/vr/ - Retro Games

Gunlord looks awesome. Unfortunately, I was never able to get the disk drive on the secondhand Dreamcast I bought working correctly, so I can't play it.

>>2954

Issue with the laser or motor?

I think you can purchase complete assemblies in some places.

>>2954

What model was it?

>>2952

>tfw halfchan border-jumpers can't use the catalogue on even the slowest fucking boards

At least you've the sense to get out of that shithole.

>>2956

Yeah, my biggest regret though is how much more activity they get just for being well known.

Illbleed. That is the craziest fucking game I have ever seen. People say Deadly Premonition is the most polarizing horror game out there, but if Illbleed was released last gen, people would debate the two games together.

Although a huge favorite of mine is Phantasy Star Online. The fact that people seem to ignore the series in an age of Monster Hunter and the Souls series is sad, especially since the games wouldn't probably be around if it weren't for PSO, more than a decade ago.

>>2952

I was thinking about making a thread here. Why does half-chan /vr/ have such a raging boner against the dream machine? They are banning threads on sight over there for fuck's sake.

I've recently purchased a Dreamcast particularly for Shenmue, but then I beat that in quick time and realized I need to get another game for the Dreamcast.

I've been looking at Seaman, but I dunno if I want to spend $30 on the game and the mic. Illbleed is too expensive for what the game is, and I'm having trouble finding a copy of Space Channel 5 Part 1. Any other recommendations?

>>2987

I beat JSR on PS3, it would seem. Considering JSRF exists, I don't have too much motivation to go back to JSR on Dreamcast - but trust me, I did every little bit of Shenmue that there was - save for maybe the Sega CEO sidequest.

Otherwise, I might be willing to try some of those games as long as they're cheap enough.

>>2988

JSRF and JSR are very different and both worth a spin; but if you've beaten the original on PS3…

The ones I mentioned ought to be pretty cheap. I was just trying to suggest ones that don't get mentioned all the time.

Ecco the Dolphin: I've Forgotten the Subtitle might be another one you want to check out, but I don't know if that one's going to be in your budget.

>>2986

Shenmue 2

>>2985

I got the memo, just haven't done anything else yet. Had some friends stay the weekend for the 4th and got some grilling done.

>>3005

nice! i'll be waiting for your next releases

>>3005

Any plans for a Surf Rocket Racers release soon?

>>3028

Honestly I never even gave that game a second thought but apparently it has at least one dedicated fan haha

>>3029

2 if you count the guy that made the thread on halfchan with that as the op.

>>3030

>>3031

I love this game more than life itself.

>>3030

>>3031

>>3038

Hate to piss on your parade, chaps, but was that Saturn game ever ported to the Dreamcast?

>>3036

Oh I thought you may have been the same anon. In that case, sure why not. I think I'll have some free time tomorrow to sit down and knock out a game or two. The last thing I was working on was Toy Commander, so I'll probably finish that one up and do Surf Rocket Racers.

>>3061

Awesome!

I think you may be the first guy to put out a decent release of it. Tux never touched it, and I don't think anyone else decent did either. And from what the other anon was saying, it sounded like a pretty decent game.

>>3064

I haven't looked into it yet. It sounds like the loop info is just stored in a slightly different place than typical ADX, but is still the same format. So, it shouldn't make a bit of difference.

I went ahead and set up a NoBS-DC IRC channel. It's on freenode at #NoBS-DC

>>3075

Got it! I hope we're able to spread this around with the anons from half-chan and people here.

>>3043

Nope.

Poking around in Sonic Adventure 2… I wasn't going to start this right away but then I found the ADX for Live & Learn and now I'm all in. Sorry Surf Rocket Racers fans. I'll have some other games posted up once I'm done messing with SA2 for the day, though.

Okay, I'm going to use this thread a bit like a notepad for what I'm working on and if anyone has any other ideas I guess they can chime in, too. PAL versions of Marvel vs. Capcom and Toy Commander on the way as well as NTSC-U Toy Commander.

Sonic Adventure 2 Notes

-Remember to hack internet browser files

-Might be best to remove browser completely, but DLC could be added to webpages in browser

-Lots of duplicates but linking only saves about 5mb

-Need to see if game supports non-standard ADX sample rates, should be able to do stereo audio using KVCD video encoder to crunch videos good

-24khz seems to be threshold for keeping sound quality acceptable and in stereo, less gives distortion

-Find different way to demux SFD files, regular workflow doesn't detect second audio stream in SFD

-Large amounts of space saved ripping Japanese voice, are there textures to remove like Sonic Adventure?

-Exactly what bytes are loop data in SA2 ADX header? Definitely within first ~20 bytes. Hex editing didn't work. Failure possibly related to how ADX looper detected samples and encoded downsampled files? Are WAV sample counts affected by sample rate changes?

-M1V files for ending sequences, short and small but high bitrate. Probably should be downsampled.

New rips are posted. Marvel vs. Capcom PAL, Toy Commander NTSC-U and Toy Commander PAL.

Also, could the person with the obsession with removing the highlighting on the latest NoBS-DC release please stop? I'm marking the newest one so people can check the NFO and see what came out recently since there's not a chronological release list anywhere.

>>3043

this is what happens when you post drunk. Yeah, dragon force is a damn Saturn game.

>>3085

Sonic Adventure 2 update:

Found a different demultiplexer that let me get both audio streams and got all the video downsampled. Used KVCD at 1200kbps, quality is still very good. After taking care of the video there still needs to be about 100mb removed. Downsampling the ADX should give me exactly this. I should have enough room to add DLC content to the web browser so that you can download it to your memory card.

>>3093

>>3085

>>3086

Thanks a lot for the insight of your releases so far! I think it's pretty interesting.

If you can, you should do one release with US voices and one with JAP ones, if they can't be crunched together in one.

>>3097

For a game like this that's a matter of remuxing all the video again. I'd be more likely to do the Japanese version. That probably has English subtitles. If it was something like Shenmue where there is a huge contingency of people who hate the dub, I'd understand. SA2's dub isn't really horrible. It's just average. I think I only had one comment requesting the Japanese voice for the RDC Sonic Adventure.

>>3093

What DLC content?

I've never heard of any DLC for SA2.

>>3104

There were downloadable menu themes, a Halloween theme which reskinned character models with costumes and I believe there's extra kart racing content as well (I want to say a level or two and an additional character).

>>3108

Oh wow.

So how would you be able to access them without a dial-up ISP?

>>3110

Essentially how I did it for the Fire Pro english translation. All the DLC is just VMU save file shit. The DC's web browser recognizes when it's linked a VMU file and downloads it to the memory card. What I did with Fire Pro was just point the HTML code to a directory on the disc which downloaded the file.

>>3111

Wow, that's a really neat way to do it.

So where did the VMU files come from? Some lucky guy happened to archive them?

>>3112

Yeah, pretty much. There's a site that has a really extensive archive of save files and additional content. I believe it's called blueswirl.

>>3113

>blueswirl

I use their dreamexplorer iso for all sorts of stuff, like save files for crazy taxi, and doing the shenmue region change stuff. Really useful!

>>3126

That should have all the DLC stuff on it as well in case anyone has a copy of SA2 and doesn't want to wait for me to finish.

>>3127

Quick question that just popped in my head:

Is there a way to remove the software restriction in NTSC-U Lightgun titles that prevents one from using the real official Sega gun?

>>3129

Uh, I don't see why not to be honest. I could run a comparison on the binaries and see if there's anything I can find. If nothing else swapping the PAL binary with the NTSC-U files should give red gore for HOTD2.

>>3130

Shit, it's been so long since I played the DC version that I honestly forgot about the green blood. I primarily play 2&3 return now, as my CRT isn't readily accessible.

Good news for Sonic Adventure 2: I found a program that actually reads the loop points correctly (at least it appears that way, the numbers look like what you'd typically end up with when you're looping a file yourself). I'm not as clever as Tux to code my own program to grab something like that (I can't code at all, truthfully). It'll be a bit tedious grabbing the loop points this way, but it'll go faster than me converting the hex to decimal by hand for every file.

I'll work on getting the game cracked next and then I'll convert a few ADX files that show up earlier in the game to make sure I am indeed getting the right loop points. After that it'll just be a matter of making sure everything fits.

Then I can do Surf Rocket Racers and some easy stuff for a while.

>>3156

It's usually a mix of things. Sometimes I want to do it, sometimes the game could just use a better rip, sometimes it's a game that's kind of unknown and I'd like to have more people aware of it and sometimes it's just the slog.

>>3160

Question I just thought of:

Is there an English translation of SeGaGaGa available? I found the project blog, but it hasn't been updated in almost 2 years.

Not that I'm asking you to do a translation, but if there's a translated GDDump, have you ever explored making it self-booting on a DC?

>>3161

There isn't a translated version anywhere. As far as the inactive project.. I heard some things about that. I'm not sure how true they were so I won't go into details, but don't count on that ever surfacing.

>>3163

:(

Sonic Adventure 2 Part 3:

Downsampled the music to 24khz from the 32khz native… I didn't like the results with this. The bass starts getting fuzzy and distorted. I had to bring it up to 26khz to maintain the sound quality.

Cracked the game, checked it out. Music loops correctly in game. We're on the right path. Needs more testing before I declare it 100% cracked though, allegedly there's some graphical glitches at the end of the game that pop up with the standard fixes. Echelon apparently fixed this, I'll have to investigate if I run into this issue.

The only bad part about the music being at 26khz is that I'm about 80mb over right now. I can save 10mb removing the extras folder that has been going into the NoBS-DC releases that has the GD-ROM track 1 data (PC viewable data). There's 5mb worth of duplicate files in the second data session. I'm not sure how many are in the first data session. I can crunch the videos harder, KVCD can get to a pretty low bitrate before it starts becoming extremely degraded. As it stands, the videos are taking about 56mb… so I don't have a lot of wiggle room there. I MIGHT be able to get 20 more mb off of those. I can also remove the internet browser files, that would give me maybe 17 or 18mb.

I'm pretty determined to keep the music at 26khz. I might try it at 25khz to see if the bass fares any better and give myself more wiggle room. Every byte counts at this point.

>>3170

I know this ain't ideal, but have you considered doing a split release?

>>3171

No, I'm pretty particular about getting everything to 80 minutes and getting it to the same number of discs it usually was. Not everyone can get 99 minute discs, and in poorer countries CD-Rs are expensive. Dreamcast has a pretty decent sized following in the less fortunate countries.

>>3172

*the same number of discs it originally was, that is

Knocked music to 25hz, saved myself 10mb. Sounds comparable to 26hz. 24hz is just the spot where it all really goes to shit, I guess. Removing the web browser is the only way to proceed from here. I'll work on getting files moved to the first data session to use the space freed up from the web browser. Videos will have to be downsampled more. It should all be good to go after that. I'll have to test it well since Echelon apparently had some issues and since the Chao garden didn't work in their rip.

>>3174

2 questions, are you mononizing any sound in your release? And also, did you rip out Japanese audio?

Out of curiosity, I was reading through the release notes from Tux's single disc release of this, and he did both things. Just curious as to if your release would be better in that aspect (as well as others where I'm sure it will be)

>>3175

Everything will be stereo. Some audio files were actually mono originally and those will remain mono of course. Japanese language had to go. It simply can't be on the same disc for 700mb. I did some research and the Japanese version does have English subtitles. I'll be doing the Japanese version as well.

>>3176

Very nice!

One more thing: Is there an intro movie that is relevant to the plot? If so, then leave it, but if it's similar to VOOT's intro video that doesn't have any purpose, you could rip it entirely and replace it with a second of low-bitrate black space (assuming there's nothing at play preventing that).

If the video is relevant to watch once, you could rip it and release the game twice, once with the intro video ripped and the rest at higher quality, and the other release with the video retained and all videos encoded a bit worse.

Just a suggestion, there may be holes I'm not seeing preventing that from being viable though.

>>3177

There's a couple videos that could be expendable but there's nothing like an intro that can be ripped. I've got enough space to work with without the web browser I believe.

I'm so happy to see this here. The Dreamcast thread(s) were my primary reason for browsing halfchan's /vr/, but the draconian "moderation" has gotten out of hand.

We need to spread the word to other halfchanners and /vr/ comrades to get this place bumping.

Long live 8ch /vr/.

Yay, you got the thread back up, i was hanging in via the irc channel after that halfchan going nuts. Then on the topic i see this thread linked, super happy :) and the spreadsheets coming along lovely.

Yet another Sonic Adventure 2 update:

Crunched the videos more. I did each video individually and took them as low as they could possibly be while maintaining a fair level of detail and keeping macroblocking down. I still need about 25mb taken off. I'm going to see if I can attack this a few different ways..

There are some videos I haven't touched that are overlaid as special effects towards the end of the game. I don't really want to mess with these just incase it interferes with how the effect works. If worst comes to worst, I'll see what I can do here.

There are some unused textures and sound files which I'll be removing.

There are 3 audio files for City Escape: the regular song, the part where the truck chases you, and another file for the song after the truck chasing you. The only difference between the two regular song files is a bass riff at the start. I believe the songs are the same apart from that. If this is the case, I'll just link the files.

There are 3 sound files for all of the character themes. A long version, an instrumental, and a short version. Linking the short and long versions shouldn't have any negative effects.

Interesting stuff comradesnarky, im enjoying seeing the work that goes into these releases, great ideas employed, thanks for documenting it for us :).

>>3207

>>3211

The only game I ever played on a Dreamcast that I remember was some 3D version of Centipede. Never owned one, don't really plan on buying one, but I still wanted to say thanks to snarky for doing this important work. You guys know how important it is, just want to let you know there's another lurker that knows it, too.

>>3211

This one is really testing me. Usually you can just go after the video and audio and the game will fit no problem. There's so much data in this game, though. It's not really surprising given the texture quality, but most Dreamcast games fit to a CD-R without much fight. I guess I am getting ambitious in insisting on having the audio stereo, though.

>>3216

Thank you, and I just want to say that all you guys have been really great and supportive. Users on most download sites just want you to hurry the fuck up and get it done and then don't over much in the way of thanks. I don't expect anything in doing this (it's pretty thankless), but it's really nice to see some real genuine interest from more than a few people after 7 years of on and off work on stuff like this.

Hopefully the NoBS stuff can be pretty definitive in terms of quality.

>>3218

Naw, dawg, I greatly appreciate your work. You're probably the single most important individual when it comes to helping preserve the Dreamcast's library and allowing it to be freely playable for anyone with access to CD-Rs.

With Emuparadise having next to nothing that actually works, and The Iso Zone being a clusterfuck, you're pioneering the way for true accessibility to genuinely good rips.

The only thing I wish you had was even more support. It's a legitimately noble cause.

>>3227

Yeah i 100% agree with you, i wish there was a way of getting this some more attention, although i think we should maybe password protect editing the spreadsheet if that is possible, if we were to expose it to more people etc i wouldnt want people to mess it up.

Unless theres a better way im not sure yet, maybe we could obtain the password from the irc chan.

>>3231

A good model would be the PS2 HDD-OSD compatibility spreadsheet. It's read only publicly but there's a form to submit additions which are reviewed and added.

>>3244

Err I mean POPSTARTER

>>3244

Sounds legit. Think we can migrate this spreadsheet's contents over?

Can someone set up Q to be able to do automatic invites for specific people?

I just tried logging in to the IRC and it wouldn't allow it.

>>3246

Well the popstarter sheet is a google spreadsheet. I have no idea how the submission form was set up.

Alright people, gonna need some help here. Sonic Adventure 2 is going to be finished up shortly.

I NEED people to test it. Frankly, with my job and my commute I just don't have time to test this as thoroughly as I would like. Please send me an email at revivedcproject@gmail.com or send me a message in IRC and I'll distribute the link to you once it's finished.

Things I'd appreciate:

-Playing the game to completion and letting me know if there are any bugs

-Letting me know if there are any audio issues caused by my linking of a few files

-Letting me know if there are any lagging issues with cutscenes, ESPECIALLY towards the end of game sequences. These parts will be accessing video and audio simultaneously at some points. I will likely need to adjust the sort order accordingly.

Thank you!

>>3253

I didn't realize that ** put things in spoilers. My misguided attempt at emphasis.

>>3253

One more thing in this regard, I would also like to know if Chao saving is fully functional. It would be nice if you could edit posts within 30 seconds or something..

>>3261

to clarify, for italics and bolding , you have to individually put two single ( ' ) apostrophes directly next to each other so it looks like a " but it really isn't. For bolding, you put three. I know some of them stack for example, but header "==" which makes text big and red doesn't, I don't think. It also has to be on:

==it's own line=x

it's own line

like that.

>>3261

yes you would need a Dreamcast since I need to know how the game handles streaming.

I finished completely last night but in some cruel twist of fate NONE of my CD burners are working. I have four…

>>3266

That's not an emulator problem. That's a kogami problem.

>>3265

Hate to sound like I'm insulting you're intelligence, but you're trying different discs too, right?

>>3270

Yeah, discs are good. All of my drives have finicky little habits but this seems to just be a bizarre case of the stars aligning. I guess that'll happen with stuff that's about 10 years old

>>3269

>>3267

>>3266

Well shit, now I'm getting it with Demul as well. When I walk into a room in the harbor (Warehouse #4, alpha trade office) it just stops on the loading screen. I'm on the 99 min version, can I switch with my save to 80 without problems?

>>3271

Well, looks like my problem was my fucking USB hub. I've had this problem before. I think my printer being plugged into the hub causes it. I wish I would've remembered that problem last night before I dug out 3 other drives… Anyways, first test is almost burned. Haven't gotten any messages for testers. I'd really appreciate it if someone could help out there.

>>3277

If my mom hadn't just gotten a potentially multi-thousand dollar bill from her medical insurance I would run out and buy a dreamcast to test this shit right now, dude…damn….I don't know anybody that has one that I could borrow, either…

I have a literal pile of Dreamcasts. I can test any disc images provided, but know that I spend a lot of my time teaching people how to kill themselves on /suicide/, so let your imagination walk around a bit.

>>3287

Can you send me one if somebody you coach leaves you a spare in his or her Will?

>>3290

Yes, because worrying about something one is not equipped to correct is going to help.

>>3290

It was a physical therapy machine that she broke and then threw away. It was just some stupid thing that gave you "massages" by giving small shocks of electricity that just tensed your muscles temporarily.

Insanely stupid and ineffective device - I tried it myself - but they're saying they want $3,300 for it. The thing was the size of an old gameboy and just basically zapped you like you would zap your tongue with a 9v. $3,300. Fucking ridiculous. She's talking to an attorney tomorrow about it because apparently the case was settled a year ago, and now the insurance company is asking for it back, long after the settlement was done. Office of Consumer Affairs said it sounds illegal for her to be billed post-settlement, hence contacting the attorney…

>>3291

This too. My mom has issues that nobody on this planet can solve. Even just being around her drives you crazy. I'm her son, but I have my own life and needs for leisure, too.

>>3075

Was the IRC closed down? I just joined and it appears I'm the only one here…

>>3296

It's not down, it's just a bit inactive at the moment since it hasn't been spread properly.

Speaking of, half chan has had a dreamcast thread for the past few days, but it's apparently filled with people fighting. Kind of amazing how fast a dreamcast thread can go down the shitter over there.

>>3297

To be fair that happens basically anywhere. You either think you're a Dreamcast expert or think you're a Dreamcast expert. Most of the discussion around the console is a shit slinging match about who's right and who's wrong. Or ego stroking.

>>3298

A witness to the drama bomb that went off at DCemulation? Jesus christ, autism should be a terminal disease.

>>3300

I've been around long enough to see plenty of DC drama bombs go off. Detonated a few myself..

>>3296

You're using irc.freenode.net right? I've been idling it

>>3304

Lol, I'm really stupid. I was on QuakeNet's IRC server.

Alright, this will probably be the final Sonic Adventure 2 update. I've finished the hero and dark sides, not a single hiccup. There is one cutscene in the hero side where it streams separate audio and video tracks and there wasn't any lagging problem. I'm guessing there wasn't a problem because the KVCD video is a low bitrate. Assuming I get some time to finish the last story today then it'll be finished up and released.

Sonic Adventure 2 released and added to spreadsheet.

>>3321

>>>3323

>>>3321

>Great! Can't wait to try it out, man. Sorry I couldn't send an E-mail during testing phase. Keep up the good work!

>>3324

>>3323

I fucked that up, sorry. You get what I mean anyways.

What do you have in mind after Surf Rocket Racers?

>>3325

Eh, I dunno. We'll see. Most games don't take as much work as SA2 so it's a bit more spur of the moment.

Random thought, but maybe a WinCE game with CDDA. I have an idea about why CDDA won't work with those games but I haven't ever tested my theory.

>>3327

>WinCE game

Oh shit! I just remembered that Super Runabout has no decent release out there. I know it's not the best game ever but it certainly could use a better treatment. Last release I saw was a DCRes one that had no Audio tracks. It came with a shitty script that didn't work either.

Also, I just remembered that the best version of Sega Rally 2 (the japanese one) hasn't even been touched yet! Talk about a game that should've had more attention.

>>3328

I think there might be a DCCM release of Super Runabout? I remember there was some racing game that someone in the old RDC IRC was working on and it had some really bizarre stuff going on with it. It did something where it checked the drive firmware to verify it was reading a GD-ROM or some shit like that, which I guess was a violation of Sega's SDK terms. I might be thinking of Rush 2049, though.

>>3329

If there is it should definitely be added to the spreadsheet. Otherwise there aren't that many to be seen on TIZ other than the ones mentioned

There's something about the Dreamcast version of SA2 I really like more than the others, I think it might be the specular effects on the models. I find it a bit funny that not all the Big the cat cameos have been ported over. Them fucked up character shadows though…

>>3332

There's something about it that just sort of feels different. I don't know if it's the controller or how the game runs or what.

>>3413

>dat faux-British accent that drops in and out

>dose awkward as fuck models

I never wanted to play this back in the day, but now I kinda do.

Test post.

>>3420

Not sure what's going on here.. timeouts.

>>3231

I could possibly password protect this sheet and make it into a similar submit and review model. The only issue there is sourcing group reviews and discussion out of that. Google Sheets are sort of 2D in that aspect.

Ideally I'd like some sort of issue tracker with git-styled submission and a website with a searchable database. All in due time.

You can also fork the sheet as it is. There's one person who has, though who hasn't pulled an update in a while.

>>3421

God a website with a database would be fucking beautiful

>>3432

Was thinking something similar in function to that PS database with a form more similar to vndb/vgmdb.

This is probably more than a year out given my schedule, but I'd be willing to crowdsource the development by throwing build scripts and config files up on github.

>>3413

what is this

>>3364

I think it's the fact that the models look slightly different and some cutscenes have different angles and such. The HD versions tend to borrow more from the gamecube enhanced port than the original one.

>>3435

>what is this

The Ring: Terror's Realm. Really awful Resi clone

Not really DC related, but I finished up my PS2 softmod kit and put it out. It's on TIZ, haven't put it on emuparadise yet. I'll get back to DC stuff now.

>>3421

Sorry I missed your message re: features for a database. Not sure if you're a what.cd member, but something like that would be a godsend. Individual games broken up into region, GDI and rips by each group.

Or are you looking for more like… technical features as opposed to UI?

>>3497

Oh man, this is sweet. Can't wait to play it! Keep up the good work!

Did you get to try it? What track did you like better?

>>3501

I didn't get to play it extensively enough to have a favorite track but it was definitely better than I thought it would be

>>3504

The few reviews I see talking about it mention that it looks a bit drab. I'm using a VGA adapter, so I don't really see it that much, since some tracks have some pretty neat effects like the New York track, or the Rome track.

Thought I'd take a shot at NFL 2k1 since I'm ready for football to start. Interesting audio formats at work here. Tried raw imports with a few different programs but I can't quite get it right. I'm thinking it's Yamaha ADPCM like SoulCalibur used. I'll have to poke around more.

>>3527

Not ADPCM, looks like VOX is correct. I think I'm going to have to either put this one on the back burner or just use Echelon's files. Most of the audio is packed into .DAT files, which have a corresponding .DIR file which seems to point to the offset of the individual sounds inside the .DAT file. It's not really worth it to work out the format for games that you can get for next to nothing.

Going to be releasing 6 or so games later today. Starting to dig into Shenmue II, I think I should be able to give it a pretty good treatment around the level of what I was able to do with Sonic Adventure 2, but we'll see.

>>3543

Can't really give a fair opinion. Never had a legit copy of it and only ever played Echelons rip.

7 new games added to the spreadsheet:

Marvel vs. Capcom NTSC-J

Crazy Taxi PAL and NTSC-U

Dynamite Cop PAL and NTSC-U

MoHo PAL

Resident Evil CODE: Veronica NTSC-U

>>3555

Does 10KHz have the 'gruffy' quality complained about in a lot of other releases?

>>3558

Not sure. It just sounds a bit fuzzy but that's with not being compressed to AHX. My other idea is to try to reduce the bit depth while keeping the sample rate higher. This should give it a fuzzier quality instead of the robotic sound.

I'll play around with it more tonight. It took me most of the day playing around with the scripts I wrote to get them behaving in the needed way to handle all those files

>>3559

I'm assuming that playing with the audio like that is the only way to get it to an 80-Minute size?

Is there some sort of way to optimize the bitrate and sample rate in such a way that the resulting audio is equal parts robotic and fuzzy, but both less so than if you were optimizing for one or the other? I'd think that the issues would be less noticeable if you did it this way, but I have no idea, since I haven't personally heard them.

>>3560

Yeah this sucker won't fit an 80 minute disc otherwise. There's a few posters on Shenmue Dojo who are constantly criticizing rippers for not taking out unused files but they've never provided any info on what is unused. This is a huge game, you'd have to be obsessed to be able to scan over the files and know what's not used.

Balancing the two qualities is sort of what I'm hoping to do, that's my theory too that it would be less grating overall to have a bit of each.

>>3558

http://vocaroo.com/i/s1M51hkkb3Bs

>>3481

No worries.. the internet is asynchronous.

UI is interaction, tying tightly to feature requirements, which drive the back end design decisions. I'll take a look at what.cd screenshots and put together some mockups in the next few months.

>>3529

My inconsequential vote for backburner. Might as well go for high quality releases imo, especially if the game is popular and available.

>>3555

This is nuts. Really shows the amount of effort that people have put in for prior releases.

Sorry guys, Adam koralik said that everyone should be getting atreyu187 rips. I'm hanging it up. He's proven himself to be the true DC guru again.

>>3573

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

>>3574

I kid. I guess he didn't actually say that I just misread an IM I had been sent. I am debating my own YouTube channel about DC stuff though.

>>3573

Adam Koralik can be pretty interesting to listen to sometimes on his retrospective video. But he has a horrible attitude towards his own fanbase and thinks he knows better.

Also he looks like a hobo.

>>3576

I really don't get the YouTube celebrity shit. It's just someone who is giving their opinion. That's all. It's especially stupid when a lot of the time he's not even 100% accurate on what he's talking about. His video about the Dreamcast's security in particular (I'd like to tackle that if I decide to go ahead with making videos). Whenever I see Adam Koralik actually post on a Dreamcast site, it's like the scene in Tron Legacy where Jeff Bridges shuts the power off in the club and everyone drops to their knees in reverence. It's fucking absurd.

>>3577

If you're going to be doing videos, disconnect that from any persona.

As old wisdom dictates:

>Objective Fact, Tits, or GTFO

>>3578

What in particular do you mean by "that?" That I don't get the celebrity status thing?

Anyways, small update on Shenmue II. A friend sent me a script he had used when working on the game. I realized that a bit allocation pattern is necessary for better AHX compression. I had seen the .bap files in the CRI tools, but I had no idea what they were for because I didn't realize that all of the AHX documentation was stored with the ADX documentation. So I read over that and now I get why my 10khz files didn't result in as much compression as I thought. I'm going to play around with the BAPs and see what type of results I can get. 10khz looks more promising now.

On an unrelated note, I had a theory about why WindowsCE CDDA games didn't play properly when ripped. The typical Dreamcast selfbooting method for CDDA results in a 2 second pregap. I thought this might be interfering with the playback. I did a test run on Virtua Cop 2 without pregaps but the CDDA still didn't play. I'm now wholly convinced that there's some sort of LBA references to the CDDA tracks at play here. I think I located the references, but I want to test it with an emulator to see if that's really what they are. If anyone has a working DEMUL setup (since it supports WinCE games), let me know and I can either supply you with a modified Virtua Cop 2 GDI or toss a PPF patch that will fix one of the references to see if alternate music will play. Basically I just want to test it by switching a reference for the Sega logo music to a song for the game.

>>3586

You're a god among men, sir. Want to play lucky hit?

>>3594

Not feeling too lucky because I ended up 25mb over the 80 minute size limit. I'll have to remove the logo CDDA, a small price to pay. I think I can still keep 10khz but use a slightly more aggressive BAP.

>>3597

I know you got your hands full doing this, but I was wondering how hard could it be to "fix" the dub dreamcast release of Shenmue II?

So far the decent one is the 99 minute version, while the 80 minute version sounds about as terrible as the regular current releases. Do you think if you did the same data compression methods you're doing for this one could make a difference?

Anyways man, keep up the good work!

>>3634

Honestly, I'm just not really interested in doing any more hack/mod type stuff.

Disc 1 is (pending burn test) finished.

Audio ended up being 9.5khz using a BAP with slightly more compression. Used AFS compactor to shrink the AFS files, so on and so forth. I had to remove the logo CDDA tracks and the disc change graphics for disc 1, 3 and 4. Not a huge improvement over 8khz, but it is an improvement.

Now I just need to do the same shit with the other discs. Oh boy.

Oh man I was really scared for this thread when I saw 8chan go down.

Dreamcast stonk.

Cracking into disc 2. 30,000 speech files in FREE02.AFS. There's more data in this disc, but there seems to be about the same amount of actual game data. As far as the media (voice) goes, there's more of it but it should still fit at 9.5khz. FREE02.AFS has been downsampled, getting at the rest of the speech now.

>>3582

Sorry for the wait. Meant "that" as in your Youtube channel, meaning to say to separate that persona from any other to avoid dragging any mud along with you.

>>2952

So what games are best on the system, other than Shenmue

>>3690

Try some of the mentions in this thread:

>>2985

>>2962

>>2987

I really like VOOT and EGG, personally.

added 3.Count.Bout.NEO4ALL.RC4-RDC to the list enjoy

>>3702

Thanks, dude! Hopefully these releases will last a while on MEGA

>>3690

Get Zombie Revenge and Dynamite Cop if you're into beat 'em ups!

>>3687

Really looking forward to how this turns out, man!

Shenmue II is a cruel mistress. Disc 2 isn't managing to give even a slight amount of cooperation. It's definitely not going to be the 9.5khz I got disc 1 at.

Downsampled everything to 8.5khz for disc 2. Still not enough space. I need to take off about 17mb. I guess I'll try 8.25khz. I'm not quite ready to admit defeat and take it to 8khz.

bamp

8.25khz not looking good either. I'm going to have to up the compression in the BAP and see what I can do. Back to MGS V….

Starting to think I need to do more research into how the BAP relates to audio quality. I looked deeper into some tools I was supplied that were used to make the existing 80 minute fullspeech rip. These use 10khz audio with a very aggressive BAP. Now I'm at a point where I'm wondering what would be better.. a lower bitrate with less compression or a higher bitrate with more compression. I haven't actually played the existing 80 minute so I'm going to grab that and see how it compares to what I've got set up for disc 1 with the 9.5khz and pretty lax BAP.

>>3823

I've played them and they sound okay, though I think the entire thing is in mono so it could be better.

>>3850

As far as I know all the speech files are mono anyways. I'm not touching any of the other audio. I dunno, starting to think Shenmue II is a bit of a waste of time. I want to download the existing 80 minute rip and decode the AHX, see what bitrate it actually ended up at and what I would need to do to improve on it. If it's just going to be just a slightly marginal improvement, then it's a waste of time.

Working on getting some new NoBS added to the spreadsheet (Mega is being bitchy):

Crazy Taxi (NTSC-J)

Frame Gride (NTSC-J)

The Ring: Terror's Realm (NTSC-U)

Sega Bass Fishing (NTSC-U)

Slave Zero (NTSC-U)

The rip of The Ring doesn't have the Echelon intro, so you can have a nice clean version.

New stuff added to the spreadsheet:

Street.Fighter.III.Double.Impact.(U)-NBS

JoJos.Bizarre.Adventure.For.Matching.Service.(J)-NBS

Evolution.The.World.of.Sacred.Device.(U)-NBS

Street.Fighter.III.Double.Impact.(E)-NBS

Evolution.2.Far.Off.Promise.(U)-NBS

Evolution.The.World.of.Sacred.Device.(E)-NBS

Tony.Hawks.Pro.Skater.(U)-NBS

>>3928

I want one, but I can't bother to spend the money. Also, for that asstarded amount of hot glue, you need to suffer.

>>3942

>Also, for that asstarded amount of hot glue, you need to suffer.

Not much in the way of reading comprehension, are you?

>>3947

Uh try the app the program the Russians made that slims GDIs for use with the HDD mod. I'm still of the opinion that those replacement devices are an insane rip off, especially considering how few games need any kind of significant sow sampling.

>>3952

*downsampling

>>3952

I'll check it out, thanks.

For me, $120 was worth it to have flawless playable copies of ever Dreamcast game ever released, without having to burn discs. I don't have to worry about my motor going out, or about the lens dying either. I don't have to worry about certain games that do require awful downsampling just to fit 700MB, and I don't have to track down 99 minute discs to get better versions either.

As a side bonus, the loadtimes for games are significantly reduced.

Pricewise, things will get much better once the ching chongs get off their ass and clone it. The reason GDEMUs are so expensive is because one guy literally builds each one by hand.

>>3954

I really don't think the laser "dying" should even be a concern in the first place. The Dreamcast is the only console where this is a concern and anecdotally I've never seen any evidence to support it as being even slightly true.

And that's actually not a horrible price for the GDEMU. I guess it's just the USB one that's really ridiculous. I'm hoping that Dreamshell gets going with the compatibility aspect and the HDD mod is more viable. That seems to be the best option since it lets you keep the GD-ROM.

How improved are the load times with the GDEMU? Is it as drastic as the PS2 with an HDD?

>>3958

Though it hasn't happened to me personally it supposedly can affect almost any CD-based system. Aside the DC, the PC Engine CD-ROM^2 and first gen PSX are known to be particularly susceptible.

>>3962

I'd be interested to know if it's actually due to the media being used or if it just has to do with quality control on the laser assembly. It's basically inevitable that a laser unit will either need to be adjusted or replaced and we've seen widespread failures before (the PS2).

>>3928

Would you mind providing a mod write-up with pictures once you're done? I'd be really interested in seeing how this comes together and might want to recreate it at some point.

You could host on github and be essentially guaranteed that the page will stay up forever. I believe images can be encoded as base64 and still display, saving you 404s with external hosting.

…in fact, I think I might even start a technically-minded dreamcast wiki there sometime in the near future (mods, technical info links and files [within legality], dev setups, networking guides). Goal would be to maintain a high quality of writing and content (structured, informative, standardized) and to stay away from hearsay where possible. Any thoughts on this?

Any of you guys converted a USB controller to mapelbus?

I want to hooked up some fight sticks to the DC that I have laying around. I can find a lot of guides going from mapel -> USB but not the other way around.

So how's the DC Katana box? Worth it?

>>3996

I haven't found anything to this end either, but here's another guy who built a MB->USB cable as part of a thesis project:

https://sites.google.com/site/leucemidusdc/Home

Key takeaways here would be some already-assembled documentation, in case you're missing any (patent, schematic).

A USB->MB adapter this might sort of be a piece of the holy grail for dreamcast longevity aside from emulating the GDROM and networking equipment, so report back if you have any progress.

Wanted to post some info that I had been sent, I don't know if any of you guys saw that Raspberry Pi Dreamcast server, but here's a link showing how you get it all set up:

http://blog.kazade.co.uk/p/dreampi.html

Seems pretty painless.

Also, there's a user trying to get an online community going. I'll redact his name, but here's the info:

"Also I have dreampipe.net and bb.dreampipe.net. You should check it out. Its a community i'm trying to start self contained in the DC browser. I think that'd be a cool tribal aspect to interact and converse with the community on the browser. But i'm in no way trying to compete with dc-t TiZ, OC, or anybody. I've heard the stories of feud between SCHTACK and DC-T. Again i don't want any bad vibes from anyone its for the people who still play online to use their browsers"

Sorry there hasn't really been any new stuff released, I've been doing some overtime at work. I'm hoping maybe I'll have some time to sit down today or tomorrow and knock a few games out.

>>4161

The only think that doesn't excite me about it is the line voltage inducer. I have no problem with soldering or tricky mods, I just don't particularly want to. I think I have an Apple USB modem around somewhere, I believe they were still packing them in when I bought a laptop. Curious if that one would play nicer than a generic one…

And for the bickering between communities, I dunno, it has always been there. There's members who really don't venture beyond certain forums, and a lot of forums still just absolutely forbid any kind of piracy talk. I could see that stance if it was still the year 2000, but it's not. All of the better PS2 communities allow or tolerate that type of discussion. The piracy aspect is really a gateway to the console for a lot of people. It's not necessarily that there are feuds, but it's not a very united community.

>>2952

shilling for /v/s wiki http://alltimevrecommendations.wikidot.com/

I dont know if any of you browse /v/ but we have been working working on a wiki to catalogue what is considered worthwhile in the board. The dreamcast (and overall sega sections) are quite barren.

The entries come from personal experience so please do recommend some games for the system.

Been a minute, just tossed some new shit on the spreadsheet:

Crazy.Taxi.2.(U)-NBS

Gundam.Side.Story.0079.Rise.from.the.Ashes.(U)-NBS

Hydro.Thunder.Hot.New.(U)-NBS

JoJos.Bizarre.Adventure.(J)-NBS

JoJos.Bizarre.Adventure.(U)-NBS

SoulCalibur.(U)-NBS

Street.Fighter.Alpha.3.(U)-NBS

Tony.Hawks.Pro.Skater.2.(U)-NBS

Anyways, this will be the only place to find this shit from now on. I was able to ignore TIZ only being used as a means to line the admin's pockets and accept it as a necessary evil to get games out there, but since he apparently got cucked by an arab and went full "BURN DOWN MOSQUES AND KILL MUSLIMS, STRAIGHT WHITE MALES ARE GOING EXTINCT," I don't think he deserves to make any more money off of shit I put up. Not to mention going on a tirade about how liberals can't deal with other people's opinions then banning several users for expressing differing opinions to his.

>>4222

Thanks for the ups and the laugh.

Next month around Christmas I'm planning to pull down the entirety of the spreadsheet for a local backup. The spreadsheet might go into suggest mode or otherwise be protected from vandalism/take down/destruction some time after that, but more news and discussion on that later.

I know nothing has happened yet.. but just to head it off.

>>4239

>>4222

You guys are cool and you should feel cool

>>4239

Someone put some shit on there like "DREAMCAST HAS NO GAMES MAYMAY" but they didn't mess anything else up. There were a couple of times that some of the cells have been blanked out, I think that was just someone accidentally hitting a space bar and not noticing. I've been keeping an eye on it and fixing stuff like that. People have been surprisingly civil with it considering that anyone can edit it.

Oh, I was also going to post that I've been working on a better rip of Guilty Gear X. The music is all cut down to size already, I didn't remove any tracks like Echelon did. Most of the tracks were sort of like Hydro Thunder where there was only about 1:30 of song and then it just looped, so I was able to cut it back pretty well without losing anything. I've also noticed that everyone who burns CDDA games has done it the Echelon way, which leaves a 2 second pregap. I figured out a few years ago if you use the -dao flag in cdrecord it removes the pregap. For games like GGX it means you get a full extra minute to work with (34 tracks, that would be 68 seconds wasted on pregaps). The only problem is that I'm not exactly sure how to get it hacked right. The game boots, goes through all of the menus and loads the match… but the match never starts. The characters just loop in their idle animations. None of the "standard" binary hacks will fix it. I'm going to have to take a look at Echelon's and see if I can figure out what they did.

>>4244

I think a large part of that is that the users who do come into contact with it recognise it as a resource, rather than a potential for funposting. That, and because you advertise on /vr/ and not /b with less ponies/

>>4245

Could it be that the fight-start code is looking for an absolute position on the disc's track layout? In your new image, would everything be shuffled forward? Just a random thought without any prior knowledge..

>>4281

I've fixed it but now the music tracks are off. I'm going to try to decompile it and see how the game is referring to the CDDA. Echelon got it working without dummy tracks (and I'd like to as well to save more music) but none of the standard CDDA stuff is fixing the references.

>>4284

So, how'd you go about fixing it? Hacking binaries to change to change where they were looking for the tracks on the disc?

>>4286

The match not starting wasn't related to the CDDA at all. There were checks to see if the game was running off of a GD-ROM or not that were causing the matches to not start.

This is about Saturn, but IRC said I should ask here so I'll try.

Does anybody know where I can find a decent rip of Burning Rangers (NTSC-J) for Saturn? The one I have won't start for me on my chipped and region-modded Saturn (it's a PAL unit that thinks it's an NTSC-J unit).

I've found a decent-looking NTSC-U rip that I could patch to NTSC-J but I'd prefer playing in the original Japanese.

OP here, glad to see this thread's still alive!

For the Saturn guy, where was your bad rip from? The only place I ever knew to get Saturn games was Gazelle Games, and they're down atm due to a DDoS. When they come back up I can look for that game

>>4302

I think it was from Emuparadise.

>>4308

I would maybe try one from The Iso Zone? They probably only have bad ones too, but it's worth a shot.

>>4309

The Isozone one is the good-looking NTSC-U one I was talking about.

>>4288

What an odd check. Why have it in the game when there was potential for a future set top box or pay per play rental box in the pipeline?

Jap devs, never change.

>>4389

Trying to prevent piracy. The Dreamcast was wide open at that point and everyone knew it.

If you like fighting games, best one i ever played was marvel vs capcom 2 for dreamcast. Dreamcast version was the best one. I tried it for ps2 and it wasnt the same. Emulating might make a difference because i think the dc controllers are what set it apart.

Hey comrade, have you ever tried to give a go at D2?

All I see on TIZ are some really crazy split releases.

>>4452

Can't say I have, my understanding is that there's not really anything that can be done with it. The game's ADX decoder is apparently hardcoded to the sample rates that the game's audio is encoded at, so trying to downsample anything means fucky playback. If there were some way the game's ADX handling could be modified then better releases should be possible

I bought a Dreamcast around 2000 for NFL Blitz because I liked the arcade game. It came with D2 and Shenmue. Shenmue we all know about so I won't comment much on it.

D2 was fucking weird, man. I mean weird. You are a woman in a business dress running around the snow shooting animals and aliens.

"So I'll count the roses…"

>>3328

>Sega Rally 2

That still hasn't been touched as far as I've seen. Which is weird, since TIZ only has one release of it and it doesn't even have music, I think.

Japanese one has better performance and some Ford cars, I believe.

>>4480

Japanese one hasn't really been touched either because it would have the same music issues.

just added the dcres uploads by rouken in the masterlist

i've never seen a *.cdi release of sonic adventure 2 with japanese voices, someone should make that.