Dreamcast Homebrew Scene

[Tom Salter]

We all talk about the Xbox as if it's the first console to be thoroughly hacked, and in ways, it is. Things like running your own OS, having your own HDD etc made it so easy to add roms/emulators/utilities on it.

I haven't looked at the state of the Dreamcast home-brew scene for a very long time though, and while browsing today, I'm amazed at the wide range of apps for this machine, and amazingly, most of them for a non-illegal purpose.

OS's like netBSD, Linux have been made, even with official Sega BBA support. There's a plethora of graphical demos out there, some looking very nice indeed. But with classics such as Doom, Quake, Quake 2, Hexen, Hexen 2, Wolfenstein (You'll need the originals to play them) being ported, it's showing no sign of slowing down.

What gems have you lot found on this system?

[Siri]

I remember in the old days of 56k where i used to look at this site (mods can edit this if it's against forum rules to post places where you can obtain such software)

http://www.dcemulation.com/

I just had a look and noticed that there's a port of PCSX, a playstation emu, which is a bit of a surprise (albeit that games only run at 5fps supposedly )

There's also a ScummVM port, which is on ScummVM's site respectively. Which is nice.

[Papercut]

Theres a really nice divx player available.

and lik-sang are selling Feet of Fury for $20, which can also be downloaded, a decent homebrew ddr style game.

[Burai]

There's nothing wrong with linking to DCEmulation as the DC coders made their own SDK making everything nice and legal.

I wish the Xbox boys would hurry up with theirs so I don't have to keep going through all this Xbins malarkey.

Dreamcast homebrew was great. They never got emulators perfect (except for maybe NesterDC), but what they did with the limited power of the DC was excellent in context.

[Kron]

Dreamcast homebrew was great. They never got emulators perfect (except for maybe NesterDC), but what they did with the limited power of the DC was excellent in context.

You need to re-check Burai there are alot more perfected emu's than NesterDC now.

The homebrew side is really kicking off now which I am pleased about.

[Tom Salter]

Yeah, www.dcemulation.com is still going strong, with many subsidiaries of that site releasing more and more cool software.

Emulators don't really bother me, but I think I'll have a blast at the operating systems to see how they go. Anyone tried the Divx players yet?

[Papercut]

Anyone tried the Divx players yet?

Yeah, impressive. Only support certain resolutions/audio codecs though, but I've watched Princess Mononoke on my Dreamcast

and yes, I do have the DVD...

[Vaipon]

Yeah, www.dcemulation.com is still going strong, with many subsidiaries of that site releasing more and more cool software.

Emulators don't really bother me, but I think I'll have a blast at the operating systems to see how they go. Anyone tried the Divx players yet?

I've had a bash at DC divx. It can look brilliant if the movies are encoded properly for that platform, but sadly the DC isn't quite fast enough to play standard PC formatted divx (by this I'm talking in the region of res >576 horizontal, bitrate> 600kbps). It's the same situation as the PocketPC divx scene. As long as the content is encoded at the right level for the hardware platform, it can look amazing. You also have the advantage of DC divx being displayed on a TV for the most part, so v. high resolutions aren't even necessary.