ABOUT
The Sega Dreamcast was not only the last true Arcade console, but also harboured some of the greatest 2D Fighters of all time. Despite that, for reasons unexplainable, the homebrew scene has made little to no effort to uphold the DC's position as the best Fighter console of all time. At least until now:

Introducing Dolmexica! Originally planned as an original 2D fighter supposed to revitalize the console's Fighter landscape, it has since become the "Dolmexica-Engine", a modifiable game engine which allows users to create new games (or mods, as they are usually called) without programming knowledge. In addition to that, the D-Engine tries to make modding as simple as possible, for example offering an alternative to the use of palettes. As far as gameplay is concerned, the D-Engine was always built around speed. Running with 60 frames per second (in contrast to the 30 fps of most other fighters), it also utilizes special compression (QuickLZ to be exact) to achieve an incredible amount of usable frames. The upper frame limit has yet be reached, but calculations suggest about 1000 frames to be usable during a fight (for both characters put together). Another great thing is the hit detection: Instead of using the traditional hit boxes, Dolmexica introduces a brand new hit detection (dubbed internally as the Crash Layer), which basically reduces the inaccuracy of hits to 2 pixels for 128x128 characters or 4 pixels for 256x256 pixels. Yes, your eyes troll you not: characters with a resolution of 256 pixels x 256 pixels are possible. And since they would look kinda silly with a small screen resolution, it was upped to 640x480 (again twice as large as the usual 320x240). Just imagine what the Stages can look like with a resolution like that! By the way, those also support state-of-the-art animation, layers and everything you could possibly want. Oh, I already mentioned that modding all of this is really simple, right?

Of course that doesn't sound right, the technical specs of some moddable homebrew fighter outperforming them commercial powerhouses. My best guess is that the various optimization methods for this Dreamcast-only engine paired with current technology (once again, QuickLZ) resulted in this rather unusual situation.

Dolmexica's source code is freely available (SourceForge 'n stuff kinda gave that away, eh?), released under the GNU General Public License v3. If the modding tools do not suffice, you can crank up the awesomeness of your mod even more by changing the code itself! Have fun with this engine, I hope it will help you create another great game for the best console of all time. Should you feel like sharing your mod with the world, contact me at "capt_dc@yahoo(dot)com" to have it displayed on this site. But never forget the most important thing: Having fun!

- JOSH TARI, DREAMCAST PROGRAMMER AND WOMANIZER, 2012