Software Support > PowerMAME
PowerMAME plug-in??
squirrellydw:
Any more news on the plug-in you were talking about?
MikeQ:
Aaron and I talked about it briefly. I don't think I'm going forward with it.
#1) It would be a bunch of work on Aaron's side.
#2) If I can't find the time to keep up with it, I don't want to pollute mame with a bunch of external interface stuff that is only used by my application. What I need would be pretty specific to my application. It could be extended to support the community but that would require cooperation by everyone doing software. No one seems to want to do that. Everyone runs off in all directions doing there own thing and we end up with 50 different solutions to the same problem and none of them really satisfy everyone needs. I wanted PowerMAME to be a collaborative effort to get people focused but that never evolved.
I'm going to do what everyone else does and do my own thing. I'm not going to share it with the community though because then I start having play vendor and work on things that don't fit my cabinet or I have to make things generic to try to make everyone happy. If I don't do that, then people won't use it so what is the difference. I may as well not share. Plus, I have to stay on top of things and keep multiple build configurations that I don't personally use. That is a testing nightmare because I end up having to let the end user test. They find problems and I have to try to fix them. It is too much like work.
Dealing with hardware is another difficult thing to deal with too. There can be a lot of incompatibilities that only show up in strange circumstances. It makes finding problems very difficult. I don't know if you were around when the USB 2.0 problem was found with the LEDWiz but that took for ever to solve. I couldn't reproduce the problem except on 1 machine and couldn't narrow the problem down to a single item. If I had been doing PowerMAME for myself and not the community, I would have ignored the problem and never looked any deeper since it didn't happen on my cabinet computer. However, I had "customers" that were complaining about the problem and I had to dedicate many weeks to fixing it. It took a lot of time and effort to find the problem. RandyT didn't believe there even was a problem for a long time and that made it even harder to debug. Finally I found a workaround and that workaround today is in place for anyone using the LEDWiz. I don't think anyone (except Randy) appreciates what it took to resolve that problem. I enjoy working on drivers and hardware. It is what I do for a living. However, in the context of PowerMAME, it is just too much to work all day on this stuff and then come home a deal with the customer support aspect of it as a hobby.
I haven't worked on cabinet for a year (just played it) and I'd like to get back to it. PowerMAME or any software endeavor is just going to keep me from doing the things I want to do when it pertains to my cabinet. If I can't give it 100%, then I don't want to do it. I can't give it 100% either. It takes too much time away from the family and it turns my hobby into something I don't enjoy.
I've been stressing over this decision. I'd like to support the community but it really would be a full time job for one person to do it right. I just can't dedicate that much time to it. This is why I tried to get a team going early on. People tell me to just do things at my speed and ignore the communities demands. I don't work that way #1, and #2, if I don't listen to the community, then they won't use it. What is the point of developing something that isn't quite what everyone wants? I can develop exactly what I want with a lot less effort.
squirrellydw:
Thanks Mike. Even though you may not develop PowerMAME for us anymore, it still lives on in many ways. You brought some great ideas to the community. I understand you not wanting to dedicate the time for everyone else, becomes more like a job than a hobby. I appreciate everything you did to find that bug, I wasn't able to help since my cocktail table still isn't done but I was watching. Maybe you can help the MaLA guys out, they are working on trying to make the buttons flash and speak the controls like PM did based on a suggestion I asked. Otherwise, sit back, relax and enjoy life, you deserve it.
southpaw13:
My two cents. And Mike I am not made at you at all.
Here I send a lot of money on two LEDWIZ controllers, lights, buttons, and re-wiring my control panels. The LEDWIZ was rushed to market with only the hope that software would support it. So here I sit with Mame 105 and can't go any furthur. Maybe I can buy ADDITIONAL chips to run Mala or have hope that AtomicFE or GameEX will fit the bill.
Just my frustration....
squirrellydw:
Mala does support it natively now, see the link below. Maybe Mike can help out the Mala guys a little more with the speech part of it? I know Atomic supports it some what, not as easy to configure and I am not sure about GameEX.
http://forum.arcadecontrols.com/index.php?topic=61779.0
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