Shenmue 2 Full English Xbox Speech mod for Sega Dreamcast

[brad86]

I'm in the same boat with Demul. Can never get the thing to work correctly. I had some success once, but the performance when upping the internal resolution was shocking, and I don't exactly have a bad GPU. The sound is pretty bad too.

I have high hopes for Reicast when it eventually comes to PC. Seems to be progressing well on smartphone devices. I see that as a great successor to NullDC.

[sm1th]

If I am not mistaken the shen2 eng version that is for emulators only was posted at snesorama about a month after my 80min and 99min versions were uploaded.
It is a direct file swap of the shen2 xbox .ahx files.
No downsampling, No compression, Nothing ripped.

If anyone wants to create a version like this...
Simply swap the xbox files and create a selfboot cdi.
Done!
It is definately the perfect version for emulators.
And it should also be the perfect version for gd rom emulators and dc-ide? <--has anyone tested?

Anthony817 is correct.
I never wanted to make the 99min version at all.
I was fine with the 80min cd-r version since anyone can burn the iso with no need for special disks or burners.
The 99min version uses compression only, no downsampling.
I have never even played the 99min version.

[Anthony817]

Don't worry Smith I got your back when I get my disc's in from China. You WILL have Shenmue 2 99 min English on your home console.

[sm1th]

thanks Anthony817

[Shadow2222]

I'm sorry if this has been asked elsewhere but I bought (quite awhile ago from Anthony817) a set of "banana" discs with the high-quality version of this already burned to them.

This is my own fault, but I was not able to test them until two days ago. I have two Dreamcasts and they both act very strange with these discs (they run regular burned/legit games fine, as I just played through Shenmue I on them).

They either:

1. Do not read them and say to insert a disc
2. Act like they are a music CD
3. Start loading, but when it says "Now loading..." on the bottom, it will quickly display an error message and not go further
4. Load fine (after almost 30-40 tries, no exaggeration), but the Dreamcast makes a horrendous clicking sound.

Can anyone help with this? I'd love to be able to play through for the first time ever with my Shenmue I save file. Thanks!

[Anthony817]

Damn, that is a shame. I made sure to test all disc's on mine before I sent them out to you.

A likely possibility here is that you might need to tune the potentiometer on the lens assembly.

I posted a tutorial on how to do it years back. I hope this is the case because other than buying a new drive or full DC I can't think of anything else. You say it works with other burnt games so it is a mil-cd version system.

http://www.theisozone.com/tutorials/dre ... ive-lense/

Also what does that error message say?

[Shadow2222]

Thanks for the quick reply! I have actually tuned the potentiometer before (only on one though) using your tutorial when the one Dreamcast could not read regular discs before I will try that again

I'm at work, and actually won't be home again until either tomorrow or Friday, but then I will definitely check. I believe it said something like "cannot read," but I will try to get more specific as soon as I can.

[BlueMue]

I wish the GDEMU and similar devices would become cheaper and more available and widespread.
Then this whole messing with the laser and having to cut and downsample things to fit the games on CDRs would be a thing of the past (it already is for me).

[Anthony817]

I hear that BlueMue. I am actually having a friend mod a Dreamcast for me with the IDE HDD and Bios mods so I will be able to hook up my 1tb hdd to my Dreamcast(With SATA adapter) and put the full game set on my drive. The DC set is only something like I think 500gb or close to it for all 720+ games. That gives me lots of extra room for my Half-Life mods and other homebrews.



http://www.retrocollect.com/News/how-to ... shell.html

[doof_warrior]

been lurking here for like 10 years lol finally made an account



so, has anyone successfully burned the 99min non-downsampled version?
I have a friend trying to make me a set because he was able to easily find 99min cd-r's in south korea, but he said the audio sounds really bad. so I'm assuming it's just like the 80min version

is there a chance the downsampled audio was accidentally put into the 99min version? :\


edit: so, its just the cutscene audio that sounds downsampled. all the free audio with random npcs is full quality. is this normal?

[sm1th]

is there a chance the downsampled audio was accidentally put into the 99min version? :\


edit: so, its just the cutscene audio that sounds downsampled. all the free audio with random npcs is full quality. is this normal?

hell if i know.
i have never even played the 99min version.
all i remember doing was compressing all of the ahx files for the 99min version.
i did not downsample any of the ahx files in the 99min version.
i don't know how the ahx files would be different for cutscenes and not free speech?
the source is from shenmue 1 .gdi
when people say that the cutscenes sound different in the 99min version are they using an emulator or playing the iso on an actual dreamcast?

[Gebirgskuchen]

In my case, the 99min English DUB Version was played on an actual Dreamcast. I can also confirm that the bad sound quality only occurred during cut scenes. Concerning the gameplay the Sound Quality especially the Soundtrack was allright.

[Agent_Morgan]

That's weird...
Has anyone else played the 99min version with lossless audio in the cutscenes? There's no samples anywhere on Youtube and the like of the 99 minute version at all.

I'm currently playing the 80min version myself (thanks for your hard work, SM1TH). And what I've noticed is the sound quality for the speech seems to be slightly better in the cutscenes than on the streets and whatnot. Also, the speech quality seemed to be a lot better on Disc 1 than on Discs 2 & 3 (haven't made it to 4 yet), where the quality seems to have taken a major hit. It's so bad now that I had to put the subs back on because I can't decipher what's even being said half the time anymore. I'm assuming the voice files had to be downsampled even further on these discs due to the size.

It's still a dream being able to play this on a Dreamcast in English at all, but I would definitely like to see what this 99min version is about.

And does anyone know where I would take my DC to have an SD card slot installed? I didn't know this was a thing. Just playing all the games off an HD of some sort and not having to worry about lasers, moving parts and size issues for ISO's anymore would be quite nice.

[Nico0020]

I burned the 99min version. The audio quality is still low and sounds quite robotic when talking to people on the streets. Strangely, some peoples audio sounded higher quality than others. Although I myself prefer the Japanese audio, I'd still like to see a 99min CD version with little to no audio quality loss. Similar to the 80 min cd version of Shenmue Undub.

[Snoopbob2006]

I still have a few 99min discs left that I was going to burn the Shenmue 2 Eng Dub on. But I guess it isn't worth it if its just the same as the 80min version.