Hi my names Greg, I am a lecturer at Staffordshire University(www.staffs.ac.uk) in England. I lecture in Computer Games Design and cover allsorts of wonderful topics OH: such as Modelling, Texturing etc... At present I've been lurking around the Homebrew and Dreamcast dev sites for a couple of months. I'm interested in 1) collecting information regarding the homebrew community, 2) the official sdk's and hardware, 3) producing a new title for the console and lastly just getting some console development in action. Do any of you recommend investing time in purchasing a Katana System from ebay / another seller? Would myself / students benefit from the official hardware / software. Currently myself and a friend have tested and ran several homebrew solutions which have worked. We have yet to port a 3D engine but plan to do so during the next couple of weeks. Apart from the obvious web communities such dreamcast scene, dcemu and assemblergames, can anyone recommend any good reading? Some of you may wander why I wish to persit into development for a "dead" console and the answer is simply 1) there is a large homebrew community 2) relatively cheap 3) good starting ground. I wish to use the information from the Dreamcast development to build up projects for programming and designing students. Information which can then be used to build PS2, Xbox or various other console development plans. Anyhow please feel free to contact me regarding any of the above, I am interested to hear any problems / issues people have come across in the field. Regards Greg Dowding BSc MSc Games Design Lecturer Staffordshire University www.staffs.ac.uk G.S.Dowding@staffs.ac.uk
Well apart from the will it be a benefit or not the official hardware/software would not be licenced and there for illegal so would the university even allow you to use it?
of course we would obtain a liscence from sega regarding the hardware. It would be the same procedure as with the PS2 hardware we have at the moment.
There you go then...I think you've answered your own question...When you approach SEGA, officially, they will be able to give you all the support you could ever wish for, and more besides! ...Thats not to say that 'other' people can't help you, it's merely stating that what you can't get 'officially' probably isn't worth getting in real terms! Hope this helps.
You've probably already heard of KallistiOS (KOS) as a free homebrew alternative to the official kits. The sourceforge is here, just in case, and google as always will fill in the blanks.
they provide "free" as-is support, but not promises. the DC is never going to stop being a nice piece of ass to code for. Its the perfect sandbox for current and next-gen console coders
Hi there, I've been writing code in my free time using the official tools and hardware. In case you need any info please drop me a pm.I think i could provide some useful info on how the toolchain works. Cheers
