03:16 PM

Buy an Xbox for $70 and mod it. Perfect emulation of NES, GB,GBA, SNES, Atari, Intellivision, Coleco, Genesis, TG-16. Why bother with the DC?

not everyone has access to mod chips or the skill to do said mod, and a dreamcast is super cheap to pickup (20$ or less) and xboxes like to randomly die more often then dreamcasts in my experience ;-)

InsaneDavid

05-18-2007, 03:19 PM

Buy an Xbox for $70 and mod it. Perfect emulation of NES, GB,GBA, SNES, Atari, Intellivision, Coleco, Genesis, TG-16. Why bother with the DC?

Because emulation on the Dreamcast requires no modification to the hardware and the console takes up 75% less space. ;)

MarioMania

05-18-2007, 03:56 PM

Is it ok to burn at 4x..Would the Emulators work in my Sega Sports Model DC

Captain Wrong

05-18-2007, 04:30 PM

YEs and yes.

Might I add the Neo Geo CD emulation is pretty damn good. Not perfect, but a ton better than anyone should expect. Good enough to play.

InsaneDavid

05-18-2007, 05:10 PM

Is it ok to burn at 4x..Would the Emulators work in my Sega Sports Model DC

Dude, you posted in the thread that I linked (http://www.digitpress.com/forum/showthread.php?t=99708) earlier in this thread. You asked the same question about CD-R. And you'll get the same answer here - yes.

Synergy

05-18-2007, 07:48 PM

7.1b+ does support the lightgun and it works well.

Now by "support", do you mean a crosshair on the screen you move with the Pad, or can I use the same gun I would use to play House of the Dead 2 with Duck Hunt, Freedom Force, Hogan's Alley, Gumshoe, etc. etc.?

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

InsaneDavid

05-18-2007, 10:37 PM

Now by "support", do you mean a crosshair on the screen you move with the Pad, or can I use the same gun I would use to play House of the Dead 2 with Duck Hunt, Freedom Force, Hogan's Alley, Gumshoe, etc. etc.?

Thanks for all the replies everyone.

NESterDC v7.1b+ will support Dreamcast lightguns as in the physical lightgun. NESterDC v7.1 uses a simulated optical gun as in crosshairs on the screen controled by the control pad.

Synergy

05-19-2007, 08:52 AM

NESterDC v7.1b+ will support Dreamcast lightguns as in the physical lightgun. NESterDC v7.1 uses a simulated optical gun as in crosshairs on the screen controled by the control pad.

Looks like that's the version I want then. Awesome; thanks again!

kainemaxwell

05-19-2007, 09:23 AM

With the emulation, are all of the controls pre-set or can you change some of the button configs?

RugalSizzler

05-19-2007, 09:27 AM

Buy an Xbox for $70 and mod it. Perfect emulation of NES, GB,GBA, SNES, Atari, Intellivision, Coleco, Genesis, TG-16. Why bother with the DC?

Another reason is that regaurdless how easy something is to emulate and it is far cheaper as long as the hardware is powerfull enough you can emulate as many systems as you want to.

What I want is a cd emulator for the Saturn to run various CD consoles.

Sweater Fish Deluxe

05-19-2007, 04:04 PM

Buy an Xbox for $70 and mod it. Perfect emulation of NES, GB,GBA, SNES, Atari, Intellivision, Coleco, Genesis, TG-16. Why bother with the DC?
Because the Dreamcast is one of the best consoles of all time and everyone should have one anyway for it's great library regular games, so you're really getting emulation and homebrew as a bonus for a system you would have anyway.

The only reason to get an Xbox is for emulation and its three or four good commercial games.

Why bother with the Xbox?

...word is bondage...

Blitzwing256

05-19-2007, 08:30 PM

i'm going to have to check out the stelle emulator, I've had a hard time getting a 2600 to run on my tv (too much interfierence) so that might be a good choice

Dire 51

05-21-2007, 07:05 AM

How is TG16 emulation on the DC? I don't recall it being mentioned in this thread.

kainemaxwell

05-21-2007, 07:17 AM

Just picked up one of the NES DC discs this weekend. Love it. Cleanest emulation for the NES I've seen in a long time.

Synergy

05-21-2007, 09:05 PM

Just picked up one of the NES DC discs this weekend. Love it. Cleanest emulation for the NES I've seen in a long time.

Nice! By the by, I don't want another DreamCast just to emulate NES games, but being able to play my precious NES games, especially the Zapper ones on the same system as Power Stone on my TV just kicks ass.

While I'm at it, anyone know a good tutorial anywhere that shows me how I can make my own NesterDC7.1b+ w/ ROMs CD? Does the file structure on the disc have to be a certain way or something...?

Sweater Fish Deluxe

05-21-2007, 10:07 PM

While I'm at it, anyone know a good tutorial anywhere that shows me how I can make my own NesterDC7.1b+ w/ ROMs CD? Does the file structure on the disc have to be a certain way or something...?
Yeah, it does. But there's a number of programs available that will take raw files and compile a burnable image with the proper file structure. The best one is probably Selfboot Inducer, though it requires that you get the Dreamcast files in a specific format called SBI rather than just in a standard ZIP archive.

Using Selfboot Inducer, you can have multiple games or emulators on a single disc. For instance, I have NesterDC, SMS Plus, Stella for DC, DColem, GNUBoy and a couple others along with tons of ROMs for each of them all on one disc. I also have a disc with about 150 homebrew games and demos on it. Or you can also use Selfboot Inducer to make single game or app discs, too, if you prefer.

Check out the tutorial here:

http://dchelp.net/index.php?id=sbindv4

Sbiffy! (which you can find linked from that tutorial) is the original source for SBI files and they have pretty much everything (including NesterDC 7.1+b), but DCHelp also has their own collection, which may or may not just be a mirror of what Sbiffy! has, I don't know. Here it is anyway, though:

http://dchelp.net/sbi/

Good luck. Compiling your own Dreamcast homebrew discs is definitely the way to go.

How is TG16 emulation on the DC? I don't recall it being mentioned in this thread.
Saddly, Turbo emulation on the DC is pretty bad. There's three of them that I know of: Dream Engine, HuCast and PCEcast, but all three are actually very rough alpha releases. I don't know why, that is. The TurboGrafx is a relatively popular system and the Dreamcast emulation scene was huge for a while there. Really too bad in my opinion. I'd rather have a solid PC Engine emulator for the Dreamcast than SNES, to be honest. Especially if it could play original Turbo CD discs.

...word is bondage...

Dire 51

05-23-2007, 04:36 PM

That sucks about the TG16 emulation. :(

I've been working on trying to create my own NES DC disc, and so far I feel completely confused. Can anyone help me out with this (or if I can't get it, maybe hook me up with the disc itself - ROMs not needed)?

CosmicMonkey

05-23-2007, 06:15 PM

I'd rather have a solid PC Engine emulator for the Dreamcast than SNES, to be honest. Especially if it could play original Turbo CD discs.

Have to agree with you there. If there was any way to play Gate & Winds of Thunder with just a simple disk swap, I'd be a very happy man. I'm not really into emulation, but if it was 99% perfect I'd be well in as there's a few Super CD games I really miss.

Sweater Fish Deluxe

05-23-2007, 09:08 PM

I've been working on trying to create my own NES DC disc, and so far I feel completely confused. Can anyone help me out with this (or if I can't get it, maybe hook me up with the disc itself - ROMs not needed)?
Where are you getting confused? If you read the tutorial that I linked to and the readme that comes with Selfboot Inducer, it should be pretty simple to burn a single emulator disc.

Put the NesterDC SBI file wherever the Selfboot Inducer readme tells you to put SBI files, should be C:\<location of Selboot Inducer>\SBI\, I think. You don't need an SBT theme file if you're only burning a single emulator or homebrew game to the disc. Start up Selfboot Inducer and extract the NesterDC SBI. Then close or minimize Selfboot Inducer and in Explorer transfer your ROMs to wherever the NesterDC readme said to put them, probably C:\<location of Selfboot Inducer>\DATA\NINTENDO\. Now go back to Selfboot Inducer and create your disc or disc image (to burn a disc directly from Selfboot Inducer, you have to be able to use cdrecord and for some reason I've never been able to get cdrecord to work on any of my computers over the years, so I always just compile a Nero image and burn the actual disc using Nero).

...word is bondage...

Dire 51

05-24-2007, 02:37 PM

I'm following the tutorial, everything gets extracted the way it's supposed to, I create a TAO image (I'm using Nero 6.0), burn it, try it, and... the system won't read it. I have one other self-booting disc and that loads, no problem.

I have no idea what I'm doing wrong. I've tried this three times, and none of the discs work. If for some reason I can't get this to work, I am willing to trade... something for working, selfbooting NES, SMS and 2600 emulators.

Sweater Fish Deluxe

05-24-2007, 06:15 PM

heybtbm

05-24-2007, 09:44 PM

I'm following the tutorial, everything gets extracted the way it's supposed to, I create a TAO image (I'm using Nero 6.0), burn it, try it, and... the system won't read it.

For what it's worth, I've never been able to get Nero to burn Dreamcast games. Everything is set up correctly, the disc burns, I put it in my DC and....nothing. I've wasted so many CD's on that shit program. Now I use DiscJuggler and it works every time.

I'm not saying Nero won't work (it obviously does for some people), but in my experience it sucks for burning DC discs. Another telling sign is that 90% of downloadable DC game files you find on the internet are in DiscJuggler ".cdi" format.

j_factor

05-25-2007, 01:09 AM

After bleem died, did anyone ever attempt to take PSX emulation on DC further?

kainemaxwell

05-25-2007, 01:11 AM

I've always used alcohol 120% for burning DC games and never had issues with it.

Cryomancer

05-25-2007, 11:56 AM

I have experienced problems with newer versions of nero when burning DC, I usually install a 5.5 build just for burning DC games and that works fine.

Dire 51

05-25-2007, 09:50 PM

Are you burning the disc at a slow speed? I usually use 4x just to be sure.

Are you using good quality CD-Rs? Everyone says this is important, but actually I always buy cheap stuff myself and I've never really had a problem. COuld be your problem, though. CD-RWs will not work, either, but you probably knew that.

If you try burning a disc at 4x on good quality media and it still doesn't work, I'd be willing to send you a disc for free, but please try the above suggestions first if you haven't already. Send me a PM if it still doesn't work.

...word is bondage...
I actually did not know you couldn't use CD-RWs. That took care of one problem, but my burned discs still weren't working. So I switched to DiscJuggler and I've managed to get Nester DC and SMS Plus up and running. :D

However, I'm having a few issues trying to get DC Stella going. I'm going to keep working on it and see if I can straighten it out. Thanks for all the help so far!

edit: got it up and running, and while overall I'm happy with it, I'm a bit disappointed that certain games don't run at full speed, especially Pitfall II. That sucks.

On that note, can you recommend any decent Genesis or SNES emulators?

Smashed Brother

02-16-2009, 04:16 AM

I've been getting into the DC emulation scene for the past month or so (yeah, better late than never) and I've been totally happy with it. So far, I have...

Neo4All
NesterDC
DreamSNES (decent quality with great sound)
Genesis emulator (perfect quality but with messed up sound)
Mame4all
SCUMMVM
Sierra Classics emulator
DreamEngine (decent PC Engine emulator, but no sound)
Amiga 500 emulator
Colecovision emulator
The Simpsons Arcade standalone
Vendetta standalone

...and a full set of roms for each! I think that the quality overall is just fine and I'm more than happy to be able to play all of these great games on one system.

kainemaxwell

03-29-2009, 02:33 PM

Depending on what format the file is for the emulators and roms when I download it, I run isobuster to extract everything, then add/delete as I want. I have a set of DC emulation tools that will remake an iso or cdi file to burn for the Dreamcast (i honestly can't remember the name or where I got it, but if anyone wants it, I can megaupload it). Then burn with discjuggler.

My collection now is:
NES
GB/C
SMS/GG
Genesis (maybe someone can help me here- I downloaded a rom/emulator set (450+ genesis roms and dreamcast, or something like that for the name, I have no dea the name of the emulator, but is there any suggestions on setting the frame skip, etc? Also be nice to know what the key combinations are to save states, etc...)

I also have a SNES one (I think dreamsnes, all my emu files are in cdi format now on my pc) I'm gonna mess around with when I buy more cd-rs and see what I can do with it, be nice to get back into those Japan snes rpgs. I take it gba emulation is still next to crap?

skaar

03-30-2009, 11:36 PM

Where are you saving games to?

kainemaxwell

03-31-2009, 08:50 AM

Where are you saving games to?
VMU for save states and save files, where else, my left hand??

Rickstilwell1

04-11-2009, 07:57 PM

MarioMania

04-11-2009, 11:00 PM

How is MAME emulated on the DC

j_factor

04-12-2009, 02:45 AM

I got a couple random Genesis emulator discs for the Dreamcast with my system, and with those, the graphics display fine most of the time, but the sound is decreased in quality where it sounds like 8-bit games instead of 16-bit games. It's kind of strange. When games are saved, it calls the save file "Sega Smash Pack Vol. 1", so it thinks the burned discs are that game.

Are all Geneis emulators for th DC like that with the decreased sound quality? Or do I just have a weird one?

The Sega Smash Pack was merely a Genesis emulator with a few ROMs, and Virtua Cop 2 and Sega Swirl thrown in for good measure. It sounds like your Genesis emu is merely a hack of the Smash Pack. The Smash Pack itself had terrible sound.