Specific Dreamcast roms not loading past Sega Logo (lr flycast)

swagford

So I've been compiling a complete working rom set to run on the Raspberry Pi 4 and there are a number of games that simply do not load past the Sega logo after the initial Dreamcast splay screen. Some examples are:

4x4 Evolution
Armada
SnoCross Championship Racing
Bang! Gunship Elite
Bust A Move 4
Caesars Palace 2000
Championship Surfer

Now I've tried both CDI and GDI versions of the same rom and the results are the same: Dreamcast splash screen appears, Sega Logo appears and then the system hangs there after 10+ minutes of sitting there. I've tried chaning the region settings from "default" to the specific region the rom is from and no difference. I've tried running these roms using the Redream emulator and they all fail to get to the Sega Logo (the Dreamcast splash screen appears, then goes into the BIOS screen where selecting "Play" gives the error "no disc loaded".

So then I thought maybe it's an issue with the BIOS files. I checked the MD5 checksum of my BIOS files and they were:

dc_boot.bin = e10c53c2f8b90bab96ead2d368858623
dc_flash.bin = df8160f06ff3f246068ce14b0ff4855d

After looking at the table on Retropie Docs, the checksum for my flash.bin file isn't listed. So I opted to find another BIOS file. I then tried the following:

dc_boot.bin = e10c53c2f8b90bab96ead2d368858623
dc_flash.bin = 0a93f7940c455905bea6e392dfde92a4

No change here either. The same games won't load, while many other games from different regions all play just fine.

I'm at a loss as to what this could be. Are there just certain games not compatible for some odd reason or another?

simpleethat

@swagford I know that Armada at least was altogether incompatible when I was setting up my XU4. So whatever is holding up emulation of that game may or may not have been fixed yet. I'm sure there are other games that just don't work--emulation isn't perfect after all.

You can take this list that can be found here with a grain of salt but it does have at least 4x4 Evolution and Armada listed as "doesn't work" in some columns.

nemo93

Those games are "powered by" Windows CE (check the full list). Neither Flycast nor Redream do support such games at the time being even if there was an experimental Flycast Libretro-core.

simpleethat

@nemo93 Well that explains it, thank you. This list will help. I still wish I could play Armada though.

swagford

@nemo93 I see. That's very unfortunate. Are there any PC emulators that could run these, or are they simply out of reach for now?

mitu

@swagford I think lr-flycast can play WinCE games on PC - https://www.libretro.com/index.php/flycast-wince-has-merged-into-regular-flycast-only-one-core-now-plus-switch-port-teaser/.

Steams71

Yes, iirc the only way to use Dreamcast Windows CE powered games is PC based. I think it's something to do with bit depth. Eventually it will come to Pi but We're a bit off yet.
The Nvidia shield TV (android) version may be able to do win ce via redream?

dankcushions

it requires 64-bit so you can run them on flycast + pi4 in aarch64, however it's a slideshow. redream doesn't support any win ce games right now, i think

barbudreadmon

yes, flycast supports wince on 64bits and it requires far more cpu power

swagford

Thanks for the replies everyone. You've all been very helpful!

Darksavior

@swagford Bust A Move 4 is playable on finalburn-neo.

barbudreadmon

Yes, bust a move 4 is a taito f3 arcade game which was ported on a lot of platforms, fwiw it's also available on psx.

TPR

Has there been any progress on this at all recently? Or, more specifically, can Windows CE games run on a Pi 4 yet? Or should I say, run well?

barbudreadmon

@tpr said in Specific Dreamcast roms not loading past Sega Logo (lr flycast):

can Windows CE games run on a Pi 4 yet

it seems there was some kind of misunderstanding so i'll be clear : it'll never happen, pi4 doesn't have the kind of specs required, by far.

dankcushions

@tpr please see my previous comment. they can run, but not well, and there’s no reason to suspect this situation will be improved as it’s computationally expensive.

barbudreadmon

@dankcushions said in Specific Dreamcast roms not loading past Sega Logo (lr flycast):

there’s no reason to suspect this situation will be improved

Yeah, flycast is already using every possible means of cpu optimization, but it's still not sufficient even on 3.2Ghz aarch64 devices iirc, so maybe when pis will hit those frequencies but until then i don't think it's useful to ask again.
Idk about redream, i think they mentioned "wince support nearly done" around 2 years ago, but i don't think it's available yet. Not that i see how they could do a miracle about this whole "very computationally expensive" situation.

TPR

@dankcushions Thank you for the response. I was just asking as it has been five months and I wanted to make sure there wasn't an update that I had missed. I see improvements in emulation all the time. I can now run far more MAME games with lr-2016 and lr-mame than I could with previous generations emulators even on the same hardware so I don't think my question was that outlandish.

Thank you for the update, though.