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  • September 1st, 2014

    by Published on September 1st, 2014 20:25  Number of Views: 3770 
    1. Categories:
    2. Sega Dreamcast News

    Hello everyone and welcome to "Reicast Team / Nillware interview."


    This Interview is with the creators of Reicast the worlds first working Dreamcast emulator for Android.


    I'm Emulation-X I've been around the emulation community since the very beginning. I've been M.I.A for nearly a decade untill Reicast Surficed.


    Welcome Reicast Team ( drk||Raziel & Psyman )

    Emulation-X: Could you tell us alittle bit about yourself?
    drk||Raziel: I'm 25 and I am a self taught computer guy

    Psyman: I'm 30 years old networks engineer but also self-taught on other subjects, both of us are located in Greece.


    drk||Raziel: I have worked around with various other projects (Pcsx2, a tiny bit with dolphin, typical gameboy/etc stuff for learning), and have worked extensively on dreamcast (a couple of private projects, then later on nullDC). I've also fiddled a little bit with Gc and ps1 but never got anything release worthy done.


    Psyman: I've been in the nullDC team (before it was even named nullDC) and naturally continued being part of it as platforms changed and the project evolved.

    As part of the dreamcast emulator scene, we’ve helped a bit with the mame/dreamcast/naomi backends, and shared information with other dreamcast emulator teams!

    Emulation-X
    : When did you first get into computers and coding Emulators for both Pcs and for the Android Os? What type of background do you have?
    drk||Raziel: I got a computer as a baby. Psyman had to wait until he was a teen -lol-


    drk||Raziel: I got involved with emulation around 10 years old, and, amazed by how they worked. After many years of hard study, nullDC materialised in late 2005 when I was 15.


    Psyman: I got involved with emulation around 15 years old. The idea behind emulation got me interested in helping with emulation projects and I ended up helping drk||Raziel with nullDC.

    Emulation-X
    : How did you both meet? ( drk||Raziel & Psyman ) How many projects have you worked together on?
    drk||Raziel: It was an accident. One night, Zezu asked Psyman to test through the IRC (#emudev at efnet). It was later found out that Psyman lives in Greece, which is also where I live! Ever since we’ve worked together on many Dreamcast related projects (nulldc, nulldc/naomi, and then later on what became reicast)

    Emulation-X
    : Where did the name Reicast come from ? Nillware and also your own names ( drk||Raziel & Psyman )


    drk||Raziel: null = 0 / missing
    rei = used as part of things happening again (ie: reintroduction, reimagination, etc.), also, in japanese, it means appreciation, or zero
    nill = “To be unwilling; To reject, refuse, negate”


    Our own personal nicknames don’t really have any special meanings. They just happened to be like that.
    We did try to keep a naming connection between reicast, nillware and nullDC though.

    Emulation-X
    : Who makes up Nillware, What is the purpose of Nillware. How many people are on the Reicast Team? Do you have any other emulators or other projects on the horizon you would like to release on either Android Os or on the Pc.

    drk||Raziel
    : Nillware is my company. We use it to handle the legal stuff.


    On the reicast release team there’s myself and Psyman. Various other contributors have joined in to help after the source release, for more detals head over to our gitbhub page!

    Emulation-X
    : How many hours a day do you devote to working on Reicast or being active on ( Irc/Facebook/ Twitter/Google+ )

    drk||Raziel: I spend one or two days per week, mostly around coordinating and reviewing code and stuff, as well as replying on facebook/twitter and google play store.

    Psyman: I spend about 1-2 hours a day of irc and reicast issue documentation/testing/debugging.

    Emulation-X
    : How does one become a beta tester for Reicast? What qualifications are needed?

    drk||Raziel
    : We have not decided yet. As the project is open source many people can just compile and test our latest work. We want to have an official, dedicated team of testers so we can do quality checking before releases, but we have not organised that yet.

    Emulation-X
    : What made you port NullDc /NullDce to the Android Os? ( Why was there a 3 year delay? )

    drk||Raziel
    : Mobile makes everything old new and shinny again, so why not?


    drk||Raziel: The delays were from personal issues on my side, the greek economic crysis and a lot of other stuff.


    Psyman: I also couldn’t start touching drk||Raziel code to fix known issues because it was quite half-done and mostly worked by magic… It still does actually.

    Emulation-X
    : Do you plan on having Reicast take the place of NullDc/NullDce on Pc?

    drk||Raziel: Eventually. NullDC, demul or makaron are much better choices for the foreseeable future. From what I understand demul is the most up to date pc dreamcast emulator these days!

    Emulation-X
    : What is your thoughts about a Reicast Gold Edition so people can buy to support development vs Crowdfunding like Kickstarter?

    drk||Raziel
    : Gold editions are unfair ways to make money, imo. Open source developers shouldn't be forced to monetize their projects, that diverts from the original purpose of making something great.
    Gold editions also scale the wrong way, you don’t get the money during development, only after - and you don’t get paid based on the effort spent.


    Psyman: what drk said more or less.


    drk||Raziel: We’re gonna go for the crowdfunding way so we can really put some of our working hours into making this extra awesome. It’s up to the community if this will work out or not

    Emulation-X
    : Will Reicast be Android Only? Do you have plans to port Reicast to Apple Ios / Windows/ Blackberry Os or even Psp / Ps vita via Total_Noobs TN-V eCFW or to Nintendo 3DS via the Gateway exploit.

    drk||Raziel: Your coffee maker will be able to run reicast at some point. mark our words. With enought time and hardware donations we can be on every possible platform.

    Emulation-X
    : What's your overall view regarding Emulators ( Homebrew vs Piracy ) for newer consoles or handhelds being sold currently. ( Wii/ Psp/ Ds )

    drk||Raziel
    : That’s one of the other reasons we don’t want to make a gold edition. While many people do use emulators in a legal way, we know a significant fraction will not.


    We of course don’t support such activities. As a team, we have 4 dreamcast (2 broken) and a ton of original games. The gdi format was introduced by nullDC so that we could test with our own game dumps.One of the major problems is the requirement of the dreamcast bios. If we do manage to secure funding, we plan to develop an open source bios replacement so we don’t need sega’s one!

    Emulation-X
    : Do you think that the Saturn / Ps2 / Gamecube could also be ported to Android and run at a good speed like Reicast? Currently Dolphin for Android runs on very specific hardware for now and slow.

    drk||Raziel
    : As android gets more mature, and hardware faster, it will happen. It can’t happen on current hardware, at least not for ps2.


    It’s important to mention that the effort put in optimizing reicast made requirements very low. But android is a general purpose -mostly mobile- platform that is not designed to work efficiently.


    For the record, on the same hardware, if you used Linux instead of Android to run reicast, you’d get a major speed boost.

    Emulation-X
    : Do you think it would ever be possible to port PCSX2 to android? Might Nillware release it in the future?

    drk||Raziel
    : PCSX2 is a much bigger project, and will require much more work. As hardware gets more capable I’m sure people will eventually port it over. While we are quite familiar with the source, there are no plans for something like that right now

    Emulation-X
    : What features / Options do you hope to add to Reicast in the future?
    drk||Raziel: Everything!


    Better stability and compatibility are our primary focus. We also want to add support for naomi and other dreamcast derivatives. Some other ideas we’re interested in is a bios replacement, software rendering for perfect visuals, dsp emulation, and a lot more.

    Emulation-X
    : Would you consider having someone donate a new Reicast logo so you can use it for your site and for the Reicast icon on Android? Something along the lines of say ( SuperGnes & Mupen 64 plus Ae )

    drk||Raziel: We don’t know yet. We’re still thinking on this.

    Emulation-X
    : What devices have you tested Reicast on? ( I personally love it on my JXD7300B Tablet and my Samsung Galaxy S4 connected via Otg cable to a PlayStation 3 Dualshock 3 Wireless Controller ) I have been told its beautiful on a Ouya.

    drk||Raziel
    : We don’t really have much up to date hardware, mostly due to its cost. Most of the testing is done in an LG Optimus 2x and a Galaxy Plus 7. We got some more hardware after the release (some donated, some brought by us) but we haven’t started using it thoroughly *yet*.

    This concludes my interview with the Reicast Team


    Thank you Reicast Team for bringing Dreamcast to Android ( It's Still Thinking )

    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Coming Soon : The Smea Interview ( Homebrew Channel for Nintendo 3DS )........
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