Quick Yes/No question: Is it possible to perfectly emulate a Dreamcast game in OSX?

I want to play Ikaruga really bad, but there's no way I can access my Dreamcast right now. I know it's probably not possible yet (oh man, why does disc emulation take ages... it's been 14years), but I guess I'd rather ask since I do not follow any emulation related news.

It only makes sense if the emulation on a standard specs Macbook Pro (1yr old) would be rather perfect. I'm not willing to deal with retarded black shadows around moving objects or a framerate of 20fps and input lag!

Given these requirements of mine, am I asking the impossible?




(ps: I own a legit Ikaruga & a Dreamcast - just want to play it on the go)

 

I wouldn't know about it "perfectly" emulating but I guess it's a factor of messing around with plug ins and what not, but I know there isn't a mac Dreamcast emulator that I know of

 

nullDC won't run on macOS, and the alternatives are even farther from perfect.

 

I've had troubles finding a Dreamcast emulator for Mac. So far, I can only seem to find a VMU emulator. It would be a cool, yet extensive project to take on.
Maybe bootcamp it? It's a pain to have to switch, but I can think of at least one Dreamcast emulator for Windows.

I think it's the lack of interest in the system. Not a whole lot of people want to be playing Dreamcast games when compared to people wanting to play PS2 or Gamecuybe games.

 

Yeah, flawless DC emulation is something hard to achieve... not only it depends on the emulator itself, but it also relies on your gfx card and drivers.

What you could try is emulating the Gamecube version of Ikaruga, since Dolphin also run on OSX as far as I know.

 

Oh, that would work for me too! On a sidenote, how's GameCube emulation on OSX? Last time I checked was in 2004 and GameCube could be emulated at around 5fps without textures on a Windows computer

 

For me GC emulation is perfect. While I do run It on a really good OSX system, I can do max everything on all games @ 2560x1440. Dolphin is very good, especially with PS3 controllers. In windows it took.me a while.to get my controller to work...

 

It's possible, only with a lot of dramatic reverse engineering. A full-scale DC emulator would need a lot of power too, considering that something like BSNES requires a high-end Pentium 4/Core 2 Duo and a lot of RAM to simulate the SNES the way it does.

 

Why don't you try using wine? http://wiki.winehq.org/MacOSX

Someone made NullDC 1.0.3 works under linux using wine, here's his comment: http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=14669

Hope this helps you!
I'll personally try to run in under linux when I'll have free time and get back to you.

FG


[EDIT]
Confirmed booting into bios with this package of NullDC 1.0.3 : http://games.brothersoft.com/nulldc-1.0.3-download-s1.html
I had DirectX and vc++ installed via winetricks. (d3dx9_36 and vcrun2010)
Was 100% speed with D3D normal plugin on a 5 years old laptop.

I'll test furter with a game tonight or tomorow. If it runs on linux, it should work on Mac given the wine version is the same (or an older one that works anyway).


[EDIT]

Just played chuchurocket GDI for 5min at 100% using the D3D plugin on linux. Works well, including GDDA. Only problem I see is that you got to "reconnect" the controller in the maple plugin option each time, not a big deal.

Bottomline, to run NullDC on linux/MacOs, install d3dx9_36 and vcrun2010 with winetricks then you're good to go!

FG

 

NullDC 1.0.3 runs fullspeed for me in linux, same for a friend with mac. Both DC and Naomi versions. Dunno if it requires .NET because my default wineprefix is five times bigger than native WinXP installation, i have most of stuff like codecs and libraries installed, but it won't be much of a problem with winetricks anyway.

NullDC 1.0.4 and Demul are slow like hell, so don't bother.

But i highly recommend to play GC version with Dolphin. Why ? First - there's no GFX bugs at all. Second - with 3x-4x internal resolution, 8-16x AA and 16x AF game looks absolutely stunning.

 

As I said only vcrun2010 and d3dx9_36 are needed, install them with winetricks. Of course, an intel cpu is required.

 

And if you really want to run a Dreamcast emulator, a small Windows partition does the trick fine

 

There's no such thing as a "small" windows partition since XP sadly...

 

Wow just tried out Dolphin on OS X.

Never known an emulator run so flawlessly.

EDIT: Anyone know how I can getting working with a PS3 controller?