Dreamcast Bleemshell new GDEMU menu for playing PSX games on DC

[deluxxx]

Hi Im a new member here you can find my old thread on Bleem!Shell here: https://www.dreamcast-talk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=12026

If it is allowed Ill make the same thread here...

 

[Honkleson]

Hey guys, just a small update. This is actually pretty huge news though. japanese_cake has finally gotten all 3 retail Bleems working on GDEMU, and the protections have been 100% removed! Hopefully this leads to things such as selfbooting versions of the 3 official games, but also the ability to add this to Bleemshell as individual cores to really help boost compatibility on the Dreamcast. He said he will release it soon!

We've been spoiled so much this year that I found myself starting to become impatient with this. Once I realized, I had to remind myself that we're lucky to be getting interesting new things for Dreamcast every couple of years at this point. Hell, we're lucky to be getting anything at all!

Still, I've been looking forward to this since that was posted. I've beaten MGS a few times but I'm pretty sure enough years have passed to enjoy another playthrough when this become available. I still own my original Bleemcast discs and a copy of their compatible PS1 games, but am a GDEMU user now.

I never got much use out of the games. I've never cared for simulation racers like Gran Tourismo 2, I like driving games the crazier the better. My issue with Tekken 3 was needing to unlock all the characters given how saving required an entire VMU. It made more sense to just use my PS1 for that game. I probably would've gotten much more use out of it otherwise though, I was big into the competitive arcade scene during the Tekken 3 -> Tag -> Tekken 4 eras... then like most arcades, our local arcade at the mall closed very suddenly in 2002-03. It disappeared so fast that I still had some tokens left which remain in my drawer to this day.

 

[Anthony817]

I spoke to him over the summer and he said it was still coming along just takes him a long time to set stuff up to start working on it. But rest assured it is still eventually coming. Just him finding the time and motivation really is all that is needed. He said only one dirty hack needed to be addressed and cleaned up and he would release.

 

[Anthony817]

Just another recent update I thought I would make everybody here aware of. He started working on it again but like most things with reverse engineering it quickly became more difficult than even he anticipated. But he is still working at it.

 

[PiMpGranny]

The cdi tool closes any time I try an open it on my computer. Anybody know if I have to do something special to get it to run?

 

[michel almeida]

So I am sure many of you here will be familiar with @megavolt85 and his many great contributions in the Dreamcast community such as his widescreen codes for DC games, as well as most notably his contribution to maintaining Dreamshell and adding nice features to it. Built from the Dreamshell codebase, Bleemshell is specifically built for GDEMU and allows us to load up multiple PSX games all from a nice Bleemcast and PSX style menu.



Features so far...

*Ability to add game covers to image files.
*D-pad has been mapped to analog stick, and L2 and R2 are now working and mapped to D-pad Left and D-pad Right, while D-pad down is now mapped to Select respectively making more games compatible.
*Ability to choose between remapped controls or original Bleem beta controller mapping. Want D-Pad for Castlevania SOTN? You can absolutely do that.
*CDDA support means no more silent music on games like N2O: Nitrous Oxide meaning that sweet Crystal Method soundtrack works in game!
*Soft reset game by pressing Start+A+B+X+Y
*Reset console by pressing D-pad Down+A+B+X+Y

Planned features:

*Action Replay/Gameshark cheat code support.
*Possible FMV support? Not sure about this one but megavolt85 mentioned it to me in private message.
*If japanese_cake strips 100% of protections from retail GT2, MGS and Tekken 3 emus, then ability to choose what emulator to load games with for best compatibility.

If you are interested in following the as of now 23 page thread, then you can find it here. Small note however, is that you must be a registered member with a post count to see the hidden downloads section which it resides in.

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Bleemshell Alpha 3
Download: https://mega.nz/#!zEVFnAYJ!EaWLy6_7jqLC9ezkz545kpFz_qd_hSS5nRwPE5ZFZeQ

Video tutorial for making your own Bleemshell images with cover art. Note: Covers should be 256x256 pixels.

MEGA

MEGA provides free cloud storage with convenient and powerful always-on privacy. Claim your free 20GB now

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CDI_Insert app for creating your own Bleemshell iso's.
Download: https://mega.nz/#!Lc9jnALb!QtJOgrG8MT3flaPovBqG04PRE2UlvVV39NlYXqDdklw

how do I join this closed group

 

[Anthony817]

Closed group? It isn't closed, you just need to register and then have 3-5 posts in the forum site to be able to see threads in the download section. I think they do this to keep sites like Google from crawling the site and advertising it on Google search. Basically it is to keep them safe.

 

[michel almeida]

friend i want to play clastervania on my dreamcast
i am assembler programmer i wanted and the bleem source code


I am the administrator of the arcadebr.com forum in Brazil I saw your post on another forum with the new bleem you are to be congratulated

 

[megavolt85]

i am assembler programmer i wanted and the bleem source code

bleem source code belongs to SONY, you don't even have to try to search for it

 

[Americandad]

bleem source code belongs to SONY, you don't even have to try to search for it

Does it? I seem to recall Bleem won against Sony in court?
"Ultimately, Bleem! won in court... Sony lost on all counts, including Bleem!'s use of screenshots of PlayStation games on its packaging."

Or are you talking about PS2/PSP POPS?

 

[megavolt85]

@Americandad
in an interview, Rand Linden said that the source code for bleemcast belongs to SONY
after the whole story with bleem, Rand worked for SONY, apparently then SONY took / bought the rights and source code of bleemcast

 

[FamilyGuy]

@Americandad
in an interview, Rand Linden said that the source code for bleemcast belongs to SONY
after the whole story with bleem, Rand worked for SONY, apparently then SONY took / bought the rights and source code of bleemcast

Sony lost the big lawsuit against bleem! in the PC bleem days, but I think they kept suing into the bleemcast days. It's possible a settlement gave them the source code, or that Randy and Rob sold it to them when bleem! went under (maybe with the implied threat to release the source otherwise).

Here's the source for the fact that Sony owns bleemcast source: https://titangamestudios.com/2020/09/09/interview-with-bleem-developer-randy-linden/

 

[Anthony817]

Yes, it has been speculated that the technology behind Bleem went on to be used on the PS3 for the PS2 software emulator. Which would explain why that emulator is super compatible compared to even the open sourced PCSX2 emulator that has been in development for almost 2 decades now.

But Rand was asked if we would ever see Bleem source or earlier builds released and it was basically a definite no becasue Sony owned the source. So we can pretty much give up ever seeing anything else out of the guy. Not even so much as a leaked later build. That interview put to rest any hopes I had of potential later builds being leaked from him. Perhaps the guy who had the E3 demo that was known about may leak that one day, but I wouldn't hold out hope.

 

[Anthony817]

Hey guys, little update regarding the retail bleemcast discs. Ian Micheal and I have been discussing how only a few games ever would really boot on the retails even after the disc check was removed from the 2011 hacked releases. So he tried over something like 40 discs over the past 2 days. He came to test Spyro and mentioned that it completely froze after the game played the intro cutscene and the controls locked up and when it went to check for memory card. As soon as this happen it clicked in our minds. Every single game that doesn't boot with the retail is auto checking the games for memory cards immediately after pressing start on the boot disc. Screen goes black and nothing.

So I suggested he look up beta versions of games to test and remembered the Spyro beta. So he burned a copy of it, and wouldn't you know, it works 100% as good as the beta does on PSX. Note that this beta actually does lack full audio on the characters, so it is a problem on original hardware too. But Spyro beta actually lacks this memory card check feature. So in theory this means if japanese_cake can also find a way to disable the memory card check before he releases his version with all protections removed, then others should run very well. Ian even got Spyro beta to save, but when he tried loading up the file it had some issues. But see for yourself here.



This is a very exciting and major breakthrough I believe, so this goes to show that with the protections removed and save check disabled we should potentially have other games working from the retail Bleem emulator.

Also, I have posted my old compatibility list for the Bleem retail discs here, so if anybody would like to contribute to find more games that run perfectly go here. Also if anybody knows of other games that have no memory card checks or betas that do, please let us know.

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[Americandad]

Hey guys..

Good news! Thanks for the update!

 

[FamilyGuy]

That's so logical in hindsight. Great find!

So I guess people could patch ps1 games to skip that check and get proper bleemcast compatibility.

 

[Anthony817]

Yeah, that is my thoughts as well. Megavolt85 actually had to do something somewhat similar to get Driver 1 and 2 working from the beta Bleem. He literally had to go in and disable the save check from the game executable for them to boot into game. Ian did test those 2 versions of Driver on this and had no luck. But this does show how something has to be going on here definitely.

I mean as soon as he was pressing start from the boot disc he mentioned that you can immediately tell if a game is going to work or not. If it is you hear the laser moving, if not it just sits there black screen. So when Patriot released this hack in 2011 I doubt he knew about this problem too. As he did test a few games that worked with it as can be seen in this video.

 

[Anthony817]

More discoveries made. Looks like Duke Nukem: Time to Kill and Land of the Babes could be made to work if memory card check was hacked out of the 2 games.




In Land of the Babes you can see the demo starts playing when sitting on main menu all graphics are rendered perfectly. He told me this happens with the Time to Kill game as well when demo plays. So if we can manage to get in game this will most likely work really well.