This forum is for discussion pertaining to homebrew and indie software for the Dreamcast, such as homebrew games, emulators/interpreters, and other homebrew software/applications. Porting requests and developmental ideas are not to be made here; you can make those here. If you need any help burning discs for homebrew software, this is the place to ask as well.
The Dreamcast scene does need some limelight, none of my friends even considered the DC a viable Homebrew system untill I showed them these sites. More publicity, a more concentrated effort by all the people in the community to not only get the word out, but also bring everything together. Coming in here as a total newb, I have to say that its daunting just to think about all of the seperate web sites, and to try to keep track of them all. I've never been a "website bookmarker" but this has made me start.
Little solace comes
to those who grieve
as thoughts keep drifting
and walls keep shifting
this great blue world of ours
seems a house of leaves,
that's another good idea....we need sega to recognize that the Dreamcast isn't dead in the hearts of the fans, and that there are still lots of people who play it, and make stuff for it...
Sega already knows we exist. Have you not heard of the recent cease and desist letter to a warezy homebrew/emu site in which dcemu was quoted as being an example of a legal site for the same stuff?
there are more examples that supposedly aren't to be spoken of in public, but exist (apparently).
If Sega was really against all this, Feet of Fury would have never happened. In fact, since then the two newest releases required Goatdan to get Sega to talk to the pressers in order for them to allow him to press the discs (because they thought it might be illegal). (iirc)
"When you post fewer lines of text than your signature, consider not posting at all." - A Wise Man
There are certainly aspects of the PowerVR 3D which are still not well understood by the homebrew. They are tricky or impossible to use with the KOS libraries. But some headway is being made. I think the real reason for a lack of 3D homebrew is that it takes a great many more skills to bring together a 3D game than a 2D game.
It's not really the extra programming, it's modelling, skinning, scene building. All these things are extra skills. A 2D game can get by with coding, artist and sounds. To do the 3D stuff you need to find those extra skills too. That's easy for a professional studio, but tough to coordinate for a homebrew team.
Back on topic, I think it's an excellent idea to ask Sega. There's no harm asking. and in the past some good things have come out of Sega because people asked. Often they came out with strings attached, but it's still progress. I agree that we would be better targeting the right contacts instead of generic email addresses.
As far as the games coming out of Japan are concerned, I don't know how they are licensed. One assumes that they have the standard DC license, but some of these games have been developed for Naomi boards in arcade machines, and the DC release licensing may have nothing to do with the DC dev-kit itself.
Most of the DC games being released in japan are dating sims and slideslows, that are not naomi ports. There is a good chance most use the WinCE devkit.
I'm not saying it's a BAD idea to ask, I'm just givings points as to why Sega wouldn't release the dev kit.
"When you post fewer lines of text than your signature, consider not posting at all." - A Wise Man
Quzar wrote:If Sega was really against all this, Feet of Fury would have never happened. In fact, since then the two newest releases required Goatdan to get Sega to talk to the pressers in order for them to allow him to press the discs (because they thought it might be illegal). (iirc)
Not exactly, but sort of.
Let me just say this for now, and I'll type a whole bunch later:
Sega does a heck of a lot more for the DC Homebrew scene than anyone can easily realize. I'll get into what I mean by this later.
-and-
Sega can't officially recognize them at this point in time due to strange legalities (At least, that's how I see it).
Anyway, either tonight or tomorrow I'll type a lot more on this issue...
Yah, i can see waht Carbon14 is saying, and i know Quazar is giving constructive criticism, and i can see the veiwpoints that we all have, but hey, the way i figure it is that it's worth a shot, even if it doesn't succeed we've still gotten somewhere...
GyroVorbis wrote:Back on subject. What the scene could use more than anything is some publicity. Not too long ago I tried to get Dreamcast.com for us, but some asswipe got it to resell for like $5,000. I'm sure if Sega said something, it would make quite a difference.
All right, I've been meaning to reply when I had a second, so here goes...
Sega has done all that they need to for the community, and there are reasons for not letting it go further than they have. First, about the development kits -- as someone else pointed out, what's the point? At this point, KallistiOS is more than ample for what is needed, and it would essentially take relearning the Dreamcast to do something else.
On top of that, the Dreamcast technology is still viable. That is a huge reason that Sega won't release it. There are still Naomi games coming out for it. There are still some Japanese games being released. Who knows what the future may hold? What if someone wants to pay Sega to take the hardware and use it in a watch? Or built into a TV? I'm not saying it will happen, but it could. And really, the only system technology that has been 'released' was the Atari Jaguar -- not because Hasbro (who owned Atari at the time) necessarily wanted to, but because they were under contract to complete a game by encrypting it for a company, and they couldn't get the key. Instead of facing a possible lawsuit, they 'gave' the world the rights to develop on the console.
Why doesn't Sega link to Dreamcast sites? Because they aren't Sega related or controlled sites. If Sega throws up a link to some site, if that site suddenly decides that with the increased traffic from Sega.com that they are going to make a bunch of money by turning their site into a porno site, then Sega looks really bad. And what is holding the site to actually keeping it clean?
So why doesn't Sega at least release the development information? Again, what point would there be to that? It doesn't work in KallistiOS to my knowledge, and some of it is propreitary.
Why doesn't Sega sell dev kits at cost? Because Sega doesn't MAKE dev kits any more. When they made them, they sent them out to various places that would be coding for the 'Cast. Sega didn't make a thousand that are sitting in a warehouse. As for the ones that they have, Sega probably only has the kits that were used in house, which they probably would want to keep in case they ever wanted to look at code for future games. Remember, games like NFL 2K5 still have code based on their DC originals. There is still a market for this stuff.
As for what I meant by the 'Sega does a lot for the DC community,' let me offer these things as proof:
1) Sega never tried to thwart the Dreamcast community from developing for its console.
2) Sega uses sites like this to point to as "legal" Dreamcast sites, while protecting their copyrights.
3) By protecting their copyrights so strongly, Sega stops illegal activities from cropping into the scene, which degrades it and ruins it very quickly as the vast majority of people suddenly come looking for the illegal stuff, not to help in any way. By Sega protecting their rights, they stop the illegal stuff from happening.
There is more, but I can't get into all of it.
Besides, what would any of this benefit us with? Sega won't suddenly start back up their presses for any US Dreamcast releases...
just one minor addendum: sega releasing development information would be helpful. There are some aspects of the Dreamcast's hardware that are still unknown, and while it is unknown wether or not the official development kits conatained information pertaining to some of these things, there has still got to be SOME bits of information that sega could release that would be helpful and in no way detrimental to them.
That being said, i of course recognize they have no obligation, nor need to go out of their way to do such a thing, doesn't mean it still wouldn't be nice =P.
"When you post fewer lines of text than your signature, consider not posting at all." - A Wise Man
@TyBO - I wasn't trying to pwn ya, it's just that thanks to how things have worked out in the past two years, I somehow think that I have a very good feeling of exactly how Sega feels about everything That having been said, I'm not the end all on the subject, but I do think I've got a TON of information about it.
@Quzar - I meant more like to control the TV, not to play games on it. Lets face it -- the life of the Dreamcast as a game system is over. But, at least for now, it is still a viable technology for the use of possible programming the hardware to run things on a set-top-box, for instance.
As for what's in those development kits, I know that some people have looked at the development information from where ever it has been obtained -- eBay, friends, work, etc. I think that the common information wouldn't be much better, and I doubt too much of the detailed workings are well documented or easy to find without releasing the entire source code.
goatdan wrote:
@Quzar - I meant more like to control the TV, not to play games on it. Lets face it -- the life of the Dreamcast as a game system is over. But, at least for now, it is still a viable technology for the use of possible programming the hardware to run things on a set-top-box, for instance.
As for what's in those development kits, I know that some people have looked at the development information from where ever it has been obtained -- eBay, friends, work, etc. I think that the common information wouldn't be much better, and I doubt too much of the detailed workings are well documented or easy to find without releasing the entire source code.
One never knows what could happen though...
I was mostly kidding, i understood that you meant not just a dreamcast slapped together with a TV, but the way it was stated begged for the divers thinger to be brought up.
Also, about hardware information, they could for example simply release something that says quite literally: <blah> register 0xblah0214 is used to blah. (in this example blah can be used for anything)
Yes, it is possible for people to look at the sources from real development kits, but as far as i know, kos has stayed away from that because of the obvious legal implications. This doesn't of course stop anyone from saying they figured it out on their own, but based on the fact that the two function so differently it would be safe to say that it hasn't been used to an extensive degree.
"When you post fewer lines of text than your signature, consider not posting at all." - A Wise Man
yah, i see what goatsdan was saying, even if they don't do anything like release the dev kits, they could at least give us some more useful information that wouldn't jeopardize their monetary value in the parts market....who knows, maybe they could be co-hersed into giving us some useful info....
Quzar wrote:Also, about hardware information, they could for example simply release something that says quite literally: <blah> register 0xblah0214 is used to blah. (in this example blah can be used for anything)
Out of curiosity, I was wondering if you were aware that Sega actually was doing that with the VMU. I remember reading an article awhile back where Sega was doing just that. Too bad they don't do that with the Dreamcast.
Personally, I wouldn't be interested in a dev kit. I know KOS is everything I'd ever want for now, and it is always getting better.
A little bit of publicity would be nice, but I see what you mean. Maybe not even a link just say like "Oh, and the Dreamcast isn't dead yet because THOSE CRAZY BASTARDS aka "Dreamcast Devvers" are still coding away for the white box."
GyroVorbis wrote:A little bit of publicity would be nice, but I see what you mean. Maybe not even a link just say like "Oh, and the Dreamcast isn't dead yet because THOSE CRAZY BASTARDS aka "Dreamcast Devvers" are still coding away for the white box."
You never know just what may come in the future.
I make no promises, but I know of some ways to indirectly get a lot of attention...
GyroVorbis wrote:A little bit of publicity would be nice, but I see what you mean. Maybe not even a link just say like "Oh, and the Dreamcast isn't dead yet because THOSE CRAZY BASTARDS aka "Dreamcast Devvers" are still coding away for the white box."
You never know just what may come in the future.
I make no promises, but I know of some ways to indirectly get a lot of attention...
Make vague, promising, hope-inspiring posts? If so, it's working
"When you post fewer lines of text than your signature, consider not posting at all." - A Wise Man
GyroVorbis wrote:A little bit of publicity would be nice, but I see what you mean. Maybe not even a link just say like "Oh, and the Dreamcast isn't dead yet because THOSE CRAZY BASTARDS aka "Dreamcast Devvers" are still coding away for the white box."
You never know just what may come in the future.
I make no promises, but I know of some ways to indirectly get a lot of attention...
Make vague, promising, hope-inspiring posts? If so, it's working
That only works on a small scale basis though...
What I'm hoping may happen would work on a much larger basis... Although unfortunately, I fear the chances of it happening are rather slim.
But hey, I'll keep up the vague, promising, hope-inspiring posts if for no other reason than to inspire myself
That having been said, I'm not the end all on the subject, but I do think I've got a TON of information about it.
