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---fudgesicle--- mame!
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Bender:
MAME rocks!
and just keeps getting better
I mean we can play over 1,000 arcade games how F...ing cool is that, is it perfect, no, but man it's free and makes me very happy

Xiaou2:
I actually play spy hunter better on my mame than the real thing, and I don't have a steering wheel, shifter, or pedals
Xiaou2:
Weather anyone can play a game without its intended controls is not this
issue.   The game is designed to be experienced a certain way for a reason.

 If you have no analog pedals,  you are not only cheating... but also
missing out on a ton of precise control and ability.

 The mass of the wheel gives the feel, and realistic control... along with well
placed buttons for quick access.  Trying to manage all those button on a keyboard
at speed is ridiculous, and I suspect you can not do it or do it well.  IE: Can you
get to the boat stage?

 BTW - I Own a SpyHunter machine... so Im well aware of the differences.  Im also
a decent player.   Ever knock the Switchblade guys off the road by bumping the
Front of their cars while the blades are out and spinning?


 Someone posted a harsh topic about mame.  I can understand the frustration
at times, because as much of a fan I am... there are things that make keeping
up to date very difficult.

 I made suggestions.  Such as how the rom managers seem to not know what the
heck old roms are after a few releases...  to include a file in the roms which contains
information about the roms.   In fact... Guru used to do this anyways.   The
difference I suggested... is to make that file mandatory to running a game.

 Thus keeping the file known... giving data about the roms to devs and game
fixers... and keeping the rom managers from not knowing what the heck the file is
after a few releases.   Its a win-win idea.  (minus a tiny bit of harddrive space loss)
 

 I dont just B*tch.   I try to come up with useful solutions.


 As for Devs doing what they want...   Its understandable.   Yet its also quite
sad.  Sad, because for some... these artworks mean nothing to them.  And they
may not be preserved in their entirety because of it.

 A game is much more than circuit boards.  Its artworks. Schematics, controls,
cabinet dimentions and shape, lighting, sound placement / reverberations,
3d artworks, and much more.

 You wouldnt catch me saying F-Mame.   I was merely putting out reasons why
people get frustrated by Mame.

 Hazel decides to attack all non devs, saying they are worthless.  That ticks me
off, considering Ive donated several times to the purchase of games, as well as
done other things to contribute to mame.

 Mame is great, but does not mean certain  devs & dumpers  are great.   They
may get the job done... but that does not mean they all are nice people.
Haze:

--- Quote from: Xiaou2 on September 08, 2009, 01:05:33 am ---Weather anyone can play a game without its intended controls is not this
issue.   The game is designed to be experienced a certain way for a reason.

 If you have no analog pedals,  you are not only cheating... but also
missing out on a ton of precise control and ability.

 The mass of the wheel gives the feel, and realistic control... along with well
placed buttons for quick access.  Trying to manage all those button on a keyboard
at speed is ridiculous, and I suspect you can not do it or do it well.  IE: Can you
get to the boat stage?

 BTW - I Own a SpyHunter machine... so Im well aware of the differences.  Im also
a decent player.   Ever knock the Switchblade guys off the road by bumping the
Front of their cars while the blades are out and spinning?

--- End quote ---

I've played Spyhunter twice maybe?  I didn't even like the original.  The hardware is certainly curious tho.  Recent work was even done on shifters to display something onscreen (which I find rather annoying, but that's not the point) It's not as if nothing is *ever* done. 


--- Quote --- Someone posted a harsh topic about mame.  I can understand the frustration
at times, because as much of a fan I am... there are things that make keeping
up to date very difficult.

 I made suggestions.  Such as how the rom managers seem to not know what the
heck old roms are after a few releases...  to include a file in the roms which contains
information about the roms.   In fact... Guru used to do this anyways.   The
difference I suggested... is to make that file mandatory to running a game.

 Thus keeping the file known... giving data about the roms to devs and game
fixers... and keeping the rom managers from not knowing what the heck the file is
after a few releases.   Its a win-win idea.  (minus a tiny bit of harddrive space loss)
 

 I dont just B*tch.   I try to come up with useful solutions.

--- End quote ---

The rom managers know what you throw at them.  If you throw an old dat, or old version of MAME they will know how to use it.  The only exception might be ones which predated the xml output format (and before that predated any kind of support output), although again, if you have a clrMAME dat for them then it doesn't matter.  Honestly, I can't stress enough how absolutely insane it would be to try and do this any other way.  People who dump roms do it to the best of their ability, it's not as if they dump things badly on purpose knowing that they'll change again later.


--- Quote --- As for Devs doing what they want...   Its understandable.   Yet its also quite
sad.  Sad, because for some... these artworks mean nothing to them.  And they
may not be preserved in their entirety because of it.

 A game is much more than circuit boards.  Its artworks. Schematics, controls,
cabinet dimentions and shape, lighting, sound placement / reverberations,
3d artworks, and much more.

--- End quote ---

Except most of the time when games are purchased they are simply the PCBs.

I've stated many times myself that I find the current artwork system to be worryingly inadequate in some areas and that it should be promoted to a full 3d reproduction so that graphics aren't being stretched, distorted and reduced in quality just to give a '3d' look, however, you should also realise that this is a hobby project and somebody would have to

a) code a 3d engine flexible enough to support all the materials, lighting configurations etc. etc. that would be needed to accurately model the cabinets
b) make the models, scan all the artwork, and painstakingly ensure it all works and looks right.

making artwork (and samples) to be accurate is subjective (and legally distributing such could easily be considered the same as distributing roms) so such tasks are left to external contributors.

MAME is a programming project, good artists can be incredibly expensive, getting them the reference materials they need, near impossible, and setting any kind of standard for art / models likewise.

I'd love to see a 3d engine for rendering the cabinets, the pictures of a real space encounters running simply highlight how MAME's 2d art system fails to do it justice at all, however, it's not a task for everybody.  Emulating hardware, and writing a good portable 3d engine are 2 differnet disciplines.  The new 2d rendering / artwork system nearly killed advancemame / dosmame because it was just impossible to port.

I'm in no way saying that the artwork isn't important, however, moaning because devs would rather work on Mahjong drivers is futile, because they're completely different areas requiring completely different skills.

MAME also now supports games with no video output at all aside from lights.  (eg Fruit Machines)  Currently the only one that anybody has even attempted to do anywhere near a complete reproduction of is the Dr. Who one.  There are thousands of these things, and in several years only one has been studied enough to create a *2d* reproduction in MAME.  The reason commercial game development costs are skyrocketing is because every new generation requires more and more attention to detail, bigger teams, specialist programmers / artists, and ever increasing amounts of work.  These kind of human resources don't seem to be available.  There is nothing stopping external contributors coming up with these things right now but only a handful do.

I signed up to MAME to emulate hardware, I'm not an artist, and I'll never be an artist.

If somebody stepped up to the plate and produced an acceptable, portable system to do the above I doubt it would be rejected, but nobody has.

Likewise, we've provided a system whereby output can be hooked up and read externally, and only minimal use has been made of it.

I think it's important that you see MAME as 2 distinct layers, there is the hardware emulation, it doesn't care what the inputs are (they're just bits in a port) or what the outputs are (they're also just bits in a port)  it emulates the hardware, reproducing the behavior of the CPUs, graphic chips, sound chips etc. and generates a bitmap which contains an image of the emulated game and sound streams with the output of the sound chips.

There is also the outer layer that wraps around that, which says what the inputs are, what the outputs are, where the sound gets routed, how the image gets presented to the user.

The latter is almost entirely Aaron's jurisdiction, he took it upon himself to write and rewrite most of these systems.  Personally I don't touch that code, and as somebody emulating the hardware I simply expect it to *work*.


--- Quote --- You wouldnt catch me saying F-Mame.   I was merely putting out reasons why
people get frustrated by Mame.

 Hazel decides to attack all non devs, saying they are worthless.  That ticks me
off, considering Ive donated several times to the purchase of games, as well as
done other things to contribute to mame.

--- End quote ---

Resorting to personal insults again?

I said the project would continue without external contributors, it would.  This is not the same thing as saying all external contributors are worthless.  The project however wouldn't continue with *only* external contributors.

There is currently plenty of room for external contributors especially in areas such as artwork.  That said the expectations that the development team should do everything the way they want it, for them still makes no sense.  Decisions are made on what will take the project forward, nothing more, nothing less.


--- Quote --- Mame is great, but does not mean certain  devs & dumpers  are great.   They
may get the job done... but that does not mean they all are nice people.

--- End quote ---

Indeed, I have my fair share of issues with the attitudes of several of the current developers, who I feel to be malicious in their changes, and expect everything spoon fed to them, however a good number of them are friendly, dedicated, always take time to explain things, always respond to questions and are a pleasure to work with.

I try to be the latter, however, it seems people take offense at my answers if they're not the ones they want to hear.

The same could easily be said about users.  Some will take the time to understand the changes that are being made, the nature of the project, the team, and the reasoning behind things.  Others .. don't.  I try my best to explain these things to people.

I don't agree with every decision made by the team, in fact, I'm unpopular with some people because I can also be quite critical of certain changes, and the direction being taken, however, I will at least try to see what reasonable logic is behind changes made rather than assuming they're just to annoy me.  I've suggested several times that the MAME/MESS projects are properly merged because a lot of hardware is shared and it would allow the MAME emulation of arcades based on console hardware to be greatly improved, and still really don't like the fact that the idea is rejected on political and philosophical grounds rather than practical ones for example (there is no technical limitation at all, it could be done right now with the flick of a switch)

Aside from forking the project, there is nothing I can do about this, just as there is nothing I can do about adding 3d artwork, changing the input systems or anything else.  I can go and emulate some Mahjong games tho, or sit around doing nothing.  I think for all intents emulating the Mahjong games is a better use of my time.

Mamedev is a collection of individuals who work together on certain projects.  This is why aiming comments like 'Only work on Mahjong' makes no sense.  The only person really likely to change the (artwork related) things you want changed is Aaron, and I can't remember the last time he sat down and emulated anything, let alone a Mahjong game, thus making your critisism rather invalid.  Aaron rather make core changes these days, rearrange the code, make things more object orientated with the overall goal of allowing MAME to run multiple machines at once.  If external contributions are up to scratch, they may well be accepted too.   The only other developer I remember doing recent input work was Derrick and he has little time for MAME anyway, and is neck-deep in discrete sound emulation which is another specialist area (and definitely a worthwhile one, couriersud's discrete improvements to Galaxian and Battle Zone are stunning)

What it boils down to is that people often want changes which are
a) Illogical (would create additional work for the development team for no benefit, or go against the overal goal of the project)
b) Technically infeasible
or
c) There simply aren't enough interested devs in that field to implement

Don't forget, it's a hobby project, just consider what it would cost to hire the entire team, and then all the extra specialists to do the things you want to see.  Each and every member of the development team has to find a way to squeeze doing all this between their real lives, real jobs, families etc.  Decisions have to be practical and the project has to be maintainable for the developers.  Time is a precious resource and one which can't just simply be donated.  B.Rap Boys which I recently emulated is the result of 8 years of work, on and off, by various developers and that was for just 2 games.

Bender:
yes I can reach the boat stage

My set up is: an analog stick, the X axis is steering and the Y axis IS analog acceleration and deceleration, top fire for shifting, Four buttons that light up when you get the appropriate weapon and the start buttons flash yellow for the weapons van(Thanks Arzoo!)

it's actually very easy to control and quite fun, and yes I have knocked switchblade off the road while his blades are out :P

Cheating?????? I'm just Trying to enjoy a game the best I can with the controls I have

I'm not trying to claim that these are arcade authentic controls, we are talking about Mame here, you'd practically have to have a dedicated machine to run that game "authentically"
tcleary:
F ignorant newbies.  Mame is an incredible project and it deserves respect.  All the things you do in your life will most likely pale in comparison to it.  So have some patience and recognize the guys working on it are doing it for fun, not for the enjoyment of people like you.  your criticisms are lacking.  You could always just not use it.
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