In all honesty, a simple user such as me obviously would never understand what it implies, this has always been one of the key friction elements in the relationship between the millions of MAME users, and the developers + contributors crowd.
Sorry for the term it's not intended as pejorative at all; but one has to be a genuine computer nerd to put himself in the shoes of devs/contributors.
I've read enough threads of conflicting opinions on mameworld in the past decade to know for sure there's a huge understanding rift, and that building a bridge between the knowledgeable and clueless (whose primary interest is only to
play games in the best conditions) is almost impossible without great, great effort. The controversy addition from my part would be that the effort would need to come from both sides.
It's not the policy of alternative builds makers I criticize,
BUT from my point of view and what I understand you guys (or other builds dev's) besides the essentials of your own creations, are also wasting time and effort doing the menial stuff that should be in base MAME (well, only when it applies I mean, since several of those things are still left out anyway).
If you say it's additional effort and trouble to add those little things later, wouldn't it be better if it wasn't removed from base MAME to begin ?
I mean when it's removed from base MAME it's naturally removed from the most known/famous UI builds too, and users more and more find themselves in the position to either mourn, beg alternative builds developers to bring the features back, or the much harsher way: to learn how to modify and compile their own builds.
As I've mentioned another time; please realize that for a peasant-level user getting into just GM is already headache-inducing, people already struggle with UI builds after all, so stuff like compiling or even coding is almost beyond their imagination (it is still beyond mine atm but I'm working on it
).
Again I insist; don't take it as a criticism towards you all great alternate builds developers and contributors, I'm glad you are here, but please understand that in the eyes of a clueless user, this 'process' taking place over time makes little to no sense (base MAME stripped of everything useful and nice to
players, leaving them users in the hopeful/beggar position).
I have one example for you related to something I've come here to request in the beginning; the case of integer scaling.
It's something more people you could imagine wish for (even excluding individual wishes it makes games look better anyway in many cases if you have the choice), and when they go to mameworld to ask why it hasn't been working since some update (don't remember the v.) members, as far as actual mamedev members afaik, first state it's still working because they're not aware it's gone, then they say mildly irritating stuff like 'why do you care?', followed by hermetic project language that don't really give the outsider any answwer to 'why?', and finally some dev saying "oh the guy who was in charge of the new d3d probably just forgot to implement it, then it was on mametesters or something, and the entry was removed before too many people asked about it because it's troublesome", and it's been broken/hidden for many years according to RB, with no one indeed caring.
Can you believe that ? It is unfortunately true, when you're a user it's just impossible to understand.
So today if one wants to play games with clean scaling he's got to go to GM, or RA, thankfully those exist even though it's done in different ways.
But to sustain my point again; wouldn't have been much more simple it it had never been removed ? (I think I read it's SS or you Calamity who brought it back, well cleanstretch I mean).
I'm quite far from a computer geek myself (like most users of whatever software in the world) so the reasons why good features get killed are beyond me, unless I dedicate myself to this world and bring myself to a developer's level with time and effort, I cannot understand what this kind of project is, the implications of every bit etc, I can only see a vague, blurred image of it from very far just taking the word of developers and contributors who have more experience and understand.
Er...sorry I said I wouldn't turn this into a debate, ha ha.
PS: + apologies for hijacking your thread Donluca.