ATTENTION ALL PROGRAMMERS!!!!

Trip Mercy · Post by **Trip Mercy** » Mon Apr 27, 2009 10:36 pm

I too would like to make it all original, that's what would really make it special. Then we could totally sell it and make some cash on the side

xDerekRx · Post by **xDerekRx** » Mon Apr 27, 2009 11:45 pm

Become a small company and make 2-3 games based on our engine and release them for 40$, see how many saturn owners buy

like 20-40

Warp2063 · Post by **Warp2063** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 9:00 am

xDerekRx wrote:Become a small company and make 2-3 games based on our engine and release them for 40$, see how many saturn owners buy like 20-40

Lol. We'll never make back even development costs. =P Too bad I don't think we can do what that group is doing with Pier Solar. They found a company to build the cartridges for them. I haven't heard of anyone that can create discs that will run normally on an unmodified Saturn.

dbdrummer88 · Post by **dbdrummer88** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 10:23 am

Although I did have 2 computer programming classes in high school and 1 in college, I am unable to remember any of what I had learned

If a game were to be made or even a demo, would i be able to acquire a copy of it? It would be quite amazing if whoever is going to take part in this could actually come up with a new game!

Trip Mercy · Post by **Trip Mercy** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 11:06 am

Well the Saturn uses a basic cd drive and will read cd r disk so theoretically we could just buy a bunch of burnable disc and use some kind of disc juggler or what have you to burn the game onto the cd and the saturn should read it. VCD cards might help.

Warp2063 · Post by **Warp2063** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 2:06 pm

A Saturn will not play games from a CD-R unless the Saturn has been chipped or you use the swap trick. To date, no one has been able to duplicate the special reflective ring on a Saturn disc that lets the Saturn know whether it is an actual Saturn disc or not. I don't think a VCD card would help at all, especially because so few people have them.

xDerekRx · Post by **xDerekRx** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 7:18 pm

Warp im surprised to hear no one has done the discs with the outer authenticating ring yet.

I wonder who has the rights to those discs? If you contact Sega would they ever release that information? Sega is buried in years of personnel changes and my guess would be no one could ever do it again.

Trip Mercy · Post by **Trip Mercy** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 8:55 pm

well what I'm thinking is that the Saturn was discontinued 12 years ago and they have no mention of it what so ever on their own page, though they do own up to the DC. If we ask real nice they could let us use their system. As for the disc no one has the rights to them, you can buy them from wal mart

Warp2063 · Post by **Warp2063** » Tue Apr 28, 2009 9:09 pm

The ring is a reflective layer stamped at the time of the disc's pressing. From what I've read, the Saturn checks for the reflectivity index(es?) of the ring, decides whether it's a valid disc or not based on what it detects, and then continues. It's not information you can burn to the disc; it's a physical property that the laser is detecting. That's why it hasn't been duplicated. It's much easier to perform a swap trick or install a mod chip than it is to find a way to duplicate that ring. I've heard lots of thoughts on how to do it, but I've never heard of a success. It's not worth the effort.

Trip Mercy · Post by **Trip Mercy** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 12:30 pm

right, I've read some of the same things, well, I'm sure there's a way to make it work, the thing is, no one has figured it out yet.

Warp2063 · Post by **Warp2063** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 2:37 pm

Trip Mercy wrote:right, I've read some of the same things, well, I'm sure there's a way to make it work, the thing is, no one has figured it out yet.

They have. There are two ways to beat the system.
One: duplicate the ring. Difficult and expensive, as you'd have to find a company willing to produce the illegal discs for you. Modifying an existing disc to include the ring is too difficult to be worth the effort.
Two: convince the Saturn that it has a legitimate disc in there by letting it see or hear what it wants to see or hear. This is the easiest method. You can either, A: Show it a real copy protection ring from a legitimate disc, then swap in your copy (the swap trick), or B: send the information that the laser would have read from the disc to the Saturn, even though the laser never actually saw the copy protect ring. This is how a modchip works. When the Saturn would normally check for the copy protection ring, it sends the information that would have been read from a legitimate disc to the chip that would normally receive it. Either way, the Saturn believes that it's a legitimate disc, either because it saw a legitimate ring, or thought it did.

I guess you could also custom-design a BIOS for the Saturn, and you might also have to modify the drive... but while you're at it, why not just design and build a whole new system? Building a new BIOS would probably be fairly difficult, and it would definitely be more difficult to install than soldering a single wire to the modchip.

HoboJoe · Post by **HoboJoe** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 7:05 pm

Except installing a modchip more often then not takes more than soldering one wire. And if you have a model 1 saturn, sucks for you....cause chances are you ain't gonna get a modchip working. It's possible, but two broken modchips have convinced me to wait until i get a model 2.

Warp2063 · Post by **Warp2063** » Wed Apr 29, 2009 10:09 pm

HoboJoe wrote:Except installing a modchip more often then not takes more than soldering one wire. And if you have a model 1 saturn, sucks for you....cause chances are you ain't gonna get a modchip working. It's possible, but two broken modchips have convinced me to wait until i get a model 2.

In some systems, yes. But the only modchip I've been able to get ahold of for the Saturn only requires you to solder one wire in place (power for the modchip.) You have the option of soldering one more wire, but it's often unnecessary.

And yes, installing a Model 2 modchip on a Model 1 Saturn is a pain at best.

retro · Post by **retro** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 5:24 am

I don't want to put anyone off, but programming for Saturn is no easy task! You really need to have knowledge of the following:

SH2 assembler (and Sega's method of using dual SH"s)
C programming
SCU
SMPC
SVCSP
VDP1
VDP2

There's some heavy reading involved in getting that knowledge!

Back in the day, there would have been a lot more reading if you wanted to get a game out. For example, you'd need one of the development kits which have big manuals in themselves. Then you'd need to know the VCD system, how to write a CD correctly, Sega's development standards....

On top of that, you'd need to have and know how to use the SBL, SGL, graphics and sound tools.

Whilst you're probably unlikely to use the DTS tools nowadays, you'd still need to brush up on the stuff I listed first.

As for creating a disc that you could sell legitimately - forget it! You should go down the homebrew route, providing compilable code and assets or an ISO. You won't replicate the protection ring or get the Saturn to think you have without using a mod chip or swap trick.

There are actually three ways to fool the saturn into booting a CD-R - mod chip, swap trick and the official system discs that were sold to developers. You can also run code on a Saturn with one of the development kits or using a retail Saturn with an Action Replay connected to your PC via a comms card (probably the best option for most people).

Having said all that, I hope there are still people determined to do this! There are already a number of Saturn homebrewers over on SegaXtreme - they even have a programming contest which I believe runs every year!

As much as I would love to offer my assistance with such a project (my main area of expertise would be the sound/music side but I could help in other areas, too), my time is very limited at the moment and I don't think I could give it the attention it deserves.

One thing that I will say (and I don't mean to offend at all) is this. If you're thinking of a group project, you need a project manager who knows what they're doing. I have seen homebrew projects fail due to poor management - usually someone who wants to start something up but doesn't have any programming experience. Whilst it is possible to operate like that, it is best if the project manager can at least have a basic grasp of programming concepts.

Anyway, if you go for it, good luck! Let us know how it goes.

Warp2063 · Post by **Warp2063** » Mon Jun 15, 2009 7:41 am

I had a sense of all this before you said that. =P

No, I didn't think this project would ever get off the ground. There's certainly interest, but I don't know if any of us have the time or patience to get into something that involved. I did some preliminary research, but I realized a few months back that I was probably never going to get around to programming for the Saturn. A shame, but a very likely truth.

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ATTENTION ALL PROGRAMMERS!!!!