Unstoppable Mame.

[Rasher2k]

I think MAME has picked up such momentum that it is, for lack of a better word, unstoppable.

I imagine Nicola Salmoria originally created Multi-Pac so that he could PLAY Pacman, not document hardware, but that just my theory. Upon completing the simple emulator, he must have realized that emulation could have a much wider spread of application than just Pacman alone, since the components in Pacman were very similar to other machines of that time and could be easily arranged to suit them. Enter MAME.

Arcade boards are (very basically) a collection of CPU's that run a game ROM. As long as you have the CPU emulated correctly (many of which have been around long before MAME) all it take is a bit of tweaking and you have yourself simulated an arcade board. (Granted it's not THAT easy, but put into lamens terms I reckon that's pretty much it). The more CPU's you can emulate, the more types of machines you can emulate.

With such open architecture in MAME, no classic digital based system is safe. In just 6 years a majority of the games from 1975 to 2003 have been emulated, and the rest will be emulated in the near future. Newer CPU emulators are slowly closing the gap between us and the newer arcade processors, so unless arcades start being built around a more exotic processors, all thats going to stop users from playing them is getting their hands on the ROMs.

Now I can't say I'm not happy about being able to play all these wondrous games, but one day MAME will get to the point where every new release arcade game will be emulatable days after they're released. Wont it? I'm just wondering if there's going to be anybody there to crack the whip and yell "Woah nelly!". Keeping classics alive is one thing, but then again, everything's going to be a classic one day right?

Just some random philophisizing of mine to think about

[Richy]

PC hardware probebly won't be able to keep up with emulating consoles and arcades, so i doubt it.

[rampy]

what slows down emulation of modern stuff is 1-off / propietary chips that aren't well documented...

What made the classics easier to emulate (well comparatively) is that the processors were commonly used and documented (the z80 for example was/is in everything!)

bah... I don't even care...  zzzzzzzzz

rampy

[seaner]

you'll either see newer games using more standardized pc hardware or you'll see more complex boards which require a fair degree of reverse engineering to get the board support emulation correct.. think memory mapped device I/O, etc.  Not to mention of course the number of asics and other programmable logic devices that new systems may require to get those nifty-new features that the other games don't have.. good luck getting the datasheets on someone's proprietary asic designs
Working in the embedded sector myself, and doing powerpc development, there is almost as much work put into developing your target drivers as the simulated ones.
I was recently thinking about purchasing a satellite receiver and replacing the onboard software with some custom code, just to see how tough it would be to reverse engineer.  The board schematics were available, but the datasheets for the CPU on most of those things are almost impossible to come by unless you have a development agreement, NDA, etc. with the manufacturer (ie. ST Micro or Motorola).  While it may only be a PPC750 core or something, the "add-on" features would be almost impossible to reverse engineer. (although there are places that will do this for $$$$.. next door to where I work is a shop that basically sands down chips one nanometer at a time and creates drawings of the internals, schematics, etc.)
So take these same kind of problems and apply them to a small handful of people with a budget of $0 and lets see how far we can push the envelope

[skirge66]

ok i work for intel, and have very good idea of what makes it into what system so i though I might try to clarify something for you about computers keeping up with the console games. To start with a console game requires very little processing power a good example would be take  x-box, probably the most powerful and advanced console available on the market.

the processors in x-box are very low end, they are probably the slowest least powerful cpu's intel still produces, they work so well for a console because the process is so robust, it requires little tweeking, and practicly, can be mass produced simple takes very little space (relitively) to run the process to produce it. The fact is that that cpu has a fraction of the processing power of a 2.5 or 3 Ghz P4...this is not even taking into consideration what is going through the line and being tested right now for future releases (this stuff would tweek your brain...hehe). so what's the difference? processor being put into x-box are being used exclusively to run those games only, they do not need all the multitasking required by a PC...but believe me here, Mame has a long and fruitful future, there are already processors available that if implemented in something like a console will be able to do incredible things.

just remember this simple rule, the software companies lag the hardware companies by several years...just look at the machine requirements on the newest games in the store and compare them to the hardware available.  Imagine what a game would look like that fully utilised a high end p4 and a 128mb radeon video card.

what will impact this comunity is price...can you afford to upgrade your mame computer to run golden tee 2007? because the hardware needed is probably already available.

just my thoughts.

skirge66

[Rasher2k]

Yeah you're right, I'm probably just dreamin'.

I spose we're at the point where companies like Capcom and Neogeo have squeezed the last drops of life out of their old hardware. All their bigger and badder systems will be conquered when the PC becomes mightier in later years, so I guess emulation will always be around. Just sometimes companies hang onto their hardware a little too long and emulation catches up with them every now and then!

[2slk]

Where's Magnet_Eye? I need a beer.