Free Dreamcast Homebrews?

[jbanes]

I'm a bit of a newb on the Dreamcast Homebrew scene, so I was wondering what everyone would recommend that I try?

 

So far I've learned all about Beats of Rage and the spinoff OpenBoR engine. I think it's amazing how much has been done with this engine. Everything from Street Fighter, to MegaMan, to Battletoads. (Though I can't get past the snowy jumping level on Battletoads. Anyone have advice on how to make the toad jump farther/run faster?)

 

That being said, I'm getting a bit tired of the same beat'em up being rehashed again and again. It would be nice to play other types of homebrew games. Yet I don't want to waste CD-Rs on boring games that I'm not going to play more than once. (I learned my lesson with Lunar Lander 2K. Blech.) So in the interest of expedience, what do you all recommend?

[Atari5200]

you may want to try out some dc emulation sites as they often have or lead to good homebrew sites. Sadly, i've only tried Beats of Rage and it was pretty damn fun, it was also ported to the GP32 and is great on a handheld as well and all the mods work too, within the GP32s ram limitations.

[jbanes]

you may want to try out some dc emulation sites as they often have or lead to good homebrew sites.

Yeah, I found a whole bunch of games over on consolevision. I was just hoping that someone could vouch for some of them before I wasted CD-Rs. I already feel stupid for having burned Lunar Lander 2K (from DCEmu), and I'm not looking to repeat the experience. One CD-R wasted on a completely unplayable title is enough for me, thanks.

 

I suppose you guys are going to make me test everything through emulation first, aren't you? *sigh* Fine! Be that way. See if I care.

[Scumdogg]

Do i need a boot disc for Beats of Rage? This thread led me to go hunt down the site, and a i burnt the CDI using BootDreams, but my Dreamcast doesn't recognize the disc. I have a boot disc around here somewhere, but i can't find it at the moment. Do i need one, or did i just screw up the burn somehow?

[jbanes]

Do i need a boot disc for Beats of Rage? This thread led me to go hunt down the site, and a i burnt the CDI using BootDreams, but my Dreamcast doesn't recognize the disc. I have a boot disc around here somewhere, but i can't find it at the moment. Do i need one, or did i just screw up the burn somehow?

It should be self-booting. You can try the Utopia Bootdisk, but if it doesn't work you probably have a coaster on your hands.

 

Try the CDI images from DCEvolution. They have a collection image that contains Beats of Rage along with a couple of mods. I have yet to have trouble with their CDI images, so give it a whirl.

 

Oh, and make sure you burn at 4x or whatever your drive's slowest speed is! I haven't run into it yet, but faster speeds have been known to cause problems. (Not that I haven't made coasters for a variety of other reasons.)

[Scumdogg]

Do i need a boot disc for Beats of Rage? This thread led me to go hunt down the site, and a i burnt the CDI using BootDreams, but my Dreamcast doesn't recognize the disc. I have a boot disc around here somewhere, but i can't find it at the moment. Do i need one, or did i just screw up the burn somehow?

It should be self-booting. You can try the Utopia Bootdisk, but if it doesn't work you probably have a coaster on your hands.

 

Try the CDI images from DCEvolution. They have a collection image that contains Beats of Rage along with a couple of mods. I have yet to have trouble with their CDI images, so give it a whirl.

 

Oh, and make sure you burn at 4x or whatever your drive's slowest speed is! I haven't run into it yet, but faster speeds have been known to cause problems. (Not that I haven't made coasters for a variety of other reasons.)

 

 

Alright, i'll give that other site a try then. Thanks for the help!

 

As a side note here, i thought i found what looked like a really interesting DC Homebrew called Alice Dreams. I followed one of the links from the Beats of Rage site to find it. The Alice Dreams site wasn't in English though. So while i could figure out enough to download and successfully burn the Dreamcast version of the game, i didn't read how incomplete it was. Still though, fun to test out, and it seems like it could be a really cool game when it's all done. One to keep an eye on.

[Scumdogg]

Well, crap. I downloaded the BOR Collection 1 from that site, and it still doesn't boot up in my Dreamcast. Both times i got the "Successful Burn" notice from DiscJuggler, but apparently something's going wrong.

 

I know i'm not just burning them wrong because i downloaded two homebrew emulator images from the same site, and both of them work on my Dreamcast.

 

I even tried a boot disc, to no avail. It's frustrating, some of those mods look really cool, i want to play them...but i can't keep wasting CD-Rs if it's just going to keep failing.

[jbanes]

Well, crap. I downloaded the BOR Collection 1 from that site, and it still doesn't boot up in my Dreamcast. Both times i got the "Successful Burn" notice from DiscJuggler, but apparently something's going wrong.

I thought you were using BootDreams?

[Scumdogg]

Well, crap. I downloaded the BOR Collection 1 from that site, and it still doesn't boot up in my Dreamcast. Both times i got the "Successful Burn" notice from DiscJuggler, but apparently something's going wrong.

I thought you were using BootDreams?

 

 

Yes, that's what i meant. BootDreams. I had just been reading about Disc Juggler and wondering if i should switch...hence the typo.

 

I decided to try the BoR collection vol. 2, and even that works. Maybe i should try to find the first collection on another site? Or email them and see what's up?

Edited June 19, 2007 by Scumdogg

[jbanes]

Yes, that's what i meant. BootDreams. I had just been reading about Disc Juggler and wondering if i should switch...hence the typo.

Oh, ok. Yeah, I can't help you other than to say, "it works for me". Go ahead and give DJ a try and see if that works for you. It can't hurt.

 

BTW, you have BootDreams 1.0.5, right?

[Scumdogg]

Yes, that's what i meant. BootDreams. I had just been reading about Disc Juggler and wondering if i should switch...hence the typo.

Oh, ok. Yeah, I can't help you other than to say, "it works for me". Go ahead and give DJ a try and see if that works for you. It can't hurt.

 

BTW, you have BootDreams 1.0.5, right?

 

 

Hmmmm.....no, i have 1.0.2. Perhaps that's the problem. I'll find an update.

[jbanes]

Hmmmm.....no, i have 1.0.2. Perhaps that's the problem. I'll find an update.

Yeah, it could be a version incompatibility between BootDreams and the CDI images.

 

Here you go:

 

http://dchelp.dcemulation.com/?BootDreams

[Scumdogg]

Well, i downloaded the update, and it still didn't work. Four wasted CD-Rs later, i'm calling it quits unless i can figure out for certain what's going wrong.

[bretthorror]

you may want to try out some dc emulation sites as they often have or lead to good homebrew sites.

Yeah, I found a whole bunch of games over on consolevision. I was just hoping that someone could vouch for some of them before I wasted CD-Rs. I already feel stupid for having burned Lunar Lander 2K (from DCEmu), and I'm not looking to repeat the experience. One CD-R wasted on a completely unplayable title is enough for me, thanks.

 

I suppose you guys are going to make me test everything through emulation first, aren't you? *sigh* Fine! Be that way. See if I care.

 

Use this: http://consolevision.com/members/sbiffy/ . They have a bunch of DC homebrews and it lets you burn more than one per disc. It's a super easy program to use, the only reason I could get anything burned.

-----------

 

Wow, this Beats of Rage game looks cool. I just don't think I could burn the games without that sbi program. For the Dreamcast, it's weird what you get when you burn. I can't figure out how to burn the TMNT or Simpsons single arcade game emulators/games (maybe the roms don't come with the emulator?). I have wasted around 10 discs trying to burn 7800 games to no avail. I can get NES, SMS, GG, 2600, Colecovision, C-64 and Game Boy to run perfectly. I really wish I could get the 7800 and arcade ones working because I've never played a 7800 game before and I've not played those two arcade games from my childhood in years. I've just had enough of wasting CDs on them. The 7800 one seems to look like it's going to work fine, the roms all show up, but they just don't run. I know you have to put the bios in there somewhere, but I never get it right. I get so tempted to keep trying and trying because it takes only 5 minutes to download all the roms from this site and a whole 1 minute to run the sbi program and 2 mins to burn!

 

On a side note, the help files on the DC emulators suck 80% of the time. They usually assume you know what you're doing, which negates the purpose of the file.

Edited June 20, 2007 by bretthorror

[Atari5200]

some programs will not burn whatever needed to auto boot, I used Nero to burn my CD-R and it worked perfectly fine.

[Scumdogg]

Finally got the first Beats of Rage collection burned properly. Man, that Mega Man game is the bee's knees.

[jbanes]

Finally got the first Beats of Rage collection burned properly.

Awesome! What did you do different?

 

Man, that Mega Man game is the bee's knees.

Isn't it, though? I was surprised at how good it was. The one trick I found is to do lots of jump kicking. If you try to play it with just your blaster, you're going to get pounded on in the later levels.

[Scumdogg]

Finally got the first Beats of Rage collection burned properly.

Awesome! What did you do different?

 

Man, that Mega Man game is the bee's knees.

Isn't it, though? I was surprised at how good it was. The one trick I found is to do lots of jump kicking. If you try to play it with just your blaster, you're going to get pounded on in the later levels.

 

 

Fiddled with the settings in Disc Juggler....that seems to work the best for burning Dreamcast discs, but i didn't know at first that you had to change stuff around in the advanced settings menu before burning.

 

I was using Roll in the Mega Man game...sadly, i don't think you're really supposed to. She just stopped moving when i got to the yellow one-eyed boss. Select a character indeed. Next time i'll give it a shot with Mega Man.

 

I also played through Kill Ryu vol. 1. It has its problems, but it was fun. Too short though, i could have gone for more.

[jbanes]

Fiddled with the settings in Disc Juggler....that seems to work the best for burning Dreamcast discs, but i didn't know at first that you had to change stuff around in the advanced settings menu before burning.

Weird. The instructions I used for DiscJuggler (before finding out about BootDreams) said "Don't touch anything!" So I didn't, and it worked fine.

 

I was using Roll in the Mega Man game...sadly, i don't think you're really supposed to. She just stopped moving when i got to the yellow one-eyed boss. Select a character indeed. Next time i'll give it a shot with Mega Man.

Yeah, I've found that the game really was intended to be played as MM. Other characters seem to experience too many cheap deaths. Not to mention that their special moves just aren't as useful.

 

I also played through Kill Ryu vol. 1. It has its problems, but it was fun. Too short though, i could have gone for more.

If you're looking for a particularly evil Beat'Em Up, try the Battletoads download. Between throwing some tough enemies at you and (seemingly impossible?) platform action, the game has a lot to offer. You also don't need to unlock the other episodes. You can play them from the beginning.

 

I honestly wish the game was a bit more balanced, but it's still pretty darn cool.