Basically, my lovely, precious, shiny, smooth white Dreamcast has been slowly deteriorating over the last few years, and has finally gone bang. It's not under warranty any more, and I don't want to have to hunt for yet another one. So I've been looking at Dreamcast emulators, and have found a few with varying results: NullDC: I've heard this is the best one, but I just can't get it to work. At all. I have working Dreamcast BIOSes, but they're apparently "too large". Some other files are not found, and apparently don't exist anywhere. Makaron: I can't get this one to work either. It causes an "Open error" when trying to open the BIOS. Since the filename and path are correct, it leads me to assume that there's something wrong with the BIOS. However, the same file works fine in Demul: I can get this one working just fine. The problem is, it's slow. Painfully slow. And it has a few problems when it comes to deciding which polygons should be in front of which. I've tried following various sites on the internet, but all it seems to do is make it look worse without affecting the speed at all. I understand that Shenmue and Sonic Adventure are fairly hard to emulate accurately, but these are practically a must. Anyway, onto my system: Operating system: Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit Processor: Intel Celeron CPU 900 @ 2.2GHz RAM: 2GB If there's any more information you need, I'll happily provide. I'm basically just looking for either ways to make the above emulators work, or another emulator. I may have to up/downgrade my computer, or I may have to wait until the emulation quality steps up, in which case I'll probably buy another Dreamcast. I just want my Chu Chu Rocket. EDIT: Shit, I thought this was General Gaming. Please move if it's more appropriate there.
I've never emulated any DC stuff before, but seriously Dreamcasts on ebay and in pawn shops are usually super cheap, I got mine for £15. The cool thing is you can just burn and run games on CD-Rs + - as legitimate legal backups
Yeah, the problem is that they keep breaking. I could easily pick up another one, but it'll have exploded in three years time, at which point I'll need to buy another one... Strangely enough, my ZX Spectrum still works, and it's more than twice the age. I have original discs for the games, and downloading them if necessary isn't a problem, it's just actually finding a reliable way of playing them.
The only Dreamcast emulator I got working was NullDC, and even then, the sound was fucked until I forcibly changed the buffer size (or something like that) and it works fine now. I could send the BIOS' to you via email if you wish, because I know they work with me.
Are you aware of the easy-fixes for Dreamcasts? I've been through about 3 which all ended up with the same problem where it would reboot every minute or so, until I googled around and my brother and I fixed it, and the one I currently have has been running fine for 5 years+ it's also now regionless, but the battery-clock doesn't work :P
Ooh, yes please! I'll PM you my email. I have tried looking at ways to fix it myself, but with no luck. The one that just died started off by occasionally not reading discs properly, and ended by not starting up at all. One of the most annoying things that went wrong with a previous console: the disc lid-thingy wouldn't open when you pressed the button. Of course, after forcing it open, it wouldn't shut again, and therefore wouldn't play any games any more. The battery-clock seems to be a recurring problem in all of them, though. It doesn't affect me much, but it's annoying when trying to figure out which one is your latest save file.
The battery-clock thing isn't much of a problem but it does screw with shenmue. Even if you do manage to emulate successfully, I'd still recommend tinkering with the DC that you think is dead.
I've tried hitting it with a hammer. It didn't work. I'm not sure what to try with a console that won't even switch on.
That made me laugh, and I'm not sure why. I may sig that. NullDC is the way to go, I tried it out over at a buddy's place and other than sound, it worked perfectly. Minus a few sound and graphical glitches that are present no matter what system, it should run fine on your computer, but you may want to use v1.0.0. Last I heard, that's the only version that joysticks still work.
Well, I don't know how good it is nowadays, but I remember one back in the day called Chankast, why not take a look at that.
Chankast wasn't updated since the initial 3 versions came out. Every other dc emu is lightyears ahead of it. Makaron is the only one that can run Ikaruga without glitches, so use that. Fuck shenmue and sonic adventure.
I had this problem with a GameCube - turned out there wasn't enough give on the release mechanism. Opened it up, stuck a bit of grease on, works perfectly fine now. Well, in that the eject mechanism is fixed. The actual unit has a laser issue. XP
I personally have had the best results with NullDC. Unfortunately, there's no gamepad plugin in the latest version. Speaking with the creator on the NullDC forums, I guess he actually hates gamepads as an input device and refuses to code a controller plugin for his own emulator (why he chose to emulate a game console, then, is a mystery to me). Somebody else was supposed to write a controller plugin a few months after the last release, but that never happened. You could roll back to the previous version, which has a gamepad plugin, but there are some optimizations in the last release that, at least for me, make that not an option. On top of that, the author says he has got bored of working on NullDC, so a new release isn't likely.
Sure as hell NullDC. The compat is the best so far, and the only problems I discovered were some alpha glitches in REZ. Gotta love the extended geometry mode as well, looks like this is the only emulated console with support for real HD. This emulator also supports most games that were released even after the system's 'death'.
Sorry for thread hi-jacking, but on my computer that *just* meets nulldc's system requirements, the 1.06 version actually runs *faster* than the 1.3. Just thought I'd throw that out there oh, and what are the best plugins/settings?
The best plugins are default ones, really. As for settings, you either set the sound buffer low (choppy sound, good framerate) or very high (choppy framerate, good sound). The other things, as much as your CPU allows.
Hmmm. I can either set the sound buffer low (choppy sound, choppy framerate) or very high (no sound, no framerate). I might need to adjust a few more settings. And don't worry about the thread hijacking; it still fits with the title, doesn't it?
Dolphin (GC/Wii emulator) has a wide screen hack, too. I'd say it's better than NullDC's, too, because it stretches 2D assets to fill the screen while leaving 3D assets at the correct aspect ratio. I had some screenshots comparing Skies of Arcadia at 720p on both Dolphin and NullDC, but the site they're hosted on seems to be having some trouble. The thumbnails work, but if you click to view the image itself it returns an error (it's not just these two images, every image hosted on their site is doing this, even recent uploads). NullDC: Dolphin: If la.gg ever fixes itself, you'll be able to click those thumbnails to get the full-sized images.
