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Comment by Sakos | Hacker News Reader

The only google results about Populous and the Dreamcast refer back to this HN post and a comment-less Reddit post or two linking to the same repo. Mysterious. It doesn't look like Populous ever got a Dreamcast release either.

edit: Oh, I dug around for LemonHaze and found this twitter post https://nitter.mint.lgbt/i/status/1607154272612896769 I think the title of the HN post is erroneous. It seems to be an unreleased Pocket PC port, which makes way more sense.

edit2: The source for the code seems to be https://en.sega-dreamcast-info-games-preservation.com/liste-... where it's titled as "Source code of Populous for the Pocket PC system (Unreleased Windows CE Version)" Apparently WinCE games can be ported to Dreamcast too?

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The credits also reference Pocket PC:

  CString theCredits[50];
  theCredits[0] = "POPULOUS";
  theCredits[1] = "FOR THE";
  theCredits[2] = "POCKET PC";

> "Apparently WinCE games can be ported to Dreamcast too?"*

My memory is fuzzy but that seems doubtful. Windows CE for PocketPC had implementations for Windows' windowing system but IIRC Windows CE for the Sega Dreamcast did not, under the assumption that the game developer would be going straight to DirectX to manage the display.

Windows CE was on the CD for Dreamcast games. You could use image Builder to choose what was included. However Populous is fullscreen and dose not use any Window's UI.

Dreamcast ran windows ce, so it would be easy (ish?) to port it.

The Dreamcast didn’t come with CE. There was just a version that could be used /with/ the DC.

For some reason people equate “compatible with Windows CE” stickers with “runs Windows CE when you turn it on”

According to segaretro.org the Dreamcast did actually run an "optimized" version of WinCE (painful acronym) with DirectX. Some games ran on top of it but most ran a different OS that actually booted off of the game disc.

https://segaretro.org/Windows_CE

From that link: “ In the end, Sega chose to go down a different route than what was originally planned - bundling simple operating systems within the discs themselves. Running games through Windows CE was still an option for developers, but most games used Sega's proprietary software instead. The limited adoption of Windows CE is often blamed on console programmers lacking the experience to deal with the OS, and a lack of advantages that Windows CE offered over the competition.”

It doesn’t by default boot to CE. It /is/ an option though. But it doesn’t boot it from an internal ROM.

Or having the experience to not want to deal with that OS

Yeah, what an odd decision. I did a lot of work on CE back in the day, and I'm not a pro game dev by any means, but I don't know what advantage it would offer over any SDK that abstracted the hardware a little

CE was a very lightweight OS that was mostly nice for making it easier to port drivers and apps from one embedded system to another

Maybe Sega had some vague plans to turn the Dreamcast into a multipurpose family computer?

Considering it had a modem, could have an Ethernet module added, had official Web Browser Discs, had official Keyboard and Mouse accessories (I have all of these except the darn Ethernet module)… I think they were. Or at least a “web TV” -esque plan.

It had a ton of potential. The hardware is still fast enough to do basic browsing etc without issue if it had an updated browser.

It should be noted that the Dreamcast doesn't have any built in OS. Windows CE libraries were booted of the GD-Rom discs.

I think it’s reasonable to assume what is on the box comes in the box.

It’s not very intuitive that CE is merely available as an SDK option, and that it is only included in the boot media if developer wishes to do so.

Also slightly disappointing that it could have been the first console that don’t need to go through reset/reboot when changing games, though that would have been too ahead of its time.

I would agree if the sticker on the box didn’t say “compatible” :p

Dreamcast has a little Windows CE logo right on the front but I never knew to what extent that meant much

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