Makaron WIP - Cliffhanger

Progress on the Sega Dreamcast emulator for Windows.

Evolution will not boot (black screen right after SEGA logo) if there is less than 8 free blocks on Port A/Slot 1 VMU. It's not a bug in Makaron, it does exactly that on my Dreamcast too. Interestingly if you remove the VMU completly at this point it'll unfreeze and show a warning (about there not being enough space to save) and let you continue. On Makaron the only way to avoid this situation is to make sure there's enough space left on VMU before you launch the game.

If you get that Skies of Arcadia bug where it hangs once you leave the in-game menu, it's probably damaged FLASH. Unfortunately Makaron can damage this file as well - this is a bit complicated and so I'll spare you the boring details. Point is, if that happens you need to replace it with a good dump. I consider FLASH image safe if it's not been used with any emulator, so there's no chance it got corrupted. You might still need to set the date & time, mind you, but that's normal and should work from there on.
By the way - I'm always talking GDI images, unless otherwise noted. In this particular case I'd like to remind you people that there are various problems with Echelon's rip of SoA on Dreamcast, and that stays true for Makaron as well. It's not as bad, as Makaron GD emulation is still faster than the real hardware, but you should expects random lags (like those in intro sequence), maybe broken sound and even more graphics glitches.

I've been playing SoA for several hours (and not just me) and not a single hang :) Right now I'm trying to implement VMU sounds - if there's anyone out there who could explain to me where exactly SoA makes use of that, it'd be great. A save file would be even better.

And one more thing - if everything goes well there will be something interesing to show at the end of this week. Stay tuned :)