Dreamcast Exult port?

[Ravenous Dragon]

Certainly it's possible, no?

The Dreamcast OS is Windows CE based, right? The Dreamcast has keyboard and mouse accessories. People have ported over games such as Doom straight from the PC.

The only thing I wonder is if the memory cards would be large enough for save data. How big are Exult saves? (I can't look myself right now.)

But anyways, I'm just wondering if anyone here is into the DC development scene at all. I'm kind of interested in learning, but I wouldn't have the first clue how to do this personally.

If anything, it's an option...and it would be kind of cool to be able to market Exult to the console folks a little. Let them experience a REAL rpg. =)

[suraimu]

The dreamcast doesn't have an operating system. It's just somewhat
capable of running WinCE applications. Normal DC games don't use it
whatsoever.

As for porting U7, it would take some significant re-engineering to eliminate
enough of the writing to disk involved that it would make it more or less
pointless.

If you're interested in porting things to the Dreamcast in general, you should
go take a look at KallistiOS, a freeware development kit for it and the
Gameboy Advance.

ciao.

[Negative9]

Try http://www.julesdcdev.com/ for info on developing for dreamcast, there are a bunch of other good sites on top of this one, but I can't remember any off the top of my head

[funkyass]

u7 is just an HD cruncher. the sound of my harddrive working away was a constant companion

[Darke]

There was a discussion about this previously.

IIRC the only problems seemed to be related to the music/sound effects and the amount of memory available requiring us to fiddle with a cacheing scheme, splitting the art along chunk lines, and only loading that which was needed.

The problem is, AFAIK none of us have any experience with coding for the Dreamcast, so it's mostly theoretical based on the specs of the machine.

Darke

[drcode]

I'd be more interesting in doing a GBA port, but that would >really< be a challenge.

[FitzRoy]

U7 on a GBA? I think I would cream my pants.

[Crypt]

most definitly

[Blackbird]

How about a port to a real console like Sony PS2? They use a custom Linux distribution if I'm not mistaken.

- bb

[nadir]

The problem with consoles is memory. They have very little.
If you don't have memory, you need fast disk access, and CD/DVD drives are very poor performance-wise.....

[suraimu]

Porting U7 to the GBA would be much simpler, really, since there's already
an SNES port that you could port right over.

[nadir]

But the SNES port is outright disgusting

[drcode]

Plus we don't have the SNES U7 code.

I think it would be fun to try to get U7 on the GBA (which is why I suggested it), but it would almost be like writing a whole new game.

[suraimu]

You don't have the PC U7 code, either. I just suggested that since there
are a lot of SNES->GBA conversions out there. It would just take some
advanced assembly tweaking, more or less.

But yes, the SNES port -is- pretty disgusting. All the Ultimas 5+ on consoles
are pretty horrid.

[FitzRoy]

Actually, 6 for the SNES wasn't too bad.

[SB-X]

Yes, Ultima VI on SNES is a work of art compared to VII on that platform. I can't say this enough.

[suraimu]

Ultima 6 is a pile of @!#$ simply because you cannot attack townsfolk.

[SB-X]

You can't in Ultima 7 either.