Sega Katana Dev kit

Hello, I was wandering if anyone knew about some of the software discs that came with the Katana. I noticed that it came with 2 discs, i was told one of which had all of the libraries, including the 3d modeling program, ms visual c++, as well as the instructions. It was essentially the sdk. I was told the second disc is not needed for developing games. I was just wondering if anyone knows about these discs, and is the gd writer needed to develop games with the Katana or is it just an extra. If anyone could tell me if all of the specific software needed to make games for the katana comes on the disc, i would greatly appreciate it.

Thank you,

 

Moved to the Dreamcast forum.

An SDK is rarely ever ALL you need to develop games. They might just be libraries, for example. Things like 3dsMAX are commercial software and you'd have to buy them separately.

You'll probably want to look at this page:

http://www.dcemulation.org/?title=Development

...and take a look around the Dreamcast dev forum here.

A lot of people use KallistiOS nowadays.

 

I was told that the sdk comes with the 3d modeling software(which in this case comes in a disc) and yes it is in fact 3d max. IVe been on that site before, and the reason i would not use KallistiOS is because it has much more limitations than the offical sdk. For example making a game like Powerstone, or Shenmue could not be done using Kallistios, or it would be probably be much more complex. The reason im asking this is because i was thinking of purchasing a Katana, so i want to make sure i know all of the necessary requirements are for making a dreamcast game.

 

The SDK didn't come with 3DS Max, but it contained export plug-ins for 3DSMax. (and only the plug-ins !)
That is, plugins for the 3DS Max versions that were current at that time, versions 2.0 to 3.1.
So you would need 3D modeling software besides the SDK.

If you consider buying a devkit just to use the SDK, forget it, you're not allowed to use it in an official way.
You would be putting a lot (!) of time developping something that could be prohibited by Sega any time they want.

Kallistios is the preferred way, and it is still being worked on.
eg: http://dcemulation.org/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=102836&start=20

 

Reasons not to use Katana for a new game:

1. Many in the community will shun you and your project for it
2. Pretty much no one in the community has real experience actually developing games with the Katana SDK, so forget getting any kind of help from the community
3. Unlicensed use of the SDK means no one will publish your game if you ended up going that route

If you have a problem or situation with KallistiOS, posting on the DCEmu Programming Forum gets you directly in touch with many others experienced in writing software with KallistiOS, as well as BlueCrab, KallistiOS's head maintainer. Same goes for the IRC channel (#dreamcastdev on Freenode).

Keep in mind that, as far as I know, every single unlicensed game commercially released for the Dreamcast uses KallistiOS as the SDK. All the upcoming ones do as well.

The last time someone attempted to make a game with Katana, it caused a lot of division and arguing in the community--please spare me from having to moderate that (I'm the owner of DCEmulation) Also, I'm pretty sure he ended up abandoning his project altogether because he was way too far in to port it to KallistiOS and it wasn't worth the headaches to continue on with Katana.

 

is Kallistios capable of the same developing feats as the Katana. So far I have not really seen anything similar to the likes of any of the commercially released games that used the Katana. Is it possible create a 3d game similar that of what sega has done, or capcom, or any other Japanese developed game for the dremacast. If it can do that i would have no problem using it.

 

I don't mean to be rude, but... do you have the knowledge and a team required to develop a game similar to that of a professional/commercial studio such as the ones you mention?
Or can you be more specific as to what exact feature(s) you need that may not be available in KallistiOS?

 

Basically what i mean was can you create the same quality type of game with Kallistitios, that you could with the Katana. The Katana was the offical Development kit that almost every company would use develop to their games for the dreamcast. Since Kallsitios is not the offical sdk, I wanted to know how it compares to the Katana. As for the question regarding if i have the knowldege/team, well that's not what i was implying. I was just implying whether or not Kallistios has the has the capabilities to develop games on that caliber. Some of the features i have noticed (keep in mind all of this is from what i have seen, so it might not all be true) is that developing 3d game engines do not work well with Kallsitios, so most of the games that I have seen being developed for it were 2d games, not that thats a bad thing, but Its just something i would like to point out

 

You do seem to be misunderstanding somewhat.

Katana was a target box (technically, a specific model of the range of target boxes). It is used to test running code on hardware.

The SDK, as always, was a collection of code samples and tools for specific tasks.

KallistiOS is an operating system.... a simple kernel, with a library.

Homebrew games don't look like retail games because they're not made by a whole team of professionals who know the SH4 inside-out and had all the Sega manuals and support.

In order to get a game to look like a retail game, you need to be proficient in 3dsMAX for starters. Once you are able to create decent looking objects and environments, you then need sound knowledge of the CPU, its assembly language and the hardware of the console. 3D games are much harder to make - it's probably a case of people finding 2D stuff "doable" at home with their knowledge, as it's not the easiest platform to code for.

 

I spoke to someone who owned a Katana, and he told me all of the libraries, as well as instructions are included in a disc. The SDK included a specific MS Visual C++ , the optimized winCE, and studio max. A 3d game engine for the dreamcast is made with Visual C++ according the Katana owner.

I know that commercially sold games are much harder to make, but as long as someone has the hardware/software that the commercial developers did, then there is at least a possibility to make something close to that level.

 

I may be wrong (as I never really used or looked specifically at the DC SDK); however most (if not all) console companies sell an SDK which is just that: libraries, documentation, compiler, and some basic tools to convert graphics and sound to their proprietary format.
They may offer alternatively a bundle that includes third-party tools (ie. Yaroze + CodeWarrior + Lightwave), but most companies already have their preferred IDEs and 3D package and won't spend money on a different one unless it's a must.

 

I have actually been asking these questions myself, so I searched the web abit, and it seems when it comes to RAW performance and capabilities, the Katana SDK with SEGAs libraries, is better than KallistiOS. But as far as starting a new project, you would probably be better off with using KallistiOS because of all the documentation that is available for free, not to mention that you would be doing it illegaly if you used SEGAs libraries.

On the other hand:

MOST people developing for the Saturn, is using SEGAs own libraries with the GNUSH toolchains.

But back to the Dreamcast, if your main purpose is to start a big serious project, and your going for the Katana SDK either way, I dont see any reason for you to actually buy the devkit itself. You would be better off just downloading the SDK's off the net, and buying a broadband adapter for your Dreamcast and run your code via dcload-ip for testing. But as for debugging, there is no alternative to the Katana SDK with the devkit itself.

 

http://www.assemblergames.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-27697.html Read up.

 

The WindowsCE SDK does NOT include MS VC++. You need MS VC++ 6.0 (without service packs) besides the SDK .
It does contain an optimized/specialized WinCE toolkit & SDK.
As stated before, it does NOT contain 3DStudio Max, only export plugins.

Partly true, with MS VC++ for the WindowsCE SDK,
but with CodeWarrior for the Katana SDK.
(and I'm not talking about the hitachi compiler option, because it's command-line)

 

@Petterk- so I could just download the katana sdk from iso zone, and it would be the equivalent of using the sdk disc that came with the Katana? than i can transfer my programs using the adapter to the dreamcast.

 

Not using the typical development tools (dcload-ip). They won't work with Katana code, because there's code in KallistiOS that makes dcload-ip (and dcload-serial) work in the first place. You'd need to port that code from KallistiOS to your Katana project (which might be really difficult/impossible because with the way those loaders work that'll likely require changing code that's in closed source libraries).

DreamShell's ethernet loading code is broken and Marcus Comstedt's ethernet loader is buggy and abandoned, neither are suitable for a development scenario. Neither do serial/USB loading at all. Marcus Comstedt's ethernet loader is open source, though, so I suppose if you want to finish that project, by all means, the community would be happy to see you do that. Failing that, you could write your own loader from scratch.

Alternatively you could use the SD card loader, but even that isn't perfect because it doesn't load at the proper speeds necessary to run a full fledged Katana game correctly.

Your best bet compatibility wise is to burn to CD-Rs for every build.


EDIT: Apparently, japanese-cake already created code to run Katana SDK based stuff with dcload-ip, here, but I don't know how well it works.

 

What would be the best method for burning CD-Rs if you used the online sdk? If you use a Katana dev box i think you need the GD-writer, as well as the special development discs for burning a a cd compatible with the dreamcast. The GD-writer, and the development discs are very hard to come by though, so I don't think i will be taking that route. If you use a katana, couldn't you just run your programs from there, and play it. You wouldn't really need to burn it to a disc to be able to run your game code, if you are transporting it directly from the Katana.

 

The code you are referring to which specifies what program to run on execution is called a makefile or a linker-script and can easily be edited out to launch the dcload-ip program so games can be ran off the broadband adapter, even with the Katana SDK.

I have done this myself and it is no harder to do this with the KatanaSDK rather than KallistiOS.

 

A CD-R is a CD-R. Use a CD-RW drive. You can make it bootable for many Dreamcasts... or use the System Disc 2, as developers did.

A GD-R is a recordable GD-ROM. Convenient for burning from the dev kit, but expensive.

 

I know what a makefile is, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about loading resources over the Broadband Adapter. Just because you load code into memory and execute via BBA doesn't mean the code is going to magically know to load resources over an ethernet connection instead of the GD-ROM. KallistiOS and dcload/dc-tool are specifically made to work together in this regard. Admittedly I have zero experience with the Katana SDK but obviously some provisions are going to have to be made for this. I assumed that's what japanese-cake's code does but I didn't actually go through it.