They said it would never be done

Now at ljsdcdev they have announced Project L. Brace yourself. Project L is a... SEGA SATURN EMULATOR FOR DREAMCAST!!! more info at http://ljsdcdev.sunsite.dk/. oh and discuss in this topic.

 

THis is great news. I sure hope that they can do it. After all, if a Dreamcast can run many PSX games which is a so called more powerful system then why not Dreamcast as long as they do it right?

Yakumo

 

Wow... that's pretty neat. I'd much rather see a Saturn emulator on the DC than Windows/X-box. Just wouldn't feel right putting a Saturn CD in the Xbox. I'm sure they've got their work cut out for them thoughl

 

:/

I really do hate to be the bearer of bad news, but this project will likely never be 'playable'. Odds are the DC was running that BIOS *very* slowly. You need to remember, the Saturn was a very complex machine with multiple video processors, sound processors, hell, even the disc drive had its own processor(!). Even my DAMN good desktop can barely run Saturn games decently using the very best emulator, which still isn't that good. I just don't see the DC coming close to full speed Saturn emulation on a 200 MHz SH4. As far as PSX, I was actually a beta tester at one point for bleem! and helped at thier bleemcast booth in 2000. While very cool, remember that the PSX was much less 'complex' than the Saturn, and also bleemcast used a lot of hacks which is why they ditched the 100 game paks originally planned and went with the single game packs, compatability was just not good.

Maybe i'll be prooven wrong, but iv'e been in the emu 'scene' long enough to know Saturn emu authors that have run away screaming from it and have nightmares about Saturn tech docs ;-) I'm not saying this emulator won't play games, I just don't believe the good 'ol DC has the raw horsepower to do it at playable speed. AFAIK the SNES emu's on the DC still aren't full speed ^_^

And lastly, the homepage for the Saturn emulator this guy is porting states:

"Yabause (Yet Another Buggy And Uncomplete Saturn Emulator) is a Sega Saturn emulator under GNU GPL.

Be aware that this is an early alpha version. Don't expect to play commercial games on your PC. This software is released for testing purposes only, and is essentially aimed to developers."

And it states that it is buggy, slow, and only runs the Saturn BIOS.
Still sorta neat to see though.

 

That's great news. I really like to know Dreamcast keeps getting support, with new game releases , homebrew games and emulation. :smt023

Too bad the majority of Playstation users are so damn stupid. Fanboy-ism is just too damn stupid. :Hangman: Plus homebrew is not supported as much as i wanted ( Beats of Rage being the only one that really matters )

 

While I totally hear what Sonikku says, and think he's probably right, the emulation scene is always filled with people breaking through barriers. Look at all the shit they said you could never emulate on the Xbox:

PSX
N64
and most importantly, Virtual Ram

the DC clearly has much less to work with, but I never want to give anyone a reason to not try.

 

This all sounds great, hope they can pull this one off although i doubt it :smt009

 

Yeah, and with the "G1MME T3H FREE R0MZ0RZ PLZBBQ!!111111" people that are drawn to emu's like flies to shit :Hangman:

And I neither think Saturn emu on the DC can be done. Heck, this is a port of the Linux version, so it can use a lot of specific optimizations too - but the DC lacks the horsepower (and the Xbox does, too, looking at the performance of the leaked GiriGiri emulator)

 

:smt017
Girigiri on Xbox? How'd anyone get the source?

I agree though --all the Win32 Saturn emulators (well, SSF definitely) uses CPU specific optimization... you could never port it to the Xbox.

 

No, what I meant is that the PC emulator require a lot of CPU horsepower which the Xbox lacks (as its an x86 cpu the comparison is rather easy )

 

Hmm that name sonikku rings a bell. I dunno why but I have images in my head of a dodgey webcam style website with pics of burnt dc version of dead or alive 2 around the time just when utopia released the first "dc rips".

Maybe my memory is foggy, but there was some guy who always had sorta webcam images of new and "interesting" things on his page. Possibly before the general public.

Forgive me if I have mistaken you.

 

But dont forget the SH4 is fully compatible with previous insturction sets from earlier chipsets so its not like the emulator has to run an interpertor / recompiler core or anything. The problem i do see is getting the two cpu's emulated one processor needs precise timing.

 

Read up on the details of the respective machines and see if you can spot the showstopper.

 

Are saturn cds readable on the dreamcast?

 

Sure, except for the security ring they're perfectly normal CDs.

 

then whats the showstoper?

 

Aww, give up so early? Anyway, the showstopper is that the Saturn is big-endian and the Dreamcast little-endian.

 

i'm not sure WTF endian means, but since the DC would be emulating two CPUS that were notiriously difficult to get to sing in harmony, most people think it'll never work.

Me? I'll just drink some more.

 

Little-endian and big-endian refers to the order values are stored in memory (the names come from Gulliver's Travels by way of an essay).

Consider the following sequence of bytes in memory:
0x11 0x22 0x33 0x44

When interpreted as a single 32-bit number a big-endian machine will see the number 0x11223344 (ie. the most significant byte is stored first in memory) while a little-endian machine will see the number 0x44332211 (ie. least significant byte stored first). Since the same mapping is done on both code and data there is simply no way to run native Saturn binaries on the Dreamcast even though the processor would otherwise allow it.

 

Forgive my ignorance, but isn't that something that could be taken care of in an emulator? I mean, since all an emulator is is software allowing code from one system to run on another, wouldn't that be kindof an expected thing for the emu to take care of?