what are the prerequisites of making a mod for dreamcast

[esn23]

Im just wondering i want to make a mod that will work 100% on dreamcast psp and systems i wanted to know what the dont's are if you want to successfully make a game that works 100% on dreamcast?

[rafhot]

to work in dreamcast the mod shoul have at max 16mb of memory usage i think 
for psp fat is 32mb ram
and psp slim 64
xbox 64 rb ram

[Roel]

for psp fat is 32mb ram
and psp slim 64

Is that correct? I thought Sony reserved 25% of the PSP's RAM for the OS. That would leave only 24 and 48 MB (or perhaps 24 and 56).

[rafhot]

before i put mods on my psp slim i look at the memory usage of the mods and choose the ones that are  64mb ram usage max
but i dont know the exact value

[esn23]

how do you see how much ram it uses?  So if I make a mod that uses snes styled graphics and midi music with 5 playable characters should i be fine?

[erifpiR]

Why the OpenBOR for Dreamcast NO USING MMU for loading large PAK files ? 

Why the OpenBOR for Dreamcast REMOVE Jump Pack? 

Why the OpenBOR for Dreamcast NO SUPPORTING SD Adapter? 

WHY, WHY AND WHY...?

[MatMan]

Why the OpenBOR for Dreamcast NO USING MMU for loading large PAK files ? 

Why the OpenBOR for Dreamcast REMOVE Jump Pack? 

Why the OpenBOR for Dreamcast NO SUPPORTING SD Adapter? 

WHY, WHY AND WHY...?

openbor is opensource,

why why why and why arn't you updating the engine yourself?

[NickyP]

It really depends on a lot of things. How big sprite image files are*, how many entities you "load" versus "know", how many entities you spawn on the screen at the same time... it's a lot of things.

For example, one mod I made worked just fine on the PSP until you hit a certain level. That level had almost 50 different entities all spawned at the same time, and as a result, the mod is almost unplayable until you manage to (very slowly and frame-skippy) kill some enemies. I imagine if I played that same level on the Dreamcast, it'd probably just blow up all together.

You can check how much RAM you're using by pausing, going into Options, and I forget where after that. It's probably System Settings. In that same screen, you can also check how much RAM is free (very important for Dreamcast modding).

As a general rule of thumb, just remember that the more entities you "load" in Models, the closer you are to reaching the Dreamcast's limit. I'm not trying to dissuade you from properly modding, and in truth you can probably get away a lot more advanced mods on the Dreamcast these days. But just keep in mind that the higher the amount of things in memory, the less likely the Dreamcast will run it. The poor thing only has 16 mb to play around with.

I could be completely wrong in my understanding of RAM, however.

*You could technically be using original scale NES sprites; but if the sprite itself is in a 320x240 image, it'll take up way more memory than it has to.

[esn23]

Thank you that was very helpful so it all has to do with the size of the spirtes and how many load on the screen at once it makes sense I was always wondering that how the sailor moon mod was on the dreamcast with all the voice overs and cutscenes

[PrinceOfBrains]

So, as a total noob who admittedly got into OpenBoR just to make stuff for the Dreamcast, I just wanna make sure I'm reading this right: this is ALL you need to do to make a Dreamcast game with OpenBoR? So long as it's burnt correctly and meets the memory requirements, it will load like normal? I don't have to do anything fancy in OpenBoR itself to make sure it knows to work in a Dreamcast?

Sorry for the dumb noob question, I just wanted to make sure I had all this down before I got too far into something and realized I was doing it wrong...as has happened before. 

[NickyP]

So, as a total noob who admittedly got into OpenBoR just to make stuff for the Dreamcast, I just wanna make sure I'm reading this right: this is ALL you need to do to make a Dreamcast game with OpenBoR? So long as it's burnt correctly and meets the memory requirements, it will load like normal? I don't have to do anything fancy in OpenBoR itself to make sure it knows to work in a Dreamcast?

Sorry for the dumb noob question, I just wanted to make sure I had all this down before I got too far into something and realized I was doing it wrong...as has happened before. 

Nah, you're good. Making a mod for OpenBOR is generally making a mod for all of the supported consoles. Memory management aside, you make a mod for Dreamcast just like you'd make it for Wii. As long as your burn it right, there should be no problem. 

[PrinceOfBrains]

That's...amazing, frankly. So it automatically sets the controls and everything? Why the heck hasn't anyone else come up with a program like OpenBoR? Good job, everyone.