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View Full Version : DCaSTaway Release Candidate - 1. Experiences



ron
April 7th, 2005, 15:45
We would like to know for first hand what are you impressions using this Release Candidate 1 on Dreamcast. The two x86 distributions are to check if mkcache works correctly and and fine.

Tell us any comment about any feature of DCaSTaway , will help to us reaching a better Final Release.

Thanks a lot.

boule
April 9th, 2005, 00:35
actually I got nothing to say on the emu itself :D all the games I played worked perfect.
I was just wondering if there was a way to make mkcache looking into subfolders, so it's easier to classify the roms :)
and Thank you guys once again for DCastaway!
there should be 2 people on the trone but...
http://img136.exs.cx/img136/3708/allhail7hy.gif

Starscream
April 15th, 2005, 10:53
Compatibility is really great, one of the few things that doesn't run is Lethal Access, but this is a game that cause problems even for the various Windows emulators. Other than that, maybe the file menu should be organized differently. I mostly use those multi-game group disks, and all the files on those get listed, including all the stuff I don't need. I would perhaps be better to just make a tradional disk listing.

Eric
April 16th, 2005, 22:56
Alright i finally got this thing to work and i will let you know how. Have all your games in the root directory with the 1ST_READ.bin,IP.bin and anyother files that require you to run this emu. Also to make your rom list a hell of a lot faster use the good mkcache program and have that in your root directory. After running mkcache you can delete the program it will create a txt file that you must keep. I had heard people who used the Dir2boot tool which should be used. The only way your going to get that tool to work to make an image is to be using DiscJuggler as it did not work at all making a Nero image. After opening Dir2boot and making a DiscJuggler image open Disc Juggler make a Mode 2 CDXA image and also select TAO. After burning shabam you wont have any problems and i made a 20 meg image the roms loaded in about 1 second. Have fun and i hope this should help those who do not have DCastaway yet.

Eric

obelisk
April 17th, 2005, 00:05
i luvv this emu,

I highly recommend this Atari ST emu for DC. it rocks very nicely, chui n ron are working so very hard on this, and they deserve attention and respect for it. Applause and cheers to the both of you!

During the time that Sega Genisis and Super Nintendo were filling everyones heads, i got a hold of a 520st and started trading up, and upgrading. Soon i had a 1040ST and both color and Black and white monitors. The graphics on this thing rocked, sound was cool, and my friends came over to play in my Atari ST, 8bit and TG16 & Duo cluttered lair, just for the record (sorta) i want to state that i had Genisis, SNES, NES, and more as well, and dont want to be considered biased towards any specific 1. Please try this emu and thank ron and chui for their hard work, you'll be glad u did.

Zherae
April 17th, 2005, 04:42
Not liking the mkcache process, the sound emulation is a bit off at some points, other than that I like everything about it.

DARKGATE
April 17th, 2005, 09:36
For me, is perfect :| too much beauty.
chun&rui you are greats ^_^
P.s excuse me boys but someone have tried LAST NINJA 3?
To me don't work T_T

obelisk
April 17th, 2005, 22:26
i fail at using mkcache. made 5 bad siscs last nite. darn. Also, did the RC1 thread get deleted because of me?

Eric
April 18th, 2005, 19:46
edit:guess i should have put this quote in
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For me, is perfect :| too much beauty.
chun&rui you are greats ^_^
P.s excuse me boys but someone have tried LAST NINJA 3?
To me don't work T_T



If its not working for you or anyone when the next release comes out it might compatible i have no clue. Just wait for the next release or a future release and it will be working it goes for any rom or game for DCastaway. The games seem to be working for me alright with Mkcache but it might also been cause i have very little games on the CD.

Game play speed was fullspeed but I had problems play one of the James Bond games which it could have been the game or a fix that will probably be updated in a future release of the emu. Sound is a little jerky but its understandable if its not perfect sound nothing is 100% but we can hear it so the emu is good.

Cant wait for the next release thank Chui and Ron for making this amazing emulator and more thanks for the tutorial this goes for Chui and Ron. The only way i got this working is with what Vamp told me but doing so its recommended using Discjuggler and Dir2boot as directed in the 4th post of this thread.

Eric

obelisk
April 22nd, 2005, 22:16
I tried some more. I copied mkcache and ran it in each directory, with each directory having its own txt file.
The folders open up quicker now, i've broken it down into 5 folders 4 with 100-110 and 1 folder with about 40 disk iimages. I notice now that the folders open quicker, but the names of the games themselves, is waay less, like by 80 percent, and more of just the filenames of the disk images show up.
As soon as i get some spare time i'll be messing about with it some more. Thanks guys.

obelisk
June 27th, 2005, 16:03
bump!

fil
July 9th, 2005, 17:55
only real problem is the speed it takes to read a DIR with games in, seems to take forever, ill go out the room and do stuff and come back in and its still cataloging the folder

also in 60hz the music constantly jumps, when vsync'ing, the music needs to be speeded up 20% with display, either by uping the sample rate (pal60) or the timing needs to be 20% faster (ntsc)

thats my only 2 gripes, dir caching is the main one i think

fil
August 5th, 2005, 15:50
ok, i answer this one myself.. as i realised you have to run mkcache.exe in the games dir to generate a text file, which speeds up the dir chaching

thing is, it crashes while running in some of my folders.. seems like it cant handle some of the files, and as theres no log, i cant see which file it is crashing on !! :(

another thing:-
Lemmings 1 and Oh No more lemmings dont work, ive tried like 5 different crack versions of each

is it possible we can get these great games working?

chui
August 8th, 2005, 10:56
Thanks, i will try patch Lemmings games for next release (and maybe the LAST release).

No easy task synchronize 50Hz games under 60Hz Dreamcast. I will try a workaround.

Starscream
August 8th, 2005, 22:42
Any chance to improve the saving? Didn't work for me at all despite having a empty Memory Card. That would make the emulator almost perfect for me, I don't mind the directory listing that much.

fil
August 9th, 2005, 02:11
i found another bug, some games the fire button doesnt work properly, and only seems to work if you are pressing in a direction too.. quite a few games do it, say 20 out of 250 i tested, something like that, cant remember them all, but Savage is one of them

fil
August 9th, 2005, 02:13
Thanks, i will try patch Lemmings games for next release (and maybe the LAST release).

No easy task synchronize 50Hz games under 60Hz Dreamcast. I will try a workaround.

i was thinking to 'force' the st emulation in 60hz, just like running the st in 60hz - you know when switching in some game menus etc.

then the music will be 20% faster, rather than just frame rate

the gfx are running 60hz ok

fil
August 9th, 2005, 20:12
i found another bug, some games the fire button doesnt work properly, and only seems to work if you are pressing in a direction too.. quite a few games do it, say 20 out of 250 i tested, something like that, cant remember them all, but Savage is one of them

correction on this, i found that this can happen on only certain versions of the game

on dragon breed for instance, on the automation 373 disc, the fire works ok, but on the bad boy crew (or flame of finland cant remember which) the fire wont work unless you are pushing in a direction, which makes the game unplayable.. so seems to be an issue with something other than the actual game, happened on about 25 games out of all the ones ive tested

fil
August 9th, 2005, 20:34
ok, all the version of ghosts n goblins i tested all had a problem with fire button, and if you do a certain combination it escapes the game, almost like the joystick mapping is mapped wrong

fil
August 10th, 2005, 02:12
compiled a list of non-working games, tried every available crack and compilation:-

Afterburner
Archer Maclean's Pool
Atomix
Apprentice
Awesome
Brat
Chuckie Egg 1
Enchanted land
Exile
Flimbo's Quest
Gods
Hunter
Klax
Leander
Lemmings
Narc
Oh No More Lemmings
Outrun Europa
Plutos
Populous
Populous 2

Games Unplayable because of firebutton:-

Ghosts n Goblins
Savage
Toki
+others i cant remember at the moment

ron
August 11th, 2005, 00:31
Thx a lot for all the info compiled with the EMU. We'll take a look arround. I'll speak to chui and let's see what can be done in order to solve as much pbms as we can . THX FIL