How do you deal with Dreamcast roms that do not contain cdi files?

[Rotgut]

I finally got NullDC to run via HS!! Very excited about that.

But. Some roms I unzip and there is a cdi file that runs the game --- other roms I unzip and they spill out a bunch of little files and NO cdi file... how do I get those games to run?

[Aorin]

Rotgut, I learned somethings about Dreamcast isos here from other members, I'll share with you what I learned so far.

 

CDI Dreamcast isos are, in fact, downsized Dreamcast GDI dumped games, it means that, to play Dreamcast burnt Isos in the real console, most games needed to fit a 700 Mb CD, i.e., down sampled music, voices, or even deleted audio/voices or other stuff to fit it.

 

The other case, that should be something like this http://www.epforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=38486&d=1383832264

when you unzip and you get lots of files, RAW, GDI etc, these are the real dumped games, these will have 1.10 GB in size, because Dreamcast media was a GDI CD, that had 1.10 in space.

So, what you have to do to run these, isn't difficult, it should run the same way as the CDI, just adding .gdi to your default emulator and it should be fine.

 

I'll go a little further in this explanation and I'll tell you how to take advantage of these RAW, BIN and GDI split files, keeping them like the original and downsizing it even less than those CDI.

 

I'm attaching a GDI to CHD batch tool that awakened kindly shared with us, all you have to do for it to work is running this batch OUTSIDE your GDI games folder, it will create a CHD image of your split GDI/RAW/BIN into a single CHD image, compressing really really well.

 

After the compression, inside each folder you'll have the resulting CHD game, you'll have to remove the former extension so it will fit your database, it doesn't remove the old extension, always keeping the name like "gamename.GDI.CHD", just remove the GDI and you're good.

 

Also, don't forget adding CHD extension to your default emulator in Rocket Launcher UI, it will run just fine as your CDI images.

 

I recommend searching for non-CDI images, this way you can be sure that you have the actual stuff, instead the ripped ones.

GDI to CHD batch tool.zip

[Spawk]

Ok, there are a couple of choices of sets for dreamcast.

There is a "Scene" pack that contains a mix of cdi, nrg and bin+cue formats. These are made for booting in a real Dreamcast and have often been modified to fit onto a CDR (Downsampling of audio, maybe cutscenes removed). You will be able to tell if you have this set as they usually have a "scene" intro load before the game. I couldn't get nullDC to play nice with the nrg or bin+cue formats. There is an old program "bin2boot" that will convert the bin+cue but it needs to be run in dosbox. The nrg I never could figure out.

The "Trurip" version contains gdi type (usually including track wav and raw data). These are as pure as possible so no downsampling or silly intros. This set is ideal for emulation but not all games in the xml have been ripped.

A gentleman on BitGamer has put together a HyperSpin ready set with as many trurips as possible, filling in the rest with cdi versions. These will all play nice with nulldc.