Hacking Wii-cast

[dottor_male]

Ok, but the problem is that the DC has to be EMULATED. Do you know how fast the CPU of a megadrive is? Is a 16/32bit Motorola 6800 running at 7.60 Mhz. Do you know what you need to FULLY emulate a megadrive? The FIRST megadrive emulator came out on a 486 Intel CPU, and the the author reccomended a Pentium processor. The speed was not that great, also.
We need a lot of raw power to emulate a console. Look how difficult is to emulate the N64!

Only now the code has been optimized an the megadrive emu runs on the DS and on Pocket PC, but the DS build lack sound and use a lot of frame skipping.

The Dreamcast main CPU is a 128bit Hitachi SH4 RISC processor running at 200mhz, and we are not considering the GPU, a PowerVR2.
Also, I can't find the bits of the Brodway, but I think its a 64bit processor (I think that looking at his specs on Wikipedia)

So FIRST we need a decent emulator on a PC, and then MAYBE, we can optimize the code and port it to the Wii. The GD problem can be avoided using ISO stored on the SD or a DVD.

I remain skeptical about emulating the DC on the wii.
However i'm not saying that its impossible, only that it's a VERY VERY difficult task.

 

[TheWon]

Hell I would take a Sega CD emulator.

 

[ppc_gba]

I wanted a dreamcast emulator for wii, until we got the gc loader, and I realized that Sonic Adevnture 1 + 2 we're directly ported to the gc already (Sonic Adventure DX, and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle). Also, Crazy Taxi was ported to the Gamecube (ok we still need crazy taxi 2, but it's a start). Of course there's still other unique titles like Shenmue, but even if someone with the experience to make this happen would be willing to work on it, you have to realizer they'll consider if it's worth their time based on what new games people would be able to play with it.

@TheWon: Sega Gems collection for gamecube already has a SegaCD emulator, if you have one game in particular you wanted to play, you might try replacing the Sonic CD rom with it.

 

[dottor_male]

I wanted a dreamcast emulator for wii, until we got the gc loader, and I realized that Sonic Adevnture 1 + 2 we're directly ported to the gc already (Sonic Adventure DX, and Sonic Adventure 2: Battle). Also, Crazy Taxi was ported to the Gamecube (ok we still need crazy taxi 2, but it's a start). Of course there's still other unique titles like Shenmue, but even if someone with the experience to make this happen would be willing to work on it, you have to realizer they'll consider if it's worth their time based on what new games people would be able to play with it.

@TheWon: Sega Gems collection for gamecube already has a SegaCD emulator, if you have one game in particular you wanted to play, you might try replacing the Sonic CD rom with it.

That's a nice info! Maybe I can replay Lunar: Eternal Blue... You have to open the iso with wiiscrubber or a similar program, and the replace the inner iso, right?

 

[Jacobeian]

for those of you who said i should go buy a DC, i've had mine since 9/9/99....bought it and every launch title. i own just about 95% of all retail DC games (NTSC-U & J) Second i never said i wanted to install the DC games on the Wii, just play them on it. and the dreamcast board is a naomi mini me, the wii ati card has more "latent" power then the entire dreamcast board, and to clarify a gd-rom only has 1024mb, or 1 gb.

devolpers of wii games claim the power of ati's hollywood chip, which is dual core, is somewhere in between a radeon x1400 and x1600.

the wii has more then enough power to emulate a DC.

lol, you are speaking without knowledge about how an emulator works, you can not compare hardware just like that

the wii is not powerful enough, period... no matter how hard you want it or how much you speculate about hardware specs

sure, everything can be *theorically* emulated but what is the point when it runs at 5 FPS ? and there is ALWAYS a limit to code optimization ...

QUOTE@TheWon: Sega Gems collection for gamecube already has a SegaCD emulator, if you have one game in particular you wanted to play, you might try replacing the Sonic CD rom with it.

that won't work so easily ... many people have already tried to simply change the audio tracks and failed

some links:

http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=13953
http://projects.sappharad.com/tools/cvm2iso.zip
http://forumsx.sonic-cult.org/index.php?showtopic=1241065

EDIt: apparently, Sonic-CD version is based on the PC port, not the original game... so it's impossible to "inject" another game

 

[raulpica]

Ok, but the problem is that the DC has to be EMULATED. Do you know how fast the CPU of a megadrive is? Is a 16/32bit Motorola 6800 running at 7.60 Mhz. Do you know what you need to FULLY emulate a megadrive? The FIRST megadrive emulator came out on a 486 Intel CPU, and the the author reccomended a Pentium processor. The speed was not that great, also.
We need a lot of raw power to emulate a console. Look how difficult is to emulate the N64!

Only now the code has been optimized an the megadrive emu runs on the DS and on Pocket PC, but the DS build lack sound and use a lot of frame skipping.

The Dreamcast main CPU is a 128bit Hitachi SH4 RISC processor running at 200mhz, and we are not considering the GPU, a PowerVR2.
Also, I can't find the bits of the Brodway, but I think its a 64bit processor (I think that looking at his specs on Wikipedia)

So FIRST we need a decent emulator on a PC, and then MAYBE, we can optimize the code and port it to the Wii. The GD problem can be avoided using ISO stored on the SD or a DVD.

I remain skeptical about emulating the DC on the wii.
However i'm not saying that its impossible, only that it's a VERY VERY difficult task.

Well, nullDC's author (drk||Raziel, which also contributed a lot to MAME regarding NAOMI, iirc) said it could be feasible on a PSP slim (you can even still see "PSP slim version: TBD on nullDC's site).

The Wii is more powerful than a PSP slim, so it's almost certainly possible. If you cannot trust the guy which has created one of the best DC emus out there I dunno who you could trust

 

[Jacobeian]

everything is possible
software can emulate every kind of hardware as long as it is fully documented
PowerPC dynarec can help you emulate SH4 cpus faster
GX hardware can help you emulate PowerVR more efficiently

so yes, this is always possible
the problem is how fast it will run ?
usually, you see a POC showing a BIOS running at 5FPS, people starts praying for updates...then nothing

also, it's not always the CPU power that counts but also the hardware features: for example, the PS1 emulator on the Wii will certainly never been as performant as the one on the PSP, even if the Wii is more powerful than a PSP

 

[CockroachMan]

The Wii is not powerful enough.. you people are underestimating the DreamCast..

 

[Wii-Nis]

i've already started working on this, so ill keep everyone up to date, but so far so good.

 

[raulpica]

The Wii is not powerful enough.. you people are underestimating the DreamCast..

Even the nullDC emu author is understimating it?

Who knows the DC insides better than someone like him?

 

[Jacobeian]

you can also say: what does he know about the Wii hardware ?

he said it was possible, did not said how fast games would run

I said that there is no glory in giving people false hopes

 

[raulpica]

you can also say: what does he know about the Wii hardware ?

he said it was possible, did not said how fast games would run

I said that there is no glory in giving people false hopes

He was talking about the PSP, and the Wii is more powerful than a PSP, and as you said earlier, it'd emulate it even better than a PSP.

Well, my guess is that he's a pretty busy guy, and he wouldn't even talk about making a PSP version if it was totally useless and it'd run at 5FPS.

Serious emu programmers don't even waste time on things like that.
When you see some emu port on an unfeasible platform it's most certainly someone in search of quick fame (look at the DeSmuMe port on PSP... a total waste of time, made only for quick fame)

Obviously he isn't aiming for fullspeed on the PSP, everyone knows it's more than unlikely. But if you know the PSP emus, a good example would be Mario 64 on Daedalus64. Obviously it's not fullspeed, but it is playable.

 

[Nelson9937955]

What a waste of a discussion. The Wii can barely run N64 games and you want it to emu the dreamscast?? LOL

NEVER going to happen

 

[raulpica]

What a waste of a discussion. The Wii can barely run N64 games and you want it to emu the dreamscast?? LOL

NEVER going to happen

Are you basing that "the Wii barely run N64 games" on a beta of Wii64 which is MORE than incomplete and without a dynarec of any sort?

 

[kashin]

What a waste of a discussion. The Wii can barely run N64 games and you want it to emu the dreamscast?? LOL

NEVER going to happen

As stated above me, your sense of logic is warped.
The barely beta version of an emulator port does in no way give you an accurate perspective of what else the wii may or may not be able to emulate.

 

[Jacobeian]

you can also say: what does he know about the Wii hardware ?

he said it was possible, did not said how fast games would run

I said that there is no glory in giving people false hopes
He was talking about the PSP, and the Wii is more powerful than a PSP, and as you said earlier, it'd emulate it even better than a PSP.

Well, my guess is that he's a pretty busy guy, and he wouldn't even talk about making a PSP version if it was totally useless and it'd run at 5FPS.

Serious emu programmers don't even waste time on things like that.
When you see some emu port on an unfeasible platform it's most certainly someone in search of quick fame (look at the DeSmuMe port on PSP... a total waste of time, made only for quick fame)

well, I do not deny the fact they know their stuff about the DC hardware
but the fact you have coded an emulator on a PC platform does not give you any suitable kwowledge about porting stuff on powerless platform


just look at the current NulDC requirment:

QUOTE

Recommended :

- CPU : AMD 3000+ or Intel Pentium 4 at 2.6GHz or equivalent.

- Video Card : DirectX9 compliant video card With shader model 2 support. (Geforce FX, ATi Radeon 9600)

- RAM : 512MB Dual channel DDR333

you can not SERIOUSLY think that the same code could achieve playable speed on a PSP or on a Wii, even with evil optimization


for me, either they simply mean that the code could be ported on the PSP (well, as already said, any code can be theorically ported on any platform) or either this was just a poser attitude

 

[elfsander]

The Wii can run N64 games perfectly, just buy a VC N64 game and see.

I'm not that sure about DC emulating, though.

 

[raulpica]

you can not SERIOUSLY think that the same code could achieve playable speed on a PSP or on a Wii, even with evil optimization


for me, either they simply mean that the code could be ported on the PSP (well, as already said, any code can be theorically ported on any platform) or either this was just a poser attitude

I know well nullDC's requisites. I was just quoting what the author said. Oh well, I couldn't care less personally.

I'm certain that they weren't just talking about porting the code, as there are some POC videos of the port out there.

BTW, comparing x86 architecture requisites to a Wii just doesn't work. They're deeply different and that influences prestations deeply.
Sure, you need a deep knowledge of both architectures to make mad optimizations, but you could gain a lot of speed from it.

Now having said this, I just want to clarify that this is all speculation and the only way to confirm one of the two theories is to wait for a PoC.
Seeing no one out there seems interested in making one (not a crappy straight port, obviously), this debate will probably continue for a LOT of time

 

[Jacobeian]

I retrieved the blog entry:

http://www.emudev.org/drkIIRaziel/blog/?p=17

While i think it is possible to get fullspeed on psp it is quite likely that i will be proven wrong. I CAN NOT MAKE ANY PROMISSES ABOUT THE SPEED, I ONLY PROMISE I WILL TRY TO GET IT FAST.

this does not sound very promising to me, more like he is hoping this could be playable (fullspeed ? doh) but is not really sure

I personnaly think he was a little too optimistic, note that you don't have heard anything about that port for a while (does not mean he has abandonned his project though but probably lowered his hopes)

anyway, even a POC running a 15 FPS would be a great achievement... dynarec and assembly can do lot of optimization but certainly not make you jump from 1FPS to 60FPS

 

[Hadrian]

It shouldn't be impossible, as it looks like it'll be released on Virtual Console soon. (Sega have re-trademarked many dreamcast titles recently).

lol no. There are other services out there other than WiiWare plus many companies re-trademark things all the time, just so others can't rip them off and besides that most of what SEGA have re-trademarked has actually been for merchandise purposes.

Question aswked a gazillion times alerady and in wrong section, gonna close this.