GenesisPlusDC With VMU Support ! (26/07/06)

[Darksaviour69]

Another new release today, but this time by BlackAura

OK, here's another build to play with...

gpdc-20060726.zip (http://files.frashii.com/~sp00nz/Doom/files/BlackAura/gpdc/gpdc-20060726.zip)

Drop that .bin over the top of Warmtoe's last release, and it should be good to go.

Only five changes worth mentioning, most of which aren't that important...

1 - Palettes are now double-buffered. That gets rid of all of the palette tearing effects, or weird blocks of colour on screen when a game was supposed to change the palette mid frame.

2 - Sound channels are now properly synchronised. They were very slightly out of sync before - the right channel was a few samples behind the left. Should result in a slight increase in sound quality. This was needed because the mono output sounded terrible without it (see below)

3 - For those of us who still have to put up with a mono TV, there is now a mono sound output mode. Don't get too excited - it doesn't speed things up, because it's still stereo. It just gets the sound hardware to do a mono mix, rather than a stereo one. It's enabled from the Dreamcast's BIOS (set the sound mode to mono). If you have a mono TV and some sounds were missing (like every other ring "ding" noise in Sonic), check this setting and try with this version.

4 - The sound looping bit from the menu has gone (I never noticed it because it was only the right channel, and I have a mono TV), as has the momentary blip of audio when you start the second (or later) game.

5 - SRAM support has been hooked up. Only works with C68k, and has only been tested with Sonic 3. Seems to work pretty well though - the SRAM save for Sonic 3 takes up a single block, and it still has about 200 bytes free in that block out of 512 total. Loads from and saves to the first VMU only. Error handling is crap, so it might occasionally destroy a save file. The saves from all your other games should be safe though.

No icons though. If anyone wants to draw some (32x32 pixels, 16 colours), feel free. A different one for each game that supports SRAM would be pretty cool. Eyecatch images (the little pictures that appear on the BIOS VMU manager when you have a file selected) might be cool too - they're 72x56 pixels, and can either be 16 color (adds 4 blocks), 256 color (9 blocks), or true colour (16 blocks). Considering their size, I'd probably make them optional.

Just to make clear both BlackAura and Warmtoe are working on this

dcemulation.com forums (http://www.dcemulation.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=83409&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=140)

Comments and download via comments

[Christuserloeser]

SRAM support ? Damn, that's sooo sexy !

[JohnnyB]

I've made a default save icon that you're free to use.

http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/3078/gpdcsaverp5.png

I don't know if you need to use a certain background colour for transparency or what so it's just white right now.

[DaRKSLa1N]

Does it have Directory Browsing? :S, i have make a lot of bad cd´s because my roms.txt isn´t accurate :S

Any idea to fix this?

[AkumuHau]

i extracted the sbi that was released a few days ago and just erased the 1st read file and replaced and renamed it with this, but it never makes it past the sega boot up screen

[Dull Blade]

it s nice to see a boom is genesis emu. if anything i thought the genesis emu would of been the most polished instead of nester dc. seeing how both are systems of sega (dc and genesis). I support you DC - genesis coder, for now i can enjoy Toejam and earl on the Television :)

[Christuserloeser]

i extracted the sbi that was released a few days ago and just erased the 1st read file and replaced and renamed it with this, but it never makes it past the sega boot up screen

I compiled SBIs + plain files versions + a little tool set:

[YZB]

Thanked ~
to test,Probably the speed is very slow on the simulator?

http://bbs1.chinaemu.org/attachment/Mon_0607/92_12451_993a0bb3ba7c8af.jpg

http://bbs1.chinaemu.org/attachment/Mon_0607/92_12451_a06cea767ad180a.jpg

[Christuserloeser]

Oh, thanks for these great screenshots! :)


Probably the speed is very slow on the simulator?

Very slow in Chankast.... GenesisPlus is using the Dreamcast PowerVR2 video card at 100%. This could be the reason why it is so slow in Chankast.

On a real Dreamcast it is VERY fast :)

[LazerTag]

I tried using the romlst creator and just found I did not like the output I was getting. And it seemed a really big chore cleaning up after it manually. So without to much manual intervention on the files I came up with this. I hope someone finds it helpful or at least comes up with an even better idea on doing this. It seems a little long, but it is really was easy to move through all of it.

Required Tools

DOS command line (you should have this)
Notepad (you should have this too, :lol: )
GoodGen (if you want your ROMs named correctly)
Excel (some other worksheet application will probably work too)

1) Open a CMD window in your ROM folder

2) goodgen inplace (skip this step if you are not going to use GoodGen)

3) dir /on/b *.zip > roms2.txt

4) goodgen in place nosep (skip this step if you are not going to use GoodGen)

NOTE STEP 4 - This may not be needed, but I didn't want to waste a CD only to find that spaces in file names caused issues in GPDC. If spaces are a non issue, you can skip step 4 and just "copy roms2.txt roms1.txt" and then skip STEP 5 also.

5) dir /on/b *.zip > roms1.txt

So now you have a list of all your ROMS in two different files.

6) Modify roms2.txt to your liking.

You can edit this file however you like really. It is used for the ROM list displayed in GenesisPlusDC. For instance in mine I didn't want to see all the ".zip" extensions and all the various region codes or ROM codes that GoodGen applies. So I did quite a few "replace" commands from Notepad to rid myself of them. Do make sure if you actually remove any of the games that you also remove them from roms1.txt. It's important to keep the two roms TXT files in sequence line by line. Other wise you may end up with a list where you think you are picking one game, but it's loading another. Trust me if you mess that step up you will notice. :P

7) Open Excel, highlight the A column and go to Data > Import External Data > Import Data. Pick your ROMS1.TXT and click Finish

8) On Import Data window Click "Existing worksheet" and make sure the selection is "=$A$1" without quotes.

9) Now do the same as step 7 and 8 for the ROMS2.TXT file, but highlight the B column and use select "=$B$1" without quotes

Now column A should contain ROMS1.TXT (unedited list of your ROM ZIP files) and column B should contain ROMS2.TXT (your display list for GPDC)

10) Click in column C1 and type in the calculation '=A1&" "&B1' without the single quotes the double quotes are used.

this should now show you A1+B1 in C1 with a single space between each value.

11) Right click C1 and select copy, the click C2 to select it scroll down to your last used row (let's say it's C60 for the sake of this guide) and shift+click C60. So now C2 through C60 should be selected, right click and select Paste. this will copy your calculation into all the subsequent fields so the concatenate like it did for A1+B1

12) Select the C column now and right click Copy. Then paste into your ROMS.TXT file GPDC


Again I hope someone finds this helpful. I sure thought it was fairly easy, thought it seems like many steps, but now my list looks just like I had wanted and it didn't take hours of typing or editing to get it that way.


GenesisPlusDC is quite awesome too. I'm a first time user of it. I Have not used it much yet, but I have a few games that I have found do not work. Is there a system for reporting these?

[gxb]

I coded a tiny program to list rom files in VB6.0.
It's quite easy to use, and only zip files are supported.
Pay attention to the filename-length of your roms. Don't be too long (better less than 28 characters).
:)

[fackue]

I coded a tiny program to list rom files in VB6.0.
It's quite easy to use, and only zip files are supported.
Pay attention to the filename-length of your roms. Don't be too long (better less than 28 characters).
:)
One suggestion is not to use zips. Have them unzipped, that way you can get the header info from the ROM for the description, rename the files in a numeric fashion (0001.smc, 0002.bin, 0003.bin, etc.), zip them using the same numeric number using Unzip then create the ROMs list.

[JohnnyB]

Hopefully straight up directory browsing will be implemented in the final build, rom lists are a hassle.

BlackAura/warmtoe, any plans on implementing that crazy GUI with the rotating boxart and whatnot? You could give NesterDC SE a run for it's money.

[BlackAura]

A simple directory browser and the crazy GUI are basically mutually exclusive. The emulator has to be able determine what games you have on the disc before it loads any of them, which means they're going to have to at least be in very specific places on the disc, with specific names. Like NesterDC SE.

There's no reason we couldn't have both (the game browser if you have a properly configured disc, the file browser if you don't), except the file browser would be vastly inferior.

[fackue]

Don't get me wrong, but I was under the impression you had most of the "crazy GUI" done?

[JohnnyB]

A simple file browser would be just fine, I still use NesterDC 6.0 in my compilations since it's so easy.

[BlackAura]

Well, there are bits of it laying around, but it's not connected to the emulator, and it doesn't work nearly as well as I would like. It's also too complicated (far more so than NesterDC SE), and uses more main memory than we have free.

[Christuserloeser]

Just the GUI displaying screenshots of your games would be fine :)


Hm, still there got to be a way of implementing the rotating boxes into the GUI without needing too much RAM/work...

Hm, maybe it would be better skip displaying the actual boxart and just have a rotating 'empty' box (one for each region like WaCk0 did) displaying the game's name.

Maybe to replace the screenshots or as an animated icon at some sort of an 'about the game' info screen ?

[peens]

Another new release today, but this time by BlackAura
[indent]OK, here's another build to play with...

gpdc-20060726.zip (http://files.frashii.com/~sp00nz/Doom/files/BlackAura/gpdc/gpdc-20060726.zip)

Drop that .bin over the top of Warmtoe's last release, and it should be good to go.


dcemulation.com forums (http://www.dcemulation.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=83409&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=140)

Comments and download via comments

Am i suppose to delete the original 1st_read.bin or do they both stay together?
if at all possible could somone send me an semi-detailed explanation of how to burn this properly? i downloaded all the files and tool-kits christuserloser posted and still managed to ruin 2 CDs. Thanks

[Christuserloeser]

Why don't you just use one of the versions I uploaded (and posted in page 1 of this topic) ?

Here is is again (Plain files of the latest public release for use with BootDreams):
http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=8273&d=1154083349


General Info + Tutorials can be found here:
http://www.dreamcast-scene.com/index.php/Main/GenesisPlusDC

[turnerl]

Thanks, BlackAura!!!!

save support I've been waiting years for this !

now I can play monster world...

[peens]

Why don't you just use one of the versions I uploaded (and posted in page 1 of this topic) ?

Here is is again (Plain files of the latest public release for use with BootDreams):
http://www.dcemu.co.uk/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=8273&d=1154083349


General Info + Tutorials can be found here:
http://www.dreamcast-scene.com/index.php/Main/GenesisPlusDC

i did use those files. i guess i just did it wrong. i was only asking for some assistance. thanks for the tutorial.

[dreamer1uk]

Gah, i cant seem to get this EMU to work. It seems to boot up fine but my game never show up, eve after i have edited the rom.txt file and use other programs to make the rom lists for me.

Help :confused:

[fackue]

Gah, i cant seem to get this EMU to work. It seems to boot up fine but my game never show up, eve after i have edited the rom.txt file and use other programs to make the rom lists for me.

Help :confused:
Try the ROMs list maker that warmtoe made.

http://www.dcemulation.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?p=893694#893694

[KISSER]

Question. This runs Mortal Kombat 1 ?

[Nemo2006X]

I Can't beat the first Dr. Robotnik in "Sonic 1"

:(

[WHurricane16]

Wait, this emu runs almost smoothly now with sound? Arrrrghhhhh, I should have brought my Dreamcast with me!

[Darksaviour69]

yo will! when will you be back?

[WHurricane16]

I'm actually back, but I'm about to leave again. I'm actually in San Diego county, California at the moment but for only a short while.

Btw, I left you a PM. You might not be too happy about it :(

[Christuserloeser]

Wait, this emu runs almost smoothly now with sound? Arrrrghhhhh, I should have brought my Dreamcast with me!

Wrong: This thing runs full speed with sound ^^

[Nemo2006X]

But , All Sonic games are full of bugs..
I hope they (WT & BA) dont drop support for this..

[Christuserloeser]

I don't think they're full of bugs. You could try the games with different CPU settings and see which works best for each Sonic game.

[KISSER]

well, MK1 and DOuble Dragon 1 run with this emu ?

[RetroGoth]

this emulator rocks. Keep up the good work

[Runefox]

I've been fiddling with the first available release of this emulator (the one where sound carries over to the menu when exiting to menu), and I have to say, most of the time, it's got absolutely perfect emulation at full speed. It does reset every so often, however. Since the compatibility 'wiki' seems to be gone (or I can't find it), here's a few games I've tried (I first try a game with C68k, HW video; If it works, I stick with it):

Afterburner II: Use C68K, HW video. Backdrop breaks up into blocks when turning, fixed by using SW video, but game speed roughly halves. FAZE causes audio glitches.

Castlevania Bloodlines: Use C68K, HW video. Perfect speed/emulation. FAZE causes slowdown.

Double Dragon 3 - The Arcade Game: Use C68K, HW video. Works perfectly.

Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine: Use C68k, HW video. Works perfectly.

Eternal Champions: Runs slowly on any setting IIRC.

F-22 Interceptor: Use C68K, HW video. Works perfectly.

Gunstar Heroes: Title screen corruption on any setting but SW, game works fine beyond that on C68K.

The Immortal: Use C68k, HW video. Works perfectly.

Jurassic Park - Rampage Edition: Use C68k, HW video. Works perfectly.

M.U.S.H.A. Aleste: Not working/won't boot

Mega Man - The Wily Wars: Not working/won't boot

Phantasy Star IV - End of the Millennium: Use C68k, HW video. Works perfectly. FAZE emulates sound too quickly.

Raiden Trad: Works, vertical black bar in centre of screen.

Ranger-X: Use C68k, HW video. Works perfectly. FAZE emulates too fast.

Road Rash 3: Use C68k, SW video. Works perfectly, runs slowly. HW video causes road to disappear but increases emulation speed to full.

Shadowrun: Use C68k, HW video. Did not test with SW video, but thin vertical bars along middle of the screen, pause menu corruption.

Sonic games: Use C68k, HW video. All Sonic games seem to work properly in this configuration.

Street Fighter II SCE: Use C68k, HW video. Works perfectly.

Thunder Force IV/"Lightening" Force: Use C68k, HW video. Fullspeed emulation, but sound issues, music stalls. Same outcome on FAZE.

Vectorman1/2: Use C68k, HW video. Perfect.

Virtua Fighter 2: Extremely slow / nonworking on all settings.

[KISSER]

At first download this little tool set: http://www.dcevolution.net/dsdevelopment/large/CE/gpwt-tools.zip

Included are Provlist & Renamer which both are needed.

1. Copy your ROMs (*.zip) in /gpwt/data/ROMS/ and run Provlst.exe

2. Open ROMS.LST in Wordpad and replace ".SMC:" with ".ZIP " (space).

3. Save as 'ROMS.TXT' in /gpwt/data/

4. Right-click on your /gpwt/data/ROMS/ folder and start Renamer

5. Click on 'Edit' -> 'Multi-Change' and replace "%a.SMC" with "%a.ZIP"

6. Click on 'A->B' to apply the changes and then close Renamer

7. Burn the disc with BootDreams or SBInducer v4


I followed all this, but when I run the emu just I see the name of the roms and I can't choose the games ; look, I have the correct rom versions as is said in that site; I put zipped roms ( maybe unzipped there ? I put them zipped , renamed with Provlist , and then they appear zipped at the end of the preparation process . Or am I wrong with this on my rom list ?:

SNS_0001.zip:Double Dragon (U) [!]
SNS_0002.zip:Mortal Kombat (UE) (REV01) [c][!]

I changed .SMC for .ZIP

Then I used "renamer" for change the extntion on the roms ; saved ROMS.lst as ROM.txt , Bootdreamming...
Burn the disc but just I see the name of the games on the emulaotr. I press start and nothing :(


Open ROMS.LST in Wordpad and replace ".SMC:" with ".ZIP " (space).

Must I left a space to separate ?
EX:

SNS_0001.zip:Double Dragon (U) [!]

into

SNS_0001.zip: Double Dragon (U) [!]

or into

SNS_0001.zip Double Dragon (U) [!]

uh ?
Please....


EDIT: solved ! The last was my error ( I'm another spanish speaker with no so much luck with english )


Cool emu ! Finally I have MK1 for DC ( SNES version sucks )

[Magician45]

For the rom list grab the roms. This will take some time though. You have to manually write each game in the order you want. It is more complicated with the rom list thingy. I wasted alot of cds till i did that and it worked fine

One thing is that i cant beat castlevania blood lines because theres certain graphics that dont show up when your in certain screens. Any one know what might fix this or is there gona be a upcoming fix?

[YZB]

The under address has more than 700++ games the tests to report that, what a pity is Chinese

http://bbs.chinaemu.org/htm_data/92/0608/53740.html

[Darksaviour69]

Babel Fish???

[Christuserloeser]

I've been fiddling with the first available release of this emulator (the one where sound carries over to the menu when exiting to menu), and I have to say, most of the time, it's got absolutely perfect emulation at full speed. It does reset every so often, however. Since the compatibility 'wiki' seems to be gone (or I can't find it), here's a few games I've tried: [...]

Great list my friend :)

The WIKI list is located here (http://www.dreamcast-scene.com/index.php/Main/GenesisPlusDC-GPWT3c-Compatibility), maybe you'll find some time to add your test results ?

[Nemo2006X]

Has anyone played "Sonic the Hedghog" under the current emulator ?
You CANNOT beat the first boss ! There are similar problems with the other sonic games too...

I think its some kind of hit detection bug..

Edit: I just edited the Wiki page, I'll contribute more later !

[Christuserloeser]

I just edited the Wiki page, I'll contribute more later !

That's great!, we really need more bugreports if we want an update.

I am in the process of moving to a new flat so I all managed so far was to start a lot of games, but I only really beat a few like Streets of Rage II and Bare Knuckle III.

I remember Sonic 3 & Knuckles to crash at a later stage, but I can't remember which CPU settings I used.

[preetyforu]

How to burn GenesisPlusDC:
Using Selfboot Inducer:
At first you need to download Selfboot Inducer v4 and install it into C:/SBInducr/.
Then download the SBI for GenesisPlusDC from DCHelp.net's SBI Repository HERE (right-click and save target as...).
Put this file into your C:/SBInducr/SBI/ folder.
Start C:/SBInducr/SBInducer.exe and check the SBI file showing up on the right window. Then select either "Single Menu" or "SBI2Boot" and click on 'Extract SBI'.
Using Windws Explorer you'll find some tools within the C:/SBInducr/Inducer/gpwt/tools/ directory. Extract "provlist_by_burnerO.zip" and copy "Provlst.exe" to C:/SBInducr/Inducer/gpwt/data/ROMS/
Copy your ROMs (*.zip) in C:/SBInducr/Inducer/gpwt/data/ROMS/ and run Provlst.exe
Open ROMS.LST in Wordpad and replace ".SMC:" with ".ZIP " (space).
Save as 'ROMS.TXT' in C:/SBInducr/Inducer/gpwt/data/.
Right-click on your C:/SBInducr/Inducer/gpwt/data/ROMS/ folder and start Renamer
Click on 'Edit' -> 'Multi-Change' and replace "%a.SMC" with "%a.ZIP"
Click on 'A->B' to apply the changes and then close Renamer
In Selfboot Inducer, click on the CDRecord button to burn the CD, or on the DiscJuggler button to create a .cdi that you can burn with BootDreams' CDI-burner or Alcohol120% in TAO mode.

preety
webmaster
http://www.entertainmentvenues.org

[gxb]

What about this project?
Is it dead?

[Christuserloeser]

No. :)

[Eviltaco64]

That's great!, we really need more bugreports if we want an update.

I am in the process of moving to a new flat so I all managed so far was to start a lot of games, but I only really beat a few like Streets of Rage II and Bare Knuckle III.

I remember Sonic 3 & Knuckles to crash at a later stage, but I can't remember which CPU settings I used.

I played Sonic 3 and Knuckles through a couple times on GenesisPlusDC.

[law56ker]

Hmm just been playing my dreamcast again and playing this emulator. It's great and I can't wait for an update:)

[Smurph]

I got bored. Here, have a console-based GPWTList tool thinger (should work 100% on linux, as well as 100% on windows). Includes sourcecode and a precompiled i686 binary for linux as well as a Win32 PE Executable.

[law56ker]

Is this project abandoned for good? Anyone know why development was ceased.What happened to blackaura?

[quzar]

Is this project abandoned for good? Anyone know why development was ceased.What happened to blackaura?

Development was put on hold when BA was finishing up school (iirc). The project isn't dead.

[DemoniusX]

3 years without a new release? yes, this is pretty much dead regardless of what the devs say. Infact all dreamcast emulators are DEAD. I miss the days of coming on here and finding new version of my favorite emulators. Those days are long gone and aren't ever coming back. Well Gens+ and my DVD of roms are the only thing that'll give me my genesis fix I guess. Such a shame too. R.I.P Genesis plus.

[quzar]

3 years? I made some releases 2 years ago. BA just started working on an optimized sound driver for it a month ago. It's not dead...

[DemoniusX]

I remember playing this emulator before I purchased Nintendo wii. So ALMOST 3 years. I been looking up info and I heard BA was done with GP and the only thing he WANTED was to fix the GUI of the current emulator. This is all I read and haven't heard anything of it. Another thing I heard was Chui was suppose to work on a Gens4all if I'm not mistaken. Sources told me that was "quietly" Cancelled along with Psx4all and Snes4all.

I understand devvers don't owe nobody anything. If I was a programmer it would be more then a pleasure helping the author with a favorite emulator. I know snes is impossible on the DC. I'll just see, at least someone allowed me to know of the status of this emulator. Thanks,quzar.

[Christuserloeser]

Well, your "sources" are obviously wrong. I know that both emulators (GPDC and Gens4All) are still being worked on. Also Gens4All isn't Chui's project but Fox68k's. As far as I know, Chui is still working on PSX4All / SNES4All, although he mentioned several times that they're of the least priority among his other projects - for obvious reasons.

Anyway, please do consider this a warning. You really shouldn't go around and blame the authors for abandoning something (especially when it is not the case) because like you said: no one owes us anything.

[law56ker]

Any updates?

[Maturion]

Yeah, that would be very interesting to hear. ;-)

[jackjill]

Could someone please tell me how to save to VMU with this emulator. Trying to play Shining Force 3 but can't get it to save or simply don't know how. Help please ?