Genesis Plus DC

From dreamcast.wiki
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Genesis Plus / DC
No Screenshot Available
Homepage Unknown
Latest Version 07/26/2006
Downloads Local links:
Release Date 07/26/06
Author BlackAura
Based on GenesisPlus by
Charles MacDonald
Systems Emulated Sega Genesis
Best Available Emulator
For this system(s)?
Yes.
Active Yes.
Refresh Rate Unknown

Genesis Plus/DC is a port of Charles MacDonald's Sega Genesis/MegaDrive emulator, Genesis Plus, to the Dreamcast. It is currently the best available Sega Genesis emulator for the Dreamcast platform.It runs full speed on most games without frameskip with sound disabled.


Features

  • Full speed with full sound (no skipping!)
  • SRAM Saving to VMU
  • Great compatibility
  • 2 player support
  • 6 button pad support
  • Region settings (JP/US/EU)
  • .GEN, .BIN, .SMD, and .ZIP support
  • 2 CPU cores, FAME and C68K
  • Hardware and software rendering
  • Fixed graphic bugs from PVR3 version
  • Mono/Stereo settings (via Dreamcast BIOS)
  • Nice and easy to use GUI
  • GPDC is free software

Missing Features

  • 4 player support
  • Frameskip options for the software renderer
  • Enhanced sound options


History

GPDC started as a port of Genesis Plus by Charles Mac Donald. It's been in development since 2003 and a lot of progress has been made since then:

BlackAura rewrote the video renderer for the Dreamcast's PowerVR2. Stef D of wGens fame joined the project in 2004 to contribute fast and accurate CPU emulators: C68K & CZ80.

Now with Fox68K's new SH4 Z80 emulator FAZE, and FAME, a 68K emulator written in Dreamcast's SH4 assembly language, and BlackAura working on sound emulation, the project has reached its final stage. An official release is expected for the end of this year.

GPWT

Until then there's the preview version of GenesisPlusDC Warmtoe & BlackAura released in 07/2006.

It is called "GPWT" because it's been the first version to introduce a new GUI written by Warmtoe.


Controls

Button Layout

  • Mega Drive A-Button: (X)
  • Mega Drive B-Button: (A)
  • Mega Drive C-Button: (B)
  • Mega Drive X-Button: (L)
  • Mega Drive Y-Button: (Y)
  • Mega Drive Z-Button: (R)
  • Mega Drive Start-Button: (Start)


To exit a running game press (L) + (R) + (Start).

In the Menu

(Start) loads a game.

Pressing + holding (Up)/(Down) scrolls through your game list.

You can skip pages with (Left)/(Right) on the d-pad.

To disable/enable 6 button support, press (X).

To change the region settings, press (L).

CPU Settings

Some details about the different settings:

Pressing (B) at the menu changes the CPU emulator. You can select either

FAME - Fox68k's great SH4 M68K emulator for fastest emulation, or

C68K - Stef D's fast and accurate M68K emulator for better compatibility.

Video Settings

Press (A) to toggle the graphics renderer. You can select either

HW - Hardware renderer written by BlackAura, using the Dreamcast's PowerVR II DC, very fast but inaccurate in a few games, or

SW - Standard software renderer of GenesisPlusDC by Charles MacDonald, 100% accurate but much slower.

Recommend Settings

Recommend settings would be 'Render: HW' with 'CPU: FAME' - if this doesn't work for your game, try 'Render: HW' with 'CPU: C68K' (which is the default setting).


ROMS.TXT

Method 1: Manual creation

Make sure to rename the actual '.gen', '.bin', or '.zip' roms to not have spaces.

Examples that'll work:
Rename 'Comix Zone (U) [!].bin' to 'Comix_Zone_(U)_[!].bin'
Rename 'Comix Zone (U) [!].bin' to 'ComixZone(U)[!].bin'
Rename 'Comix Zone (U) [!].bin' to 'ComixZone.bin'

The rest is straight from the readme:

In GPWT there is no directory browsing - just that fixed list of names for that fixed list of games.

You put your (zipped) ROMS in the directory:

\gpwt\data\ROMS

It also expects to find a file:

\gpwt\data\ROMS.txt

In ROMS.TXT you can put the names of your games in there plus the name you'd like to see displayed on screen:

SHINOBI.ZIP The Revenge of Shinobi

'SHINOBI.ZIP' (or 'shinobi.zip') would be your actual ROM, 'The Revenge of Shinobi' will be displayed on screen. Each file + name goes into a seperate line in ROMS.TXT.

Method 2: Provlist by burnerO

First download this:

Included are Provlist & Renamer which both are needed.

1. Copy your ROMs (*.zip) in /gpwt/data/ROMS/ and run Provlst.exe

2. Open ROMS.LST in Wordpad and replace ".SMC:" with ".ZIP " (space).

3. Save as 'ROMS.TXT' in /gpwt/data/

4. Right-click on your /gpwt/data/ROMS/ folder and start Renamer

5. Click on 'Edit' -> 'Multi-Change' and replace "%a.SMC" with "%a.ZIP"

6. Click on 'A->B' to apply the changes and then close Renamer


Method 3: Romlister by Smurph

Download this application first:

1. Zip all your roms. Keep them in a separate folder apart from the Plainfiles, or SBI, directories.

2. Start the rom lister.

3. Select the 'data' subfolder from the the extracted Plainfiles, or SBI, packages.

4. Select your folder containing your zipped roms, and click on the 'Process' button.

How To Burn

A little tutorial:

Using Selfboot Inducer

  • 2. Then download a SBI for one of the GenesisPlusDC versions HERE.
  • 3. Put this file into your C:/SBInducr/SBI/ folder.
  • 4. Start C:/SBInducr/SBInducer.exe and check the SBI file showing up on the right window. Then select either "Single Menu" or "SBI2Boot" and click on 'Extract SBI'.
  • 5. Browse to the C:/SBInducr/Inducer/gpwt/tools/ directory to find some tools.
  • 6. Using one of the 3 methods listed above, copy your roms to the ROMS folder, and create a ROMS.TXT.
  • 7. Click on the 'CDRecord' button to burn the CD directly, or on the 'DiscJuggler' button to create a '.cdi' image.

Using BootDreams

  • 2. Extract the plainfiles to their own folder.
  • 3. Using one of the 3 methods listed above, copy your roms to the ROMS folder, and create a ROMS.TXT.
  • 4. Start Bootdreams.
  • 5. Select the folder containing the plainfiles '1st_read.bin'.
  • 6. Choose your image type: CDI, NRG, or MDF/MDS.
  • 7. Click on the process button.
  • 8. Burn the image with your application of choice.

To burn straight off Bootdreams, without creating an image, select the "CdRecord" option.

To use the Bootdream's image burner select the "ImgRecord" option.

Downloads

The files are called 'GenesisPlusDC-gpwt-260706-BlackAura.sbi', and 'GenesisPlusDC-gpwt-280107-Quzar.sbi'.


Compatibility

Lists can be found here (W.I.P.):


http://dcemulation.org/1-newsdump/emulators/genesis/genesisplusdc/genplus_dc_01_src.tar.bz2

This page contains broken links within DCEmulation/dreamcast.wiki's own domains. Fixing these links should be a high priority.