Dreamcast Developers

[Falco Girgis]

Buying that is absolutely pointless. Did you read my post? We have our PCs and an ethernet adapter for your Dreamcast.

[BlueMonkey5]

Yea, I did see your post and definitely no offense taken I got a little too excited when I saw the Katana! ok, now that the smoke has cleared from all the excitement, I totally catch what your saying. The Dreamcast can run burned CD-R's, so we only need PC to make Dreamcast titles. I think I got that part right :D

I'm guessing that homebrew tools are some kind of custom made engine or something? And what's an elf?... i mean the technical definition So, the DC's gotta be the easiest system to port to, which must be why you guys are not choosing any other system to release Elysian Shadows for, i'm guessing.

[dandymcgee]

So, the DC's gotta be the easiest system to port to, which must be why you guys are not choosing any other system to release Elysian Shadows for, i'm guessing.

I'm not sure whether or not it's the easiest to port to, but that's most certainly not the reason they chose Dreamcast. I'm pretty sure it has to do more with Falco's insane attraction for the console and it's abilities. If you've ever watched the YouTube videos you would know that the only thing Falco loves more than his Dreamcast is sex.

[eatcomics]

So, the DC's gotta be the easiest system to port to, which must be why you guys are not choosing any other system to release Elysian Shadows for, i'm guessing.

I'm not sure whether or not it's the easiest to port to, but that's most certainly not the reason they chose Dreamcast. I'm pretty sure it has to do more with Falco's insane attraction for the console and it's abilities. If you've ever watched the YouTube videos you would know that the only thing Falco loves more than his Dreamcast is sex.

No, no dreamcast comes first...

[BlueMonkey5]

Excuse my ignorance, but what's Homebrew? It sounds like something custom and complicated.

[LuciDreamTheater]

Excuse my ignorance, but what's Homebrew? It sounds like something custom and complicated.

I haven't looked up the definition (if a standard even exists), but I always assume it to mean a game created by a non-licensed developer.

If you're looking to get into the Dreamcast homebrew scene, consider using my article as a starting point.

[MadPumpkin]

Excuse my ignorance, but what's Homebrew? It sounds like something custom and complicated.

i'll excuse you, but not forgive you for it quite yet
lol not complicated... if you've been around a computer for more, then 15 minutes in your life anyways... (and if not, let god have mercy on you).

Homebrew means created, basically, what ever you made, or someone else made that you might use for whatever reason that i don't really care about.

so basically use yours/someone elses home made crap

[LuciDreamTheater]

I should add that it sometimes is used to describe development for a cell phone.

[Falco Girgis]

Dreamcast itself is about like Gamecube and Xbox to develop for (PS2 is a bitch). Dreamcast has been completely reverse engineered, and has an insanely complete homebrew development suite (unlike any other console) that is completely legal.

Combine that with the fact that it is a really powerful little bastard, it's sexy, and it has a huge audience of homebrewers--yes, it is better than sex.

And "homebrew" game is synonymous with "indie" game. Think of it that way.

[BlueMonkey5]

So if Dreamcast is like the Gamecube and Xbox (and NOT PS2), that means we can just as easily port to those systems too? That's awesome! Might as well develop for all three of them then, I would have to think.

[deryni21]

So if Dreamcast is like the Gamecube and Xbox (and NOT PS2), that means we can just as easily port to those systems too? That's awesome! Might as well develop for all three of them then, I would have to think.

nah he was just saying that those you can devolop while you cant on the ps2

[BlueMonkey5]

ooooh, my bad. Well how bout the PS3, 360, WII and the current hand-helds? I guess that would be stretching it...

[Falco Girgis]

Whoah, what the hell? I'm just saying that their architectures are similar, so programming for them isn't too terribly hard. They're still completely different pieces of hardware. Coding a game for a console is not just "eh, might as well do them all." It takes months to learn how to use a console correctly. Years, maybe. We don't have official devkits that Sega/Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft gives out. We're hombrewers, so we have to figure things out by ourselves.

[CC Ricers]

This topic makes me want to start developing for the Dreamcast. What is the 3D API like for the Dreamcast dev kit? Is it more OpenGL-based or more proprietary, and is the fact that it runs on a version of Windows CE have any importance on this?

ooooh, my bad. Well how bout the PS3, 360, WII and the current hand-helds? I guess that would be stretching it...

Development with 3rd party homebrew kits is mostly irrelevant for the 360 since Microsoft actively encourages it with its own XNA framework and community following it.

I've had experience deving for the PSP before but it's hard to find anything really good on the scene. It's become too saturated with ports and simple games that run off a PSP LUA player with limited features (not good as LUA on PC apparently).

[Falco Girgis]

What is the 3D API like for the Dreamcast dev kit? Is it more OpenGL-based or more proprietary

You would be using KallistiOS's PVR API, I should hope. The PowerVR is the Dreamcast's 3D hardware (also the iPhone's now). KallistiOS is a library/collection of APIs created by the homebrew scene to give low level access to the DC's hardware. It is by far the most usable and impressive noncommercial API on any console. You can also sell what you make, since it is created with something that Sega had nothing to do with.

http://redspotgames.com publishes DC games. As a matter of fact, Wind and Water Puzzle Battles came out pretty recently and supposedly sold a shitload.

and is the fact that it runs on a version of Windows CE have any importance on this?

No. For commercial developers, you could use either Sega's "Katana" or the Windows CE devkit. The benefit of the Windows CE devkit was that it allowed you to port things super easily to the Dreamcast. The commercial games that use it have "Powered by Windows CE" at the startup, and you can usually see that the quality/framerate/poly count is lower. It just wasn't as powerful as Sega's, and the ports seemed rather sloppy.

...Though Resident Evil 3 DC was pretty damn cool. Exactly the same as PC, including high ass poly count.

It's become too saturated with ports and simple games that run off a PSP LUA player with limited features (not good as LUA on PC apparently).

Yeah, they also have Lua on Dreamcast. The problem is that Lua is a scripting language, and everything that it can do must be wrapped back to C/++. So they have this framework/library of functions in C++ like "DrawSprite()," "PlayMusic()," etc, and that's it. In order for Lua to do more things, more wrappers have to be made. Whereas you can directly interact with the API at the C/++ level.

So yeah, an entire game in Lua is going to be extremely dumbed down in comparison to what it could do in pure C/++.