Hacking Sega Dreamcast Emulator?

[Oshae93]

Hey i've been searching and havent found anything about something that could load sega dreamcast games. Does anyone know of any dreamcast loaders?

 

[Rydian]

Hey i've been searching and havent found anything about something that could load sega dreamcast games. Does anyone know of any dreamcast loaders?

The Wii is too weak to emulate the DC to the point of retail games being playable, so there isn't one.

 

[Oshae93]

ok thanks i kinda feared that but now i know

 

[Foxi4]

The Wii is too weak to emulate the DC to the point of retail games being playable, so there isn't one.

Ehh, I'm not so sure if it's a matter of the specs, I think it's really just the lack of interests. I've seen some footage of experimental nullDC builds for the Wii (it was a "for kicks" job) and it wasn't terrible considering the fact that it wasn't a serious project. Now, that's not to say that you'd get full FPS and compatibility, but perhaps with some frameskip it'd be "somewhat playable".

 

[emmanu888]

If your desperate to play Dreamcast games and your PC is powerful enough. Go for NullDC on PC, otherwise a Dreamcast is not that expensive if you search for one. Although with 3 cores support with vWii mode, couldn't Dreamcast be possible on vWii ?

 

[Rydian]

Ehh, I'm not so sure if it's a matter of the specs, I think it's really just the lack of interests. I've seen some footage of experimental nullDC builds for the Wii (it was a "for kicks" job) and it wasn't terrible considering the fact that it wasn't a serious project. Now, that's not to say that you'd get full FPS and compatibility, but perhaps with some frameskip it'd be "somewhat playable".

If they resort to per-game hacks you could probably get 2-3 games 25FPS+...

 

[Foxi4]

If they resort to per-game hacks you could probably get 2-3 games 25FPS+...

It's still relatively acceptable - I remember playing PSX games at 15-20FPS way back when I played them on my Mio A701... WINDOWS MOBILE 5 MASTER RACE! ;O;

 

[Oshae93]

If your desperate to play Dreamcast games and your PC is powerful enough. Go for NullDC on PC, otherwise a Dreamcast is not that expensive if you search for one. Although with 3 cores support with vWii mode, couldn't Dreamcast be possible on vWii ?

my pc can play them i just wanted to use my wii to the best of its capabilities

 

[macmanhigh]

This would be the Last great Emulator for Wii i believe as it can emulate pretty much everything.....I still Amaze all my friends when they come over and see whut i got Running on my Wii....."U have Nes!!!U got Snes!!!U got PS1!!!U got Genesis!!!U got Sega CD!!!!"

 

[Clydefrosch]

never got the ps1 emu to run... it always just crashed on me :/ anyways, as with n64 and psx (when it works at all), dc would give you slowdowns one way or another. you'd be much better of playing this on a pc. i'd expect it doesnt take a modern gaming pc to get games at full to nearly full speed

 

[Elliander]

Is the Wii U strong enough to properly emulate Dreamcast games in vWii mode? At least in theory? If so, would it be possible to treat the Wii Gamepad as an enlarged Dreamcast Visual Memory Unit? It has "a small amount of flash memory", but is it enough to store game data securely? I would hope so, since the VMU had a mere 128k storage. Might it actually be possible to emulate multiple VMUs within one controller and cycle between them for use?

From what I read, the Wii U Gamepad has no processing power (if I am wrong, please correct me!)

So even getting the 8 bits of processing it would need would seem impossible away from the Wii U, but it does use NFC that is gaining in popularity, so maybe it would someday be possible to have an android app for playing the VMU games on a Smart phone, and to automatically update the saved games between controller and phone from whichever has the newest version overwriting the oldest, so that when you leave the house you can pull out your phone to play the VMU and then when you get home have no problem playing the saved game the moment you turn on the Wii U.

What would it take to actually program for such a thing? My personal experience is limited to programming and networking for computers, and am nowhere near the skill required to do such a thing, but I am curious. I have so many old Dreamcast discs, but they are scratched beyond recognition and barely load anymore

(sorry to Necro this thread, but figured it was better than creating a new one since the question is related)

 

[duffmmann]

Is the Wii U strong enough to properly emulate Dreamcast games in vWii mode? At least in theory? If so, would it be possible to treat the Wii Gamepad as an enlarged Dreamcast Visual Memory Unit? It has "a small amount of flash memory", but is it enough to store game data securely? I would hope so, since the VMU had a mere 128k storage. Might it actually be possible to emulate multiple VMUs within one controller and cycle between them for use?

From what I read, the Wii U Gamepad has no processing power (if I am wrong, please correct me!)

So even getting the 8 bits of processing it would need would seem impossible away from the Wii U, but it does use NFC that is gaining in popularity, so maybe it would someday be possible to have an android app for playing the VMU games on a Smart phone, and to automatically update the saved games between controller and phone from whichever has the newest version overwriting the oldest, so that when you leave the house you can pull out your phone to play the VMU and then when you get home have no problem playing the saved game the moment you turn on the Wii U.

What would it take to actually program for such a thing? My personal experience is limited to programming and networking for computers, and am nowhere near the skill required to do such a thing, but I am curious. I have so many old Gamecube discs, but they are scratched beyond recognition and barely load anymore

(sorry to Necro this thread, but figured it was better than creating a new one since the question is related)

the vwii mode is no more powerful than a standard wii, it cant gain access to the extra processing power of the Wii U (at least not at this point, maybe some sort of crazy hack could enable that, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that). Having said that, I do recall reading somewhere years ago, that there are a lot of similarities between the Wii hardware and Dreamcast hardware, so in theory it could properly emulate the system, but I don't think anyone ever put enough time in to find out how to successfully tackle this issue. However, when the Wii U mode itself gets hacked, I'm sure this will be much more probable.

 

[Foxi4]

the vwii mode is no more powerful than a standard wii, it cant gain access to the extra processing power of the Wii U (at least not at this point, maybe some sort of crazy hack could enable that, but I wouldn't hold my breath on that). Having said that, I do recall reading somewhere years ago, that there are a lot of similarities between the Wii hardware and Dreamcast hardware, so in theory it could properly emulate the system, but I don't think anyone ever put enough time in to find out how to successfully tackle this issue. However, when the Wii U mode itself gets hacked, I'm sure this will be much more probable.

That's actually not true - vWii Mode can get access to three cores, which is something Maxternal is actively working on.

 

[duffmmann]

That's actually not true - vWii Mode can get access to three cores, which is something Maxternal is actively working on.

Really? Excuse me then, I'm talking out of my ass lol. But really, thats awesome, glad to hear that.

 

[Foxi4]

Really? Excuse me then, I'm talking out of my ass lol. But really, thats awesome, glad to hear that.

Well, your post was half-true - there is a wicked hack involved.

 

[Elliander]

Thanks, both of you, for the explanations! I definitely understand the limitations of vWii mode, and it helps to know that 3 cores will be available. Of course, much of what I would like to see happen is going to require the Wii U fully hacked and although I am looking forward to that happening, a part of me is glad it hasn't happened yet. I want to see Nintendo regain third party support before the piracy starts up on that console, and my main interest is in the old games anyway. Still, the Saturn and Dreamcast and probably the only consoles that I don't have the ability to run backups of and it's going to be really nice to see those old games preserved.

What about the GB of system memory? How much of that would be possible to tap into for running emulation?

Also, for someone like me with limited C/C++/C#/XNA experience where should I look first if I want to learn how to do Homebrew related stuff like this? I don't have classes again until next Autumn and my only side project is my garden and studying a Neural Headset.

 

[the_randomizer]

That's actually not true - vWii Mode can get access to three cores, which is something Maxternal is actively working on.

I've been quite lost while I've been following the topic, what's the current status on that project, now that he has a Wii U?

 

[Foxi4]

I've been quite lost while I've been following the topic, what's the current status on that project, now that he has a Wii U?

Absolutely no clue - it would probably be better to ask the man himself in his thread about it here.

 

[the_randomizer]

Absolutely no clue - it would probably be better to ask the man himself in his thread about it here.

Fair enough I'll give it a whirl.

 

[XDel]

On the other hand it looks like JXD's new S7800 pulls off Dreamcast quite well as I've seen on Youtube. Ordered.