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[MrCunningham]

Sega Rally 2 was such a disappointing port but,

Sega Rally 2 was one of the first games that I ever owned for my Dreamcast. The framerate was the biggest issue. I know that one of the devs posted on Twitter quite a while back; mentioning that the game was ported to PC first and then the PC version was ported to WindowsCE for the Dreamcast. Which is why it has performance issues.

I forgot what team ported the game, but they used Sega Rally as a guinea pig to test the efficiency of Windows CE on the Dreamcast.



WindowsCE in itself was a pretty novel idea overall, as it allowed for quick and easy Windows ports to the Dreamcast hardware. Also WindowsCE did serve as an alternative game development environment to Sega's own official development tools. The Tomb Raider games used Windows CE. So did Resident Evil 2 and 3. As well as games like Wild Metal, Railroad Tycoon 2, Armada, 4X4 Evolution, Urban Chaos, Kiss: Psycho Circus, Super Runabout and probably about 50 other Dreamcast games. You can tell if a game uses Windows CE from the opening copy-write screen. It will display a "powered by WindowsCE" logo for the games that are using it.

The downside to Windows CE is the extra overhead required by the Dreamcast to run the additional directX libraries in RAM. Which caused many games to be capped at 30fps.

 

[MrCunningham]

Well TBF, the people doing these hacks and mods today are leveraging modern programming techniques & understandings/concepts as well as matured dev community tools and a laxed environment that didn't exist back in 1999/2000 when the Dreamcast was a commercial product.

That all said, it is amazing to see these niche systems get their potential pushed by the homebrew scene and really show the full capabilities of the hardware. And, now that we know it exists in some form, I would definitely like to see a PS2 port of Shenmue leveraging all the advantages of that system to give folks a taste of what that would've been like at retail.

This homebrew GTAIII port is built from a reverse engineered decompilation of the GTA III PC source code: https://www.pcgamer.com/reverse-engineered-gta-iii-source-code-is-back-online/

The original PS2 version was built from the ground up for the PS2 hardware using Criterion's old Renderware engine. GTAIII was originally planned for the Dreamcast though, in its' earliest stages of development. The Renderware engine did support the Dreamcast. There were a few Renderware games released on the Dreamcast, like Trickstyle and Stunt GP.

Rockstar did release a port of GTA2 for the Dreamcast, as well as Wild Metal. Max Payne 1 was also planned for a Dreamcast port as well. But due to Sega discontinuing the Dreamcast early, the Dreamcast ports of GTAIII and Max Payne were cancelled. GTAIII was pushed over to the PS2 initially, but later ported to Windows and the Xbox OG.

Max Payne was always a PC game first and foremost. Rockstar did the ports themselves to the Xbox and PS2.

Rockstar also had an Austin Powers themed kart racer planned for the Dreamcast that was cancelled.

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

you are a sad fanboi stuck in the past though

So basically the speech changed to "DC would never run that" to "move on, get over it" when proved wrong. Pathetic.

Well TBF, the people doing these hacks and mods today are leveraging modern programming techniques & understandings/concepts as well as matured dev community tools and a laxed environment that didn't exist back in 1999/2000 when the Dreamcast was a commercial product.

That all said, it is amazing to see these niche systems get their potential pushed by the homebrew scene and really show the full capabilities of the hardware. And, now that we know it exists in some form, I would definitely like to see a PS2 port of Shenmue leveraging all the advantages of that system to give folks a taste of what that would've been like at retail.

Shenmue PS2 port would be hella interesting!!!

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

This homebrew GTAIII port is built from a reverse engineered decompilation of the GTA III PC source code: https://www.pcgamer.com/reverse-engineered-gta-iii-source-code-is-back-online/

The original PS2 version was built from the ground up for the PS2 hardware using Criterion's old Renderware engine. GTAIII was originally planned for the Dreamcast though, in its' earliest stages of development. The Renderware engine did support the Dreamcast. There were a few Renderware games released on the Dreamcast, like Trickstyle and Stunt GP.

Rockstar did release a port of GTA2 for the Dreamcast, as well as Wild Metal. Max Payne 1 was also planned for a Dreamcast port as well. But due to Sega discontinuing the Dreamcast early, the Dreamcast ports of GTAIII and Max Payne were cancelled. GTAIII was pushed over to the PS2 initially, but later ported to Windows and the Xbox OG.

Max Payne was always a PC game first and foremost. Rockstar did the ports themselves to the Xbox and PS2.

Rockstar also had an Austin Powers themed kart racer planned for the Dreamcast that was cancelled.

Those assests are from actual game? It would have been waaaaay cool to.have that on DC. Probably would had added some sales to the console...

 

[diffusionx]

So basically the speech changed to "DC would never run that" to "move on, get over it" when proved wrong. Pathetic.


Shenmue PS2 port would be hella interesting!!!

you can go back and see my early posts in this thread that I said the Dreamcast actually was powerful at launch and not the beneficiary of no competition. But at some point this thread did become a bunch of nerds stuck in the past trying to fight for the DC vs. the PS2 and re-litigate something that was decided over 20 years ago. So yes, move on, get over it. It's like boomers arguing over stones vs. beatles, nobody cares anymore.

 

[Geometric-Crusher]

was the dreamcast actually powerful at launch ? or the beneficiary of no competition ?

 

[thicc_girls_are_teh_best]

Sega Rally 2 was one of the first games that I ever owned for my Dreamcast. The framerate was the biggest issue. I know that one of the devs posted on Twitter quite a while back; mentioning that the game was ported to PC first and then the PC version was ported to WindowsCE for the Dreamcast. Which is why it has performance issues.

I forgot what team ported the game, but they used Sega Rally as a guinea pig to test the efficiency of Windows CE on the Dreamcast.



WindowsCE in itself was a pretty novel idea overall, as it allowed for quick and easy Windows ports to the Dreamcast hardware. Also WindowsCE did serve as an alternative game development environment to Sega's own official development tools. The Tomb Raider games used Windows CE. So did Resident Evil 2 and 3. As well as games like Wild Metal, Railroad Tycoon 2, Armada, 4X4 Evolution, Urban Chaos, Kiss: Psycho Circus, Super Runabout and probably about 50 other Dreamcast games. You can tell if a game uses Windows CE from the opening copy-write screen. It will display a "powered by WindowsCE" logo for the games that are using it.

The downside to Windows CE is the extra overhead required by the Dreamcast to run the additional directX libraries in RAM. Which caused many games to be capped at 30fps.

From what I understand, Windows CE also fell out of favor because SEGA's own development tools were simply so much better.

Which made sense; after the debacle of early Saturn development, SEGA got teams like AM2 to clean things up with rapid SGL iterations, and that probably helped foster a culture of providing better development tools early on and to as many 3P partners as possible.

 

[MrCunningham]

Those assests are from actual game? It would have been waaaaay cool to.have that on DC. Probably would had added some sales to the console...

Those are the models from the cancelled Dreamcast game, yeah. The game was called Austin Powers: Mojo Rally. This image was taken from an issue from the Official Dreamcast Magazine. Rockstar did have the Austin Powers license.

From what I understand, Windows CE also fell out of favor because SEGA's own development tools were simply so much better.

Windows CE had a benefit of using Windows as the development environment. It was mostly used to port PC games from Windows to the Dreamcast, with a few exceptions. It was also apparently ideal for smaller scale games. But again, really came at the cost of system performance. I think the WindowsCE development tools were made available online earlier this year. Really also seems like Microsoft was using WindowsCE as a test for their Xbox console.

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

you can go back and see my early posts in this thread that I said the Dreamcast actually was powerful at launch and not the beneficiary of no competition. But at some point this thread did become a bunch of nerds stuck in the past trying to fight for the DC vs. the PS2 and re-litigate something that was decided over 20 years ago. So yes, move on, get over it. It's like boomers arguing over stones vs. beatles, nobody cares anymore.

So if you were agree in the first place, why now argue over something you and everyone here knows it´s true (DC was powerful at launch, PS2 won and stomped DC and every other competition to this day....unless the Nintendo Switch...)? In this very thread some actual nerds discredited the DC, the facts prove them wrong and its right to point that. End.

was the dreamcast actually powerful at launch ? or the beneficiary of no competition ?

Come on, you know you love that question!

Those are the models from the cancelled Dreamcast game, yeah. The game was called Austin Powers: Mojo Rally. This image was taken from an issue from the Official Dreamcast Magazine. Rockstar did have the Austin Powers license.

Windows CE had a benefit of using Windows as the development environment. It was mostly used to port PC games from Windows to the Dreamcast, with a few exceptions. It was also apparently ideal for smaller scale games. But again, really came at the cost of system performance. I think the WindowsCE development tools were made available online earlier this year. Really also seems like Microsoft was using WindowsCE as a test for their Xbox console.

I would kill to play as Mine Me!!!

And OG Xbox using Win CE makes lotta sense. In several ways the first Xbox felt like the DC spiritual successor.

 

[Xaeroxcore666]

So basically DC during this 2024, 23 years after it´s demise, is getting Doom 64 with Vertex Lighting and Normal Maps (something not even the HD remaster for modern console does), this unbelievable GTA 3 port and what´s basically a live action adaptation of one of its best games ever, Sonic Adventure 2, in form of the third Sonic movie, which is also breaking the box office. Not bad for a failure of a console! "Get over it, folks"

 

[MrCunningham]

And OG Xbox using Win CE makes lotta sense. In several ways the first Xbox felt like the DC spiritual successor.

WindowsCE was a stripped down version of Windows that was designed to operate in 'low powered' hardware and embedded devices from back in the day. Like pocket organisers, pocket PC's, set-top boxes and stuff like that. In the Dreamcasts case, WindowsCE loads directly from the GD-ROM disc to the systems memory, and contains various DirectX API's used to run modified WindowsCE games on the Dreamcast. It was a fascinating idea for the time.

The Xbox doesn't really run WindowsCE. It has its own custom OS that has elements of the Windows NT kernel, but games do use the "Direct" runtimes in a similar fashion to WindowsCE powered Dreamcast games. The Dreamcast runs a DirectX 5 equivalent (I think), while the Xbox uses DirextX 8.1. The PowerPC GPU does support DirectX, and there was even a desktop version of the GPU released called the Neon 250.

It's like Microsoft was using the Dreamcast to test how their Direct API's would function on a game console. I think they tried to convince Sega to include internal storage in the Dreamcast that would contain WindowsCE built into the unit. I think Sega declined that for cost reasons.

 

[MrCunningham]

I would kill to play as Mine Me!!!

There was never any screenshots or footage released of Austin Powers Mojo Racer. I know, it is really just another Kart Racer, but it would have been an Austin Powers kart racer made by Rockstar. The only images that ever appeared from the game are the character models. The big headed character models looked great. Like Frau Farbissina for example. It was oddly exclusively in development for the Dreamcast. I think it was suppose to have an online element as well.

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