Presenting Airline Pilots. Strangely enough Makaron seems able to run both single and multi-monitor version just fine. I havent tried the dedicated BIOS though, it's possible it would try to establish multi-board sync (just like the F355 one) and hang on that.




The framedrop is due to heavy debug output, game should work full speed.


UPDATE: More games.

I heard SEGA Tetris is pretty nice game but it sure doesn't look like much:


Samba de Amigo 2000 - yeah, I'm usually running JP BIOS dumped from my box so this is why most of you can't read the title :P


Still working on few other games, I'm seriously hoping this is the last batch for now or the next Makaron update will be in 2010...

As I said before, I deal with the problematic cases here. And sure enough this is one Crazy Taxi:



Not that it differs much from Dreamcast version...


UPDATE: Just for the fun of it:



Resized textures be ugly though. Still, at least now I can fix that silly aspect ratio problem.


UPDATE 2: Unfortunately F355 Twin only goes this far before dying. The "protection" here is pretty much it's unique BIOS, it doesn't work well with normal one.

Busy with the whole cart dumping thing I've been neglecting Makaron lately. Well, there's only so much one man can do. When other people got interested in the cart dumping trojan, I was happy. I hoped to just pass the baton and finally have some more time for coding. Little did I know it's going to be exactly the opposite...

For some reason all the "easy" games have already been covered and the remaining ones present all sorts of problems. Take Mushiking for example.


Step one. Not only a bad dump, it doesn't even show the ROMs properly.




Fortunately I pretty much already knew what was the cause, thanks to prior work done on Oh! My Goddess. Step two:




Okay, not sure what goes on here but there is a way to dump this game. Step three:




Yup, this is how it looks like on real hardware:




And yet... no joy so far.




This is hard work, I tell you.

Rush Rush Rally Racing looks like fun.
Hmmm... 15 EURO? Now where did I put my card :)

More goodies arrived a few days ago, thanks to Robero Malone. Being cheap I decided not to buy a ZIF socket and ended up desoldering and resoldering the firmware FLASH twice. Did I ever mention how much I hate TSOPs? The end result was worth it though:



In other news, a friend of mine visited recently and brought Nintendo DS with him. And now I want to buy one even more... pray that I don't :)


UPDATE: Thanks to ANY, who shared some crucial piece of information with me, I present these photos. Sorry for quality, LCD vs daylight problems, not to mention these games hardly have any static screens :)

Oh, by the way, don't insert the PIC key wrong. It'll get hot. VERY HOT. Even though I was careful not to make that mistake it still happened (mostly because I inadvertedly rotated the chip when I assembled the holder - so for the final version I didn't use the holder at all). Luckily both DIMM and PIC survived :P







Who needs emulators when you can run any game you want on NAOMI2 box? :)


UPDATE 2: This game I got from Yuki looong time ago, before I even got Makaron to emulate NAOMI. Now at least I can run it to see how it looks like :)

After seeing - yet another - question on why doesn't Makaron support games in so-called "MAME format" I felt I need to explain this somewhat - yet again.

First of all, there is no hidden agenda here. In fact it's all pretty simple, you just have to try and see things from my perspective:

- I'm not affiliated with MAME in any way
- MAME dumps are not my only, and not even my primary, source of games
- I'm capable of dumping the games on my own, using different methods
- since I'm pretty much Dreamcast-oriented I prefer GDIs over the generic CHDs
- until recently I've been under the impression I can't use CHD-related algorithms without breaking MAME license

The ROMs:

The dumps I make are in different format to begin with, in my opinion easier to use. I need no prior knowledge of how to assemble my files to make them work, they just do. I fully intend to support any valid Dreamcast or NAOMI image, whether it's a dump of a game, or a hack/fansub, or maybe a homebrew of some sort. In other words if it works on the hardware I hope to have it working in Makaron. MAME can only run official and supported games (that also includes any BIOS images) since the code needs to know how to handle various files. Seeing how my approach suits me better I find little motivation to support another - and in my eyes inferior - format...

While I don't condone software piracy I'm not going to look down on so-called "ROM collectors". It's really not my place to judge, not to mention in many countries it's illegal to have copies of the software even if you are in possesion of the original media (EULA aside). The only issue I have is with, how should I put it, computer-illiterate people who have absolutely NO IDEA on what Dreamcast / NAOMI is and how to use it, and expect to just play free games. Full-speed in HD of course. If you are one of said people PRETTY PLEASE have at least some decency and learn a thing or two first, and then you can come here with your questions and ideas.

The CHDs:

Again, I see little benefit of having the images compressed. Really, when you think about it, you can get higher compression ratio with solid 7z or RAR archives and faster emulation with uncompressed files. This is not that important for NAOMI where the game is loaded whole into memory at startup - though with CHDs it would still be slower due to necessary decompression and decryption steps - but would have much higher impact on Dreamcast games. To make this simple:

* My approach, that is plain files are stored compressed with 7z or RAR:
PROS:
- better compression ratio, less disk space used
- faster loading times, less lag (important for Dreamcast)
- the code is already there, well tested and working
- both GDIs and NAOMI images are plain files and easily created/modified
- tools, that people who dump games for me use, create GDIs/plain files
- Makaron will load and run any valid file you choose
CONS:
- games have to be manualy decompressed first (and then deleted eventually)
- can't load MAME dumped games natively (though conversion is possible)
- MAME (MESS?) can't run plain images (conversion is possible but only for recognized games)

* MAME approach
PROS:
- dumped games can be used as-is, just download (har har) the files and run
CONS:
- see my approach PROS, reverse :)
- CHDs could change format in future breaking compatiblity (unlikely but not impossible)
- AFAIK even MAME guys dump GDs as GDI first and then make CHD out of them

So unless you jump from game to game every 5 minutes you won't much mind having to decompress a file every now and then. Also, all NAOMI needs is decompressed game image, having to repeat this step (even if automatically) every time you load a CHD seems kinda... unnecessary. Maybe one day MAME will fully emulate the DIMM unit, then it will make much more sense to have CHDs around. Still, I keep GDIs of NAOMI games so I can make CHDs anytime I want.
Oh, and about that "you can replace a faulty ROM thanks to MAME dump" - you can as easily extract that data from files that Makaron uses. Trust me, when it actually comes to replacing anything on NAOMI carts, finding the right data will be the least of your problems :)

To sum this up, I have nothing against MAME but I think the "standard" argument is debatable. As long as conversion is possible there is nothing wrong with a little variety, it's not like I try to enforce proprietary formats here. It's a pain for some people, true, but if you can't get it to work then perhaps you should look for a different emulator. If you want to run MAME dumps, get MAME - duh :)
These formats will be supported eventually I guess but thats future for you. You lot should know by now I don't exactly make ease of use my priority at this point :P

This is how you do it properly :)
Many thanks go to Alex for running my experiments on his carts.

Rainbow Cotton apparently thinks it's possible to hook up coin acceptor to a Dreamcast:



And here's another NAOMI cart game running:



UPDATE: Aaand another game :)

Dreamcast side of Makaron is now available for download.

It's pretty much the same code as NAOMI version released earlier, with some minor modifications. From the top of my head:
- "clockmin" is now 100 by default
- accepted clock values are now in 10 to 400 range
- "pixelcenter" is zero by default (ATI users with problems please set it to -0.1)
- first gamepad can be configured by selecting "Settings" in the menu (this is just a hack for now, and let me remind you that X360 controllers don't need configuration)

As usual, keep copy of of your INI files from earlier versions (Maple.ini, MakaronPAD.ini and MakaronVMU.ini). You'd be surprised just how many people overwrite these and then come here complaining about gamepad / memory cards related issues.
These INI files will be removed soon anyway, once I get the GUI more functional.

If you spot a game that has worked in T11 but not in T12 please report it. There are some bugs that I'm already aware of:
- "Stupid Invaders" not booting (I know how to fix it just not sure if I should, it could be a side effect of another bug somewhere else)
- "Looney Tunes Space Race" sound issues (still need to find the real source of this problem)
- "Shenmue II" not booting (should work on SSE2 capable systems, works on mine but it was reported broken on some AMD CPUs)
- some games require a certain video cable to work properly (mostly JP/USA games, doing weird stuff or hanging with RGB cable)
- "Yu Suzuki Game Works Vol. 1" (sorta works but the way this is coded really upsets Makaron)
- some WinCE games like "Marionette Company" have really broken graphics (mostly extreme cases of Z-buffer abuse)
- demo/attract modes on some games are broken due to imperfect FPU emulation, the most serious case being "Aero Dancing" where the tutorial crashes the plane
- and tons of other stuff :)

Please do not report any problems with broken visuals. While some of those could be real bugs it's mostly imperfect Z-buffering and/or sorting - nothing can be done about that with the renderer I'm currently using.
Also, if you're going to report a bug then please either do it properly or don't bother. At the very least describe the problem and provide game title and your system specs. And keep in mind I only care about games run from GD images, if you have a problem with ripped game you're on your own.

I'm about to release Makaron Test 12 soon, though only the NAOMI side for now. I still have mixed feelings about it seeing how many problems were initialy reported and how some of those still remain unsolved. I guess I better explain a few things first.

The way T12 handles flow of time is fundamentally different compared to previous versions. It allows for much tighter synchronization between emulated components but comes with a price: it's slower. It's not even so much the new system itself but the parameters it uses are not fine-tuned yet.
I figure some more feedback could help so that's why I'm going to release it anyway. You can always go back to T11 series if it's too slow or too buggy to be used.
It pretty much just works on Core2 CPUs but some older AMDs are struggling. There is a good chance changing some INI entries will make it work but that is exactly what I need you people to find out :)

So what's new? There is a simple GUI but it's not very functional yet. DIMM.ini file is gone, you can just load the game you want through GUI or command line. There is X360 gamepad support, in fact it's what I use mostly these days. Keyboard can still be used (with the obvious limitations in the analog department) but the mapping format and key codes have changed. And I'm still not sure this will be the final version. Sorry but that's WIP for you. It won't be that much of a problem once it can be fully configured from UI.
Pads other than X360 ones (or in other words: XInput based) are not supported. There is XInput emulation layer, you could try that if you wish.

Even if I can now run some protected cart games I will disable that functionality in the public version. This is still mostly incomplete and I don't want to deal with any "bug reports" about that. You can play GD-based games just fine.


UPDATE: There seems to be some confusion about this - it's not that I don't want to support DirectInput devices. It's just much more difficult and not a priority at this moment.

You can download NAOMI T12 here. The ReadMe became somewhat obsolete so I didn't include it. The INI files are commented.
Please make sure you understand how the new JVS.ini works before you submit a bug report about controls being broken. For keyboard-only replace it with the included example file. As for the key codes, 0-9 and a-z use ASCII, the rest is standard Win32 virtual keys.

Oh and you can only run one game and then you have to close Makaron. This is a simple bug but since I'm not done testing I want results from clean runs - so it stays for now :)


UPDATE 2: For X360 pads you can also assign LB/RB shoulder buttons and LT/RT triggers (only as digital and analog inputs respectively). Most games run happily with one just coin acceptor so don't presume you have to assign COIN2 input, just try adding credits and that should let Player 2 join in. For multiple pads add another X360 section, the number is the pad ID as displayed by the LED indicator. Remember to edit the controls to P2! Mixed X360/keyboard input is also possible but duplicate entries will not work.

Shooting games have no additional pointer to help with targeting but someone said this is how real players do this :) Let's see if that's true. I'm going to add it as an option anyway to next release. And while on the subject, you should enter game's test mode and calibrate the controls first. This is a bit tricky since X360 analog area is circular but it's possible to extend the corner reach a bit if you do this right.
The "out of sight" signal means the gun is not pointed at the screen (it's a separate signal from the gun position) and it's used for reloading. Most games have it wired to second digital input so it works like BUTTON2, just press B on X360.

If T12 is too slow for you but T11 worked fine then try to lower SH4 clock (first thing you should try is lowering clockmax - read the comments in NAOMI.ini). If that works for you then please report your system specs, game name and settings used.
You can also try relaxed timing mode but that should be last resort.

And one more thing: since F12 is used by MSVC debugger I moved the menu key to F11.


UPDATE 3: Use F8 to close Makaron in full-screen mode :P