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the state of mame
Vigo:
--- Quote from: Haze on January 05, 2011, 02:24:30 pm ---
--- Quote from: abaraba on January 05, 2011, 11:40:52 am ---
--- Quote from: Haze ---MAME is trying to emulate things of the past on a modern platform, not drag parts of them along with it.
--- End quote ---
Or, you could say: - by attracting to many wanna be programmers and letting them freely fiddle with MAME you now have bloated MAME that can not run properly without "modern platform".
--- End quote ---
No, we have the product we want and set out to create, an emulator for old systems that works on a modern platform and therefore can easily be developed, maintained and updated without the risk of the very emulator ending up being just as much of a relic as the hardware it's trying to emulate due the absurd requirements of having an outdated platform. Bloated would be adding a billion options to support legacy garbage we can't test. MAME is streamlined to run on modern hardware. You seem to have your terms reversed.
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I never considered MAME bloatware in any sense of the word. What is it, a 12 MB download? Starts up instantly on windows xp, a 10 year old operating system, while using a 10 year old computer. :dunno
TheShanMan:
I'll just say as a software engineer, what Haze is saying about mamedev's approach is 100% right and I applaud them for approaching this project in a way that has kept mame relevant all these years. That is no small achievement.
The things that various groups of users want that are outside of the goals of the project can be solved either by someone starting a derivative project or by providing diff's that people can use to compile their own mame to work the way they want. It may be inconvenient and people may wish that mamedev would just incorporate that work to make it easier for themselves, but that doesn't mean it's mamedev's responsibility and it certainly doesn't give users the right to be childish by demanding and criticizing.
Paul Olson:
I talked to Aaron about adding support for controls at CAX last year, and he basically said the same thing that Haze is saying; it is not one of the goals of the project and won't be added. that said, he is not opposed at all to a derivative that adds the functionality. It is just beyond the scope of what MameDev wants to do. It is a bummer for those of us who do use the authentic controls, but it makes sense from their perspective - keep focussed on the task at hand. I wish that this was a priority for the team, but I can accept that it is not. I have a lot of respect for everyone who has worked on MAME, and they are certainly entitled to use their time as they see fit.
If we could get a team together to work on a derivative, that would be great. I have talked to a few people, and while we are all interested, we can't really commit to it right now. If we ever get it started, we would have to find some way to keep it updated. If we got it finished, who knows, maybe it could end up in the core someday, but I think there is zero chance of us having support for it unless we do it. I am still an entry level programmer, but I would like to help on the project. I just know that I don't have the time to try to get it started and maintain it.
I think the target market for what we want is mostly on this forum, and I also think it is a very small percentage of us who actually need it. If there are enough of us to make it happen, great, but MAMEdev is not going to do it. If we get a serious effort going, some of them may be willing to help us along, but it will be up to us to do it. Is anyone interested?
yotsuya:
I like TheShanMan's comment about providing diffs rather than attacking the development team. MKChamp's diffs have been valuable, and have actually taught me how to compile so I could incorporate a functionality that I wanted (but wasn't necessarily part of the program). It's been fun. In fact, I downloaded the source to DICE, changed it and recompiled it so now I can play Pong on my cabinet using my button assignments (as the defaults aren't MAME friendly). It was a great learning experience .
ark_ader:
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