Mala source code?

[fkane]

Given that Mala, and its website, have not been updated since 2011 - has any thought been given to making it open source, or at least making the source code available so the user community can fix issues that crop up?

A great example is the problem with Windows 7 where an OS-initiated shutdown gets blocked by Mala not responding the to the close event. Seems that would be a simple fix - if only I had the source.

Mala's great, but incompatibilities that couldn't have been anticipated 2 years ago are likely to keep piling up.

[capitaineflam25]

+1

i'd love to help correcting a few bugs

[drventure]

Loadman is still maintaining Mala, though I believe he's gotten sidetracke by life over the last year or so.

Mala was originally written by Swindus and when Loadman took over, I believe the agreement was to keep it closed source.

That was primarily because Mala uses some video libraries (and possibly other libs) that are commercial, and so open sourcing Mala proper wouldn't much help if you didn't have those libs.

Finally, I believe Malas written in turbopascal or some such, ie not a particularly common language anymore.

Personally, it might still be nice to open source it, if only to make porting to .net or some other language a bit easier. But that's a call loadman would have to make (possibly after talking with the original author).

[bosco]

I would love to see it open source.  I think there are plenty of people that would love to contribute.  I don't see a point of keeping a dead program closed source.  I love MaLa but it sure can be buggy.

[drventure]

Well, I doubt just open sourcing it would help much, since there are commercial components used in it. It would need to be refactored to not use those components (and there were good reasons Loadman chose to use those components) or ported to a different language altogether.

Personally, I'd love to convert (or rewrite) it to .net and use WPF as the UI foundation, but I just don't have time to take on a project like that right now.

[fkane]

Not to mention, taking an existing project and making it open source is in itself a large project. If the maintainer doesn't have time to squash bugs, he certainly doesn't have time to go through all the effort of making it something the public could work on.

I'm going to go contribute $20 to Loadman on malafe.net. A good software engineer's time is valuable, and I don't blame him if he doesn't want to work on a project that doesn't provide any sort of return. Perhaps if more of us donate he'll squash a few bugs for us. If not, heck, I'd easily pay $20 for Mala anyhow.

[drventure]

I really haven't seen all that many bugs in the latest release. I know there's a few peculiarities, particularly in the layout editor, but nothing that can't be worked around.

I know the shutdown issue can be a pain, but I believe Empardopo's AllInOne can be used to fix that, at least in the interim.

http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php/topic,113882.msg1209264.html#msg1209264

What other issues are you guys running into?

[fkane]

I've run into a few quirks when managing game lists. Sometimes my changes don't get saved or loaded properly, and when using multiple emulators I keep getting an index out of bounds error when attempting to edit their game lists.

The Windows 7 shutdown issue is annoying. Yes there are workarounds, but forcibly terminating Mala every time someone hits my power button makes me nervous about corruption.

All in all though Mala does a lot, and does 95% of it quite well. For free software, that's pretty darn good. But I'd love to see that last 5% polished up one way or another.

[drventure]

I've run into a few quirks when managing game lists. Sometimes my changes don't get saved or loaded properly, and when using multiple emulators I keep getting an index out of bounds error when attempting to edit their game lists.

The Windows 7 shutdown issue is annoying. Yes there are workarounds, but forcibly terminating Mala every time someone hits my power button makes me nervous about corruption.

All in all though Mala does a lot, and does 95% of it quite well. For free software, that's pretty darn good. But I'd love to see that last 5% polished up one way or another.

Hmm, Never had issues with game lists, but then, I used RomLister to generate the base lists and I only have 2 lists (for my daughter's favs and for mine) that I ever change via mala and then, only rarely.

The Terminate thing is true, but, given the kind of data that Mala deals with, it's pretty unlikely you'll ever corrupt anything.

I agree though, that last 5% sure would be nice to resolve.

[bosco]

I wished the intro movie would have been fixed.  In the middle of the intro video I begin to hear my background music in my first layout.  Every once in a while the background audio mutes and I need to raise the levels to hear it again.  Maybe it just affects me because I'm using a tree

It  is still my favorite.  I just wish it wasn't at a complete stand still.

[capitaineflam25]

Here are a few bugs i'm facing with Mala 1.7.4:


• Joystick Info Left is not working (InfoLeft= on Mala.ini)
• In Mala.ini, Volume= is decremented after each Mala run (Maybe a rounding issue when saving ini ?)
• Resume Windows XP from hibernate makes Mala lose Joystick (Mala.ini reverted to UseJoystick=0, change it back and relaunch Mala.exe corrects the problem)
• BG Music stops when image screen saver starts (only on 1.745beta)
• BG Music can't load mp3 having single quotes (') in their filename
• BG Music globaly unstable
• PNG32 images are rendered blank (Info window)


And a few enhancement 'm thinking about:

• Default image on info window when image not found for rom (ex. default cpanel, ...)
• Full screen image launchable with a joystick key (to show your cabinet help image)
• Rom related startup image (when lauching sf2 rom, i would like sf2.png to show)
• Full screen info window

Regards

[loadman]

Hi,

Thanks for the info and constructive thoughts / Bug lists etc.... 

I think a good friend of the MaLa community 'drventure' summed up why I have not spent time on this lately or made it Open Source. It could be the 3rd part paid lib nightmare making that a major operation and the fact that I have changed jobs 3 times in 2 years. Anyway fairly stable now so we will see how it goes....

Don't forget you can write plugins for Mala. If you need more from the API let me know.

[stripe4]

Hi, Loadman!

First of all, my thanks to you for spending time on MaLa development.

I was wondering... How hard would it be remove all commercial 3rd party components and release the rest under an open source license? This could help two things (in my non-developer opinion ):

• BYOAC members could have a chance at finding code that causes bugs (and perhaps help you with bugfixes)
• someone with more free time finds a way to replace the commercial libraries used by MaLa with open source ones, e.g. LibVLC

What do you think?

[empardopo]

Don't forget you can write plugins for Mala. If you need more from the API let me know.

Could you give us more info about API?
Thanks in advance!

[BadMouth]

Don't forget you can write plugins for Mala. If you need more from the API let me know.

Could you give us more info about API?
Thanks in advance!

On the right side of the plugins download page, it says:

CREATE YOUR OWN PLUG-IN FOR FREE
The Kit is now provided with the standard MaLa download

http://www.malafe.net/index.php?page=plugins

[empardopo]

OK thanks!

[loadman]

Hi, Loadman!

First of all, my thanks to you for spending time on MaLa development.

I was wondering... How hard would it be remove all commercial 3rd party components and release the rest under an open source license? This could help two things (in my non-developer opinion ):

• BYOAC members could have a chance at finding code that causes bugs (and perhaps help you with bugfixes)
• someone with more free time finds a way to replace the commercial libraries used by MaLa with open source ones, e.g. LibVLC

What do you think?

It would be nice but to be open source I can't see how it is possible. I will continue to ponder

[loadman]

OK thanks!

And the API/Plugin are supplied with the last full release:

http://www.malafe.net/files/download/MaLa174.zip

[empardopo]

Hi, Loadman!

First of all, my thanks to you for spending time on MaLa development.

I was wondering... How hard would it be remove all commercial 3rd party components and release the rest under an open source license? This could help two things (in my non-developer opinion ):

• BYOAC members could have a chance at finding code that causes bugs (and perhaps help you with bugfixes)
• someone with more free time finds a way to replace the commercial libraries used by MaLa with open source ones, e.g. LibVLC

What do you think?

It would be nice but to be open source I can't see how it is possible. I will continue to ponder

Loadman, any new news about it?

[empardopo]

Up! :-(