Resurrecting Online Dreamcast Games

[pcwzrd13]

Does anyone know if there is any work being done to bring other Dreamcast games back online? I'd love to be able to use my broadband adapter with more games like Outtrigger, Bomberman Online, and of course Unreal Tournament. I don't know a whole lot about the technical details of bringing a game back online but it's been done before with games like PSO and Maximum Pool so what's the hold-up with the other games? I'd really like to know if anyone has looked into this? Maybe I'm wrong and it is completely impossible to set up private servers for any other games? I would find that hard to believe though.

Another thing I thought of a while back is what about the games that just have online leaderboards? I would think that those would be much easier to revive?

What game do you think would be the most likely candidate to bring back online?

Anyway, please post your thoughts...

[Kaizoku ChaosStar]

Would be awesome to get Daytona USA 2001 back up. We now have the original one on PSN and XBLA (PSN community sucks), and my copy of the Japanese version is being shipped as I write this comment... so yeah, go for it.

[pcwzrd13]

so yeah, go for it.

I wish I could but my programming knowledge is very limited. I know Visual Basic but that's about it. I've dabbled in C++ but I don't even think I remember how to make a simple "Hello World" application. Besides, I can't even figure out how to read the files from a Dreamcast ROM. I'm hoping some of our resident programming gurus can shed some light on the situation.

[Jenkins]

The problem is we need the source code of the game, the right server software or at least the original server from SEGA back online (to trance the packets/flow between server and client).

SCHTHack did it with PSO. He logged the communication between the console and server. After gathering enough information he wrote his own software. Took some time but it's not impossible. But for this method the original server must be still online.

The server software from Maximum Pool came from Tino, who is a admin of the PAuth board. Fortunately the DC connects to the same rooms as the PC version. Will be forever online! Like Quake III Arena (US). Same server for PC/DC.


Unreal Tournament uses a different/special build of the UT server. It is possible to host a arena with the PC version but after connecting the DC expect something special or different. To understand what the DC wants the encryption/compression of "ENTRY.DAT" must be broken.



Leaderboard: Few games send their data to a specific hardcoded IP, like F355 Challenge or Daytona USA 2001. It would be possible to figure out which IP it was but the game must be hacked. Furthermore the data must be send to another server, which understand the packets.

F355 requires a CGI script to send out the results to the opponents by the way.


Games like MSR or F355 ask you to save your ghost car on a VMU. This savegames can be opened and compared by a PHP script. Go online with your Dreamcast and upload it to this script. Like the PSO screenshot converter. This method works fine: http://matchingservice.dcarena.de/


Few people tried to get some games back online by looking into the official SDK from SEGA. By the help of the documentary they wrote their own server software or at least tried it, but it's more a trial and error than just writing a matching programm, imo.

You'll never really know what the games are require or waiting for. The source code is compiled and the files are encrypted (normally). This makes it so hard to get games back online.


The other possibility would be reverse engineering but this technic would takes ages... a lot of effort. Just for one single game.


If I'm wrong with anything, please tell me but this is my current state.

[wip3outguy7]

If I'm wrong with anything, please tell me but this is my current state.

Nope, that about covers it.

[pcwzrd13]

Thanks for the response Jenkins. It's very in depth. I still hope to get some more responses and maybe get a good discussion going. Maybe someone will have an epiphany!

[Aleron Ives]

As Jenkins said, there's really nothing to be done without packet logs. Making a private server for any game follows the same process. You connect to the official server with a proxy to log packets, and once you've documented every single game function, you can start analyzing the results. The client transmits various packets to accomplish various functions, and the server transmits various packets in reply or to initiate functions of its own. A private server is designed by looking at what the client sends and what the official server responds, then writing a new program designed to offer those canned responses to the client's requests. Of course, the server often has to insert its own data into the packets to accurately represent the current situation in the game, but the structure of the packets stays the same. For a simple game like PSO, the server mostly needs to act as a hub to forward data between the clients, since they don't connect directly to each other.

Without some connection to the original server (in the form of those logs or source code), making a private server is anywhere from impractical to impossible. Even the simplest task, like getting PSO to connect to its online mode, would be unattainable in that situation. You'd have the ability to see what PSO transmits when it tries to connect, but you would have no idea how the server is supposed to reply. It's impossible to guess what the reply would be, since there's no way to predict the structure of a response from a query, and guessing wrong makes the game either do nothing or crash. It's like trying to reconstruct a conversation between two people when you only have the first statement from one of the participants, the response of the second person could be anything, you can't see the second reply until you guess the first reply correctly, and you don't understand the language being spoken.

The only reason Dreamcast games like PSO can still go online is because people like Schthack had the foresight to record the game's "conversation" ahead of time for future reference. In cases where nobody did that, there's no hope of bringing the games back without help from Sega. Even reverse engineering the games isn't guaranteed to work, because unless a game contains specific details that a programmer can use to extrapolate what a server should be doing for every possible in-game situation, the game only contains information on how it will react to what the server does, not what the server should be doing. To get that information, it would be necessary to reverse engineer the original server program, and if somebody had that program, there wouldn't be a need to do any reverse engineering in the first place.

[pcwzrd13]

Thanks Aleron. It's kind of a bummer but you explained everything very nicely. I still have hope that someone will be able to get a new game online eventually but I see it would be quite a bit of work.

Has anyone tried to contact any of the former hosts? Sega probably wouldn't release anything but it might be worth a try. I know Gamespy hosted (and still hosts) a few games. Two games I'm not sure about are POD Speed Zone and Speed Devils Online which both have a question mark next to them on the Online Consoles list.

[rooster]

I had no idea it's so complex to make a private server for these games.. yikes. I think we should ask Sega to release some source code! Failing that, ask Anonymous to release it for them.

As for which game to bring back online, I think games lacking offline multiplayer should get priority! Namely, Alien Front. Also F355 since almost nobody has the system link cable.

[wip3outguy7]

I think we should ask Sega to release some source code!

...if they even have the source code anymore.