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| Fozzy The Bear:
--- Quote from: WaRpEd on February 22, 2008, 09:47:57 pm ---. Would coding drivers for every type of graphics cards take forever, Yes. --- End quote --- No it wouldn't!! That's the point. You don't code drivers for every graphics card. That's why you use an API (Application Programing Interface) Like Direct-X or Open GL. You code for Direct-X or Open GL, and each graphics card's drivers support that. And no! it wouldn't change the running speed of a small percentage of games, it'd change the stability and running speed of a very large number of games. Because, for ALL games that you run through the API, you are taking away excessive workload on the processor and giving it to the graphics GPU to handle. My point being... what's the point of having graphics GPU's if they refuse to use them. That's what they're there for. Best Regards, Julian (Fozzy The Bear) |
| ark_ader:
I think where the guys are coming from is this: People who live in greenhouses do not throw stones. Personally I do not really care past version .84. I would like to see the laserdisc thing come out, but will gladly glide on with Daphne. I just want to play the old classics. Not Daytona or any of the crap games now residing in a local Game Works requiring oodles of Quad core processing for a ditsy 68K game. If the mamedev team closed its doors, I would still be happy. I would like to see a stable release every month or so instead of these weekly ones. That way I would know which day of the week to rename the roms.... :laugh2: Lets all agree that Fozzy has a good point, and we look forward to the prospect of the Mamedev team pulling off some 3D stuff in the future. When? Who knows? Maybe you can donate some $$$ to motivate them to your cause. Lets just not try to wind the mamedevs up to the point that they do not release any more binaries to the public. If that happens, I bet there will be a mob throwing a different kind of stone. :timebomb: |
| SavannahLion:
--- Quote from: Fozzy The Bear on February 22, 2008, 09:14:31 am ---I know that they claim the purpose of Mame is to archive the original software for the future, <snip> --- End quote --- Um... apparently it's actually: --- Quote ---MAME is strictly a non-profit project. Its main purpose is to be a reference to the inner workings of the emulated arcade machines. --- End quote --- Unless I'm misinterpreting this incorrectly, MAME's stated goal isn't to archive the original software it's supposedly to document the original hardware. By this, it is taken that by leveraging hardware acceleration or by splitting the code to run on SMP or some variant (for those that didn't leverage multiple CPU's in the first place) diverges from their stated goal. On this note, I asked the exact same question as Fozzy. For people who already own Voodoo cards (like myself) why not leverage them if they are the same GPU's used in the arcades? The answer that came back, after a lot of argument, is that doing so isn't emulating the hardware in question. Yes it would work, but it isn't, "referencing," the hardware. And when that hardware dies, which it is bound to do, then the Devs are right back at square one again. Personally, I feel that their idea of "referencing" the inner workings of emulated machines isn't exactly strictly kosher. For instance, as a direct tool for the repair and upkeep of arcade machines, I feel that MAME doesn't exactly qualify as a reference source. Yes, I'm aware that a lot of people leverage ROM's and CHD's to fix damaged software in the main systems, but that's an indirect side effect of MAME. You're not actually using MAME to fix the cabinet. Come to think of it, I have never heard of anyone actually downloading and examining the MAME code to figure out how to repair or replace some esoteric IC or component on an arcade PCB. For that, people either already know or they leverage some other reference source. Then there's the more esoteric hardware that MAME seems to have a lot of trouble deciding what to do with, such as force feedback. At a very minimum, MAME should be doing something consistent with the force feedback signals and others (the keyboard LED hack is a ---smurfing--- joke) without forcing everyone to apply a patch and recompile so people like Randy, Andy, and the guy reverse engineering the Star Wars yoke can offer working hardware to us. What about when some of the more recent games hit the market? How could MAME ever hope to properly emulate games like Police 911 (aka Police 24/7)? WTF are they going to do? Assign body movements to keys so people can use their DDR pads for motion? That would be an insult. While I agree with Fozzy on this, I'm not sure leveraging 3D cards is quite the right solution at this point. I'm more interested in better leveraging of the multiple core CPU's we're seeing or breaking MAME apart into a core engine with a grouped packages that specifically focus on radically different requirements of the hardware they're emulating. For instance, why bloat the core MAME code to support multi-threading that's bound to be required for modern games leveraging multiple CPU's when what Pac-Man really needs is a color fix? By diverging MAME into distinct groups, that would allow Devs to extend MAME in directions they otherwise couldn't go. |
| BORIStheBLADE:
--- Quote from: CheffoJeffo on February 22, 2008, 09:47:17 pm --- --- Quote from: BORIStheBLADE on February 22, 2008, 09:41:25 pm ---If everyone was truly concerned with "running the games the way they were originally run" then no one would be using any of the LED stuff and encoders now would we. :dunno --- End quote --- Sorry if I misjudged your post, but your closing kinda makes my point ... you seem more concerned about what you want than about what the people actually doing the work want ... --- End quote --- It might sound like that, but I already said I'm happy with the way Mame is. Alot of people seem to want to emulate with older / slower computers. To get the most they might... be able to benefit from hardware acceleration. Your right, this might be more of what end users want instead of what the dev teams purpose is. But lets be honest, alot of the wording Mames dev team uses has alot to do with them not getting in trouble. These guys found a way to play older arcade games and not get into legal issues, end of story and my hats off to them. |
| ark_ader:
--- Quote ---What about when some of the more recent games hit the market? How could MAME ever hope to properly emulate games like Police 911 (aka Police 24/7)? WTF are they going to do? Assign body movements to keys so people can use their DDR pads for motion? That would be an insult. --- End quote --- Eye Toy does a pretty good job in that department. |
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