Using chankast with daemon tools lite and utopia boot, chankst freezes shortly after the silver moos

[dev.karam]

As the title suggests I'm using chankast with daemon tools lite and utopia boot disk, chankast freezes. with rayman 2 the game loads all the way up to the 'press start button' screen. But with tomb raider 4 the chankast stops working when it gets to the silver spinning moose. Only timestalkers seems to be working and even then only just about, (as in the character movement is abnormally sped up and there are some dialogue text errors). I've tried playing both rayman and tomb raider on nullDC and although some games work on nullDC, rayman and tombraider just appear as music files, in dc bios screens.

Could anybody please help me and don't tell me to do a search on google or youtube or forums, coz ive looked fucking everywhere.

Thanks

[Zorlon]

What file format are the games in?

Rayman works fine with NullDC and Tomb Raider 4 is a WinCE game (NullDC does not support WinCE) but works with DEmul

P.S. both games are also PSX games and emulate very well with ePSXe and the PSX emulation is not a high end as Dreamcast emulation is after all the Dreamcast is closer to the PS2 than the PSX hardware wise

Chankast is not worth the effort

Myself I own a Dreamcast (No mod chip or swap trick needed for most models) I play all the downloaded games fine as long as they are selfbootable aka Mil-CD directly in my Dreamcast

[dev.karam]

the roms ive downloaded are all cdi format they become cdi files as soon as i unzip them after downloading using winrar. Also i have no idea what you're talking about when you mention psx and its relevance to this thread, ive never even heard of psx (well it does sound vaguely familiar). Anyways rayman 2 does not work on my nullDC (I did download it from a different site). It does however work up to the intro on my chankast but for my nullDC i just get a spinning music CD.

And thanks for the diligent reply, its appreciated, I'm sorry I didn't reply sooner, I don't have a habit of frequently checking forums. But don't worry I will be checking them at least daily. Its also reassuring to know that tomb raider will never work on nullDC. As for chankast I'm prepared to invest the effort, I've started now and I feel obsessed.

Once again Thank you

[Zorlon]

PSX = Playstation aka Playastation 1 aka PSone it's all the same console and it is relevant because those versions of the game emulate very well

Chankast isn't worth the effort because the emulation is not good so even if you manage to get x game working you are still faced with bugs, be it graphical or in-game functions not working so you are left with a game that can't be completed ect ect ect...

I would try another copy of Rayman it sounds like it is a none selfbooting disc image so yeah that will just show the CD-Player in everything unless you use a Utopia disc

NullDC does not support Utopia though, but if the game was selfbooting aka a Mil-CD then NullDC will boot it directly

cdi format alone does not make a game selfbooting/Mil-CD there is more to it than that, but one way to tell is to examine the disc image with ISObuster while it is attached to D-Tools Lite, if the disc has 2 or more sessions on it then it should be selfbooting/Mil-CD (I say should because I have seen some real mess ups as far as Mil-CD's go from noob attempted Mil-CD's)

[dev.karam]

ive downloaded another version of rayman 2 and it worked on nulDC and i took your advice on tombraider. Once i set up DEmul properly i was able to play tombraider but the sound and movie sequences are painfully choppy and the intro animations repeat until i press 'start' or 'A' or whatever. May I have some final support in sorting this problem out.

Thanks

[Zorlon]

Speed for that thing is just lack of PC requirements, instead go for the PSX version

You can get the game from here
You can get the emulator from here (I presume by what the up-loader called it, it has all the plugins and bios images with it)

Extracting...

Extract the disc image file as normal...
Next to fully extract the game you will need unecm from here, just drag the ecm file and drop it onto unecm, it will extract itself

Playing the game...

First run ePSXe for the first time and make sure you set the bios up when asked

For the best compat out the box just set the video to use PEOpS Soft Video for the graphics plugin (but for better visuals you will want to use OpenGL2 or OpenGL if your machine can't use OpenGL2)

Once ePSXe is setup just hit File>Run ISO select the ccd file then hit Open

I'm sure you can figure out what I skipped on your own

[dev.karam]

No you don't get it tomb raider plays perfectly its the movie sequences and the sound during those sequences that don't work. My PC requirements are fine I play steam games on this same PC after all and they demand much more than any dreamcast game would. I saw on a youtube video someone solved the same problem by selecting 'alpha subsorting' or 'list sorting' whatever they mean, in the video config menu. But owning a different version of DEmul as to the one in the video I don't have that option.

Anyway thanks for the help on setting up the ps1 emulator, I'll do that too. But I still want to get DEmul or Chankast working (preferably both, although DEmul seems easier). Because there are games on dreamcast that I really wanna play not on the ps1.

[Zorlon]

Chankast will never run perfect it has too many issues that never got fixed and never will, it's a dead project
DEmul is a high end emulator and the requirements are much higher than most of what is on steam
NullDC is also high end but uses lots of hacks ect to get good speeds and is currently the best emulator for dreamcast games in general even though it lacks support for WinCE games

None of the above are perfect some games do have issues that can not be resolved

You have to remember if you are emulating you are not just in need of the typical game requirements, you are not just playing the games directly but you are emulating the hardware as well, that always requires a lot more than what the original system had

As for the settings in DEmul just change the graphics plugin, the settings are there but they may not be in the plugin you are using
DXLegacy and DXv3 both have the settings you are looking for

Best bet is to buy a Dreamcast, no emulation issues, no mod chip required, no lag problems, no messing with settings per game, just good fun

The only real downside is that some games need to be ripped to fit onto CD-R as the original media for the Dreamcast is GD-Rom apx 1.2GB, then again you are playing rips anyway

[dev.karam]

You silly if I could just buy a dreamcast i wouldn't be here would I. Besides I used to own a dreamcast anyway but it broke down, as all consoles of that generation eventually do.

Anyways, fair enough chankast is dead I'll never mention it again and I appreciate the fact that some games will just never work. In the mean time explain this DXLegacy and DXv3, where do I get these plugins? How do Install them? Once I install them how do I utilise them to fix the movie an intro problem? What are these plugins and what do they do?

Also whats this about cd-r and gd-rom apx and rips or ripped or ripping? Most words will be foreign to me, But I aint stupid.
As for my PC specs I'll get back to you when I ask my brother

[dev.karam]

My specs are:

Windows 7 ultimate

64 Bit operating system

4GB DDR3 Ram (though 3.5GB usable Ram)

ATI Radeon HD 4800 series, whith approximate total memory of 2425MB

Intel(R) core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9550 @ 2.83GHz 3.40GHz

[Zorlon]

The plugins you should have already, they are packaged with the emulator

Wow you just gave noob a whole new meaning

cd-r = Compact Disc-Recordable (every burnable CD has 'CD-R' tagged on the disc or the packaging) [this one is the super basic, you are the first ever to not know that]

gd-rom = Gigabyte Disc Read-Only Memory (that is what dreamcast games are stored on) [I can see you not knowing this but after owning a Dreamcast I am still a little surprised as every dreamcast disc has the word 'GD-ROM' on it]

apx = approximate [understandable as that is an english abbreviated word]

rip/ripped = files are taken out of a game or sound/movies/images have had the quality lowered to make the files smaller

ripping = the process to make a rip

[dev.karam]

Alright now I know what you meant in the last paragraph of your previous response. But back to the problem If i already have these plugins why don't I have the 'alpha susbsorting' and 'list sorting' in the video config menu? How can I be sure that i have them? And even if I do will that fix the problem? And I've given you my specs are the good enough to run DEmul

This may help the version of DEmul I'm using is v0.5.7 it's build date is 28th February 2012

[Zorlon]

Config > Plugins and Paths

v0.5.7 has the plugins included you can't download them on there own

[dev.karam]

Yeah I found them although I THINK it might be my PC specs. You see my pc fans 2 of the smaller ones fall of the axles from time to time so the pc overheats and shuts down. After playing Power stone on DEmul for a while my PC shut down and Power stone had the same problem as tomb raider but it was less affected. So anyways looking at my PC specs, are they good enough to DEmul once I get my fans upgraded or are they not good enough even once the fan problem is fixed is the problem with DEmul completely unrelated to my specs

[Zorlon]

Your PC specs seem fine to me, don't know why it would be over heating though, a new fan in general would be an very good idea though as over heating is not good in any form

Just use NullDC for Power Stone instead though and anything that does not work in NullDC then use Demul for those, Demul in general does not handle FMV as well as NulDC does

Between NulDC and Demul you are going to get the best compat for Dreamcast games but there may still be a few games that will not run perfect

You can get NulDC 1.0.4 revision 150 from here

The official site for NulDC stopped releasing windows binary exe files a long time back but they still update there source code that the above is a windows binary built on one of the newer source releases

I do still recommend getting a Dreamcast though over any PC upgrades and do not see any reason that you would not be able to do that, I know you can't buy the things new, you can only get them pre owned, this will solve all your issues though and has no settings to mess on with.