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the state of mame

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YoMama1:

1.  MAME does everything I could ever want it to

2.  The MAME license is restrictive

TOK:


--- Quote from: wweumina on December 16, 2010, 06:51:01 am ---
--- Quote from: Xiaou2 on December 16, 2010, 12:12:05 am ---
--- Quote --- Narrow minded attitudes help nothing.
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 Very Ironic quote coming from the kid who thinks +20yrs of Arcade fans from ages 6 to +35  do not represent the majority of mames user base.
 
 According to Haze, the majority of mame users are Xbox modders from his generation.  LOL   And, he says this on a Build your Own controls site!  Classic.   :laugh2:

 Gota love the youngens, who think the world revolves around them and them alone.
heh

 

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Oh no, we aren't going to hear the sob story about how you are too stupid to program again are we?  Otherwise, of course you'd help out...

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Lucky for you 1 inch death punches can't be sent through the mail!  :dizzy:

Haze:


--- Quote from: upprc04 on December 16, 2010, 10:27:45 am ---Who would we need to talk to if we wanted to get involved?  I would maybe be interested at some point, but am pretty busy at the moment.  Looks like Haze?

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The source would be the place to start.  Find something you can fix, and fix it properly (not with hacks) and generally keep doing that sort of thing.

The good thing about MAME (and emulation in general) is that other pieces of the source are often a great reference, and help with fixing things.  Hardware tends to be quite logical, and often follows common design patterns.

The compile process etc. is made as easy as possible to help allow newcomers to contribute easily, and in general if you have specific questions about a driver / piece of code then they can be answered by the dev team.

At the end of the day it's mostly about initiative and understanding how the hardware should work, the actual MAME code (that you'll actually need to change) is for the most part straightforward as long as you have some programming experience.  Pick something you want to have a shot at fixing, weigh up how realistic it is (if it requires new ROMs, or actual hardware tests then it's harder) and once you've found something that seems realistic, take a stab at it.  That's how I ended up getting involved, and the same for all the devs who have come and gone really.

Haze:


--- Quote from: YoMama1 on December 16, 2010, 02:31:14 pm ---2.  The MAME license is restrictive

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The only real restriction beyond the license on which it's based is that it can't be used for commercial purposes.

Beyond that the license is very fair and open, and some parts of the code even lift that restriction if it's felt there is real benefit in doing so (the CHD support code for example)

If you're going to get anal because it's not a true 'Open Source' license, so be it, but as far as the team are concerned it's an open project; the dev team simply don't want somebody bundling it up and selling it (and at the end of the day, that's better for everybody, because it means people doing ports aren't just going to take buggy MAME code and release it as a commercial product when maybe they could have done a better job actually porting something, or doing their own research with actual help from the original manufacturers.  The MAME code is also not optimized for low-end systems, so ports not using the MAME code will run better too)  The MAME team claim NO ownership over the information discovered however, you can use the findings (which is the bulk of the work) however you want, they're facts, not something you can claim ownership of.

The rest of the so-called 'license' issues are merely requests from the developers to not do things (like removing the nag screens) because it creates too many issues as far as bug tracking and the like are concerned because people aren't properly informed of the emulation state with those screens gone.  This is just a matter of common sense and respect for the wishes of the development team.

Saying that the MAME license is restrictive is quite frankly, a myth, it's just something people are using to attack the project in the same way they did with Mahjong games in the past, saying that the devs only care about those.

You've only got to open up something like the FreeDo (3d0 emulator) license to see what restrictive is, they more or less claim that if you even look at their code, they own the right to be credited for anything you ever do even if you don't use a single line of their code.

YoMama1:


--- Quote from: Haze on December 16, 2010, 03:18:30 pm ---
The only real restriction beyond the license on which it's based is that it can't be used for commercial purposes.

The dev team simply don't want somebody bundling it up and selling it (and at the end of the day, that's better for everybody...

--- End quote ---

This restriction is pretty huge, and I think it is quite a turnoff for potential developers.  In general people like to get paid for work.  That's what this comes down to, right?

People cannot port mame to be used in an iPad app.  This would be totally legit.

I can't use MAME at a school fundraiser without feeling bad (I understand the ROM issue, let's put that aside for now).

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