The following interview was a joint venture between Emulation Camp (http://www.emucamp.com and Total Emulation (http://totalemulation.cjb.net) of Shattered Soul, author of an upcoming emulator by the name of Sega32x. This interview was edited from it's original copy (comments by others were cut out, etc.) and was conducted live in the #Emucamp channel with audience members.

uzplayer: Introduce yourself to everyone
Shattered Soul: well i'm an australian university student studying computer science. names not included naturally :)

uzplayer: like to keep that mystery for all of us.. Right?
Shattered Soul: well yes. the problem that i see is that if people know who you are, they'll hastle your personal e-mail box, and even on campus. i know of MANY fellow university students that are big time emulation fans.. i really don't want to get bothered with all the hype. :)

uzplayer: Tell us a little bit about the emulator you are coding
Shattered Soul: the emulator..

uzplayer: Yes.. The emulator :-)
Shattered Soul: it's an emulator for the ill fated Sega 32x console (or add-on really). at the moment it's coded in DJGPP utilising Allegro and a few other things. i'm seriously considoring moving over to visual c++ for the convenince of DirectX

RabidFrog: Why did you choose the 32x to emulate?
Shatterd Soul: suprisingly enough, i've never played a 32x, nor seen one in real life. i chose it because it's never been done, GenesisPower is releasing all those ROMs, and besides that I'm sure I have sufficient documentation to get it done. besides that.. it'll probably be used as a major project for university studies. :P
Shattered Soul: i did a presentation once at university about emulator (using bleem! for example) and the number of drop jaw lectures nearly made me laugh on the stage. :)

uzplayer: Have you experienced any difficulties thus far?
Shattered Soul: as far as problems..
Shattered Soul: the only real problem is the BIOS image. I've heard that (from Snorter) it's surface mounted. I know little about dumping, but Snorter told me it's not possible to dump.. whether or not that's true I'm at a loss
Shattered Soul: on the other hand, another 32x emulator author introduced a technique he termed "BIOS faking".. i'm waiting his reply to see what he means exactly by that

uzplayer: So I take it you're gonna have to simulate the bios
Shattered Soul: simulating the BIOS is something i really want to avoid. i believe it'll be a nightmare

RabidFrog: having never seen a real 32x, how will you know how accurate the emulation is?
Shattered Soul: as far as accurate emulation.. well it doesn't take a professor in graphical engineering to see that the game appears to be running properly. any other 'proper' emulation problems will come from feed back.

uzplayer: How available are the technical documents on the 32x? Have you had any difficulties obtaining documents?
Shattered Soul: i put out a request for the docs on a message board a while back. i got this e-mail address of somebody who sent me some very intimate 32x documents. other than that, i found that there's little to non on the '32x', but some on the 68k and z80. about 500mb of them on cd-rom

uzplayer: What core will you be using?
Shattered Soul: if you're refering to what language, at this stage it'll be c++. yeah i know it's slow, but i'd prefer to use something that's easier (and okay at speed) than assembler for this sort of thing (for the time being anyway)

uzplayer: Premade core is what I was referring to :-)
Shattered Soul: if you're refering to what premade core.
Shattered Soul: it's got Starscream in there for the 68k. i'm not implementing sound at any time soon, and the SH2, well that's just got to be coded myself. i have someone who's made retail PSX games before offering to do the SH2. we'll see what happens with that.

RabidFrog: the 32x is basically an add on for the genesis/megadrive, will you write the emulation of that like a 2 in one emulator? maybe run genesis games on it too?
Shattered Soul: no. with other emulator like dgen, genecyst and kgen, there's no real shortage of genesis emulator. the primary focus of the emulator is to run 32x. if it runs genesis too, then terrific - i'm happy. if it doesn't then i'm sorry, but i'll not be implementing support for that directly.
Shattered Soul: the reason is... there quite possibly is some stuff on the genesis that the 32x games wont use. remember that there's a very limited number of 32x titles. i'm assuming that i might be able to reduce some complexity with just support for 32x titles, without the bagage of the genesis, even though it's an add-on/

RabidFrog: Okay, what is the current state of emulation?
uzplayer: He means the state of the emulator as of now
uzplayer: Like what has been done so far
Shattered Soul: the current state.. well it doesn't run any commerical games if that's what you mean. it's not VERY close, but it's not VERY far away either. i'm in desperate search of some demos for the 32x to see if that helps, but to date there's been none i can find, and nobody seems to want to (or even have) sent some to me. i estimated that it'll have something released by March 2000, but because of my new venture it might take longer. :(

uzplayer: Out of curiosity what is your experience in terms of programming and technology
Shattered Soul: okay i was prepared for this sort of question. at the moment i've used visual basic for approximately 6years (yeah no good for emulation). i'm fluent with Java, and C/C++. i'm in the process of writing some commercial software, and porting some stuff to both Java and C++. technology wise, i know know how many of the consoles works very well (through docs and stuff), but again i know little about the 32x at this stage even though i'm learning quickly :) I've been programming for about 10 years now so i have the grips with the for.. next loop :P

uzplayer: With the advent of 32x emulation are you worried about legal action from Sega?
Shattered Soul: no. if i was to release it as commercial then i'd naturally approach sega about it and see what they say. obviously i'd have to get permission for the games and so forth. this project will be totally open source once it's running at least 25% of the available games. i see no reason for sega taking action against a console that did nothing really for them

RabidFrog: are you getting any help with anything other than tech docs? are you looking for someone to share the workload?
Shattered Soul: i've been offered by numerous people when it comes to coding. like i said there's a PSX game coder that wants to handle the SH2. Other than that it's all my own work, which is how i like it. I've been offered to be hosted by a (as i have just found out recently) site that is not all that it seems, so that's out of the question now.

uzplayer: How do you feel about the current state of the emulation community?
Shattered Soul: hah! this is one of the most asked questions. i feel that it's everyone's choice to do what they want. however i do feel that releases like kof99 (as cool as it may be) should not be released to the emu community. there are WAY to many lamers out there who just want to "ownz" you, which i absolutely hate... more to come...
Shattered Soul: but on the other hand, i feel that emulators like bleem! which can run games that were made yesterday are beneficial to us. it shows that we're not just making emulation a free-for-all thing, which can attract the word "warez". in short i think that emulators are just fine no matter what console you're emulation, just keep roms that bare (c) 1999 away for a few years.

RabidFrog: does the emulator have a name?
Shattered Soul: the name.. yes. i ran a competition in which people had to guess the name to get the first copy. i'm please to announce that it's been finally cracked! i'm surpised though seen as the site has "sega32x" on it and "download sega32x".. it was really good to see everyone suggesting names, but one person got it exactly. he'll recieve a nice suprise e-mail soon. :P btw. the competition is closed. :) it was weird watching all these far out names being guessed when the site had the name right there, smack bang on it. Some were so good they made my title seem plain. :)

RabidFrog: never felt like changing it then?
Shattered Soul: nope. sega32x is a simple, plain and easy to identify name.

RabidFrog: no confusion. unlike some...
Shattered Soul: names like "corn" and "psyke" don't explain the emu.. i like the names, but i just prefer the style i use

uzplayer: You have had some interesting adventures with hosting.. Please enlighten us :-)
Shattered Soul: hosting.. i've been offered to be hosted by emutech2000. they offered a nice package and the guy was nice to me. i was made aware of the fact that this site was pretty lousy on their reputation and can basically be a bunch of arseholes. i'm not saying they are, because they've been ever so nice to me, i'm just keeping my distance to be safe (and sure).

At this point the interview was opened to the audience in #Emucamp. The following are questions that were sent by audience members to uzplayer and RabidFrog.

Sent to uzplayer: P-Strife asks: what is your favorite system and 32x game if you have one?
Shattered Soul: never played any games. i like the look of Knuckles Chaotix and MK2

Sent to uzplayer: Newo asks: Will the 32x emulator be using Dynamic Recompilation?
Shattered Soul: not at this point. i'm familiar with the technique, but the 32x has enough complexity in it as it stands. with 2 sh2 processors you need to do things like load handling, and other stuff like supporting the fact that the games can use a combination of the genesis or 32x. ie. processing through the 32x and graphics through genesis. Further more, with about 4 or so processors.. do you want dynamic rec on all of them? :P

Sent to RabidFrog: do you have plans to write any homebrew roms? to maybe justify the emulator as legally, there would be nothing to play :)
Shattered Soul: No i don't. i have the sdk for it, but don't feel like it

Sent to uzplayer: Delta asks: What's your target platform? (system specifications needed to run the emulator)
Shattered Soul: at the moment using DJGPP it's DOS.. but again i want to move the win32 using vc++.
Shattered Soul: sys req: don't really know until everything is implemented. it really does depend on how efficient i'm able to code it.
Shattered Soul: i estimate: celeron 300a, 64mb ram, 8mb video card

Sent to RabidFrog: what gfx API will you use? the 32x was basically a cartridge based baby saturn, it has reasonable 3d...
Shattered Soul: that's where the win32 comes into action. i want to use directx/direct3d if necessary, and then move onto OpenGL. Note: i don't plan on 3dfx as i don't have one. :(

Sent to uzplayer: So I take it there will be no software drivers then
Shattered Soul: software drivers: yeah there will be
Shattered Soul: direct3d if necessary i mean

Sent to uzplayer: cgfm2 asks: How is it possible to emulate just the 32x when the Genesis and 32x are dependant on each other?
Shattered Soul: it's not. there'll be support for enough genesis as required. if it's required for the entire lot, then it'll be there.

At this point the interview was coming to a close.

RabidFrog: i'm curious, do you know how many 32x games were made?
Shattered Soul: less than 50 isn't there (maybe < 100).

Random Question: [Delta]: do you like ice cream
Shattered Soul: yep. the low fat creamy stuff

Random Question: [Delta]: what flavour
Shattered Soul: chocolate

uzplayer: Is there anything you would like to add before we close the interview?
Shattered Soul: here's a comment to ponder: Sex is like ironing.. after it's done, it just goes all wrinly again! :P

* RabidFrog would like to thank Shattered Soul for the interview, and for brining us a 32x emu!
uzplayer: Thank you very much Shattered Soul

Shattered Soul: np.. that last commend lost it's touch with the spelling error
Shattered Soul: okay. keep an eye on the web site over the weekend.. new tech docs md, and sh2 memory maps are coming