Is there any chance for Sega Dreamcast support with XNA?  Shmup fans are asking about Sega Dreamcast support for our game, and mentioned the connection with Windows CE (which I admit I know very little about).

(Not sure if this post should be in the XNA Framework forum?)

EDIT:  I do not mean from the XNA team!  I mean as a homebrew solution.  Should have been more clear.

Hahahaha.

Do you do kids parties too?

Hahaha!

Matthew Doucette:

Is there any chance for Sega Dreamcast support with XNA?  Shmup fans are asking about Sega Dreamcast support for our game, and mentioned the connection with Windows CE (which I admit I know very little about).

I'm at a loss here.... You've been around these forums long enough to make me wonder if this is a joke, or if you're just fooling around. Or maybe it's some sort of parody at the questions we get here from time to time....

Oh yeah... and just for completeness.... imagine this was actually said somewhere in this thread :)

Head Evil MVP:

Matthew Doucette:

Is there any chance for Sega Dreamcast support with XNA?

Not gonna happen!

I actually didn't mean by the XNA team! lol  Sorry about that confusion!  I was wondering how hard it would be.  Potentially a wrapper could be produced.  (It wasn't a joke, there is still a niche market on the Dreamcast.  But I repeat that I wasn't asking if this would happen by the XNA team.)

Matthew Doucette:

I actually didn't mean by the XNA team! lol  Sorry about that confusion!  I was wondering how hard it would be.  Potentially a wrapper could be produced.  (It wasn't a joke, there is still a niche market on the Dreamcast.  But I repeat that I wasn't asking if this would happen by the XNA team.)

Well, the Zune uses a custom version of the .Net Compact Framework for XNA. But the .dll files are on the Zune. You don't have access to the Zune runtime, so you can't get your hands on them. That is... if they even work on something else other than a Zune...

The only thing that could be considered XNA-but-not-from-MS-on-other-platforms is the dead born Mono.Xna. Doing it yourself is only a matter of time you want to spend on it.

Also, Bill Hill - There is only one space after a period.

And I heard of Mono.XNA.  It's not out of the question that someone (it will not be me) won't give us XNA access to the Dreamcast.  There are still games being made for it, and lot of shmup fans still own one just to play shmups that cannot be found on other systems.  Anyway it was just a question.

Teh Grumpy Dude:

Also, Bill Hill - There is only one space after a period.

Wow, you notice I do that?  I may have to stop, but now it's a habit.  I learned it from typing class.

Matt, there are a few home brew type SDKs floating around.

If you were smart, the game logic in your code is separate from the XNA graphic and sound calls, it's only a matter of porting your C# code to C code and then switching out the multimedia calls. I'm not sure what the deal is on the discs loading up on non modded dreamcasts, as I'm not really a fan of console hacking (or any hacking), but I believe I read somewhere that you could just boot up your home brew burnt discs?

If that's the case, it shouldn't be TOO much effort to port when you are finished, and then burn a disc for whomever might want to order it from you. You'll just have to do your own asset and memory management.

I'm not too familiar with the Dreamcast hardware, but if it's MIPS then Mono probably already runs on it with little modification.  Then it would just be a matter of writing the Microsoft.Xna.Framework.dll and Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game.dll assemblies for the Dreamcast, using appropriate native calls in a separate library.  Of course, that would be a huge undertaking for 1-2 people, and you would have to provide some shader emulation to get up and running.

Hell, I had Mono up and running on my PS3 with almost no effort, and it generated significantly better code for the PowerPC than the Xbox CLR does. ;)

ShawMishrak:

that would be a huge undertaking for 1-2 people, and you would have to provide some shader emulation to get up and running.

They only have to port the classes they use, though, which will be still a huge effort but a little less amount of work :)

ShawMishrak:

Hell, I had Mono up and running on my PS3 with almost no effort, and it generated significantly better code for the PowerPC than the Xbox CLR does. ;)

Not to derail the thread, but how?

Daaark:

If you were smart, the game logic in your code is separate from the XNA graphic and sound calls, it's only a matter of porting your C# code to C code and then switching out the multimedia calls.

Yes, the code is separate for the graphics calls and game logic.  The sound code is sort of mixed in, because it's so damned simple, even though that's no excuse.  It could be fixed quickly.

Its impossible to "Port". A DC Game to a platform.

 

• Sega released 2 Official SDK with its Dev Boxes, Katana and Microsoft Win CE
• Only a fraction of games are powered by Windows CE

At the Most you would have to Remake It...

It's possible but in some cases not happening :)

UberGeekGames:

ShawMishrak:

Hell, I had Mono up and running on my PS3 with almost no effort, and it generated significantly better code for the PowerPC than the Xbox CLR does. ;)

Not to derail the thread, but how?

1) Install Linux  (Fedora or another Red Hat variant seems to work best).
2) Build Mono from source  (distributions may include pre-built versions on Mono in their package repositories, but they're probably out-dated).
3) Enjoy

Most PowerPC distributions on Linux run fine on the PS3 when installed as OtherOS, but you won't have access to the RSX graphics chip.  So, you're not going to be able to create any graphically-complex games.

Mono has a decent PowerPC JIT compiler, and it ran fine as of Mono 2.0.1.  I've been meaning to try the new 2.4 release.

Oh, thanks a lot! I'll have to try that some time. I don't have a DreamCast but if it's easy to port things over then I might get one (although it doesn't seem to be the case).

It's always cool to see your code running on a console! ;-)

UberGeekGames:

Oh, thanks a lot! I'll have to try that some time. I don't have a DreamCast but if it's easy to port things over then I might get one (although it doesn't seem to be the case).

It's always cool to see your code running on a console! ;-)

Just to clarify, I said I got Mono working on the PS3, not Dreamcast...