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3rd-Mar-2008 01:39 am
Deunan, Ex Machina, Knute
- AICA cleanup: done
- Puru Puru Pack (vibration) support: done
- Render to texture: done
- Fixed (again, and for good I hope) missing sound in Project Justice
- Spent 4 hours playing Elemental Gimmick Gear on Makaron :)

Force feedback was tested on Soul Reaver and seems to work. Did I ever mention this game is one of the reasons I moved from simple SH4 recompiler project to full-blow Dreamcast emulator? I simply adore whole series.
Makaron 2008-03-02 Soul Reaver

Now this is actually Saturn conversion, that's why the graphics look a bit dated. Don't let it fool you into thinking it's old and boring - it's quite the opposite. Runs rock solid too, I've played it on full screen and never had a single problem whatsoever.
Makaron 2008-03-02 Elemental Gimmick Gear

And this isn't a game at all, just a movie demo disc - GD though, so Dreamcast exclusive. Kinda sucks they didn't remove the interlace - looks pretty bad on PC monitors. Nothing can be done about that now, it's MPEG stream.
Makaron 2008-03-02 Dead or Alive 2 - Taiken Ban Saishin Maruhi Eizou

And this apparently is Makaron exclusive for now :) I've only played Interlude for several minutes (can't read kanji, so...) but I've noticed there's lots of nice backgrounds. Plenty of spoken dialogues as well. It's 2003 game so I guess quality is higher compared to similar games for Dreamcast (why, even compressed the image is still almost 1,2G).
Makaron 2008-03-02 Interlude

I am so sick & tired of cutting every screenshot I make to size... I need a good and free screen capture program. Any suggestions?

UPDATE:

Gunspike seems like a nice 3D shooter - problem is you can't take a decent screenshot, it ends up looking either silly or boring :)


Never7 makes heavy use of VMU LCD. Cool title screen animation aside, it changes displayed face according to game dialogues. Pretty neat.


I've nothing to say about this one. VF3 clone of sorts, fighting games aren't really my area of expertise.


Unfortunately NFL2K is pretty broken right now. It will crash & burn trying to start it's 3D engine - most likely a DMA problem. Guess it's another entry on the TO-DO list...


And yet another shooter. Now, don't get me wrong - I do know a bit about it's unique figthing system. Just not my type of game. Seems like Dreamcast got some pretty original shooters though.


I don't have to tell you the title of this game, now do I? Actually there are two games I know of: Dead or Alive 2 - Shokai Gentei Ban and Dead or Alive 2 - Tsuujou Ban. One is a special edition - unfortunately intro is the same on both and I forgot which is which. Yuki once explained what exactly is different between them but I forgot that too :)


And here's First Kiss Story. Not really playable now as it suffers badly from inadequate polygon sorting. It's not a texture problem - the geometry is there, just not visible right now. If it wasn't for sorting many more games would look like that. Since I'm not doing per-triangle sorting (and I'd rather not do that in any case) I will need to come up with another solution - if only for those few cases that need it.


Thanks for hints on capturing software. I've tried several programs but it seems I'll stick to (Alt-)PrintScreen for now. I've added my own screen capture functionality to Makaron (saves to BMPs) - it captures images before information/LCD is overlayed but will work in both windowed and full screen mode. It's developer-only thingy but if there's a need I'll clean it up and leave it unlocked in the next release.

I've managed to get GDMT code more stable. Not perfect yet, most likely it'll never be and some poorly written games will continue to experience problems. I still want it in though, go watch Gunbird 2 intro with GDMT on and off and you'll understand why :)
Comments 
3rd-Mar-2008 02:40 am (UTC)
Stunning! I can't believe how much you've done already! This next release is going to be huge! The emu is not the most approachable though. You might get alot more fans and supporters if you maybe bundle it with the frontend or something.

Anyway, can't wait for vibration, and there's many others that have been dying to play REZ the proper way. Yea for Dreamcast emu advancements!!!
3rd-Mar-2008 05:06 am (UTC)
Anonymous
"Interlude" is very interesting.
And, it is impossible to play "Interlude" in emus other than makaron to the last minute now.
3rd-Mar-2008 06:48 am (UTC)
No ideas on the screen capture program, sorry.
3rd-Mar-2008 08:33 am (UTC) - Screeny
Anonymous
Great work on this emulator. As for a free screen capture utility try screeny. :) http://www.rotebetasoftware.net/wp/freeware/screeny/ Keep up the good. It's really appreciated. Hiroprobot
3rd-Mar-2008 05:46 pm (UTC)
Anonymous
Sorry for my very bad English :) For taking screenshots use the program Screenshot Creator 2.0. It is developed by Russian programmers, but it has an English interface. Try it and I think you enjoy it;) Here is a link:
http://scrnstcr.slaiv.net.ru/download/scrnstcr2_0_final.zip
3rd-Mar-2008 06:11 pm (UTC) - try gadwin printscreen
Anonymous
for a screen capturing software try the standard edition of gadwin printscreen, it's free and very flexible. i've been using it for years.
http://www.gadwin.com/printscreen/

oh and thank you very much for makaron! it's the most interesting emulator right now and i love to check your blog for wip updates.
btw, any chance of adding 2 player support for the next version? or is this supported already and i'm just too stupid to figure out how to configure a second joypad?
3rd-Mar-2008 06:57 pm (UTC) - Re: try gadwin printscreen
There is a way to do that:
- configure joypad for second player, close Makaron
- edit MakaronPAD.ini and rename PortA assigment to PortB
- launch Makaron again, configure joypad for the first player
- repeat for ports C & D if necessary to have 3+ players
Well, you get the idea. You can only configure controller assigned to PortA, but after it's done you can "move" it to ports B-D by editing that file.
Oh, and don't forget to edit Maple.ini as well and make sure MakaronPAD.dll is attached to Adres0x20 of each port you want to use. Attached plugins that have not been configured for given port will create virtual Dreamcast controllers - that allows more VMUs to be connected for additional saving space.
4th-Mar-2008 06:22 pm (UTC) - it works!
Anonymous
thanks a lot! it works like a charm. i think you should add that description to the readme.
5th-Mar-2008 07:51 am (UTC)
I hope fullscreen mode is a little more reliable, in that it doesn't freeze up all the time. Having to press Alt+F4 twice to get out sorta proves full screen's a little wonky right now. I've found pressing Alt+F4 ONCE gives Makaron more focus and brings it out of any initial freeze and also allows the mouse cursor to be seen some, as well as taskbar items. Then, if the user moves the mouse to the middle of screen and left clicks, it finally allows Makaron to run without hesitation for the rest of the session. I'm almost positive it has something to do with that text window stealing focus or something. Because once clicking on it (blindly from full screen), you see its blinking cursor overlap the game but it plays fine after that. Hopefully, this extremely annoying issue is not that hard of a fix and it gets resolved soon.
5th-Mar-2008 02:08 pm (UTC)
I'll change how the debug window works, it will be hidden in full screen mode and text output will not force it to refresh (as it does now). It needs to be reworked anyway for future Alt+Enter switch to work properly.
5th-Mar-2008 01:26 pm (UTC) - Yuki
Anonymous
"Dead or Alive 2 - Shokai Gentei Ban " & "Dead or Alive 2 - Tsuujou Ban ".
These two release dates are the same.
Shokai Gentei Ban = Limited edition.
Tsuujou Ban = Normal version.

The CG gallery mode exists in Limited edition.
It is necessary to fulfill certain conditions to open CG gallery mode.

The condition is uncertain.
It might be what cleared by a lot of characters.
It might be what plays the long time game.
5th-Mar-2008 02:11 pm (UTC) - Re: Yuki
Thanks!
I'll send you new WIP soon :)
7th-Mar-2008 02:32 pm (UTC) - wehee
Anonymous
great progress :)
i would agree a gui for loading isos into makaron and playing around with the makaron.ini settings would be nice.

imo makaron is the best dc emu out there. cant wait for the new wip :)
8th-Mar-2008 03:54 am (UTC) - Widescreen Support?
Anonymous
I notice in nullDC there is an option to enable extra geometry thus allowing for a kind of widescreen support. Is it possible to improve upon this concept. It seems to me many people these days use 16:10 or 16:9 monitors. I love Makaron but I just can't stand seeing aspect ratio of 4:3 across my 16:10 monitor when in full screen. Perhaps even just a larger game window 1024x768? Anyhow, thanks for all your hard work. Keep it up its appreciated. :)

Hiroprobot
10th-Mar-2008 11:09 am (UTC) - Re: Widescreen Support?
Truth be told, I'm against this. DC (and so Makaron too) produces 4:3 output and nothing will change that.
Bigger window I can do - it'll still have only 640x480 "real" pixels though. That can be worked around a bit for 3D data but only for geometry, not textures. And that rules out "2D" sprites as well (not to mention many fighters/shooters have sprites for 320x240, and upscale those 2x to fit with 640x480 background art and OSD).
You can't really filter/scale up textures without making most of them look like crap, trust me. To have it look at least decent you'd need to rescale whole composed picture - and while possible, that doesn't look all that good. I'm not a big fan of those 2xSAI or whatever algorithms.

Well I'm not ruling anything out at this point but for now I'm only planning to have selectable resolutions higher then native 640x480. I could try and add an option to provide correct rescaling for 16:x modes - there would be black bars on the sides but at least the picture would not get squashed...
14th-Mar-2008 07:28 am (UTC) - Re: Widescreen Support?
Anonymous
I completely understand why you want to keep the emulator authentic to the system. Thank you for taking the time to answer my inquiry. As for black bars on the sides of the screen this is a wonderful idea. I have seen this kind of implementation in various other emulators for video game systems. Anyhow thanks again and keep up the good work, it's appreciated.

Hiroprobot
16th-Mar-2008 11:11 pm (UTC) - Re: Widescreen Support?
That is kinda disappointing. I understand where you are coming from, but there's still reasons why that's kinda sad.

1) More and more LCDs are being used for PCs. LCDs only look good at the max. res. So users will never get a sharp image for the DC next gen graphics. :(

2) Shooters or Racing games especially, where stuff is coming at the screen, looks bad at 480. It alot easier to see what's ahead if the textures are interpolated/smoothed a bit. It just looks cleaner.

I know you know all this already, but these are strong common reasons to maybe consider it in the future. I have no idea how hard this would be to implement, but I think our users would appreciate the choice. Some people will be purist and use 480, while others, like me, will love the look of DC games at the higher settings. Cause when I play NullDC at 1400x1050, everything looks gorgeous, and I have pretty particular keen eye...but whatever, its your call, you are the creator. Not the biggest deal in the world.
8th-Mar-2008 10:05 am (UTC)
Anonymous
astStone Screen Capture nice software to screen capture and it is freeware till 5.4 version
http://findfiles.com/list.php?db=Both&string=FSCaptureSetup53
Loki7777
8th-Mar-2008 11:28 am (UTC)
Anonymous
Good job ! When the new update is scheduled ?
8th-Mar-2008 01:40 pm (UTC) - Black screen
Anonymous
Hi!I have a problem with the version 9/2.When I launch Sega Rally 2.cdi or another game,i have a black screen after a choose PLAY on the dreamcast bios!Do you know how to solve this problem?(Of course I configure the GDROM.ini before run a game :D )
8th-Mar-2008 08:21 pm (UTC) - Re: Black screen
Launch the bios, go into the options area, change the time and save it and close emu , reboot. Also, make sure the flash file is not corrupt and make sure you have the proper bios+flash for the game your trying; all in the readme ;)
9th-Mar-2008 09:19 am (UTC)
Anonymous
Thanks a lot!It's works perfectly now!I had forgotten configure date in the dreamscast bios! :D

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