Chankast Alpha 0.2 Released

[DCEmu_Newsposter]

The Chankast Team have released ver Alpha 0.2 of their great Dreamcast Emnulator for Windows, heres whats new:[br][br] About the news in this release:[br][br]- Improved stability, no more random crashes during gameplay [br]- Fixes to the GFX core for games such as Shenmue 1&2 and Soul Calibur [br]- Better compatibility, for example F355, Dead or Alive 2, Virtual On and many, many more [br]- Optimized code for even more speed [br]- Option to over- and underclock the SH4 CPU [br]- Completly re-done PAD configuration screen [br]- Added support for PAD plugins [br]- Added an option for cable selection [br]- Integrated Capcom hack into the other versions [br]- Re-worked menu and help file [br]- ... and many more fixes we don't really remember ;) [br][br]Download from Here (http://www.dcemu.co.uk/chanka.shtml)

[wraggster]

Lets see if homebrew works easier now, please post your homebrew findings :)

[MetaFox]

Lets see if homebrew works easier now, please post your homebrew findings :)
Feet of Fury still hangs on the loading screen. :(

[Del_Boy]

I'm having major troubles booting up any homebrew in this release. Could well be a prob at my end though (disc emulation software, bad images, etc).

Edit: Dcastle boots and plays brilliantly still

[vipor231]

no homebrew still??? wow thats not good

[Del_Boy]

To say 'no homebrew still' is false. More correct would be 'not much homebrew still' ;)

Alice works excellently (300+ fps)
Dcastle likewise
Revolver too

Seems to have taken a backwards step for Homebrew at the moment... but it's still early days.

[vipor231]

yea meant to clarify that now that im reading all over the place and it seems it is running a little bit more homebrew than before.thats a great thing,seeing that is the only thing keeping the dc alive and kicking.gotta love it

[MetaFox]

I decided to throw the contest entries at this build. So far, Boll freezes at the intro screen.

Maqiupai causes a crash.

[Christuserloeser]

Okay this will gonna be our new Compatibility list for Chanka Alpha v02...

Any other things tested? Any progress recognizable for our scene's devvers?

I almost think there isn't any hearing the reports so far... >:(

Nice to see a speedy update of this emu though... Maybe the next release... ???


Chris

[GPF]

damn you SSE :)

My athlon 700 doesn't work with it, so I won't be able to test it till monday at work :)

If no one saw my earlier post, here is a workaround for those of you with video cards that don't support hardware TnL.

Run a utility called 3d-Analyze - http://www.tommti-systems.com/main-Dateien/files.html which allows emulating hardware TnL or forcing it to use software TnL.

Troy

[Cap'n 1time]

No SDL support. Doesnt seem to load most home brews yet. From what I have tested, The only thing that has been updated is the speed and video. It's still in Alpha so I wouldnt expect that much from it. What would be really cool to see some kind of home made bios. I noticed this in some playstation emulator i think. What is HLE support? I think it was HLE. It was some kind of emulated bios i think.

[vipor231]

hle support has something to do with the speed of the emulator,that makes it faster.n64 emulators use and i believe playstation ones too.

[Vorrtexx]

I only tested one of two titles that previously didn't work and it resulted with the same findings.
So I don't think anything has changed in the way of more homebrew compatibility.
the new features did sound more like improved commerical stuff anyway.
oh well.

[GPF]

Has anyone figured out how to make a homebrew mountable image?

I can use the commandline


-file:filename.bin or -file:data.iso to load an application. for a couple of homebrews I have tried.

But every bootable homebrew mounted image, just gives me a IoControl error in Alpha 0.1 - Has this been fixed in 0.2, or am I creating the images wrong?

I have been taking my unscrambled bin and renaming them to 1st_read.bin and then using mkisof to make it into an iso. then using bin2boot to create a bootable cdi file, I mount it with daemon tools and then change the drive in Chanka to the virtual cd, click init it shows the dreamcast swirl, then gives me an IoControl error popup box, after dismissing about 50 of the error dialogs itsdump me to the dreamcast audio player.

Anyone else have any luck?

Troy

[Hola]

I know you all are trying to be all legal and stuff but one can't judge the greatness of this emulator on homebrew at all. In fact right now the author could give a damn about HB and I seriously cant blame him. About 98% of all the people using this emu will be playing comerical games and the author himself probably feels more oblegated to please the larger crowd than the 2% using HB. I think 70% of the people that are into DC are into HB however I dont think even 2% of that group will play HB on PC I mean the whole cool factor of HB was it was using your DC. No point in play DreamSnes on Chankast when you could use Zsnes.

[Hola]

hle support has something to do with the speed of the emulator,that makes it faster.n64 emulators use and i believe playstation ones too.
You are correct however HLE is also the name of the free psx fake bios that comes built in PCSX. Would be nice if the author actually released it as a compiled bio one day so other emus wouldnt have to use illegal ones.

[GPF]

No point in play DreamSnes on Chankast when you could use Zsnes.

No point in playing dreamcast games on a pc when I can play them on my dreamcast :)

This board is for the discussion of homebrew only, while its a cool thing to have a dreamcast emulator - there are plenty of other boards that will cater to that crowd discussing commercial software emulation. That why there is a slanted viewpoint on this board and other emulation boards for homebrew.

Again this is no slam against commercial emulation, just a developers slanted viewpoint of using the emulator as a tool to develope homebrew software for the dreamcast, same as other GBA emulators which are coming out with debuggers etc for using them not as an emulator but as a development tool for designing GBA games. Also MAME is not about commercial arcade emulation, but more a study on technical aspects of the hardware and preservation of the roms.

Game playing is usually a neat side effect of emulators :)

Just my opinion, not meant as an attack or flame against anybody.
Troy

[guymelef]

hey hola, that might be fine and dandy for other people, but for the last time dcemu.co.uk is a "homebrew site" almost exclusively. I am not trying to start an argument and I think that all the administrators would agree with this but, we here don't care for anything commercial except for compatibility reports, and what homebrew recently was able to step up and go commercial. seriously. this is the focus of these forums. i *think*. all other points are moot. no matter what happens dcemu will be here, for the coders, for the die hard fans, for anybody who shares the same intrest in doing this stuff for the dc. if you agree say yes. if you don't. don't come here. AM I WRONG?

[guymelef]

wait a minute.... I take a lot of that back. I don't mean to come down on you hola. just sick of the bickering about chankast on both sides of the argument. and since the debate happens to be here at dcemu. I seem to have taken an odd view. since this is a homebrew site that's all that I think it should focus on beside benchmarking commercial games. and maybe not even that. maybe a place like zophar.net is more suited to handle a more commercial orientated forum. that's all I am saying. and I wonder how the dcemu admins feel about this. it would at least end topics like this one. as well as redunant ideas about what is or isn't right. which really isn't up to us. but what is up to the admins is what will be seen at this site.

and thank you for your support

ps i am still very drunk

[Vorrtexx]

Has anyone figured out how to make a homebrew mountable image?


Hi GPF, the only way I found around this was to actually burn the CDI/NRG image to a CD-RW, and recreate the CD Image from the program it was burned with, DiscJuggler or Nero. It pretty much beats the whole point of it though :)
I guess there's something missing from the images when they are created with the local tools, that make them into CDI/NRG files. But that was my only way to get homebrew working from a mountable image.

[vipor231]

i find it strange though that all the games that work but hardly any homebrew.i mean doesnt any of the homebrew titles use any of the stuff the commercial stuff uses? im not starting something but maybe just maybe that part of the emulator is disabled.

[Cap'n 1time]

I guess that homebrews are developed with somthing that dosnt seem happy with what the emulator can load.

I also wanted to say that this emulator or any other DC emulator (DCemu) is great for development! From what I have read, the creators of this emu are TRYING to support homebrews.

A free bios would be great, but how would it be created?
The people of Cromwell created a linux based bios for XBOX. Could somthing similar be created for the dreamcast?

[GPF]

Hi GPF, the only way I found around this was to actually burn the CDI/NRG image to a CD-RW, and recreate the CD Image from the program it was burned with, DiscJuggler or Nero. It pretty much beats the whole point of it though :)
I guess there's something missing from the images when they are created with the local tools, that make them into CDI/NRG files. But that was my only way to get homebrew working from a mountable image.


Ok thanks, glad to hear that it just wasn't me doing something wrong :) Monday I play around a little with it at work, since I don't have a compatible computer at home.

Troy

[Hola]

The emulator has no SDL support and hardly any support for KOS. Nor are there plans so thats why I dont see why people care about HB for this emu as its not meant to cater to HB if you want HB use the other great DCemulators which are dealing with HB before comerical.

[Cap'n 1time]

Can anyone confirm that the chankast team does not care about homebrew support?

[guymelef]

how 'bout you just don't worry about it?

[GPF]

The emulator has no SDL support and hardly any support for KOS. Nor are there plans so thats why I dont see why people care about HB for this emu as its not meant to cater to HB if you want HB use the other great DCemulators which are dealing with HB before comerical.

well over on on DCEmulation



garrofi wrote:
about elf file format, if someone has a source to read elf files, please contact me, and I will add support for elf files.

About the problem with homebrew apps. I have been debugging rott and after reading the toc file, the application exits. I don't have any problem with my lle gd-rom code with commercial games, any idea about it?

and when you load an application via command line, chankast is emulating bios, but only a few calls, kos examples work fine with that.

you need a 1st_read.bin file and the file has to be unscrambled.

Garrofi


Also I am able to start my SDL application I wrote. There is limited support, and I am sure that as future version come out the issue will be resolved.

Troy

[vipor231]

there is some decent homebrew titles out there for dc,i have 2 of them that i love.homebrew is the thing that keeps the dreamcast alive with new titles.i support the dc 100%.heck i think most of the games are far better than ps2 ones.

[Hola]

Dont get me wrong HB is a awsome seen but I really only like HB for emulation tho they have been kick ass HB games. I personally really want Dc castle as the graphics are awsome.

[GPF]

I got my SDL GBA emulator running under Chankast Alpha .2a. I can navigate through the SDL menu's, select a rom, and then preceed to the emulation which is now using DMA to render to the PVR, I get no picture just sound. So I changed it to use non DMA PVR and I get a display and can play the GBA emulator within the Dreamcast emulator :) very slow though :)

Troy

http://s101533388.onlinehome.us/GPF/chankadcvba.jpg

I just checked on older version of the GBA emulator that was using SDL rendering and it works also.

[LyonHrt]

nice to see it running in chankast :)

[Christuserloeser]

I know you all are trying to be all legal and stuff but one can't judge the greatness of this emulator on homebrew at all. In fact right now the author could give a damn about HB and I seriously cant blame him. About 98% of all the people using this emu will be playing comerical games and the author himself probably feels more oblegated to please the larger crowd than the 2% using HB. I think 70% of the people that are into DC are into HB however I dont think even 2% of that group will play HB on PC I mean the whole cool factor of HB was it was using your DC. No point in play DreamSnes on Chankast when you could use Zsnes.

...er ...The point is to show the authors of Chanka which program does work and which not, got it!?

Doesn't make much sense to tell them, that this does run perfectly and that does run perfectly, don't you think?

Damn, I'm really tired of this... Please leave us alone if you don't care about homebrew or emulation for Dreamcast because that's what this website is about.

As GPF mentioned, there are thousands of sites who don't give a shxt so visit them instead.

I don't care for the fact, that you like playing commercial Dreamcast games on you PC.

Go and play but don't spend your time posting this bullshxt and spam our boards with that.



The emulator has no SDL support and hardly any support for KOS. Nor are there plans so thats why I dont see why people care about HB for this emu as its not meant to cater to HB if you want HB use the other great DCemulators which are dealing with HB before comerical.


Dont get me wrong HB is a awsome seen but I really only like HB for emulation tho they have been kick ass HB games. I personally really want Dc castle as the graphics are awsome.

It takes months or years working hard within your spare time to create these games or emulators and they won't cost you much if you buy or download them.

I don't see the future of Dreamcast lying in the hands of the warez scene, I see the future lying in the hands of the homebrew and emulation scene:
There will be lots of emus and nice (commercial and homebrew) games coming for it.
Legal Dreamcast sites like ours are rare and why risk our hard work with allowing ppl talk about Chanka and backups of commercial games?

I was always a friend of the emulation scene but for Chanka it's definitly years too early. I see it will preserve the interest in DC for years but atm it just kills any chance for the new games, that still are released monthly in Japan. Beside that, this emulator isn't very helpful at the moment for any interested developer.

Take this as a warning. I am not very proud of your posts within this thread. If you have other contributions or other things you'd like to write about, just do it and you are welcome, but don't tell us or our scene's programmers that they shouldn't care about Chanka, because no one of us does care about you playing your Dreamcast backups with it.


Chris