N64 Ports

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Roareye
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Re: N64 Ports

Post#11 » Tue Jan 19, 2021 4:09 am

Anthony817 wrote:Well, we all know that SM64 just BARELY fit into the DC's limited 16mb of RAM and still is not at playable speeds with sound enabled even on my 240mhz overclocked DC. I would say not even 5fps faster with OC mode enabled. So the thing is, it is the largest cart based console, and we want to port games over to the DC and expect it to load the full game into RAM at start. Not super feasible unless you do the 32MB RAM mod on DC. That in and of itself is a whole separate thing not going to get into.

But I feel like even if Goldeneye and OOT were ported over from decompiled source, it may require the double RAM mod to even have a chance of running full speed with sound on. Those larger games sound even less likely. If we want more retro console exclusive games brought over, we have to look for projects that people are already working on and bring to the attention of community developers with the skills. Driver 2 a PSX exclusive game was recently ported over to the PC with a decompiled source, and that would be perfect for the system since the original console it is from was also disc based and loaded each mission separately into memory unlike N64 which is cart based and everything resides in memory when loaded.

So honestly, now as it stands and as I see it N64 ports are not going to be best suited for the DC unless we get the super small early games and somebody implements music from audio files streaming off disc or something since it would optimize way better for the DC.

Well how possible would that be? Streaming the audio from "disc" (either real or via GDEMU)? Plus could a GDEMU modded DC run these games much more easily by treating the "disc drive" as akin to cart space? Using a real disc drive might be too slow to read, but perhaps the GDEMU can speed the process up enough to be feasible? That might salvage some precious RAM for the emulation/port to run?

cloofoofoo
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Re: N64 Ports

Post#12 » Tue Jan 19, 2021 9:30 am

Ragfish wrote:
cloofoofoo wrote:Think about how bangaioh and star wars racers were n64 ports probably bigger than mario64 and had no problems dc. Of course those were commercial endeavours with tens of people behind them.

A little off topic but I've always been curious how well the DC would be able to handle Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. It was originally released on PC, and PS1 and DC ports were reported to be in development, but in the end all it got was an absolute miracle port to N64 where it had practically no compromise compared to the PC version. To this day I still can't believe it exists.

Factor 5 stated that if it weren't for the N64 cartridge format they never would have been able to get a single level running, and so I've always wondered if it would have been possible on DC. The original PC version required tons of ram and had higher minimum specs than most PC games that got near perfect DC ports (such as Half Life and MDK2).


Went to check out the requirements for that game on pc and it made me laugh. I think you over exaggerated. Pc to dc games/ dc to pc games already had those requirements mostly since day one( 32 mb of ram/ 4 mb vga). Theres some ports that while on pc required 64mb/128mb ram and 16/32mb vram. Its really no indication how it will run on the dreamcast. But if ported correctly to the dc it would be no problem to run it. Most likely got cancelled for financial reasons than technical.

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Re: N64 Ports

Post#13 » Tue Jan 19, 2021 1:01 pm

cloofoofoo wrote:Went to check out the requirements for that game on pc and it made me laugh. I think you over exaggerated. Pc to dc games/ dc to pc games already had those requirements mostly since day one( 32 mb of ram/ 4 mb vga). Theres some ports that while on pc required 64mb/128mb ram and 16/32mb vram. Its really no indication how it will run on the dreamcast. But if ported correctly to the dc it would be no problem to run it. Most likely got cancelled for financial reasons than technical.

What are some examples of those? There are some that I know of with higher requirements, like Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament, but those were not even close to PC perfect. I guess there's Soldier of Fortune, if you can consider a game with literal 2 minute loading times a good port.
Last edited by Ragfish on Tue Jan 19, 2021 3:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Savlon
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Re: N64 Ports

Post#14 » Tue Jan 19, 2021 1:59 pm

Anthony817 wrote:Well, we all know that SM64 just BARELY fit into the DC's limited 16mb of RAM and still is not at playable speeds with sound enabled even on my 240mhz overclocked DC. I would say not even 5fps faster with OC mode enabled.

Are the videos on youtube emulated or something then? The ones I saw looked full speed albeit without sound. Edit: I watched another one that ahs sound and it runs close-ish to full speed sometimes but more like the N64 version emulated under daedalus on the PSP (which always amazes me especially considering how the SNES emus on PSP usually can't even do mode 7 at all or at full speed). Hi-res though though I don't know if an emulator is doing that and I get the impression that fillrate is meant to be the DC's strong spot, though I also get the impression that GPU acceleration isn't used that much in homebrews?

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Anthony817
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Re: N64 Ports

Post#15 » Tue Jan 19, 2021 3:16 pm

Yeah, so the videos running full speed are with sound disabled. It is definitely running full speed that way. Once you turn on the audio, while it does fit fully into memory, just barely. I think mrneo240 said it was like 512kb or something left in free memory after all that. So it just fits, but he and others speculated that if one were to rewrite how audio was handled, one could stream audio files from the disc image and it would not come at a cost of much computational expense supposedly, if any. Forgive me if I am explaining poorly, others feel free to chime in who know more about that sort of thing.
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Ian Micheal
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Re: N64 Ports

Post#16 » Tue Jan 19, 2021 3:22 pm

sm64 with nulldc and limit off needs 500mhz to run fullspeed with no sound stutter.. and it's super fast..

Sound is always slow on dc acia chip takes heaps of time more then 4 x slower then video it says it runs at 45mhz when pigs fly it does.. Kos runs it in slow mode as well as standard on test a few people did back in the day it runs at 12mhz if that when running throu kos

cloofoofoo
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Re: N64 Ports

Post#17 » Tue Jan 19, 2021 3:34 pm

Ragfish wrote:
cloofoofoo wrote:Went to check out the requirements for that game on pc and it made me laugh. I think you over exaggerated. Pc to dc games/ dc to pc games already had those requirements mostly since day one( 32 mb of ram/ 4 mb vga). Theres some ports that while on pc required 64mb/128mb ram and 16/32mb vram. Its really no indication how it will run on the dreamcast. But if ported correctly to the dc it would be no problem to run it. Most likely got cancelled for financial reasons than technical.

What are some examples of those? There are some that I know of with higher requirements, like Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament, but those were not even close to PC perfect.


You just think too highly of that game. Ill give just two examples and that require alot more than indiana jones requirements. One is the shitty game conflict zone with requirements directly from ubisoft website and a port from late generation dreamcast to pc, sakura taisen 4. Both games require beefier cpu and more ram and vram to run on pc. Theres more but theres no point.

Conflict zone:
Minimum Requirements
Windows 95, 98, ME, 2000
Pentium III 400 or better
128 MB RAM
4x CR-ROM drive
3D accelerator card with at least 8MB VRAM (or 16MB PCI)
Sound Blaster compatible sound with DirectX 8 support
Microsoft compatible mouse
Modem or Internet play
650 MB free hard drive space
DirectX 8 (included on CD)

Sakura taisen 4 ( min/recommended)

Windows 98/Me/2000/XP 日本語版 (Windows 2000 の場合、SP2以降)
CPU Pentium III 1.0GHz 以上 Pentium 4 1.4GHz 以上
メモリ 128MB 以上 256MB以上
HDD空き容量 2.5GB 以上
ディスプレイ
解像度 640x480 ドット 以上 HighColor(16ビット) 以上
グラフィック
ボード Direct3D対応
VRAM 16MB 以上 Direct3D対応
VRAM 64MB 以上
Last edited by cloofoofoo on Tue Jan 19, 2021 3:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Anthony817
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Re: N64 Ports

Post#18 » Tue Jan 19, 2021 3:37 pm

Ian Micheal wrote:sm64 with nulldc and limit off needs 500mhz to run fullspeed with no sound stutter.. and it's super fast..

Sound is always slow on dc acia chip takes heaps of time more then 4 x slower then video it says it runs at 45mhz when pigs fly it does.. Kos runs it in slow mode as well as standard on test a few people did back in the day it runs at 12mhz if that when running throu kos


But isn't that just sort of brute forcing it? On DC surely there must be valuable computational savings by rewriting the audio for that game since it is running so well without any enabled.
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Re: N64 Ports

Post#19 » Tue Jan 19, 2021 5:04 pm

Enabling it is stalling the main cpu as well not just sound since mixing is being done on the sh4 ... cdda with triggers could be done see vvvvdc

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Ragfish
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Re: N64 Ports

Post#20 » Tue Jan 19, 2021 5:27 pm

cloofoofoo wrote:You just think too highly of that game. Ill give just two examples and that require alot more than indiana jones requirements. One is the shitty game conflict zone with requirements directly from ubisoft website and a port from late generation dreamcast to pc, sakura taisen 4. Both games require beefier cpu and more ram and vram to run on pc. Theres more but theres no point.

I'd never heard of conflict zone, but yeah that seems like a good example (assuming it runs on par with the PC version, comparisons online don't seem to exist). Sakura Tasien on the other hand started as a DC game and was ported to PC several years later so the higher requirements make sense.

I should make it clear that I don't actually care much about the game, my initial post was meant as more of a "I don't know of any non compromised PC ports to DC that required higher specs", and not "Ha ha, I bet the puny DC can't run anything better than this game!". When I asked for examples, it's because I'm curious, not because I'm trying to prove you wrong.

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