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Dreamcast Homebrew Scene Continues To Thrive
wraggster writes "Sega's Dreamcast might have succumbed to a premature death as a mainstream commercial console, but due to the efforts of the amateur and hobbyist fans of the Dreamcast, the Dreamcast Homebrew site, now freshly redesigned, has over 200 free and legal games, demos and multimedia software for use with the Dreamcast. From DC Movie Player through Robotfindskitten, there's still a multitude of good free DC software out there."
At an all-time low of $20 at EB.
:1
I wish awesome underground scenes like this received mainstream attention, but then I guess they wouldn't be too awesome anymore...
The DC homebrew folks have made some nice ports of DooM and Quake as well, which I recommend folks check out. It's a great use for your Dreamcast, if you've been letting it collect dust.
If you do anything, however, try out NesterDC (my experience here). A great, featureful NES emulator which supports everything you could want, including a DC light gun acting as an NES light gun for games like Duck Hunt! (Also, don't forget that you should only download ROMs for the cartridges you own. Even if you don't own any, there are a good number of homebrew NES games in the public domain that you can use to try out the emulator itself. My NesterDC disc has all the homebrews I enjoy playing and the ROMs for my entire NES collection.)
Curmudgeon Gamer: Not happy
The network adapter allows you to connect the Dreamcast to your network. It's also sometimes called a broadband adapter. Depending on you choices of games/software, you can do many things. If you use the linux/net bsd port I believe that you can SSH into other machines...do basic *nix stuff. There are some games for the Dreamcast that utilize the network connection (although few and far between). I've never had any experience with connecting one to a wireless network...my guess is it's not all that easy because the Dreamcast came out before wireless was proliferating as much as it is now. You can purchase special DC keyboards and mice that use the controller connectors...I've also found some stuff online that shows how to rewire a ps/2 device to work with it (sorry, lost the link a while ago...but I'm sure you'll find it if you google).
Hope that helps and good Dreamcasting (it's my favorite system out there).
Back in the early libdream days, you had to write your own routines for 2D graphics (3D was still off-limits) by writing directly to video RAM. Today, KOS supports 3D acceleration via the PowerVR chip, as well as support for various other pieces of once-mysterious hardware. And the SDL port lets you take a break from writing directly to video memory if you're doing 2D.
dcQuad is another Dreamcast project which I started working on after finishing the DC version of robotfindskitten. I've been messing around with SDL in Windows a bit lately, and I look forward to getting up to speed on the KOS implementation for my next project.
The Dreamcast comes with its own web browser with the broadband adapter, so you can browse the internet on your TV. I browsed with dial-up and it works rather well. You can check your email as well. I know that at GameFAQs and possibly other sites you can download game saves directly to your VMU. The VMU is a memory card with an LCD screen that can give you in-game information, allows you to call plays in sports games on your controller, and even has its own football game for it.
You should be able to use your Dreamcast on a network as well, since you can run NetBSD and Linux on it. There is no hard drive adapter, however.
It should be noted that the broadband adapter will run you around $75-100, with even the browser needed with the adapter costing you quite a bit. The game servers have all been shut down now, and even when they were up, there weren't many broadband enabled games. The adapter came out right around when the system was dying and was only sold directly at Sega's site I believe.
As far as I know, there isn't a way to go wireless.
The Dreamcast has a first-party keyboard and mouse that plugs into your controller port, each of which you can buy separately. You can use your thumbstick as a mouse as well.
Until Slashdot fixes the funny modifier, use insightful or interesting. The poster knows your intentions.
The Dreamcast BBA is hard to find lately and is usually at least $100. Unless you are a big dreamcast fanatic, it is probably not worth it. Not many games support it. If you only want it for homebrew, the coders cable (special serial cable) is available for about $20 I believe. You can upload games through that and even emulate an iso image as a cd in the drive over serial cable. It is slow but great for development. Otherwise just burn cds. As always, lots of great stuff available at lik-sang. I got an adaptor from them that lets you plug in a ps/2 keyboard, or a ps1/sega saturn controller along with a coders cable and an extension cord for the controller.