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I'd like to build an emulator

Sirdar Bey

New member
Hi.

I'm a software developer and into games. I have lots of emulators that I really like, but the DC emus aren't all that great in my opinion.

I'd like to put a team together and lead the development of a new dreamcast emulator that will hopefully be more than a proof of concept.

I'm looking for a team of people to work on this with me as I can't do it alone due to time constraints. I'm happy to develop from another source tree if anyone has one, or am more than happy to start from scratch.

I'd like to open source it if people are into it.

This is a serious inquiry. I have many years experience leading a variety of software development teams, and have been thinking about an open source project to undertake, and I think this is what I'd like to do.

I'd be looking for 1 or more of the following people with some time on their hands to do a little work.

* General developer, c++, knows the deal
* Software architect, preferrably someone that has worked on large projects before, so decisions are not soley reliant on me
* Someone really into optimizing. I like doing this but find that I don't have the time like I used to.
* A visual designer for some basic graphics for the app

If there is no source tree to start from:

* Someone really familiar with sound programming, and with the yamaha hardware in the DC
* Ditto for the 3d libraries that the DC has

Information I'd like to gather:

* Information on the GDROM image formats that are out there
* I'd like to standardize on a second format, say Alcohol format (.mds, etc) for the driver for images. Something that can handle everything. so information on that format

Is anyone here willing to get involved with such a project? Please contact me if so and you have some skills and some time.

Contact by email at [email protected] or reply here.
 

STC-Fan

Dollop.
Sirdar Bey said:
Hi.

I'm a software developer and into games. I have lots of emulators that I really like, but the DC emus aren't all that great in my opinion.

I'd like to put a team together and lead the development of a new dreamcast emulator that will hopefully be more than a proof of concept.
Welcome aboard, you seem to be rather enthusiastic =P

The thing is, Chankast is already at more than the proof-of-concept stage, and I'd rather more people would try to join the development team and get some more work done on it. I know I have nothing to do with the project, but the situation with emulation of some consoles is that you have gajillions of emulators (say, for the NES, and for Windows), most of which all do the same things as each other, and to me it just seems like a waste of time to be doing that.

Developing for other OSs (say, Linux and MacOS), OTOH, might be more worthwhile, as those platforms - I think it's fair to say - don't recieve half the attention emulation-wise (and in general) as Windows. But, that's just what I think - if you think another Windows-based DC emulator is worthwhile, go for it =P

Information I'd like to gather:

* Information on the GDROM image formats that are out there
* I'd like to standardize on a second format, say Alcohol format (.mds, etc) for the driver for images. Something that can handle everything. so information on that format

Might be able to help a *little* bit here - raw dumps of GD-ROMs are usually done in the .ISO format (for data tracks), though to dump raw CD-DA tracks one would usually use the .BIN (to dump one / many tracks into one file) or .WAV (to dump one / many tracks to seperate files). It would be nice if you could dump GD-ROMs to a .BIN file and .CUE file, as it's a standard raw format (unlike proprietary formats like .NRG, .CDI etc), but I have no idea how to go about doing this.

I have been able to dump a few DC games via my PC using the "swap trick" method (check my site, link is in my signature), but I don't think CDRWIN will dump GD-ROMs to BIN+CUE format with that method. Or maybe it does, but I can't remember, and I don't have time to check it at the moment =P
 

Dark Mits

Eternal Darkness
Can a computer science student who knows his way around c and is interested in learning c++ participate as a "student" for future projects?
 

jervin

New member
it would be great if you can join the chanka team, more brains for the project. problem is how do you get them to hear you? they are 'uncontactable' for more than 1 year already.
 

STC-Fan

Dollop.
jervin makes a good point... if we look at the profiles of the Chankast development team here, garoffi hasn't visited these forums since May this year, according to his profile, and unai and baktery haven't been here since Oct. 2004. Mind you, some of these guys are getting quite, ahem, old now... so if they've forgotten about the whole thing because they're too busy (could even be married now), it wouldn't surprise me much. =P
 
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DJ Stenny

New member
I'm a high school senior who's intending to major in Computer Science in college(RPI or Boston U most likely). I took the CompSci AP exam last year and got a 5. I know a good deal of C++ but I'm not sure if i can really contribute a lot with the skills I currently possess. Still, I'd like to try and help out best I can.

Email: [email protected], [email protected]
 
OP
S

Sirdar Bey

New member
Glad to see there's interest

I have received a few mails etc, can people email me at [email protected] that would like to participate?

As far as joining chankast, a few problems there. 1. Uncontactable. 2. closed source.

I would like this to be an open source project, and allow contributions from anyone. this way if people want to go cross platform (linux, mac) it should be not much of a problem.

Thanks for the info on the file formats. I've found that NRG format (Nero) can handle bootable DC games, so I am currently dumping my entire set of games into NRG format on a removable drive so I have a starting point on that front.

So again, anyone who wants to participate, start by mailing me at [email protected] and we'll go from there.

We'll have a website up soon.
 

Sirmatto

Member
You guys should consider setting up a Sourceforge account. That way, if interest runs out within the original programmers, someone else could easily pick up the progress and go.
 

PsyMan

Just Another Wacko ;)
Sirdar Bey said:
I've found that NRG format (Nero) can handle bootable DC games, so I am currently dumping my entire set of games into NRG format on a removable drive so I have a starting point on that front.
I don't know if this is the best choice. Each Nero version (5, 6, 7?) creates images with different format (Nero 6 images are not compatible with Nero 5 as well as most other CD images related software). I don't think that you want these images to become something like the old "bad Discjuggler images" that fly around the web...

Creating CloneCD images could be a better choice since they are compatible with the majority of CD images related software.
 

STC-Fan

Dollop.
PsyMan said:
I don't know if this is the best choice. Each Nero version (5, 6, 7?) creates images with different format (Nero 6 images are not compatible with Nero 5 as well as most other CD images related software). I don't think that you want these images to become something like the old "bad Discjuggler images" that fly around the web...

Creating CloneCD images could be a better choice since they are compatible with the majority of CD images related software.
Also, aren't some .NRGs incompatible with v3.29 of Daemon Tools? Not entirely sure, but there have been numerous people posting here in the past having trouble using .NRGs with Daemon, and if that's the case, it'd probably be best to steer well clear of using that format.
 
OP
S

Sirdar Bey

New member
clonecd vs. nrg vs. etc

I've asked ahead (makers of nero) for informaiton on the NRG format. If they respond, I'll consider it, otherwise it might be too "proprietary."

But, I have Nero 6 (and 7 though I haven't used it yet) and When I create a Nero image with 6.6.0.28 the "header" (at the end of the .NRG file) says it's a NERO5 file. So I'm not sure that the format has changed since 5.

The reason I was hoping for NRG format is that it's single file.

The other thing we could do is forego all of this, and just create our own format that's just a container containing the ISO data part followed by any AUDIO tracks, and then make our driver work with that. It shouldn't be that difficult - any accesses into the ISO would be identical, and any ctls that have to do with audio would just play an audio file. In fact, we could then just go to MP3 for the audio and keep a table around for translation.

I'm actually liking that a lot.

In the emulator, we'll have to have a bridge between the hardware commands and the format anyway, so it doesn't matter all that much what it is, as long as we emulate the proper responses from the "hardware" to play a track, get a TOC (we might have to fake block offsets if we go MP3) etc etc.
 

Falcon4ever

Plugin coder / Betatester
Just from curiousity, did you already talked to Zezu?
And how well is your emu programming expirience?
 

GCFreak

New member
Well, he says he got top marks in His Programming test thingy, I think he hasn't made a Chip8 Emulator yet.
 

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