the state of mame

[bitbytebit]

I haven't read most of the posts here and I don't have much to add to the debate, but I agree with points on each side.  The only thing I would add to it is that for the past few years it seems whenever I look at a new MAME release for what games have been added it's generally some game where you remove squares to expose a naked little girl  (I take it these are the mahjong games I see referenced).  Seems tacky to me and a strange direction for MAME to go.  Documentation?  

Seemed like a strange direction for the industry to go, but, it sold.

As I said, it's not up to MAME to discriminate against certain genres of game because they're a steaming pile of poo.

There are examples of more interesting things happening in MAME tho.

Let's just say that R.Belmont, who maintains SDLMame and developers on Linux was telling people explicitly NOT to use Ubuntu for MAME, because it caused more problems than it solved.  Maybe it's since improved, but things like this have always been a problem with Linux distros whenever I've tried them; I found the same when trying to use virtualization stuff and Linux, even if there are supposedly many 'current' versions of 'Linux' the virtualization integration components only work with certain ones.  For what should be a 'single' platform it's far too fragmented for it's own good, Windows on the other hand, isn't (unless you count the server versions, but they're really just the same anyway)  This makes Windows a better target platform and is a far more important fact than any of the PR bull Microsoft spew out, and probably one of the reasons many (commercial) developers really don't bother with linux.

A cool side effect of Mame developers using a great compiler like GCC (and one without all the meaningless warnings it can spit out for different versions/library combinations), is that it'll most likely always work with Linux no matter if the OSD for SDL is there or not (at least the core, the OSD could always be added on as a separate thing by some Linux person Like me if this R.Belmont guy vanished from the Earth, which I really hope doesn't happen because it's great he's doing that work right now). 

I agree, I don't like Ubuntu and most Linux distributions are either too hard for casual users to setup (like Gentoo) yet really do work correctly once setup (yet you have to know how to basically do the setup by hand of partition/format/configure).  Really I find the best thing to do in Linux is use it for dedicated purposes, don't use the main Windows style interface (GTK/QT/Gnome), and then you have nothing most users want but can really run a mean version of something like Mame off of FVWM or just X and an xterm.  You might even have a frontend if you want to torture yourself with the pain of setting up Wahcade, which unfortunately has some nice bugs in the way and other obstacles unless you know a few advanced things to fix them.  It can be great, but I admit I definitely have to do plenty of hacking at my systems I setup for myself and know exactly what I'm doing to navigate it in an optimal way.  Using Ubuntu for a development system definitely is not something I've found possible, the thing can't even cross compile 32 bit binaries on a 64 bit system for some odd reason.  The reason it's bad for Mame, at least currently, is because Ubuntu is trying to utilize all the newest DRM/KMS Graphics stuff with OpenGL before they were ready even for somewhat decent usage (in December 2010 they got somewhat usable at least in the ATI/Intel/Nvidia side), and then there's still more of a small tight rope of what works well right now and they seem not to have been able to compile a build of every component required for Mame that utilizes it right on any video card.  I actually am surprised Ubuntu decided to dive into KMS already for working with video cards, when not even Gentoo has done that and is looking more stable which really I think it should be opposite of that.

So yes, Linux can be a mess but distributions are kind of like applications themselves, since it's just a strewn together set of GNU utilities and libraries, with the single Linux kernel placed into it.  It's nice to have competition between them, yet that's also what has caused the issues with a straightforward platform anyone can setup on most any system to run an application like Mame on most common hardware setups.  Then again sometimes people get lucky and get a setup that does something for what they are needing, and usually then it runs way more stable and efficiently then the Windows setup (or even does something that can't be done in Windows).  Unfortunately that usually either requires you to use a specialized build for your goal, that someone spent a lot of time working on building, or you to take it upon yourself and know how to hack things like the kernel and other libraries/apps (which is sad that is required, fortunately sometimes other people do it though for others in Linux and there's usually no OS/blackbox limitations depending on what you know how to do).

[Xiaou2]

I suppose X2 is going to say the original controller was revolutionary and it just doesn't play correctly without the hit pads tho, and that Capcom be damned for forcing everybody just use buttons on all their later fighting games so that weak people could play them.

Even Capcom realized the novelty controller was a gimmick ;-)

 The goal of PRESERVATION, is to Accurately represent the thing you are PRESERVING. Gimmick or Not.

 Weather you do not appreciate their direction / choices is Meaningless to the Truth of REAL Preservation.

 Being that you cant understand this shows you shouldnt be part of any Preservation efforts.

 
 Its Obvious that in This instance, the game may in fact play Better without the specialty controller.  More than likely it was a decision made from thinking people wouldnt be able to adapt to use 6 buttons.. where most games used only 2 or 3.
Still, its not up to YOU, how it should operate.  Its documenting how it Did operate, even if it was later changed. (which is an extreme rarity)

 In most cases, a specialty controller is Necessary to control the game to its fullest potentials.  720 is one such controller... where as no other controller can match its performance. That can easily be proven... and theres already plenty of evidence from various comments on sites from people who are very good at the game.

 Arkanoid?  Plays Horribly with anything but a spinner / paddle.  The only way to make it even close to playable... is to tweak the controls so that it takes less steps to move the player (cheating).. and in doing so, reduces the resolution of control... and thus the difficulty becomes 10x easier.  In the Arcades... where people playing for too long was a huge loss of profits..  that would never have been acceptable.  Also, games made too easy, and people would bore of them and not play them ever again.

 Sinistar is also a great example.  Its enhanced spring system provides superior control that no current thumb stick can provide.  Even a full sized analog stick is inferior for the job. 

 For someone supposedly so intelligent, I find it quite hilarious that you dont know why that is, as well as how you think you can 2nd guess the knowledge and skills of a mechanical engineer + MONTHS of testing & abuses.  Quite simply put, you are well out of your depth, and have a chip on your shoulders that is easily knocked off.

 Hard Drivin is pretty much ALL about the controls.  The force feedback motor is the size of a dryer motor, coupled with a 6 turn wheel... is unmatched by any console controller.  The game being all about how well you feel the road.   No xbox controller will match it.  And anyone

 Marble Madness?  Theres no better way to control the game than with a trackball... which provided superior vector and speed input... as well as the proper FEEL of rolling a ball.  Not to mention, the added difficulty and physical control & stamina needed to beat the game.

 SuperSprint?  Id love to see you try to beat someone with a real 360 degree wheel, with your xbox controller or even a mouse.

 Programmers like you dont understand the First thing about real games and real Genius.  Programmers of the past were able to program systems that had almost zero power and memory.. to their fullest potentials, and create games that today still are more fun and popular than your current garbage.

 Past Arcade devs quickly realized that a game made too easy, would represent a huge loss... cause gamers quickly defeated games on location.  Which is why they would spend months tweaking difficulty of levels.

 Unique controllers were an extension of this.  They allowed games like Sinistar to be more difficult / challenging... yet not sacrifice control, which would tick off the majority of players.   It also created interest in playing games - such as Marble Madness's Trackball... or Tempest's Spinner.  Imagine... an Original game! Gasp!

[Haze]

Programmers like you dont understand the First thing about real games and real Genius.  Programmers of the past were able to program systems that had almost zero power and memory.. to their fullest potentials, and create games that today still are more fun and popular than your current garbage.

So I joke that you'll say something about the ghastly SF controller, and you come out with even more garbage, and personal insults...

I suppose you're going to go on about how great Hard Drivin' was, and what an accurate simulation it was and .. oh ... you already did ..  You know it's just a gross approximation of a simulation + marketing hype right?  Maybe it was used for other 'technologies' back then but it's a far cry from the most basic of physics simulations you find today.  Get over it.

Seriously, WHY are you still here?

If the developers can't use it and test it on a normal PC then it's not preserved to the developers.  Do I need to write this on a big hammer and hit you on the head with it every time you pop your head up out the ground again?

If the programmers of old you claim are so great, are so great.. where is their emulator which does everything far better than MAME?  If they're so passionate about their creations, why aren't they doing something about it?  Seems to be this generation actually making an effort.  If we left it to your 'heroes' everything would have rotted away already.

[ark_ader]

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[Haze]

The heroes of old you refer to helped mame to be what it is today.

The current team seem to be maintainers and tinkerers than the hardcore coders of late.

I am not including the usual suspects of the team.

I feel nothing but embarassment for your comment towards those coders you tend to ignore.

If you're talking about the arcade devs then the topic was preservation, I'm not saying they didn't contribute towards making the games.  I said they're not contributing towards preserving them.  They're not.

If you honestly think that MAME isn't 'hardcore' then you're wrong.  Having talked to people, in person, who also programmed during that era they are impressed by the sheer scale and complexity of modern systems.

Even if you talk to the old people who worked on MAME they're impressed by the scale of things, and attention to detail.  It's done things they never imagined possible, it's done things even I never imagined possible.  Each generation has to pay more and more attention to details, get things right, understand things in even more detail to remove hacks.  There is some absolutely amazing stuff in MAME, that's been figured out!  Every now and again we'll manage to remove some little kludge or hack that the old devs put in and get a 'wow, so that's how it worked' comment, the understanding of arcade hardware has come a long way since then, hence many drivers seeing near complete rewrites.  Each generation is doing things the previous one deemed 'impossible'.

The hardcore coders of old were mostly the demoscene coders on the likes of the Amiga, not the arcade coders; if anything the arcade coders had it easy because much more money was being pumped into arcades and technology, it was always ahead of the consoles and computers at the time which meant they COULD be a lot more lax with the coding.  There are VERY few arcade games that come close to pushing what the hardware they run on can do, most are actually incredibly lazy uses of the technology because cost wasn't much of an issue.  Likewise most of the technology wasn't even around for long enough for them to start pushing it, or coding to it's strengths.

The people writing Speccy code, Amiga code, SNES, Megadrive code, PSX code etc, had far heavier constraints put on them, they couldn't just ask for better hardware, they had to work with what they had.  That's why you find games pushing the boundaries of the hardware, exploiting every little trick in the book, and using some REALLY hardcore techniques.  You disassemble some of those games, or look at how they made use of the hardware from a technical point of view, and have to admire it.  I can't say I've honestly seen the same in any single arcade title.  This is also reflected in my earlier statement that the MESS side of things provides a better component stress test than MAME. Arcade -> Console ports might have been for the most part garbage, but there were generations between the systems at the time.

Unfortunately this type of 'hardcore' programmer isn't much good for MAME coding*, these guys pushed hardware, hacked things up to give an illusion under very specific conditions etc. etc. which aren't actually useful skills for creating an emulator.  You don't want 'hardcore' code of that kind in an emulator, you want reliable, readable code!  MAME is a different kind of 'hardcore' in that it demands correct code, and correct understanding of everything.  We did allow this kind of code in areas of MAME a long time ago, and it set the project back years, look up 'AchoCode'.  It's a prime example of why the fast type of 'hardcore' code should be kept as far away from MAME as humanly possible, no error checking on anything, prone to crashing, hardcoded for specific cases, unmaintainable and the cause of many bug reports where his code simply fell apart when new use cases showed up.  (*ones who will write test code on real hardware are useful for figuring things out tho when the actual game code we have doesn't supply enough evidence)

Old projects were smaller, original ideas could sell, the industry was more open, and there was little risk in trying things, the scope of the approximations you needed, was more defined, expectations were entirely different.  These things more than made up for the constraints imposed by the hardware.  I've programmed for the 8-bits, I've programmed for modern systems.  Again the same comparisons can be made with MAME, the old versions of MAME you didn't have to care so much about accuracy, it's been said before, 95% of the effort is making the last 5% of the software work for any emulation platform / fixing the emulation bugs for any given platform.   You could write cores and video emulations that 'mostly worked'  You could write quick dirty multi-pass sprite code that caused additional glitches in the games, and nobody noticed.  The old versions in almost all cases do not represent good QUALITY emulation, because understanding has moved on since then.  They were good for the time, even impressive, because there was nothing better, and that was the limit of the understanding at the time.

Let's take a real example I've used before.
http://mamedev.org/source/src/mame/video/twincobr.c.html
This is a 'classic' MAME video implementation of old.

The function starting at line 379

  379  static void wardner_sprite_priority_hack(running_machine *machine)

nice little hack that.  Why is it there? because at the time nobody understood that sprite->sprite priority should not be affected by sprite->tile priority.  Implementing it PROPERLY, without this hack makes the driver 2x slower because you have to have a priority buffer for every pixel of the screen, rather than the quick and dirty approach being used.  It's also significantly harder to code properly, than simply hacking it as has been done here.  The final code is much more elegant however, and will work for ALL cases on this hardware, not just the specific one hacked here.

There are still many drivers which take such an approach, they don't always have hacks to hide the glitches, some glitches people have never reported / noticed, however, it's now up to the current team to actually PROPERLY understand these things and replace them with correct code.  Obviously these hacks aren't desirable, but that was the limit of the understanding back then, from a developer perspective it was 'huh, this doesn't make sense, WTF is going on??'   Cleaning these things up is hard work, it has no 'rewards' apart from much cleaned code, people only moan that things got slower.  Are they worth cleaning up?  Of course.

You're quick to insult Derrek here.  Do you think holding a microphone up to an arcade cab and playing a few sounds in test mode then playing back the wavs is more of a hardcore task than trying to figure out how the PCB generated them from the circuits, and writing the code to accurately reproduce that?  It's a perfect example of how expectations have changed, evolved, and how actually getting things from a crude approximation to perfect is so much more work than the initial coding.  He's doing things the original development team could only DREAM of being able to do, part of that is because the technology is available to do it now (it simply wasn't feasible on a P2/P3) and part of it is because he simply has skills the original team didn't have to actually figure these things out and code them.

If you want to twist my words into some kind of insult that's your problem.  Time change, you are stuck in the past, and you seem to fail to recognize the amount of hard work being done today, simply because the real hard work of doing things properly has less 'rewards'.  At the same time people here are also very quick to bash the devs of old, saying they lacked foresight.  Maybe you should make up your mind, or just realise that it's a project which is always evolving and building on what came before it.

As for my statement that the names don't matter much?  I don't think they do, people working on MAME should be working on it because they think it's an important cause, the good feeling comes from knowing you've achieved something worthwhile.  I do a ton of work for every release behind the scenes, and don't ask to be credited for most of it.  If I have something I think other people will find interesting, or I find curious, I post it on my site for discussion, not for fame.

[ark_ader]

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[Rick]

The Mamedevs of today are just standing on the shoulders of giants.

...and it's comments like this, that set you aside from those who sincerely appreciate their efforts.

[ark_ader]

The Mamedevs of today are just standing on the shoulders of giants.

...and it's comments like this, that set you aside from those who sincerely appreciate their efforts.

Read and learn.  There are two sides to every coin.

[kagaden]

I don't understand. Why trivialize any of the work the MAME team has done? Past or present? This is a labor of love by the community of developers who make it so.

The underlying argument in this whole discussion is simple:

From an end-user perspective - playable performance on old/cheap hardware. (Hey, pirates are always cheap right?)
From a developer perspective - maintainable, accurate, and progressive code.

I, for one, admire and respect the development team's direction. Looking ahead, it lays the foundation to achieve the goal of true 100% accurate emulation someday. Whereas the end-user's perspective has a workaround now (use an old version) and will ultimately work itself out over time through Moore's law.

I only read the last two pages of the thread but that was enough for me. Thanks for the hard work old and new on MAME

My two cents.

[Haze]

The Mamedevs of today are just standing on the shoulders of giants.

...and it's comments like this, that set you aside from those who sincerely appreciate their efforts.

and continues to show his complete ignorance to what actually goes on.

as for editing my posts, as I said, they all get edited while they're being written, to clarify points, so that I can work on other things at the same time.

If Pacman was to be dumped for the first time today, and you threw it at the current dev team it would be emulated within about an hour because the MAME architecture has developed to the point over the last few years where that's possible.  That's why MAME is a beautiful thing to work with.

All this seems to come back to is him being stuck up on the idea that only a handful of games matter, and they were 'emulated' ages ago, and that everything since then has somehow slowly been destroying the emulation of them because they no longer run well on his anicent box.  Therefore in his world, only the devs who did the original emulation actually matter, and the concept that taking something from 95% correct to 100% correct is the bulk of work is some fallacy the current devs make up to sound good while continuing to push out what he sees as shoddy, slow, broken code.

What the original devs did was good for the time they did it, and hardware + resources that were available at the time.  What the current devs are doing is good for the time, and the hardware + resources available now.  Over that time MAME has come to be a collection of a huge amount of knowledge which is ever evolving and ever improving.  New knowledge and findings are regularly applied back to older emulations, improving them.  There are very few drivers that haven't changed from when they were written, and very little of the code left from the older versions.

This isn't insulting towards the older devs, because they see this, recognize this, and appreciate the new findings, and understanding of the hardware.  It's the same for drivers I've written, there are things I've done which I've not been 100% convinced by, then somebody else has come along, figured out how it actually works, and implemented it fully.  I love it when that happens, because it's always good to see what the correct solution was when you couldn't figure something out.  I look forward to an accurate emulation of the shadowing hardware in Jaleco Megasystem32 for that very reason, it's got me completely stumped.  Devs are NEVER happy about leaving hacks in their code, or incomplete emulation, at least not in a project like MAME.

It's easy to fire up a lot of the older emulations and see flaws that were never fixed.  I randomly fired up Taito's 'Hit The Ice' the other day, only to see it leaving trails all over the screens after attract mode.  It hasn't seen any attention in a good few years, maybe it's time that driver got some, maybe with some study of the hardware to figure the rest out.  No doubt the flaw is still preying on somebody's mind.

Going back to page 1, my concern is there there is no 'next generation' of devs, that was my point.  The imperfections we leave in the emulation, somebody else is going to have to figure out while the PCBs still work, not controls, which can be changed at any point, not speed, which hardly matters, but genuine imperfections in the emulation, things which aren't emulated properly and are causing glitches which do not occur on original hardware, or are leaving the games completely broken.  We are currently cleaning up after the previous generation of devs, fixing things they left broken/hacked because they didn't understand them, the next generation of devs should be fixing things we've left broken/hacked, because we didn't understand them and so on and that's without mentioning the stuff that actually needs to be written from scratch because it wasn't available to work on at the time.  I blame Sony, Sega, Nintendo, and, to a lesser degree, Microsoft + all the big name publishers for creating such a locked down industry.

It's a concern, all these people saying 'it's good enough', 'it just needs to be made faster', 'somebody needs to fork an old version and start again' etc. are detracting from the real issues, and making it sound like there really are no remaining interesting challenges.  Hacking up and optimizing something somebody else has already done isn't going to help in the long run.  Doing nothing, because you think everything that matters has already been done isn't either. Forking an old version will almost certainly just mean you waste your time getting to exactly where we are now because it's the inevitable path!  At the end of the day nobody is going to care if MAME requires a P3, P4, or Core2 to run well when all those systems are sat in museums.  They will care if there are still a bunch of broken emulations, or the emulation code no longer runs at all because it was too tied to legacy systems and hardware.

Derrek is right, there is no hope here.  Somebody so far distanced from the truth is just a lost cause.

[CheffoJeffo]

I don't understand. Why trivialize any of the work the MAME team has done? Past or present? This is a labor of love by the community of developers who make it so.

THIS.

Even *I* think this is ridiculous ... and it takes a lot to get me to that point.

[CheffoJeffo]

as for editing my posts, as I said, they all get edited while they're being written, to clarify points, so that I can work on other things at the same time.

I've been watching and it ain't like Haze is pulling a Genesim and completely altering his posts -- he has added some details and points after the fact, but not done anything out of line.

Derrek is right, there is no hope here.  Somebody so far distanced from the truth is just a lost cause.

Nothing could be further from the truth (this is the place where I think there is the most hope -- there is a reasonable balance of fanboys, real collectors and lunatics; the moderation is appropriate and 99% of people share the same final goal), but with the loudmouths, it may hard to see that.

[RayB]

-- there is a reasonable balance of fanboys, real collectors and lunatics;

Don't forget wise-asses.
(points to self)

(you and Randy were correct that my pneumatic buttons post was just for humour)


PS: There are THREE sides to a coin!

[Rick]

Read and learn.  There are two sides to every coin.

If you were attempting a compliment, the "just" in your sentence belies a different meaning altogether.  If this was your intention, then yes, I believe most developers would agree that they would examine the past works of others, to attempt to build on their own success.  It's a smart way.  Who wouldn't do that?  Use what works, improve on it in your own way, and inject your own independent thought and ideas wherever you can.

Unfortunately, without looking past the "just", it reads as a sleight.

[Haze]

Derrek is right, there is no hope here.  Somebody so far distanced from the truth is just a lost cause.

Nothing could be further from the truth (this is the place where I think there is the most hope -- there is a reasonable balance of fanboys, real collectors and lunatics; the moderation is appropriate and 99% of people share the same final goal), but with the loudmouths, it may hard to see that.

Well 'here' is with reference to hoping said loudmouths actually eventually understand some of this.

I recognize that a lot of people do understand what is being said.

[kagaden]

Derrek is right, there is no hope here.  Somebody so far distanced from the truth is just a lost cause.

Nothing could be further from the truth (this is the place where I think there is the most hope -- there is a reasonable balance of fanboys, real collectors and lunatics; the moderation is appropriate and 99% of people share the same final goal), but with the loudmouths, it may hard to see that.

I can understand Haze's feelings here, but I think he meant just for this one dude.

It's a lot like being a community representative/manager for a game company. You can have tons and tons of silent fans that love your product that you're also passionate about, but there's that couple of people who are really loud and annoying and no matter how much you try to explain and reason with them they're only there to troll their own opinion recursively. The danger though is that your own views become bitter and angry towards the community in general since... for the most part it's a faceless mass and you can't immediately distinguish people who admire the work from the trolls. Not like they can distinguish and target you as being the spokesperson. It's easy to get crushed by the community. Being that Haze has been doing this so long though, I'm confident he's aware of the psychological traps of handling the community.

[CheffoJeffo]

May very well be true.

My hope is that Haze and Derrick won't give up on posting here because i really do believe it is a great place to have discussions like this, even when they degenerate.

[BadMouth]

Most of this thread reminds me of the Monty Python skit where you pay for a good argument and all you get is simple contradiction of everything you say.

[SavannahLion]

I recognize that a lot of people do understand what is being said.

Or try.....

[Vigo]

Read and learn.  There are two sides to every coin.

If you were attempting a compliment, the "just" in your sentence belies a different meaning altogether.  If this was your intention, then yes, I believe most developers would agree that they would examine the past works of others, to attempt to build on their own success.  It's a smart way.  Who wouldn't do that?  Use what works, improve on it in your own way, and inject your own independent thought and ideas wherever you can.

Unfortunately, without looking past the "just", it reads as a sleight.

I (surprisingly) read enough litarature to see it as ark paying a compliment. "Standing on the sholders of Giants" is not a phrase really used in a negative light. I think he said "just" to mean "simply" instead of "only". 

I think his post editing comment was in a polite tone as well. A habit of editing is just generally frowned upon because you will have people read and comment on your original post and it might not be so relevent after an edit goes through. If I need to, I always try to say why I needed to edit at the end of the post so nobody feels like I am changing things around after the fact. I reread every longer post I make just in case as well. 

I think things are a little too jumpy here so there is too much reading into every little comment. 

[ark_ader]

.

[sjbaines]

Most of this thread reminds me of the Monty Python skit where you pay for a good argument and all you get is simple contradiction of everything you say.

No you don't. 

[Grasshopper]

The main problem is it's a community that lacks direction, and lacks vision.  If they could focus their efforts instead of forking all over the place and going in different directions they might get somewhere, but it's not my place to go and troll their forums over it, because I have nothing to contribute, nor any real desire to.  Your continued mentioning of forking of MAME and working from older versions seems to indicate that you believe such methodologies to be the way forward, when really they just lead to userbase confusion, developer confusion, a lack of management, a lack of overall direction and endless dependency conflicts between so called modern versions and distributions.  I encourage you to try it if you really want, but I can't help but think you'll quickly find yourself getting nowhere.

Well at least we can agree on one thing. Forking is generally a bad idea and should be considered a last resort. But it's ironic that you of all people should be saying that. Right throughout this thread you and Derrick have repeatedly said that "if you don't like what we're doing with MAME then create your own fork" as a stock response to any criticism. The trouble is that sooner or later someone is going to call your bluff and do precisely that.

It's not that anyone really wants to fork the project. It is, after all, a lot of work, and dilutes the resources available. But your unwillingness to compromise means that we'll eventually get to the point where some members of the community that actually want to play the games feel they have no choice.

If somebody forks an old version they will (quickly) find themselves taking the same paths as the official dev team, and find their version ends up just as slow as the official one as they actually reinvent the wheel, and discover, and therefore have to support new features in order to progress.

Either that, or they end up with an unmaintainable mess.

........

If somebody _wants_ to try what you're suggesting they're more than welcome, however, I absolutely guarantee you that they will fail, and most developers or potential developers will see that before they even start, which is why it's never been done with any great success.  The ones who HAVE tried have quickly ended up seeing the vast amount of progress made in new versions, and the simple impossibility of porting some newer code over to old systems where a great deal of the functionality that is required, or makes MAME easy to program for simply doesn't exist, and can't be backported.  The guys doing 'uberMAME' have tried this, and end up spending half their time trying to fix things which have already been fixed, and pestering the devs with questions which simply have no answers because they're using such an old version.

Except that's not the way it would work. A far more likely scenario is that a team of developers would pick an old version of MAME released before all the good stuff started getting ripped out, but where the performance and quality of emulation was still deemed to be "good enough". They base their fork on that version and don't even bother trying to keep up with the ever changing codebase of the main build. Instead they just concentrate on those aspects of the program that enhance the user experience. Effectively any improvements to MAME since their chosen version would be ignored, and the accuracy of emulation and the number of games available would be frozen. It's far from ideal but many people would consider that to be a price worth paying.

On a personal note, if I was creating a fork, I would also make sure I chose a version of MAME created before the switch from C to C++, partly because I'm much more familiar with C, but mainly because C++ irritates the hell out of me for a variety of reasons. I've tried really hard to like C++ but I just don't.

I was initially opposed to a fork. But I have to say I'm beginning to warm to the idea. The differences between the two sides here do appear to be irreconcilable, and are just creating bad vibes within the community. So perhaps a fork is the least bad of the options available.

[bkenobi]

Question:  Why does it have to be a single version for every game?  If you are trying to play a game that works better on an older/alternate build, why not just use that build and move along?  Gun games are an example of this...  I think they are fixed now, but when the RAW input system was added, the drivers for guncon controllers broke.  If you wanted to play those games, you just had to fire up an older version and play.  ALTERNATELY, you could compile your own copy with the RAW system disabled...  Anyone using a front end can simply tell it what emu to use to load what game.  It works, move on.   


The MAMEdevs are improving the code for accuracy.  That's not the same as improvements for playability (stated many times as a "side-effect").  Users want to use the system to play games from bygone times the way they remember them (which includes at playable speeds).  Again, speed is not an important part of emulation because it will eventually fall out with improved/faster/cheaper hardware on the end users desk.

If a user wants to improve the performance of a game, they can do one of several things:
1) Buy a better computer
2) Use a different emulator
3) Buy the PCB and stick it in an actual cabinet so you are playing the original game!

If you love the game so much that you are willing to complain to the MAMEdevs about fixing it, why not just buy the thing and move on?   

[Haze]

The main problem is it's a community that lacks direction, and lacks vision.  If they could focus their efforts instead of forking all over the place and going in different directions they might get somewhere, but it's not my place to go and troll their forums over it, because I have nothing to contribute, nor any real desire to.  Your continued mentioning of forking of MAME and working from older versions seems to indicate that you believe such methodologies to be the way forward, when really they just lead to userbase confusion, developer confusion, a lack of management, a lack of overall direction and endless dependency conflicts between so called modern versions and distributions.  I encourage you to try it if you really want, but I can't help but think you'll quickly find yourself getting nowhere.

Well at least we can agree on one thing. Forking is generally a bad idea and should be considered a last resort. But it's ironic that you of all people should be saying that. Right throughout this thread you and Derrick have repeatedly said that "if you don't like what we're doing with MAME then create your own fork" as a stock response to any criticism. The trouble is that sooner or later someone is going to call your bluff and do precisely that.

It's not that anyone really wants to fork the project. It is, after all, a lot of work, and dilutes the resources available. But your unwillingness to compromise means that we'll eventually get to the point where some members of the community that actually want to play the games feel they have no choice.

I think for such a specialist application it actually makes sense.  The divide is clear, the different target groups are clear.  It's not like there are going to be 2 separate MAME projects with people duplicating work if it gets forked in that sense.  Linux on the other hand seems to have tons of forks, and distros competing for the same already limited user-space with nothing but incompatibilities to choose between them.

If somebody forks an old version they will (quickly) find themselves taking the same paths as the official dev team, and find their version ends up just as slow as the official one as they actually reinvent the wheel, and discover, and therefore have to support new features in order to progress.

Either that, or they end up with an unmaintainable mess.

........

If somebody _wants_ to try what you're suggesting they're more than welcome, however, I absolutely guarantee you that they will fail, and most developers or potential developers will see that before they even start, which is why it's never been done with any great success.  The ones who HAVE tried have quickly ended up seeing the vast amount of progress made in new versions, and the simple impossibility of porting some newer code over to old systems where a great deal of the functionality that is required, or makes MAME easy to program for simply doesn't exist, and can't be backported.  The guys doing 'uberMAME' have tried this, and end up spending half their time trying to fix things which have already been fixed, and pestering the devs with questions which simply have no answers because they're using such an old version.

Except that's not the way it would work. A far more likely scenario is that a team of developers would pick an old version of MAME released before all the good stuff started getting ripped out, but where the performance and quality of emulation was still deemed to be "good enough". They base their fork on that version and don't even bother trying to keep up with the ever changing codebase of the main build. Instead they just concentrate on those aspects of the program that enhance the user experience. Effectively any improvements to MAME since their chosen version would be ignored, and the accuracy of emulation and the number of games available would be frozen. It's far from ideal but many people would consider that to be a price worth paying.

On a personal note, if I was creating a fork, I would also make sure I chose a version of MAME created before the switch from C to C++, partly because I'm much more familiar with C, but mainly because C++ irritates the hell out of me for a variety of reasons. I've tried really hard to like C++ but I just don't.

I was initially opposed to a fork. But I have to say I'm beginning to warm to the idea. The differences between the two sides here do appear to be irreconcilable, and are just creating bad vibes within the community. So perhaps a fork is the least bad of the options available.

If people fork an older build for speed purposes, yet somehow expect to develop it further, that is pointless.  You end up being boxed in by your own goals, and can't actually improve it without sacrificing the reason you forked it in the first place.  People would come to you with the same bug reports, and requests we were getting years ago, and you'd be unable to fix them because the fixes involve great sacrifice in speed.  You'd very quickly give up and realise that MameDev had the right idea all alone, hence the demise of most other arcade emulators which were made for this purpose.

Somebody already did this split, of an older C build, because they hated C++... Now they keep bugging us about how to port new C++ drivers to the old codebase, it isn't productive, and they're already asking me how to fix bugs I fixed years ago, they're not liking my answers and they're finding debugging the problems themselves for such builds much harder, because it's not only the emulation that's improved, and the architecture that's improved, but also the built in debugging tools.  Again it's just further proof really that the direction taken by MAME is the natural one for progression of the project, standing in the way of it and expecting the best of both worlds doesn't work.

I've also got people sending me the sources to the unathorized X-Box builds of MAME, asking me to put the latest changes / emulated titles / improvements in it.  There are a few problems with this
a) I don't own an X-Box
b) We don't approve of that build
c) There's no freaking way the X-Box is going to run half of them because to support what they want I'd have to remove the hacks that actually make it go fast, and that's if it had enough memory in the first place.

They've reached a dead-end within their own constraints, in this case ones applied by the hardware.  Working within artificial restraints when you're on a PC makes even less sense!

It's the same reason all the MAME4ALL Handheld ports based off 0.36 have the same problems (poor sound, noticable glitches in certain games)  They're constrained by the version they used, and their target hardware.  They can't move forward, so people using it will always end up making the same complaints, because the things they complain about can't be fixed without moving to a more modern, slower code-base.  I've heard enough people complain that MAME sucks because of these problems with it running on their GP2X / whatever, when in reality the problems they're complaining about have been fixed years ago, just the GP2X is incapable of taking advantage of them because they up the system requirements.  By forking off .3x they've cornered themselves into a position where it's really hard to add new features even if the target hardware does improve in spec.

You can't port an old version and have a happy userbase unless those users are completely blind to some of the glaring imperfections in those older versions, which can't easily be fixed.

MAME - the main development tree is avoiding all these problems.

I'm not a huge fan of C++, but the object oriented approach does make sense for some componenets.  Old MAME was very much pesudo-C++ anyway, multiple instances of different components slotted together etc.  Actually using C++ takes away a lot of the pain of trying to have your own pseudo-OO system, and thus stops people just copying and pasting huge chunks of code to create 2nd copies of VDPs and such.  MAME isn't forcing C++ down your throat, but it is using it where applicable to avoid a lot of ugly code.

[Hoopz]

I think what happened with Powermame is a good example of a derivative project taking off and users swamping the developer with requests/demands....

[newmanfamilyvlogs]

Im still waiting for someone to suggest a gentoo style mame where you strip out all the code for systems you aren't  playing "to cut down on the bloat" or some other magic.

[Gray_Area]

If I were interested in other approaches, I think I would ask what they might be. If I had ideas for other approaches, I think I would present them in the format, 'I'm wondering this...what do you think?

Given everything, and my senses of the people involved, I don't think current MAME performs unreasonably. However, if someone out there can do something more remarkable, I'm all eyes.

  Prevents me from losing what I write if something crashes.

In this day, why would something crash?

[Cakemeister]

On a personal note, if I was creating a fork, I would also make sure I chose a version of MAME created before the switch from C to C++, partly because I'm much more familiar with C, but mainly because C++ irritates the hell out of me for a variety of reasons. I've tried really hard to like C++ but I just don't.

Plus eleventy, IMO.

[abaraba]

Apparently I reposted some deleted post.. That's what my ban message says, I honestly have no clue.

The reason you were banned is directly connected to present situation you're complaining about, it's quite hilarious really, let me give you a clue:

http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=116673&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&vc=1




--- "You have been told" ---


kevtris:
- This entitlement attitude is precisely why I have issues with Mame development in general. The LAST thing you want to do is totally piss off the guys like me that provide most of your hard-won reverse engineering work.

- I know that not everyone in the team is like this, but when the most vocal members of it act in this highly antisocial fashion, it reflects poorly on the entire team, and drives persons with valuable resources away from wanting to join the project... I hesitate to wonder what other resourceful folks you drove away with your entitlement attitude and ranting.



AaronGiles:
- I can't take back what Haze says, but I can certainly say that I and most of the other devs don't share his pessimistic black & white view of the world.



Phil Bennett:
- Good grief RB, Haze. I'd vote to ban you two from representing MAME personally. Two past contributors alienated for the sake of YOUR principles.

AaronGiles (to Phil Bennett):
- You and me both.
 


AaronGiles:
- You are being very narrow-minded here and frankly your arrogance and your attitude is not welcome. It's fine to have your opinions and even to be a firm believer in them, but stand by them as *your* opinions. Don't come here spouting off with threats about kicking people out of the development team because they don't do everything according to your personal wishes. Certainly in this matter, you don't represent the team.

- But instead of lashing out at it and ensuring 100% that there will never be any sort of collaboration, you would do well to accept that there are different points of view, take a deep breath, and make an effort to figure out ways that we might work together. If you don't, then you are only ever going to get help from people who think like you, and you are going to continually piss off everyone else. And frankly, there are quite a lot of people in the "everyone else" category who can help us out. If you shut them out, then you have only yourself to blame for "being forced to do everything from scratch again".

[Haze]

Apparently I reposted some deleted post.. That's what my ban message says, I honestly have no clue.

The reason you were banned is directly connected to present situation you're complaining about, it's quite hilarious really, let me give you a clue:

http://www.mameworld.info/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=116673&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&vc=1

That's a disagreement between myself and Aaron, and I stand entirely behind what I said there.  It's got nothing to do with being removed from MameWorld.  Aaron is FAR too soft with people at times.  I've stated before, I'm not in this to be popular, I'm in this to get stuff done.  In the end, stuff got done, you have speech in Scorpion*.  The guy was being a complete penis about things, and I called him out as such, acting like gods gift because you made some samples, while refusing to actually give the correct info to improve the project, and trying to turn people on the developers for not supporting the samples isn't really a great thing to do.  Pressing issues is sometimes necessary.

This might be one reason Aaron doesn't want me as part of the 'official' team, but I still seem to be organizing half the work that gets done.  Bit silly really.  However, in this thread, you have people backing up what I've said by saying that Aaron has said the same.  Derrek is also saying the same.  You have your references, you're choosing to ignore them and attempt to discredit me.

The views expressed on MameWorld there also represented all the other developers I was working with at the time, there were MANY discussions behind the scenes about this.  In this instance Aaron stuck his foot in without knowing 99% of the previous conversations or details; compared to the other developers Aaron isn't much involved in conversations, and usually doesn't know what's going on.  The 'I know this and you don't, nah nah nah' attitude was creating a significant degree of disharmony, you can gauge that from some of the other posts in that thread, which weren't made by me.

*In the end, after more broken promises about providing info to people who were being 'nicer' the algorithm was reverse engineered from the samples, pretty much as a f-you towards the guys hoarding the info, even if it wasn't stated in public as such.  That tends to be what the dev team do if people start being difficult for personal gain, the project is about freedom of information, not letting people make money selling bootleg replacement parts.

I just prefer to be more direct about things, rather than sucking up to people in the futile hope it might actually get me anywhere.

This has very little to do with the present situation, technical information is readily available, and the majority of the decline has been seen since I wasn't involved directly, since I was banned from posting there, and thus unable to provide actual useful information, since I stopped chasing people up over everything, since I stopped training up new devs on IRC, with a rather hard line to ensure they did things correctly.  Being too nice gets you nowhere.  There is plenty to work on, your comparison is unfounded because the guy you're talking about would have just held on forever, making excuses every time he was asked anyway, thus resulting in no progress at all hence the whole situation coming about in the first place.

The actual MameWorld ban, as I said, it still makes no sense.  Don't you think that on any rational site, if they had decent reasons for the ban, they'd still allow actual MAME progress to be posted?.  They've managed to cut off some of the most significant progress in MAME from their news forum simply because they don't allow me to be mentioned, or links posted to my site (and should you attempt to, you'll be banned).  As of late I've been kind to them by providing YouTube videos so posters can link to progress directly (I don't believe censoring progress is good for MAME _at all_, it leads to the 'nothing good ever happens' attitude shown here)  However, the attitude of the MW admin stinks of a personal grudge rather than there being any logical reason for a ban, half the people there don't even agree with it.  One party here is trying to do what's good for MAME, the other isn't.

As I've stated before.  If you're holding stuff back from MAME / damaging MAME because you have something personal against _me_, then you're doing it for the wrong reasons anyway because the project isn't about people, it's about progress and preservation.  If you're contributing to MAME it should be because you believe it's a worthwhile cause, and an important historical project which is the only reason I still contribute.

[Haze]

If I were interested in other approaches, I think I would ask what they might be. If I had ideas for other approaches, I think I would present them in the format, 'I'm wondering this...what do you think?

Given everything, and my senses of the people involved, I don't think current MAME performs unreasonably. However, if someone out there can do something more remarkable, I'm all eyes.

 Prevents me from losing what I write if something crashes.

In this day, why would something crash?

Firefox isn't perfect, nor is any other browser, even if things like Flash are sandboxed I've still seen the whole browser go down from time to time.  It's also very easy to close the browser, forgetting you had a tab open where you were writing something.

[Vigo]

If I were interested in other approaches, I think I would ask what they might be. If I had ideas for other approaches, I think I would present them in the format, 'I'm wondering this...what do you think?

Given everything, and my senses of the people involved, I don't think current MAME performs unreasonably. However, if someone out there can do something more remarkable, I'm all eyes.

  Prevents me from losing what I write if something crashes.

In this day, why would something crash?

Firefox isn't perfect, nor is any other browser, even if things like Flash are sandboxed I've still seen the whole browser go down from time to time.  It's also very easy to close the browser, forgetting you had a tab open where you were writing something.

Just a simple suggestion...try writing in a word document, then pasting over. It does the periodic saving for you, and you'd be less likely to accidently close it out since it wants you to save before quitting. 

[Haze]

If I were interested in other approaches, I think I would ask what they might be. If I had ideas for other approaches, I think I would present them in the format, 'I'm wondering this...what do you think?

Given everything, and my senses of the people involved, I don't think current MAME performs unreasonably. However, if someone out there can do something more remarkable, I'm all eyes.

 Prevents me from losing what I write if something crashes.

In this day, why would something crash?

Firefox isn't perfect, nor is any other browser, even if things like Flash are sandboxed I've still seen the whole browser go down from time to time.  It's also very easy to close the browser, forgetting you had a tab open where you were writing something.

Just a simple suggestion...try writing in a word document, then pasting over. It does the periodic saving for you, and you'd be less likely to accidently close it out since it wants you to save before quitting.  

Not a bad suggestion, although sometimes habits are difficult to break.  I actually used to do this before Firefox had a spellchecker like Word, which almost encourages writing in it.

[ark_ader]

That's a disagreement between myself and Aaron, and I stand entirely behind what I said there.  It's got nothing to do with being removed from MameWorld.  Aaron is FAR too soft with people at times.  I've stated before, I'm not in this to be popular, I'm in this to get stuff done.  In the end, stuff got done, you have speech in Scorpion*.  The guy was being a complete penis about things, and I called him out as such, acting like gods gift because you made some samples, while refusing to actually give the correct info to improve the project, and trying to turn people on the developers for not supporting the samples isn't really a great thing to do.  Pressing issues is sometimes necessary.

This might be one reason Aaron doesn't want me as part of the 'official' team, but I still seem to be organizing half the work that gets done.  Bit silly really.  However, in this thread, you have people backing up what I've said by saying that Aaron has said the same.  Derrek is also saying the same.  You have your references, you're choosing to ignore them and attempt to discredit me.

Nobody is discrediting you Haze on this board.  Your views about the community is really black & white, and the attitude towards X2 shows this.  I am not a psychologist, but it looks very much to what I spoke of very early in the thread that you do have a chip on your shoulder.  Aaron coding abilities are legendary.  Aaron has worked on titles that most of us grew up on at LucasArts, and he is not soft, but a excellent project manager.  I am not saying that you are not a good at what you do, but reading that MW thread, reminded me (I am getting APM certified BTW) on how you need to be open to everyone's views, while showing strong leadership.

I still respect you and think of you as one of those great coders that has brought us Mame to our cabs and consoles, but I think you need to lighten up a little and take future criticism towards emulation positive, instead of negative. 

[Haze]

you're just making yourself look like more of a **** with the blacked out text you know.

doesn't make you look clever and helps invalidate everything you've said.

[ark_ader]

I am just giving the people on the message board the option to read my view (which seems to be incredibly offensive to several of the people on this thread).

Clever no.  Not clever at all, just a better choice than the ignore button.  A shame really.  Your choice if you want to read it, or not.

Heck I might just post this way from now on, considering how clueless I am...

I do really mean what I posted before, regardless.

Have a nice day.

[Haze]

you're just making yourself look like more of a **** with the blacked out text you know.

doesn't make you look clever and helps invalidate everything you've said.

Insulting someone and not addressing any of their concerns doesn't make you look clever, either.

I've spent the entire thread addressing peoples concerns.  He's just resorted to childish bull and making things up again.  Saint must have the tolerance of .. a saint ...

Anyway, I hope people who have read this, aside the 4 trolls, understand why MAME is the way it is, what's important, and where the project goals are.

The minority of people like this is why as a whole the dev team tend to say a big f-you to the community, and most of them don't bother to post or explain at all which is why you just end up thinking they're elitist idiots.  I've simply been trying to help explain things because I feel it's important for the project to survive.  Most devs act as they do, because they're left with little choice unless they want to put up with this kind of BS, you saw how quickly you drove Derrek off who again, only came to explain things and provide accurate technical information and reasoning, for no benefit to himself.

I'm not being paid to post here, I have nothing personally to gain from it.  I simply wanted to help spread the understanding of decisions made by MAME, and help people understand the areas in which we're looking for people to help.  It's very easy to see why most devs simply don't bother with public discussion.  I wanted to break this cycle, but it seems certain posters here are determined to keep it intact.  Next time you try to paint the dev team as some elitist bunch of nerds, just remember, the said posters are half the reason for it appearing that way.

[Vigo]

you're just making yourself look like more of a **** with the blacked out text you know.

doesn't make you look clever and helps invalidate everything you've said.

Insulting someone and not addressing any of their concerns doesn't make you look clever, either.

I've spent the entire thread addressing peoples concerns.  He's just resorted to childish bull again.  Saint must have the tolerance of .. a saint ...

In my honest opinion, you have been arguing concerns, not addressing them. 

In Ark's blacked out message, I thought he was actually pretty sincere in his advice. He made the same point that I have been making all along, when people come in with criticism, it is beneficial to use this as a positive. Telling them reason X, Y and Z of why it's not gonna happen and will never happen will only turn this into a 13 page, flame n' rant riddled thread. Instead give them ways of how it can happen and see if you can use it to recuit some help making it happen. Yeah, you might not find anyone willing to make it happen, but at least there is no flaming involved.

[Haze]

I've spent the entire thread addressing peoples concerns.  He's just resorted to childish bull again.  Saint must have the tolerance of .. a saint ...

Well I've been addressing them in the sense of explaining them.  Dealing with the concerns.  Maybe it would be fairer to say I've been addressing the community.

The concerns have no real solution within the aims of the project tho, so nothing more can be done, so that is the reply given.  I can't offer a solution if there is no solution to offer.

The opposite of addressing them would be to simply ignore everything that is posted, without giving a reason.  That just leads to people not understanding why things have been done tho.  I prefer people to be educated.  At least by explaining why decisions have been made as they have their concerns might become less when they see that the choices made were correct, just not specifically beneficial to them.

Criticism is made, and taken on board, it can't be acted on often because it's based on unsound logic.  However, I've stated elsewhere that I think some of the points made are very good ones, MAME does need to start supporting multi-channel sound, it seems silly not to, especially when it's had multi-monitor, multi-mouse and multi-keyboard support for years now.  The practicalities of it are more difficult tho.  People seem quick to ignore the times I've actually agreed, and would rather focus on continually hammering home a point they've been given countless reasons why is impractical.  Likewise just because I agree with something doesn't mean I'm going to leap on my chair and do it.