nullDC

nullDC

nullDC running the game Ikaruga
Developer(s)	drkIIRaziel and ZeZu
Stable release	1.0.3 / August 21, 2008; 3 years ago (2008-08-21)
Operating system	Microsoft Windows
Type	Video game console emulator
License	GNU General Public License
Website	code.google.com/p/nulldc

nullDC is an open source Sega Dreamcast and NAOMI videogame systems emulator for Microsoft Windows.

After not being updated for almost two years, the project's author drk||Raziel announced his decision to release the source code with his newest build.

History

The emulator was first announced on February 19, 2006.

On August 25, 2006 the first screenshots were released, the authors were revealed to be ZeZu (programmer of Icarus, a Dreamcast emulator which was never released) and drk||Raziel, it was explained that the emulator would aim at compatibility more than speed, and would use a plugin structure to allow other authors to contribute.

The first version (v1.0.0 beta) was released on April 1, 2007, and proved itself to be the Dreamcast emulator with the highest compatibility to date.

The second version (beta 1.5) was released on November 4, 2007. It added support for game pads, but the sound did not work and had other bugs (in the author's words, it was "crashy, buggy, shitty").^[1]

A third version (beta 1.6) was released after few days, on November 7, 2007. This version included a new audio plugin and several bug fixes.

A new plugin and video shader for nullDC were released on January 10, 2008, to fix some display bugs and add the support for stereoscopy as per the specifics of the nVidia stereo 3D drivers.

Version 1.0.3 was released on August 20, 2008, nine months after the last beta 1.6 and bringing speed improvements, bugfixes and new features like the fog effect emulation, support for Dreamcast VMU and experimental DSP sound effects added to nullAICA plugin. The release is the first introducing NAOMI arcade system emulation with a separate version of the emulator.^[2] Gamepad support has been temporarily removed in this version, but it will be included in later versions.

The emulator went open source on May 9 2010.^[3]

On September 5 2010, drk||Raziel announced that he would continue development of the emulator as well as a port of nullDC for the PlayStation 3, Wii, Pandora, and ARMv7 (Android). As of January 2011, drk|Raziel is on indefinite hiatus due to personal reasons. His website closed, and it remains to be seen if he will continue work on nullDC or if he will release source code related to ARM and PowerPC devices.^[4]

The current version is 1.0.4 r136, as of September 21, 2011. The current alphas for the PlayStation 3 were alpha 1 (compiled with Sony's SDK, against DMCA), and a unstable PS3toolchain compiled Alpha 2. The current alpha for the Android is build 36.

Features

NullDC requires the latest version of Microsoft DirectX 9.0c, the latest Visual C++ runtime libraries and optionally WinPcap for modem emulation. As usual for emulators, a dump of the original console BIOS is also needed. It has a plugin architecture, with several alternative implementations (some ported from Chankast) for graphics, sound, memory cards and reading games burned to CD-ROMs (optical disc drives for personal computers (PCs) cannot read GD-ROMs directly) or disk image files.

System requirements

• CPU: AMD Athlon XP/64/Turion at 2 GHz or Intel Pentium 4 at 2.6 GHz or equivalent
• Video Card: Nvidia GeForce 4 TI or ATi Radeon 8500
• RAM: 512 MB
• Operating system: Windows XP/2003/Vista/7

References

1. ^ [1]. NGEmu. Retrieved January 20, 2008
2. ^ [2]. Sir Arthur's Den. Retrieved August 24, 2008
3. ^ [3]. NGemu nullDC discussions. Retrieved May 9, 2010
4. ^ http://web.archive.org/web/20110726032023/http://drk.emudev.org/blog/?p=147

External links

• Official website^{[dead link]}
• NullDC svn repository