Entrevista al programador del DREAMER

Traducción por Da_Vinci

Dreamer's programmer interview

1. If your emulator could work with commercial games, would you release it now?

The truth is no, it´s too soon for a Dreamcast emulator able to play commercial games, we have to realize it´s a rather new system and it´s now when it´s really selling good. An emulator that could take its place would mean great losses for SEGA, and that´s not what I want to archieve with my emulator.I don´t want this emulator to be considered as warez.

2. Why have you programmed your emulator?

The main reason is the same as UltraHLE´s programmers say they did their emulator, to demonstrate that nowaday´s hardware can handle with such a powerful system as a dreamcast is. I´ve also done it to help everyone who wants to program for dreamcast and don´t have the means to try their work in a real system (a CDR, a link cable or even people who don´t even have a dreamcast).

3. Do you think nowaday´s PC hardware has enough power to handle correctly DC games?

The emulator is being developed with an Athlon 600 Mhz with 192 MB de RAM and its power is more than enough to handle the demos we have for now. We will have to wait for the 3D hardware to be fully emulated, to see how it behaves with games that use 100% of the hardware. I hope the speed will be acceptable in a system like mine.

4. Tell us in which development stage your project is now.

Till some days ago the emulator was on hold, as I had got emulated everything I had info about, but with the release of Dan´s 3D demo, I´ve started to work with 3d. Until now, the emulation status is:

- Every SH4 opcodes. Most of them have been tested (In the previous version there were some of them that didn´t work, specially a jump one).
- FPU opcodes are emulated, but I´ve only tested some of them. I know there are yet some problems with divisions.
- CDROM. Some of the commands are emulated, but not all of them, just the necessary. This makes commercial games not to work.
- Video Hardware. 2D hardware is emulated and tested to work correctly. 3D hard is being started to develop.
- Not so long ago DMA controller and Store Queues (needed for 3D emulation).
- Digital controls work 100%. Analogic controls still need to be emulated.

5. Do you think SEGA will do with your emulator the same Sony did with Bleem?

What it happened with Sony and Bleem was due to the commercial status of bleem. People pay for bleem and don´t have to pay for a PSX (which is more expensive), so that Sony is losing sales. There has never been any problem (I think) between Sony and Psemu, as Psemu was free. Although we all know what happened between Nintendo and N64 emu programmers, but that´s historye. Apart from that, Sega doesn´t have to care about the emulator. It won´t work with commercial games (until some time in the future).

6. Cand DC be emulated with info found in Internet?

The emulator has been developed ONLY with public information from Internet. No information coming from a SDK, Devkit or whatever you want to call it has been used. There are many urls in Internet dedicated to legal documentation for dreamcast and I just have used this information.

7. What will you use for 3D acceleration: D3D, Glide, OpenGl or Software?

Acceleration will be via Direct 3D by now, although I don´t discard using OpenGl.

8. What do you think about some emulator programmers´ attitude? In case you don´t know what we mean, we´ll give you some clues....Reality..., FPS, ....

We have to respect programmers opinions, in fact they do it for free and it takes quite some time to make an emulator. Although personally don´t share the decissions of some of them, noone has to believe he´s the king of the world and say whenever you want, I quit, and now let´s get those peope that wait something from me really dissappointed. I would´t like to dissappoint people who´s been for some time waiting for a new version.

9. How do you see emulation nowadays?

Emulation has advanced a lot, in part thanks to the fact that computers´ power is increasing incredibly. Not so far ago, N64 seemed impossbile and look now, there are many n64 emulators. I hope the same will happen with dreamcast. I personally think emulation just needs another little pull, a emulator that revolutionates all that again as it happened with UltraHLE (hey, I´m not talking about a Dreamcast emulator). Personally I´d like a CPS2 emu, I´ve been waiting for years to be able to play D&D.

Click HERE to download the emulator