Ports of Open Source Games and Programs I'd Like to See on Dreamcast

[Anthony817]

Welcome to the site and thanks for digging further into these.

Well, if OpenRA is too much, what about updating the port of FreeCnC? It came out sometime around 2008 but lacked sound and I think was an early beta release.



https://sourceforge.net/projects/freecnc/

The homebrew game can be found in this compilation CD created by IberDC.

http://dcevolution.sourceforge.net/inde ... berdc_2010

[Nz17]

How about this Pong clone written in C++ with SDL 1.2?
https://github.com/James-Blackburn/Pong

[Indiket]

How about this Pong clone written in C++ with SDL 1.2?
https://github.com/James-Blackburn/Pong

Looks OK, and in fact it was a really easy exercise. Just few fixes and voilà!
Inside the zip file you will find the modified source code and the .bin file. Use the binary file to create a valid CDI.

I haven't test it on real hardware (only with emulator). Dunno if it will work on real hard, and the actual speed of the game.
Its a simple game for 2 players, no CPU. Player who scores 10, wins!

Enjoy!

[Anthony817]

OK, and in fact it was a really easy exercise.

Hey Indiket long time no see! How have you been?

What do you think about doing an updated port of FreeCNC I posted above?

[Indiket]

Hey Anthony! I'm fine, thank you!! Been very busy with real life hehe.

About FreeCNC, Chui told me long time ago that this engine uses too much memory for the Dreamcast. I think the demo is the most basic one: a single map, nearly no enemies and I think that there is no sound or music. That's why there was no improvements on it, such a shame!

[Anthony817]

Ah that is really unfortunate.

What would you think about maybe updating the Marathon trillogy Aleph One port bero did back in 2003? It runs full speed but has no controller or even mouse or save support. The only way you can play it is with a keyboard. And that just sucks.

Ian Michael uploaded the actual source and everything bero used to port it. So it should be pretty easily done vs just doing a port from scratch. In fact the latest version of Aleph One has some nice updates that should maybe be easy to back port. Such as joystick support, and the HD textures from the Xbox 360 version of Marathon 2.

[poopidoop]

i want arc ported with online capability
http://web.archive.org/web/200203290941 ... ierra.com/

[Ian Micheal]

I did get freecraft warcraft 2 engine working but it's so slow using 14 meg of memory ive not bothered to keep going ..

bero used kos1.1.7 and custom newlib and system calls that match unix.. infact all his ported work on dc linux with out change if some one would try them.. no real point .. just saying they match unix calls..

So far i have got quake 1 and to from him compiling and rott again.. not the others.. lots of errors

[leilei]

Another big thing against just demanding open source games for the Dreamcast is the deprecation-encouraging development model common with Linux and Free Software. They encourage 'upgrades' no matter how impractical they may be, like SuperTux losing its SDL software renderer for an exclusive GL backend, making that slower for anyone without an accelerated driver (like all BSD users at the time). Since computers can have loads of RAM, managing the memory footprint is often on the backburner. There's also some GL1.x games that gratuitously upgrade the renderer with no fallback (or a really bad fallback).

Also, there's the VMU issue. Games would have to be designed to fit their save data on 8" floppies.

[Ian Micheal]

It's why looking at the first few version of software from about 2003 is best. look for straight c No libs that we dont have. there's a lot of open src games that could be ported very well. Just not really the ones people want.