help with kos, dev iso, and uploading files via sd card

[mulkuth]

hey guys, yet again i ask newbie question, but after yet another swing at the dreamcast i find this problem,

im using dcdev iso 4, with cygwin and am currently compiling the examples to confirm that it is working, im using an sd card adaptor for the dreamcast with dreamshell 4.0 and im trying both .elf and .bin format on these examples (the main one being the test video mode)
it wont load either, the .bin gives an error about not recognizing bba, and the .elf just freezes.
im running win32 xp with the usual cygwin and makefiles given for the examples on the iso, the setup was automated straight from the iso, meaning it set everything up perfectly for dc dev work with kos.

my only guess is its the upload method, the sd is a micro sd 1gb, with fat 32 format and the usual Chinese sd card adapter for the dc, im willing to bet i need to do some form of modding to the bare files that kos and cygwin spits out, though dreamshell said it should work with .elf and .bin
where am i going wrong? please help as this is yet another issue i seem to get every time i come to the dreamcast dev scene
im already well into sdl and c++ but i want it to be for a dreamcast project, thank you.

[Falco Girgis]

I really can't offer any particularly useful advice, because my method of debugging is completely different from yours... I use DC-Load and DC-Tool IP with a BBA on my DC. I don't have Dreamshell burned, and I don't own the flash card (although I was planning on buying one).

You should NOT have to modify the .elf or .bin to get it to work with Dreamshell.

If I were you, I would try grabbing an .elf file from http://dcemulation.org of any random Dreamcast app/emulator that you know should work and try loading that. If that works, then your toolchain is doing something wrong.

Also, I would recommend trying other examples too. Some of the KOS examples are extremely simple, and some of them load assets that have been packed into a romdisk image and linked in with your .elf. It's possible that if your dev setup is screwed (god forbid), some examples may work fine.

edit: Another sanity check would be for you to try burning your .bin to a Dreamcast-bootable disk (or not bootable and force it to boot with an app (forgot which one could do it)). If it works from there, your development setup is fine, and I would start blaming the SD card reader or Dreamshell.

[dandymcgee]

If I were you, I would try grabbing an .elf file from http://dcemulation.org of any random Dreamcast app/emulator that you know should work and try loading that. If that doesn't work, then your toolchain is doing something wrong.

Fix'd.

[Falco Girgis]

If I were you, I would try grabbing an .elf file from http://dcemulation.org of any random Dreamcast app/emulator that you know should work and try loading that. If that doesn't work, then your toolchain is doing something wrong.

Fix'd.

Wrong. If a random elf from the internet WORKS, and the elf that he builds DOESN'T WORK, then his toolchain is wrong.

[mulkuth]

I really can't offer any particularly useful advice, because my method of debugging is completely different from yours... I use DC-Load and DC-Tool IP with a BBA on my DC. I don't have Dreamshell burned, and I don't own the flash card (although I was planning on buying one).

You should NOT have to modify the .elf or .bin to get it to work with Dreamshell.

If I were you, I would try grabbing an .elf file from http://dcemulation.org of any random Dreamcast app/emulator that you know should work and try loading that. If that works, then your toolchain is doing something wrong.

Also, I would recommend trying other examples too. Some of the KOS examples are extremely simple, and some of them load assets that have been packed into a romdisk image and linked in with your .elf. It's possible that if your dev setup is screwed (god forbid), some examples may work fine.

edit: Another sanity check would be for you to try burning your .bin to a Dreamcast-bootable disk (or not bootable and force it to boot with an app (forgot which one could do it)). If it works from there, your development setup is fine, and I would start blaming the SD card reader or Dreamshell.

im actualy planning on getting a bba for my bday, (april some time) ...it feels like theres no easy solution for any dc dev nowadays, and with the bba being so expencive i have to ask....ps3....or the chance to "try" and make a dreamcast game...
im looking at crabemu now, il reinstall the dev iso, make the emulator from the make files and hope for the best, il get back to you on how it goes,

ive used many of the examples on the iso, including the hello world, and the one im using now which is just a simple video test (draws a blank screen to show its working) i just hope it works...thanks for your help, its hard to find answers on these things, especially since like you said, most develop with serial or bba cables

by the way, love your adventures in game development series, really great help for people getting into the dreamcast scene, as well as generally entertaining XD

[Falco Girgis]

im actualy planning on getting a bba for my bday, (april some time) ...it feels like theres no easy solution for any dc dev nowadays, and with the bba being so expencive i have to ask....ps3....or the chance to "try" and make a dreamcast game...

I'm a grown man now with a career, but when I began DC development and got my BBA, I was in the same position. It was my only birthday present... But it was SO worth it. You really can't beat it for Dreamcast development. There are basically no loadtimes at all. You don't need to mount romdisks/ramdisks while you're developing either. I literally stream all of my assets from a directory on my PC while I'm developing ES on the DC.

ive used many of the examples on the iso, including the hello world, and the one im using now which is just a simple video test (draws a blank screen to show its working) i just hope it works...thanks for your help, its hard to find answers on these things, especially since like you said, most develop with serial or bba cables

So did the hello world example work? You built that example yourself from a makefile, right?

by the way, love your adventures in game development series, really great help for people getting into the dreamcast scene, as well as generally entertaining XD

Thanks, man. Hopefully we will be getting a lot deeper into the Dreamcast stuff pretty soon here. Most of what we have demonstrated so far was several years ago. I was much younger and much less experienced with low-level hardware development. We're doing some cool shit with the DC these days that can be demonstrated.

[mulkuth]

I'm a grown man now with a career, but when I began DC development and got my BBA, I was in the same position. It was my only birthday present... But it was SO worth it. You really can't beat it for Dreamcast development. There are basically no loadtimes at all. You don't need to mount romdisks/ramdisks while you're developing either. I literally stream all of my assets from a directory on my PC while I'm developing ES on the DC.

So did the hello world example work? You built that example yourself from a makefile, right?

Thanks, man. Hopefully we will be getting a lot deeper into the Dreamcast stuff pretty soon here. Most of what we have demonstrated so far was several years ago. I was much younger and much less experienced with low-level hardware development. We're doing some cool shit with the DC these days that can be demonstrated.

yea...im gona hate myself but i think the bba will be the thing for my bday :/ i just hope it really can make dev easier, if anything else itle be a great way to finally get online with phantasy star :D

yea i tried both a premade one from the iso and one i copy'd from the net, neither worked, so im willing to bet it is infact my setup,
im getting a new comp with an official; version of xp (mines a shareware version), so IL wait till after Christmas and try it on that, i do have to ask your opinion on sdl.. its what ive been mainly learning for dc dev but do you find it useful?
do please tell how your games are going, im purposely going out and buying the independent dc games that aren't space ship shooters ....well except for sturmwind, im actually hyped for that :3

[Falco Girgis]

yea...im gona hate myself but i think the bba will be the thing for my bday :/ i just hope it really can make dev easier, if anything else itle be a great way to finally get online with phantasy star :D

I don't see why you will hate yourself... It was the best birthday present I ever received. And yeah, I spent many, MANY hours playing Phantasy Star Online V2.0 online in like 2006, many years after the official Dreamcast servers were down. The homebrew servers support Dreamcast, PC, and Gamecube users... So you can only imagine my shock the first time I actually got the PSO DNS server pointed to the homebrew one and found myself online chatting with confused Gamecubers and PC people who couldn't believe I was on a Dreamcast.

You definitely want to buy the Dreamcast keyboard too if you're serious about PSO. Also, Quake III Arena is still online and is good fun.

Don't forget about the insanely useful VMU save data tool built into the web browsers. Gamefaqs has save files for every Dreamcast game with 100% completion. It also has super rare save files that were Dreamcast DLC that would otherwise be gone forever... You can unlock new songs for Samba De Amigo, get extras from Skies of Arcadia, etc from those files just by browsing to Gamefaqs with your Dreamcast and CLICKING them. It lets you save to your VMU. And dear god, don't forget the 100% save file for Sonic Adventure 2 where you unlock a 3D Dreamcast remake of Green Hill Zone...

Also, only PlanetWeb3.0 web browser supports the BBA. So either download it or buy it.

yea i tried both a premade one from the iso and one i copy'd from the net, neither worked, so im willing to bet it is infact my setup,

Uh, no. If a premade .elf/.bin compiled with another setup does not work, then your own toolchain/development setup can't be to blame. Sounds like it's the SD card to me.

i do have to ask your opinion on sdl.. its what ive been mainly learning for dc dev but do you find it useful?

To be honest, SDL sucks on most consoles. It is slow, heavy, and is not super efficient. Most builds rely on software rendering, so you're taxing the shit out of the CPU to draw stuff. There exist some hardware accelerated SDL versions on the Dreamcast (Chui's?) that use the PVR for rendering, so that will be faster, but I think you're gaining draw speed there at the price of rendering accuracy.

With that being said, if you are coming from a PC background or already have a game written in SDL that you want to port to the Dreamcast, that's really a no brainer. There are plenty of good SDL ports that made their way to the Dreamcast. Just bear in mind that you aren't going to be getting anywhere near the horsepower out of the DC that you would be with more direct hardware access.

If you are interested, have a look at KOS's PVR API in the examples. It's far more low-level than SDL's rendering mechanism, which means it is more complex, but it really isn't too bad, and you will be getting a whole heeeeeeell of a lot better rendering performance out of the DC if you do choose to go down that path...

do please tell how your games are going, im purposely going out and buying the independent dc games that aren't space ship shooters ....well except for sturmwind, im actually hyped for that :3

It's coming along fairly well. We have definitely picked up the pace again. Check out the Elysian Shadows News forum for our news article/blog discussion. We have been updating that fairly regularly with interesting stuff (including integrating Dreamcast BBA development tools with our Toolkit). Also feel free to like our Facebook page. We update that very frequently.

[mulkuth]

I don't see why you will hate yourself... It was the best birthday present I ever received. And yeah, I spent many, MANY hours playing Phantasy Star Online V2.0 online in like 2006, many years after the official Dreamcast servers were down. The homebrew servers support Dreamcast, PC, and Gamecube users... So you can only imagine my shock the first time I actually got the PSO DNS server pointed to the homebrew one and found myself online chatting with confused Gamecubers and PC people who couldn't believe I was on a Dreamcast.

You definitely want to buy the Dreamcast keyboard too if you're serious about PSO. Also, Quake III Arena is still online and is good fun.

Don't forget about the insanely useful VMU save data tool built into the web browsers. Gamefaqs has save files for every Dreamcast game with 100% completion. It also has super rare save files that were Dreamcast DLC that would otherwise be gone forever... You can unlock new songs for Samba De Amigo, get extras from Skies of Arcadia, etc from those files just by browsing to Gamefaqs with your Dreamcast and CLICKING them. It lets you save to your VMU. And dear god, don't forget the 100% save file for Sonic Adventure 2 where you unlock a 3D Dreamcast remake of Green Hill Zone...

Also, only PlanetWeb3.0 web browser supports the BBA. So either download it or buy it.

Uh, no. If a premade .elf/.bin compiled with another setup does not work, then your own toolchain/development setup can't be to blame. Sounds like it's the SD card to me.

To be honest, SDL sucks on most consoles. It is slow, heavy, and is not super efficient. Most builds rely on software rendering, so you're taxing the shit out of the CPU to draw stuff. There exist some hardware accelerated SDL versions on the Dreamcast (Chui's?) that use the PVR for rendering, so that will be faster, but I think you're gaining draw speed there at the price of rendering accuracy.

With that being said, if you are coming from a PC background or already have a game written in SDL that you want to port to the Dreamcast, that's really a no brainer. There are plenty of good SDL ports that made their way to the Dreamcast. Just bear in mind that you aren't going to be getting anywhere near the horsepower out of the DC that you would be with more direct hardware access.

If you are interested, have a look at KOS's PVR API in the examples. It's far more low-level than SDL's rendering mechanism, which means it is more complex, but it really isn't too bad, and you will be getting a whole heeeeeeell of a lot better rendering performance out of the DC if you do choose to go down that path...

It's coming along fairly well. We have definitely picked up the pace again. Check out the Elysian Shadows News forum for our news article/blog discussion. We have been updating that fairly regularly with interesting stuff (including integrating Dreamcast BBA development tools with our Toolkit). Also feel free to like our Facebook page. We update that very frequently.

i know but i really want a ps3 as well :/ but the dam things never go down in value an inch, especial since all i want is a few games from japan to play...just a few that are unique to only the ps3 -____-
yea the bba will be something il get at least for programing, ive put so much work into this project but have been stumped at this one hill, i just want to port an sdl game goddammit >.<

yea pso is one i defiantly want to try, i found an iso (though i do have the game already officially) with all the dlc pre patched on the disk, but it feels so empty without the online functionality... i have actually wondered about setting up a 57kb Ethernet to dial up converter (ones used for fax machines) and then winding that into the dc ... but ugh the lag ... i dont think i could take it,
quake 3 is still going?....unreal tornement still going?

and when i said i tried premade ones from the iso, i mean ones made from the premade dev kit from the iso, its still spitting out dead files, but like i said, new computer his Christmas, i can only hope it will work without fault then, i had enough trouble trying to get dev c++ working with the pre dev tools

my only real requirements for the game engine whether its sdl or c is that it renders sprites and animations well, since most will be pre rendered in autocad/blender, i recently took a look at "alice dreams" a kind of point and click unique to the dreamcast, it has voice actors, good animations and well done backgrounds, all i really need,

i will definitely take a look at your bba tools, if its as easy as you say its the first place i need to look at when dc developing, i just hope its the last, ive gone through so much already :/ thanks for everything :3

[eatcomics]

You know I've got PSO, but I've not played it because I don't have online. I think I may look into getting myself a BBA. It would be awesome to be able to just drag programs over the network.

[Falco Girgis]

have actually wondered about setting up a 57kb Ethernet to dial up converter (ones used for fax machines) and then winding that into the dc ... but ugh the lag ... i dont think i could take it,

Actually, if you could pull that setup off (it's supposed to be hard as shit), it should be fine. The Dreamcast shipped with a 56k modem, and that's what PSO was originally developed to support. You shouldn't really have any lag. Peter used to play on 56k, and he was fine.