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.

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 :)

All the news lately are about NAOMI progress but that doesn't mean I'm not working on the Dreamcast side of Makaron as well.

Screens below came from Twinkle Star Sprites which is broken on all (*) current Dreamcast emulators. Thanks go to Billy who tested the new version on several ATI cards and also submitted a few bug reports. As you can see I fixed the visual bug, and also another one that crashed SH4 recompiler.

(*) EDIT: The ones I have and tested anyway :)



Oh and as a side effect of DMA and Maple changes GameShark now works too. Haven't actually used it but at least it boots :)

I was waiting with blog update for some good news - but those will be delayed so I guess I will do another boring status update.

New Makaron version not ready yet. I know, I promised a release some time ago but there is little point in fixing bugs in what is essentially a broken design.
The test versions released so far were only supposed to tell me what works and what does not. Now that I know more about what I really want and how, I will need to re-write some parts of the emulator. This takes time and is often boring since I have to break things first and make them work again...

In the meantime I've run some tests on my new NAOMI2 box. Suffice to say I can dump cart games now without having to desolder anything, and that also includes the secure FLASH which stores the serial number. This method has not yet been extensively tested (only one game dumped) so hold the champagne :)

Well, not really much to say but I figured a status update would be nice :)

Yuki dumped more GDs and again I find myself so behind with testing... It simply never ceases to amaze me just how many games were released for Dreamcast in Japan. Sadly, only for that very region, never to be translated and sold worldwide. It's true that so called dating sims are not very popular anywhere else but you can't go wrong with titles like Happy Breeding.
Asked about it Yuki decided to be somewhat cryptic and replied "Game that does love as girls".
NOW I JUST GOTTA SEE IT, PERIOD :P

This was supposed to wait 'till the next release but quite frankly, with things as they are now, I'm not sure when exactly that will be. So I'm happy to annouce that I got some help from TOSEC project guys (okay, Maddog mostly) and in future Makaron will recognize all TOSEC GDI dumps for the purpose of having per-game settings.
It's really great that projects like these exist. It'd be pretty much impossible for me to get my hands on so many games - because secondhand or not, I simply can't afford to buy all those GDs myself.

The VMU emulator is now moving to the final pre-release phase. This is how it will look like:





And this just in, Alex gave me heads up on his new blog page.
Not only he dumped a cart game, he got it working with Makaron too :)

It's really nice to see that people find Makaron useful, especially that there are other emulators out there as well. With GUI and all :P

There's a small update to the PAD plugin, which can be found here.
It fixes a problem with Acquire call failing on certain systems and causing the config window to close immediately (pretty obscure foreground-only access vs window creation sequence issue). More importantly though there was a crash reported by some users, happening when OK button was pressed. Turns out this would prevent the new configuration from being written to the INI file.
If anyone's interested, this is a piece of code equivalent to the offending one. See if you can spot the problem :)

  vector<Box>::iterator i;

  for (i = boxes.begin (); i != boxes.end (); i++)
    if (!i->valid)
      i = boxes.erase (i);

I've been trying to add some preliminary GUI for configuration purposes and I have to say I'm not doing so great. It's really annoying to have to fix various random pieces of code every time I change my mind about how the GUI should look/work. At this point I belive I'd be better off creating an empty project with only the GUI and then merging the thing with Makaron once I'm happy with it. Though actually it'd probably end up the other way around, that is moving emulator internals to the GUI project :)

Anyway, I've also been experimenting with various things including SH4 recompiler. That last idea didn't quite live up to my expectations, I guess I would have to rewrite it whole in order to gain any significant speedups - and I've neither time nor motivation right now.
One of my ideas was to introduce the ability to change dics in the GD drive without having to open the GUI menu. I gave Yuki a modified version where you can choose one of 4 "GD slots" by pressing keys 1 through 4 - at any time really. Kinda neat and for now saves me the trouble of implementing the switch between window and fullscreen mode - though it will be possible in future of course.

So... what do you guys think? GD slots a good idea? It will interfere with the "classic method" a bit (and you need to assign images to slots first) so having both at once might be difficult to do and/or understand. Also, how many slots and how to switch between those? Keep in mind some games require keyboard emulation so it's best to either limit the key usage, or figure out a clever system which would allow to lock the keyboard exclusively for emulation or GUI - and again, how to switch between those modes?

If there are any good ideas for the GUI functionality then I'm all ears. Menu layout, key mappings, stuff like that. I have to say I don't much like how nullDC menu works. It's great if you need to change only one or two options but for anything more you have to constantly revisit the menu bar and navigate from there. I find that all-in-one config window in pSX more... ergonomic? Though it can be a little confusing with so many things in one place.
With a decent GUI there would be no need for the on-screen F12 menu I suppose?

Oh and BTW there is provisional support for save-states now. With all the changes I make it's not stable enough to be used, but this functionality too will require key mappings or something for easy access.



UPDATE: I've only now realised that the last screenshots posted were made in December...
Some people are working on Pandora port, some are trying to get Atomiswave working, and I've been busy with this :)
Once again, great many thanks to Yuki for hunting rare VMUs and special savefiles, and to all those people who helped me out with VMU BIOS dumping (you know who you are). Took me a while :P

VMU-E and VMU-J BIOS:




"Cho Hatsumei Boy Kanipan - Asonde Kid DC DC":



"Zen Nippon Pro Wres - Giant Channel":




"Atsumete Godzilla - Kaiju Dai Shuugou":



"Gamera Dream Battle" and "Mothra Dream Battle":




"Atsumare! GuruGuru Onsen - Chiisana Kotori Uranai":



"Pinta Quest" - Skies of Arcadia minigame:




And there's more where this came from :)