Possibility of a NonMAME emulator?

[1UP]

I'm tired of trying to find ways to dance around the issues of shipping a usable plug-n-play cabinet without pissing off the MameDevs, and tired of the whole Ultracade fiasco, and want to go my own way.

[Santoro]

I think this is a smart move.

[Hoagie_one]

Another thought.

Why not just make a self-installing Mame prog that is on a separate disk that your customer just has to put in teh cd rom drive.  It will auto run and install Mame.

This way, you dont include it with roms and you can personalize things without having to write a whole new EMU

[1UP]

Another thought.

Why not just make a self-installing Mame prog that is on a separate disk that your customer just has to put in teh cd rom drive.

[Gunstar Hero]

I think that's the key really.

Once you supply the emulator, then (the theory goes) you have to supply the ROMS, and that's not legal...

I think you need to track down a way to get the retail releases of several "Classic" or "Arcade Style" games. Golden Tee, Street Fighter 2 + CE, Puzzle Bobble, Mortal Kombat 4 and several others are in the value packs at my local Fry's. Plus you have some serious classic PC game collections available to you these days.

It would be the MAD cool if Capcom sold that "50 Capcom Classics" CD.

Figure out a way to wholesale some of this action, give a choice of however many with the cab or sell a few as an "added value" option.

[quarterback]

I think the only way to go about this is to make a clean break from Mame.

I think you're looking down the correct path here, so don't take my following suggestion as being an either/or recommendation.  But:

It seems like you could create a Mame "loader".  A program that could even go as far as to download the newest version of Mame if you so doesired, either by queriing your server or some other method.  The end user gets a CD that does NOT include Mame, they load the CD into their computer, it downloads the right mame installation files and installs it for the user.

Or even make it a free download for those not buying cabs or whatever.  It should be a simple bit of programming and if you wanted to involve your own webserver as a proxy (so the cd/program connects to your server to determine which mame build to download from the official mame website) then you could do that as well.

Just a thought.

[1UP]

I think the only way to go about this is to make a clean break from Mame.

I think you're looking down the correct path here, so don't take my following suggestion as being an either/or recommendation.

[quarterback]

Gotcha'.   Living in a house with over 10 'computers' networked together makes me forget that other people don't  

(although, admittedly, I wasn't assuming they'd have a home network, but rather simply an internet connection)

[Silver]

I am basically looking for a solution where the customer does not need to have ANY techincal knowledge whatsoever.  The ideal situation would be:  1) Customer orders cabinet.  2) Customer receives cabinet, unpacks, and plugs it in.  3) Customer relives childhood memories without clicking a single "next" button.

To do this you will definately need a non-mame emu, and you will need to have licensed roms on it (eg star roms). Rather than writing a custom one, I would suggest getting in contact with authors of other emus and asking their permission/do-a-deal to sell it on your cab (even if they provide it for free on the web). I would forget about "auto-installing" mame or whatever.

I think you've already come to this conclusion (hence the thread you started) so apologies for stating the obvious. I would also contact FE authors and strike an agreement there (much easier I am sure)

The only other option is to aviod roms by using simulators - ie pc games of old games.

[1UP]

Aren't all the non-Mame emus pretty much vaporware?  If there's one that's active, point me to it so I can look at the license...

Damn, I wish Mame was still GPL.

[Crazy Cooter]

... then we've got iRoms coming along soon.

[JODY]

Aren't all the non-Mame emus pretty much vaporware?

[JODY]

Here's a recent example.  The CrystalEmu was finished within the last few months.  The support was added to Mame based on it.  The emulator only supports a few games.  The other emulators usually emulate a single system.

[1UP]

Raine doesn't emulate the Atari games that are currently available.

About iRoms, I'm not promoting it, but if it's there, might as well use it.

[JODY]

You didn't say what games you wanted to emulate.  I've seen very detailed instructions on how to emulate some games such as Pac-Man.  There may be other instructions available for other systems.

[1UP]

Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Battlezone, Black Widow, Centipede, Gravitar, Liberator, Lunar Lander, Major Havoc, Millipede, Missile Command, Peter Packrat, Space Duel, Super Breakout, Tempest.

More later on... 

[Lilwolf]

you might want to contact the cottage group.  I think they can emulate almost many of the games full speed on a decent system.  Its 100% pure java which is pretty impressive for what they do.  Also Norbert emulates a bunch by themself... but I don't remember them running full speed on any of todays systems.

How about Vantage btw? 

I would LOVE to help on a project.  But I've been working in java only for the last few years... And don't have the time (wife / kids / work) but I'm still hoping to move over to c++ at some point. 

but I really would go over to zophars and look at all the emulators and get a list for each game which will emulate it, how well... and if you can use it.  You might be able to wrap a bunch of different emulators in one.

You should also look at some of the compilation cds that are out.  See which ones allow you to launch from the command line.  You will probably get a bunch more games you could add to your list.

[slycrel]

Hey, I emailed you earlier.

[1UP]

I think I'm going to have to think about this more.  Right now, I'm going to have to rely on Mame anyway, but it would definitely be nice to have use of an emulator with no strings attached in the near future.  If we could even get away without calling it an emulator, it would be even better.  I just wish there were more commercial ROMs available to make it worthwhile.

Thanks

[tetsujin]

The Mame license states that the INFORMATION in the Mame source about the hardware being emulated is free to use for anyone, for any purpose.  Basically, it should be possible to write an emu based on the Mame code, without actually using the Mame source for anything other than reference.

The problem there is that the information contained in the MAME source is the source.  There's really not a lot of difference between reading code and using that to write equivalent code, and using copy/paste to put their code in your project.  I think the MAME license is a little self-contradictory in that sense, and I can't really speculate too far on what they intend people to do with the information in the source other than use it to emulate machines MAME supports by copying code.

One way to resolve this issue would be to document what information you're harvesting from MAME and minimize it as much as possible.  For instance, if you're emulating a game that uses a specific processor, try to find emulation code for that processor from another source, seek specific information about the game from MAME.

IMO, as a programmer, if you wrote such a thing using MAME as one of your primary sources of information, you would have some obligations.  The first one would be to acknowledge MAME in your documentation.  The alternative, IMO, is plagiarism.  (Of course, you started on this because you wanted to avoid using "MAME", so having to acknowledge them might not help you much...)  The second obligation would be to follow the terms of the MAME license with regard to donating code back to MAME (at least anything relevant to emulating the machines - I'd say framework for pretty-fying the application, interfacing with the OS, etc. needn't be donated back, so long as you don't read their code for that...)

When exactly did MAME switch away from GPL?  If the old versions used to be GPL, then they still are.  If there's a GPL-version that supports the games you want, then you could adapt the code to make your own GPL-licensed variant.  Of course, even if you can take code from an old GPL version of MAME that does what you need, that still doesn't release you from the obligation to acknowledge the original authors IMO.

If you really want to know what's legit and what's not, contact the MAME team.  But I suspect they won't have the answer you want.

[Lilwolf]

MAME was written to document the hardware.  If you use it to learn about the hardware, they should be fine.

If you do... make sure you dont' have access to the source at the point of writing anything... this will get -not copy/paste but still exact copy problems.

But they don't mind people looking at their cores.  heck, probably 90% of the emulators or more use mame cores directly for smaller parts of their system.

BTW, have you contacted anyone directly (like HAZE or Aaron?) to see if they will answer their thoughts?  I hear that emulating something that you have full documentation is pretty easy... And if you made a C++ version of it would make parts harder to copy/paste directly...  And you could say so.

also... whatever you write it in... you should see if you could make it into a DLL that can be directly loaded into a frontend.  That would be by far way way cool!

[1UP]

All my contact has been with Haze.  I asked him if one could reverse engineer the code and write their own emulator without being bound to the Mame license, and he said "pretty much".

The last version of Mame that was GPL had lots of problems, so it would be a bug-hunt, but yeah, I guess you could clean it up.  I don't mind donating the code back, and giving credit, my only objective is to be able to load it on a machine with legally licensed roms, and not have to jump through hoops to get my customers a working machine.

I have actually offered to pay to license Mame.  They don't want to take any money for it because it could get them into trouble, since they are emulating hardware that belongs to others (or something along those lines).  Using a port of Mame in a commercial product without permission does the same thing, plus it disrespects the authors.  I don't know how Hanaho gets away with doing this, but I'm not Hanaho, and from what I've heard, the devs are not too happy with the way Hanaho went about it.

So, I started out trying to get permission for Mame rather than just stealing it like most other cabinet distributors, but in the end, I'm left with only the option of effectively stealing it (reverse engineering the code), which by Haze's own admission, is the only way to make it my own.  Kind of crazy.  I don't understand why they even put in the clause about not using Mame in a commercial product without getting permission to use it, if it is in fact impossible to get permission in the first place.  Why not just write "Mame may not be used in any commercial product, period."   

[Buddabing]

All my contact has been with Haze.

[jelwell]

Mame.Net Forums

This is from R. Belmont, discussing the Hanaho licensing issue:

> MAME's license doesn't allow distribution with ROMs. (it also explicitly bans
> people from wearing buffalo outfits on Tuesdays, last I looked.) "legal"
> licensing of MAME to date appears to have been "ignoring" licensing of MAME.

That's all true (you can however eat buffalo wings any day you'd like). That said, we in practice allow distribution with ROMs *if* and *only if* the ROMs are legally licensed. So e.g. hanaho is OK.

Again R. Belmont pointed out that distributing MAME with *legal* roms is OK, just not within the license. I am not a lawyer, but when you don't enforce your license it becomes unenforceable, yes?

MameWorld.Info Forums

> Haze, there's no issues with what Dream Arcades is doing with mame, right? Other than
> asking that quesiton to Nicola himself, I think you are the next best person to ask.
> If so that part is legal then

DA is in fact violating the letter of the MAME license, but we typically allow redistribution with legal ROMs (a la Hanaho's Capcom Classics CD).

I've always loathed the Mame license. It gets in the way more often than not. If it were GPL we'd have a lot of really nice modifications out there, like network play and more visualization tricks like the recent 3D pacman.
Joseph Elwell.

[Thenasty]

here is some atari standalone emu

http://webpages.charter.net/astgl/astgl.htm

[1UP]

Mame.Net Forums

This is from R. Belmont, discussing the Hanaho licensing issue:

> MAME's license doesn't allow distribution with ROMs. (it also explicitly bans
> people from wearing buffalo outfits on Tuesdays, last I looked.) "legal"
> licensing of MAME to date appears to have been "ignoring" licensing of MAME.

That's all true (you can however eat buffalo wings any day you'd like). That said, we in practice allow distribution with ROMs *if* and *only if* the ROMs are legally licensed. So e.g. hanaho is OK.

Again R. Belmont pointed out that distributing MAME with *legal* roms is OK, just not within the license. I am not a lawyer, but when you don't enforce your license it becomes unenforceable, yes?

MameWorld.Info Forums

> Haze, there's no issues with what Dream Arcades is doing with mame, right? Other than
> asking that quesiton to Nicola himself, I think you are the next best person to ask.
> If so that part is legal then

DA is in fact violating the letter of the MAME license, but we typically allow redistribution with legal ROMs (a la Hanaho's Capcom Classics CD).

I've always loathed the Mame license. It gets in the way more often than not. If it were GPL we'd have a lot of really nice modifications out there, like network play and more visualization tricks like the recent 3D pacman.
Joseph Elwell.

Hmmm...this is useful.  Thanks.     Better keep a copy of these threads around for reference.

I wonder why Haze gave me so much crap then, I basically asked to do the same thing.  I never seem to get a fair shake.

[Thenasty]

couldn't you just buy the Hanano CP and it comes with legal ROMS to play with ? Just include the Panel with your sell.

[1UP]

Again, getting some legal roms is not the problem.  Distributing Mame in a commercial product was the problem I was discussing.

[paigeoliver]

Here's an idea.

Forget about Mame altogether, start licensing assorted modern freeware and shareware games that play well on cabinets, there are zillions of them, and plenty of them are (truth be told) better games than a lot of the Atari games that are available via Star Roms anyway.

There are also plenty of awesome arcade style PC games (past their prime) available for chicken feed prices these day. Pod Racer, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, Quake 1, Descent 3, and many others can be had for a couple bucks each, I'll bet ID Software would be more than willing to give you a killer deal on the older quake games.

[danny_galaga]

Here's an idea.

Forget about Mame altogether, start licensing assorted modern freeware and shareware games that play well on cabinets, there are zillions of them, and plenty of them are (truth be told) better games than a lot of the Atari games that are available via Star Roms anyway.

There are also plenty of awesome arcade style PC games (past their prime) available for chicken feed prices these day. Pod Racer, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 4, Quake 1, Descent 3, and many others can be had for a couple bucks each, I'll bet ID Software would be more than willing to give you a killer deal on the older quake games.

you know, thats a pretty good idea. and of course whoever buys the cab can do what they want. they have plenty of legit (albeit not 'arcade classics') games ready to go. there would be nothing for ultracade to complain about. he can't say 'this man is selling cabs with a nudge and a wink for piracy' since the cab would be ready to go. once the cab has been bought the owner can do with it what they like- including loading mame on it...

[Lilwolf]

I like the idea of going with non-emulation software (and installable 10 in one CD's when you can).  Then have a frontend which will automatically connect to mame if it exists.

So they install mame in the c:\mame directory... then pop - it works.

my frontend also allows you to select your favorite 'version' of a game.  IE, you mame mame and zinc.  Well, it shows up like one of mame or zinc versions of the same game are clones of the other.  Then you can select your favorite clone. 

You could do something similar.  Have some games that are simulated, then they show up as a clone of tempest (for instance)... Once you have the real tempest installed with mame it starts launching that one instead.

[IntruderAlert]

Looks like TLC is heading in this direction:
http://www.nextarcade.com/catalog/