Dreamcast emulators on PC

[dark]

How many PC emulators have there been for dreamcast? I've been very surprised to find so many available, especially when many other systems like PS2 or gamecube basically only have one emulator that provides good quality results. Here's the names of ones I'm familiar with:

-Redream
-Flycast
-Reicast
-Demul (great compatibility, but seems like it needs a high powered PC compared to others for optimal results. Emulator is also no longer actively being worked on?)
-NullDC (old, great performance on low spec PCs but some graphical issues with transparencies)
-Makaron (old? I have no experience with this one)
-Chankas (old, I have no experience with this one)
-Icarus (old, I have no experience with this one)

[kremiso]

a couple of infos that could be useful, possibly not updated because i don't use newer emulators :

- Demul and Makaron can run WinCE games

- Makaron is very picky in reaching to make it run correctly, seems does not like Direct X 10 hw
yes it's old, but with a cool interface imo
iirc it can also run a couple of Naomi games (possibly not greatly, due its age)

- the 0.5.7 was the last Demul release that works with Direct X 10 hw, after that you require at least DX11
Demul has a full screen bug in some pc, you need to play with maximized windows to avoid audio stuttering/bad running

- NullDC cannot run anything that use MMU /WinCE
btw, it's probably the better choice for who have an old dx10 pc
the old 1.0.3 release does contain also the Chankast audio and video plugins; about this last i can say that the audio plugin is now useless because VERY outdated and of low quality, but instead using the combo Chankast video + NullDC audio can sometime 'unlock' some emulators/homebrews that does not work in other ways

[Ian Micheal]

There was an update to Demul just not on the main site

Code: Select all

Demul v0.7 180426

PowerVR2:
* fully emulated scaler/filter, should fix most if not all games which was cut in size if in TV-modes
* filtered NaN UV texture coordinates (Soul Reaver lifebar)
* filtered negative vertex coords (MK Gold with ATI fix)
* allowed upto 128 layers
* emulated primary/secondary render target buffers for Opaque/PunchTrought lists (Agartha proto flashlight)
* fixed MvSC2 SCORE blinking
* handle edge case ELAN IRQs
Display:
* auto hide mouse cursor when in full screen (5sec timeout)
* prettify "start in full screen" option
* renamed SPG/GPU display to FPS/RPS
Input:
* corrected purupuru device reply (Resident Evil 2)
* fixed xinput crash if attempt to configure inputs during emulation
* fixed few games with inverted "pedal" inputs
AICA:
* fixed AEG/FEG which might stuck in edge cases (some sounds in MvSC2, ReVolt jump sound, etc)
NAOMI:
* fixed RF ID generators for Dinoking, Love&Berry, etc
* small correction JVS I/O Sense line
Misc:
* patch for Orion Puzzle Collection (workaround for Kalisti SDK bug)
* documented actual game developers in game list

* fixed image distortion on Nvidia GPUs
* rebuilt using latest Visual Studio
https://forum.emu-russia.net/viewtopic. ... 178#p26178
WIP major updates are here..

-Redream -- for noob users no wince support major problems with homebrew dont support bios font it puts it's own replacement which is nothing like the dreamcast clunky annoying gui system /// Any upgrade or up scaling you have to pay which is free on demul.. Has number of problems with KOS..
-Flycast -- Most Acurate dma timing of all of them it dont allow streaming from 2 places at once alows connection to online for playing dreamcast games..
-Reicast -- Very active major work was done last year on a complete HLE bios and for dev's a debugger and is really what flycast is based on

Both flycast and Reicast please use stand-alone versions not some front end with them and get the new builds and not the rubbish included in retro arch


-NullDC (old, great performance on low spec PCs but some graphical issues with transparencies) Other problems no pvr back buffer or shadow volumes number of pvr features are missing But supports console output... There are new versions and there is a new version in the works from the ground up Skmp said..
Example i use a custom version of nulldc by mrneo240 and one by 111 that allows running direct of elf files


-Demul (great compatibility, but seems like it needs a high powered PC compared to others for optimal results. Emulator is also no longer actively being worked on?) It is but not in the main site..
best emulator is Demul by a country mile.. Really dont need a very high end pc i have old 2008 quad core with windows 7 and gtx460 card and it's 100% speed all the time.. Now it's 2.8ghz with 8gb of ram You need clock speed for this emulator more then anything and a ok card that supports dx11.. If you have any know how on using emulators of any kind it's the best supports almost all pvr features but again not all..
Demul supports many systems and proper sound speed of the acia also can upscale to 4k for free..

[kremiso]

i want add a github link, if someone want to test also the latest Makaron version (2012), called MakaronEX
just for preservation purpose :

https://github.com/PhoenixInteractiveNL/emuDownloadCenter/wiki/Emulator-makaronex#menu

[dark]

Thanks for letting me know about Demul still being updated. I grabbed the latest version and it runs much better than the older version I had. Sadly, I was hopeful the nvidia fixes might help with a Virtua Fighter 4 bug where stages that contain certain lighting or reflections cause the characters to become invisible, which is apparently only an issue on PCs with nvidia cards, but no dice.

If anyone uses Model 3 Emulator for sega model 3 games, that is another emulator that is updated with little fanfare in a forum thread, and there have been extensive updates and graphics fixes since the last "official" release circa 2012.