Unofficial Deunan's GDEMU Thread

@zero35 In-game reset is a feature of the Dreamcast itself, not related to GDEMU.

There are 2 levels (first press will perform game reset, second will exit to system menu).

The only thing you can control with the GDEMU config is whether to redirect the 2nd call (exit to system menu) to a certain disk instead (usually GDMenu in this case).

 

I highly recommend this SD card from Amazon. With a little bit of thought, you can fit a tremendous library with little compromise. No need to regret not getting a USB-GDROM for use with huge drives.
https://amazon.com/gp/product/B074RNRM2B/
SanDisk Ultra 400GB microSDXC UHS-I card with Adapter
$78USD as of this post.

I just got mine in today and I have filled it up.
What can you get out of 400GB?
I converted all GDIs from BIN(2352 bytes/sector) to GDI/ISO(2048 bytes/sector). This cuts out redundant error correction data and has no effect on gameplay for GDEmu. Should be same perfect compatibility, but save roughly 10% of storage space. Used a script I wrote for use with bin2iso.py in @-=FamilyGuy=-'s gditools project to convert hundreds of GD-ROM dumps to 2048 bytes/sector on data tracks and rewrite the GDI file.
- Entire NTSC-U set of games -- removed ringcode variants and removed older builds if more than one game version exists.
- All PAL-region exclusive games (titles like Rez, Headhunter, Shenmue II, Aqua GT, etc.)
--Exception: if PAL version has better video support, NTSC-U version may be removed in favor of PAL version instead
--Applied patches to GD-ROMs to enable VGA (from authors like @japanese_cake and other people online)
- Unreleased near-complete titles like Half-Life, Propeller Arena, Flintstones, etc.
- A curated selection of over 50 NTSC-J titles, selected from various "best of" lists online with a focus on titles playable with no knowledge of Japanese. Includes healthy helpings of fighters and shmups. Includes 8 titles that are fan-translations into English.
- NTSC-U sampler discs: Generator Vol1 and 2, all 10 discs from Official DC Magazine
- Applications for use with accessories (I own a lot of them) - Broadband Passport, Dream Passport 2 for LAN, Dream Passport Premier, PlanetWeb Version 3, O.To.I.Re Dreamcast Sequencer, Segakara, Visual Park
- Tools - Code Breaker, VMUTool, XDP

With this configuration I am left with about 2GB of free space on the microSD card according to SD CARD MAKER.

What could be improved...
- Would love to fit bleemcast with MGS/TK3/GT2 - the retail build not the beta. I hope @japanese_cake is making good progress with hacking that for use on GDEMU.
- Would like to put on all the indie releases, but I need to purchase a few more of them before I can put them on this card legitimately. Gotta support the authors.
- More homebrew utilities, like Dreamshell, video viewer, music player perhaps? Been a while since I've played with that.
- Japanese MILCD music CD releases
- Homebrew freeware games, demoscene collections, vintage console emulators
- Interesting leaked betas

I could easily fit all of the above by applying @-=FamilyGuy=-'s gdishrink to many of the games on this card, but I haven't done that yet because I don't want to impact compatibility until I know for sure which games are safe to shrink. I could also remove a lot of the Japanese games because I'm sure some of them are too English-unfriendly. I could also remove some of those damn PAL Soccer titles, there's tons of 'em.

But the bigger problem IMO is that the GDMenu software has some serious drawbacks with libraries of this size. It's really difficult to organize your library with SD Card Maker, but on top of that GDMenu doesn't do folders or organization at all. I'm looking forward to seeing a potential new menu from @Mrneo240 or someone else in the community, that could potentially support folders within the DC application. I know the SD card itself has to be just a list of folders, but perhaps that could be displayed to the user in a more organized fashion in the DC application, with organization done on a PC application similar to @madsheep 's SD Card Maker.

Scrolling speed sucks as well, I have 375 entries in my GDMenu list. It takes forever to get to the bottom.

This DC will be getting a DCHDMI as soon as it comes in from my preorder, for play on my 55" 4KTV that supports 960p input on HDMI, and I have it hooked up to a Skutch phone line simulator for online gaming. Noctua near-silent fan mod as well.
This is as close as it gets to an "ultimate Dreamcast setup" for me. Might need to get some DreamConns...

edit: Ouch, after my last update with SD Card Maker, it's now no longer reading the database from the GDMenu CDI, and it's taking several minutes to start up. I wonder what the hangup is. Games are still operating fine.

edit 2: I managed to reload SD Card Maker and the last entry on my list, XDP Dreams, when in the "Customize" screen, had a bunch of garbled text, I cleared it and now it's working fine. Not sure if it was a problem with XDP Dreams image or if it somehow got corrupted and that's where it showed up because that was the last entry. Oh well, either way, it works now.

 

Yeah. Sorry, got super busy this semester.

The rewrite without Kos, is kinda working but still having issues with some discs and looks generally ugly. Using PVR without Kos is ugly code and so far beyond a hardware accelerated UI with just white text there's nothing yet.

Been working on mil-cd project, which is pretty much wrapped up and finalized at the moment.
Stress test images have been made (75 video tracks, and 30 audio tracks, also no audio track and data session up to 99minute length), and video encoding figured out, but not easy.

 

I think we all need to take a minute to realise that nowadays, all of the NTSC-U Dreamcast games can fit in a tiny bit of plastic-wrapped silicon that's smaller than the hole in a gd-rom, for less than half of the release price of the Dreamcast.

 

It is crazy to think about. When I got in the microSD card from Amazon yesterday I took a moment to reflect.

Practically the whole DC catalog. On the tip of my finger. I was marveled enough to stop and take a picture.

My cat Ares agrees too.

 

If I could go back in time to 1999 and tell my 15 year old self what the future would hold, and that I would still be playing Dreamcast in 2019, from a micro SD card the size of my fingernail I wouldn't have believed you. Hell, just 10 years ago I don't know that I would fully believe you.

Lets just hope that when Retro-Bit releases their inevitable dual analog wireless Dreamcast controller it is everything we every wanted and hoped for, and that the other stick can still be utilized by the system so we could possibly look into executable hacking games to take commands from the 2nd input. How glorious would that truly be? I just hope Retro-Bit knocks it out of the park and does what we all wanted unlike the Brawler controller which is wired, and will lack the second stick.

 

Wait, retrobit announced a controller with a second stick? Did I miss something?

 

Well not exactly. They announced Mega Drive/Genesis and Saturn dual stick controllers. Have you not seen my mega thread about them? It is almost all but assured that we are going to get L and R bumpers and another stick, as well as a Select and Home button, so they can be used on a PC, and Dreamcast. Can you imagine if we were able to hack GDMENU to make the home button in game reset the console back to GDMENU? The Saturn and MD controllers will be compatible with the PS3 too they confirmed. Not sure about other consoles though, but yeah man where have you been bro?

Here is what the Saturn pad looks like, but they also said that all of the console controllers the are making for the Sega systems, will be cross compatible with each other, so you could use Saturn pad on DC and Genesis and vice versa.It remains to be seen how they would handle saves with the Saturn pad on the DC though...

Saturn pad.


Genesis pad.


Here is the thread.

https://assemblergames.com/threads/...urn-and-dreamcast-accessories-revealed.68063/

They still haven't released those, or shown off the planned wireless one for DC yet. It is most likely going to be going the same route as these others, so that is great news for us. I am pretty sure the issue is trying to get the VMU's to communicate wirelessly with the dongle without corrupting saves.

 

Those are Bluethooth (or proprietary RF) controller right?
Just sell a Dreamcast dongle separately that plugs in the controller port and accepts a VMU.

 

Well I was aware about all of that, but I think you are taking it for granted that they are going to do a dual stick DC pad, but we haven't actually seen any evidence for that. I haven't seen anyone else in the community with the assumption that it's coming with a second stick, and there was a lot of discussion about this exact topic around the facebook DC groups last week after the Retro Fighters DC pad announcement. We haven't seen a picture of the pad but the box shows a picture of the original DC controller so I assumed that's what it's going to look like (although that can't be certain either). And for using the Saturn controller on the DC, you can't even be certain they'd connect the second stick to the dual analog function on the maple bus given no game ever used it.

 

Well, those saturn bluetooth controller (for PC) look like they have dual analog sticks on the pictures. If the plan is to make each controller compatible with the other target consoles just using dongles, then it's fair to assume that we could use the dual-stick controller on the DC.

Now, the question is how they plan to handle it on the hardware side.

 

Retro Righters who are making a DC controller have gotten some feedback about making it with dual sticks. Now, they're funded way over their goal, but it doesn't hurt to drop them a comment. It's a long development process after all.

 

Yep Bluetooth.

I have seen quite a few people assume the same as myself, since, it is absolutely counter intuitive to expect that they wouldn't after they already did the same thing to the Genesis and Saturn pads. They are trying to hype these things up beyond belief, so I don't see why they wouldn't. Almost everybody I spoke to assumes they will based on their prior ones.

And you are right, there is no 100% proof they will do that for the DC, as that is always a possibility, but why in the world would they do it for the other 2 Sega consoles and not the Dreamcast as well? The whole point of these new dual stick wireless controllers was to be compatible with the native system via the official dongle, or over Bluetooth on PC or other systems. They released a spreadsheet showing off what each of them will be compatible with. This was obviously a while back before we saw the working controllers, but I fully believe that we should see them eventually. It doesn't hurt to believe.

We even had a decent discussion about this recently over at Dreamcast-Talk.
https://dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=11513

In fact here is the old spreadsheet that was released by them. And it ABSOLUTELY lists the Genesis and Saturn dual analog controllers as compatible with Sega Dreamcast.

If the small text is hard to read, here is what they are compatible with.

SEGA Genesis, Megadrive, Saturn, Dreamcast, Switch*, SuperRetro Cade, SR3, PS3, PC, MacOS, STEAM, Android..



Full .pdf
https://www.docdroid.net/1bfmo8H/retro-bit-sega-controller-line-up.pdf

 

Well, I certainly hope you're right and it goes the way we want it to! I guess I just get skeptical when it comes to getting our way with Sega.

 

A healthy dose of skepticism is never a bad thing!

I hope too as well, but all signs are pointing to it being more likely than ever that we will get shoulder buttons as well as another analog stick and select and Home button. It should theoretically be possible for the community to go back into games and hack the executable to get them to recognize the other buttons and stick, since the Maple bus does support another stick in the protocol.

This would also open up the possibility for us to theoretically use the other analog stick and buttons in the 2011 hacked to skip disc check version of the retail Bleems that boots other games.

When I was a moderator over at TIZ, I asked the community in 2011 to help me make a compatibility list with that newer release of Bleem. Surprisingly, quite a few games booted from the retail release that never did on the betas. This version used the analog stick in the GT2 and MGS release with the other games and the FMV's even worked yet saved never worked on other games. Only exception to the analog stick working in games was the Tekken version, since it lacked analog support in the first place. You can see an archive of that compatibility list here.

http://web.archive.org/web/20180816225655/http://www.theisozone.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=27&t=3665

It is my hope that Japanese-Cake can release a version of the emulator firstly so it would work with GDEMU, USB-GDROM and the IDE mod. Secondly with the protections fully removed like he was talking about here, hopefully we could make our own self booting releases, and if we can get those few games working that ran from the hacked retail release, we could play the FPS game shown here with analog sticks. Now it is all speculation obviously, but how cool would that be if we could do that?

 

Problem is that SD cards get corrupted a lot, and often the devices can't read them, and you're forced to recopy the whole library.

 

Corruption from what? Unreliable media, GDEMU operation, SD card maker?

I’ve noticed that SD Card Maker can hang and leave my library messed up. But I’ve been able to fix the folders with a script and edit the list file and fix it. Just really annoying.

I’ll likely back up the card to another source for easy copying. I already have Redump, TOSEC, and Trurip stores away. What’s another set? lol

 

@Anthony817 : Yes I hope too. Please japanese_cake go back. I didn't see the twitter is still sharing some news. it's great

 

Is it possible to create a save state system for GDEMU? Some PS1 games runs really great on the Bleemcast beta (Like Mega Man Legends) but there is the issue that the emulator doesn't save the games. It would solve the Bleemcast problem.

 

don't possible
save state is dump of all memory and registrs
1) you can't create dump of all system registrs
2) GDEMU don't have write function