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the state of mame
Xiaou2:
--- Quote ---Firstly, "put up or shut up" comes to mind. If you're going to go 'out of pocket' to support the developers, then do so. If you're going to step up and do some programming, then do so. Otherwise, this type of opinion is not appreciated, and is not the consensus of the community at whole.
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Firstly, I HAVE donated to various money collecting ventures to buy Rare PCBs, several times, despite my poor financial standings. You?
I have Also managed to borrow a collectors Discs of Tron artwork from his Pristine working Environmental machine, which I scanned in 4 parts, and hand edited, which ended up in Mame. And THEN, had to scan in like 15 pages of Schematics, and send them via snail mail to a Dev to get the lights to work correctly.
Now, what have YOU done for Preservation sake?
As for the Consensus, plenty of people who would like to play Atari's 720, would easily disagree. And though Im not even a big fan of the game, even I realize the IMPORTANCE of Preserving the ability to Correctly Interface a real controller for 100% Arcade Accuracy.
Plenty of people have complained about various controller options lacking, and over time, many of them have been solved. However, there are still many cases which have been butchered (720), ignored (Shifters), etc.
The Devs dont need a 720 controller to make a 720 controller work. That is Hazes BS line to try to fool the ignorant. 720 used to work fine with a real controller.
All they need to do, is bypass their OCD for 10 seconds, and code in a few switches.
Various Examples:
Arcadecontrols = yes
Arcadecontrols = no
(easy fix for a game like 720, which has only one special controller that isnt available)
ArcadeController1 = Yes / No
ArcadeController2 = Yes / No
(Could be used for multiple controls in a game, without need for individual names)
720controller = Y / N
4wayShifter = Y / N
2wayShifter = Y / N
(Define each control option available at the start, and actually enforce them)
More robust solutions could be implemented, but a simple solution could easily fix the problem until a time when some Dev cares enough to do things better.
Rick:
--- Quote from: Xiaou2 on December 29, 2010, 03:27:17 pm ---Firstly, I HAVE donated to various money collecting ventures to buy Rare PCBs, several times, despite my poor financial standings. You?
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Nothing, actually. I wasn't actually aware this had occurred, as I'm still pretty new here.
--- Quote from: Xiaou2 on December 29, 2010, 03:27:17 pm ---Now, what have YOU done for Preservation sake?
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Hmm. Again, nothing.
But, here's where we differ: I respect those who have contributed to MAME development, and I don't post like a pompous, elitist, self-serving ass who thinks he's entitled to have his opinions on the direction of the development actually heard and followed. You post like your donations or ideas mean you deserve something in return.
It just simply doesn't work that way. The Development Team doesn't exist to feed your fancy, and they'll do it their own way, regardless of how 'smart' or 'right' you think your ideas are. There's no sense getting all butthurt about it, either. Even if you have the be-all, end-all solution to all of MAME's problems for today and the future, it doesn't mean they're going to build it as you say, or make it work as you say. As it's been said a million times before in this thread, if you want it changed, pick up a programming manual and do it yourself. Nobody's stopping you. Just don't expect the developers to do anything, just because you've kicked in some coin, or scanned in some images.
saint:
Gentle reminder to keep this thread civil. (This post goes to no one specifically) Thanks!
--- saint
Haze:
--- Quote from: pinballjim on December 29, 2010, 04:05:51 pm ---I also think we need to be honest here and realize how many old games were running nearly identical hardware. I imagine once they figured out how to emulate a Z80 and dump a few ROMs they cracked 90% of the games from the 1980s. You don't get that luxury with anything newer.
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Actually of newer stuff is running on well documented modern hardware, so it's easier. That's why it's so shambolic that PSX and N64 based emulation in MAME is so bad.
If you think simply emulating a CPU core grants you perfectly working games then you have a lot to learn. There are still games running on a Z80 that have been an incredible amount of work to emulate; see the recent progress on Heavy Unit for example. The processor is merely one component, the rest is 99% undocumented and understanding the rest is pretty much the entirety of the work I've done for MAME over the last 10 years, giving hours to it every day.
Then of course you've got the fact that even something as 'simple' as the Z80 has undocumented behavior, even as recently as last year some things were being fixed on it, chances are nothing relies on those features (and they seem to differ from manufacturer to manufacturer) but again it goes to show that there is always room for improvement. There are apparently some gambling games that DO check manufacturer specific behavior of some of the 6xxx series CPUs as a form of copy protection!
Haze:
--- Quote from: Xiaou2 on December 29, 2010, 03:27:17 pm ---blah blah blah blah blah..
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1) To properly implement something, yes, developers need the controls
2) Aaron would like to keep switches down to a minimum, he's stated this in the past.
3) Again, if you have a special use case, there is nothing preventing you from either changing it yourself, or paying for somebody to change it yourself. Just don't expect Mamedev to do it for you. It's a special case, nothing more, nothing less.
Your expectations of the dev team are _ridiculous_.
Would you expect a deaf person to fix the sound emulation in something? Given what you're saying, I'm guessing the answer is yes, because they could look at the waveforms of course!
Introducing unmaintainable, untested code into the project is suicide.