4x4 Evolution DC, adding BBA/LAN to a WinCE game.

If you can somehow get some attention to it great, I cross posted the patch to DC Emulation, The ISO Zone, Dreamcast-Talk, ModDB, and a few other places. In many cases I didn't even get so much as a reply. Even attempted to work with the xbox section at ISO Zone on an updated Xbox build, before the one person interested bailed (I don't own an Xbox 1, so I couldn't test it. I think it would be possible to get this version online as well)

Generally only the PC players seemed to really care, and as of 2015 that's been pretty spotty as well. Mostly I just want to play online, a tall order for a 15 year old game/player base. If I could get online with the DC version (Outside of using the modem) I'd be all over it, if a developer with a better understanding of DC hardware could create a working API/demo in WinCE for the LAN adapter.

One of the biggest impairments to developing the DC version (Besides having a bouncy baby boy now ), is that I have no way to debug, and only have time to focus on one platform. DEMUL is the only emulator capable of running it, I don't know anyone in the south-east US with a Katana, and the only thing I can do is have it dump errors to the screen which depending on the crash doesn't always work too well.

Trust me I'm a huge DC fan, it's my favorite console by a large margin. If you can prove me wrong on with interest in it, I'd love to try getting 4x4 Evo 2 running on the DC. But from the reaction I've gotten I'm not seeing it.

 

I have a Dream of opening up a Community Center/ membership arcade and having a dedicated 20+ dreamcast section.... I would very much like to use USB-GDrom in all of them to offer a WIDE selection of vanilla and Moded versions of the games. I would also like to get all of them online for Tournaments and to demonstrate this system isnt dead to the community and it is still a Great machine. you 4x4 Evo project is just one of many that I would love to show and have a tournament with.

 

Firstly I just want to say I am sorry more people don't know about your project. 4X4 Evo and Shenmue were the first 2 games I ever bought for my Dreamcast in 2000. I love the game a lot. I even have another modded disc of the game where a Russian guy added Jeep and a few other PC mods to the Dreamcast version some 4+ years ago. I am happy to see others have modded and added to this game as well.

As far as getting the word out there. I was banned as a moderator for TIZ so I don't much care to go back and post on the place at all or I would be spamming about the possibility of getting Evo 2 on the Dreamcast. I do go to a few other Dreamcast communities mainly ShenDojo, here and Dreamcast Talk as well as dcemulation from time to time but that place is mostly a ghost town the past few years with only a few dedicated developers/users still slowly posting and working on projects.

I guarantee you if you somehow ported it many people that never even post in forums would enjoy and play it. That brings me to a question. If 4X4 Evo 2 was ported, would it be able to be played Online?

My Friend Dreammatrix AKA R4mbo did similar by porting the PC only Half-Life engine game to Dreamcast called Gunman Chronicles from modding the HLDC beta. Both are WinCE ports and they seem to be very close to the PC versions as modding them is simple enough. Google Gunman Chronicles Dreamcast and you will see it was just updated last week.

Also if you tell Dreamcast News you wanted to port the game he could make a news post here. It is in French but we all can translate the site in our browsers.

http://dreamcast-news.blogspot.com/

 

If this were Sonic, or some other still current franchise I'd imagine people would be all over it. But it's not, as a result any news about this has been quickly buried. It almost took 2 years to get some notice. The DC community I recalled from years ago would have been all over the possibility of an unreleased game and/or updates. But the general lack of enthusiasm has been deafening when it comes to one of the few working online games.

The following is possible with what I have:
-Port most of 4x4 Evo 2 to Dreamcast
-Misc. patches/fixes, anything can be added within hardware limitations
-BBA/LAN adapter support
-Possibly enable online support in the Xbox version

Main Obstacles:
-Free time, I can only focus on one at a time and progress is slow. The PC version in general get's this attention.
-Model/game content needs to converted to DC friendly formats for the sake of loading times
-There is no BBA or LAN driver for WinCE
(NOTE: This code here could likely allow LAN adapter support if someone could get it working using WinCE: http://www.4x4evolution.net/Dreamcast/dcload-ip-1.0.4.rar)
-Debugging is PAINFUL: It takes roughly 15 minutes for me to compile, create a self-booting CDI, and run in an emulator (DEMUL is the only option) Add more time to burn a disc and run on hardware, and if it crashes... well you get the idea.
-Need someone familiar with coding on DC hardware, for consulting. Hopes & dreams do not make progress.
-Of those comfortable with DC coding, they won't touch WinCE, period.

Now I do recall that Russian's project pretty nifty on him finding out non-binary models would load. And holy heck, Gunman Chronicles! I'm wondering how the heck R4mbo is patching that in, from the research I did I didn't think it would be possible to get mods loaded correctly without access to source code.

 

Yup bro, He is the guy that worked with Override on doing most of the HLDC mods. So he knows his stuff. HLDC has lots of mods if you go there and look under Dreamcast, filter to First Person Shooters and look under H I uploaded most of their work there over the past 6 or so years so you should be able to see every mod they ported and there are over 10.

Paranoia and They Hunger are 2 of my favorites.

About the other 4X4 project, they even made some PC to DC LTE track converter but I lost the file years ago. So there is ways to add in PC tracks and stuff too.

If you want I could PM you my copy of that mod so you can go over it and see if it could help your project? I just wish to hell I had that program he made for converting tracks. I would just have to rip my disc. I think I might be one of the only people to still have a copy of it.

 

Just saw this topic. Awesome to see their is a community working on this game. I played this game a ton back in the day and had several vmus filled up with custom tracks.

Sadly these days I have no access to dialup and can only play via BBA. But Ill still check out the updated version of the game.

The DC scene would be all over if Evo2 was ported.

 

With the rise of Dreamcast ODE solutions (GD-EMU, USB GD-ROM and the Dreamshell method) it might be nice to have a raw dump with patches enabled out there as well. And/or maybe use the patcher software (as seen with the 'whats shenmue' translation project; http://www.shenmuedojo.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=37&t=46933) to easily give users the opportunity to patch their game with your patches.