[ZeZu]

@Monk, your post is both thoughtfull and amusing, however i think you very much overthought that out. Even to be "reasonably reasoned", the original post was definitely not well thought out, and was mostly just to see some real numbers and interest. Which I''ve stated previously.

@MDave, yes i was the poster, and I am one of two nullDC developers..
Why does a poll has to be silly/not usefull? Just because its not usefull to you personally? The first question in the poll is of personal interest for me/us, the second one goes back to a discussion based on another post about the emulator.

@All:
I think many of you have some knowledge of at least a bit of the process involved in an emulator, development in general, or can appreciate someones time and effort. In fact cost of development of something like this on a commercial basis would run well over $250k USD (and i do mean WELL over). If you dont believe this, check base pay for professional developers, and stats on how long something like this takes in development.. do the math. 10 developers @ $40/hr * 10months = ~$400k ! nullDC is many years in development for the two of us, and it is _freeware_ for all to enjoy.

So if it disturbs anyone too greatly i''''ll ask one of the mods to remove this entire thread ... but the data the poll collects is of interest to us, and is encouragement for something that takes a great amount of my time/patience/sanity and much more.

The "free" pandora is not at all a big deal, and a lot less "free" when you look at it in perspective that a weeks work could buy more than one of them, yet it will take many many weeks of work before this is playable on the pandora.. really its more like slave labor but i enjoy the challenge and appreciate the fact that it will be used.

This post has been edited by ZeZu: 16 March 2009 - 02:05 AM

[Gruso]

Over 87% of voters say bring it, around 80% also say that you should be sent some hardware. Don''''t let a couple of naysayers get you down. ;\)

The only people who thought the poll was silly, hadn''''t yet realised that a NullDC dev started it. As mentioned earlier we have had a -lot- of useless polls from non-devs who thought an N64 emulator would magically appear if they started a thread about it. I know I speak for at least 87% of people when I say -this- thread is welcome to stay. \:D

This post has been edited by Gruso: 16 March 2009 - 02:54 AM

[Esn]

Regarding the analog shoulder buttons, it should be possible to control speed in racing games by releasing the button temporarily when you want to slow down. I admittedly do not own THAT many DC games (just a dozen or so, including a few racing titles), but I can not think of one where this would be an issue.

If you are still taking requests for videos, I would be interested in seeing an RPG. Maybe Grandia II. I would imagine that RPGs would be playable even if the frame rate was quite low.

I wish you a lot of luck in this project fellas, and I will be looking forward to it, though unfortunately I do not have money to spare these days.

[.Gogeta§§J4BR.]

helping developers has proved to be the best strategy for this kind of system (look at gp32, zodiac, gp2x)
having a great n64 and dreamcast emulators is going to mindblowingly, frenetically, exponentially increase the Pandora sales.
''nuff said

[ZeZu]

@Gruso, I''''''''m not let down, else i would just fade off and do my things privately :)

@Esn, I will work with anyones suggestions or mods on the analogs, more than happy to. If i have the time when things are going a bit ... faster, I will look into a mod myself as well .

@All, the video is a bit late and not what was requested (oops?) but I dont have that many things to test and not everything works as of now.

... So :

CODE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7o4y9k0s_Xc

a favorite of mine

Please note the framerate in this game is 30fps or so, the cpu percentage is correct and the RPS is similar to the framerate.
[ as in 8 / 30 would be 14fps+ PAL or ~16fps NTSC (if it worked out in that fashion)]

You might not label it "playable", but its looking up from things a few days ago.

I will be adding more videos to youtube on a frequent basis and will post links on these forums.

-Z

This post has been edited by ZeZu: 16 March 2009 - 04:15 AM

[Gruso]

Holy hell, I didn''''''''t expect to see this much progress in such a short time! Thanks for posting, can''''''''t wait for more. \:D

This post has been edited by Gruso: 16 March 2009 - 04:24 AM

[Svartalf]

Holy hell, I didn''''t expect to see this much progress in such a short time! Thanks for posting, can''''t wait for more. \:D

Heh... We've pretty much hit the theoretical space with this one at this point- and the Pandora's not even out yet.

Here's to hoping to see them grab a 50% or more gain in performance with it in the near future.

[ZeZu]

Here''s to hoping to see them grab a 50% or more gain in performance with it in the near future.

I''ll drink to that !

There was never really anything theoretical about it to me, it simply needed to be done. Speedwise, its a long road uphill ... but I intend to see it out whenever I have free time to do so. The sh4 has a powerfull floating point, ARM does not.. NEON nor VFP3 is made for what we want, but it will do..

[Esn]

@Esn, I will work with anyones suggestions or mods on the analogs, more than happy to. If i have the time when things are going a bit ... faster, I will look into a mod myself as well .

That wasn''t a suggestion for you; I''m happy with the solution of setting it to 100% and ignoring the sensitivity altogether (setting it to the other analog pad sounds good also). I was just saying that people could control speed if necessary by pressing the shoulder button on+off. In most racing games, you don''t slow down too often anyway.

To be honest, I''ve had the DC for years and didn''t realize until just now that the shoulder buttons were analog. So for obvious reasons, I won''t miss the lack of this feature...

That video looks quite promising, although I''ve never played POP myself so I don''t know what it should actually look like. Are some of the graphical elements absent at this stage?

This post has been edited by Esn: 16 March 2009 - 05:33 AM

[quartercast]

Goddamn, that''s a lot of progress since the dreamcast startup animation! Flabbergasted, just flabbergasted

[RoboShmup]

Here''s a video of PoP on Dreamcast running full speed for comparison.

CODE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrzJea-YCJw

Amazing work guys. With all the skepticism and negativity I''ve read surrounding a DC emu on the Pandora, I definitely wasn''t expecting any progress to this extent.

[arrrgh]

I refuse to believe that there could be a playable Dreamcast emulator available at launch. ZeZu, your work has been amazing.

[ZeZu]

Actually the graphics on POP are pretty complete.

Thanks guys ;)

With public beta testing, you''ll all get to have a run at it as soon as I can ensure it even does run on the pandora (i''m 100% sure it will, just may need a bit of tweaking first)

[MWeston]

What resolution do you run the Beagleboard at? POP is looking pretty good already.

Have you tried that Crazy Taxi game again? I remember the graphics messing up, like the road disappearing.

[RajTakhar]

Amazing work - I as always thought it would be given your work on NullDC and NullDCe already

This should really make some of the non-believers raise an eyebrow or two

Ok so we are not expecting ultra fast as at Dreamcast speed for all games but with a bit of patience you would expect alot of games to be playable at some point.

My only question for now is - how do I rip my old Dreamcast CD''s into a format usable by the emulator ? - please let me know

Shit only just completed getting my PSX titles sorted, now I have a stack of old GD-ROMs to figure out