MAME could become obsolete

[DJ_Izumi]

Not obsolete with classic games but new ones.  The Aksys fighting game BlazBlue Continuum Shift has been leaked and is now running on PCs.  Not the 360 port, not the PS3 port, not a home PC port.  The arcade version has been decrypted and via a bootloader it that allows you to remap things like service buttons and coin in functions through the keyboard.  So long as your PC has sufficent hardware to match the Taito Type X2 platform ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taito_Type_X#Taito_Type_X.C2.B2 ) that this game runs on, you can run the complete arcade version at home. 

This is astounding.  An arcade game requireing no emulation other than a few inputs running on off the shelf PC hardware in Windows as if it were a PC game.  Service mode and the works operating just like they should.  No need to produce an a full hardware emualtor.  Considdering that the vast majority of arcade games are now built on custom propritary PC hardware with security/encryption features this could mean that modern games will come to your home brew arcade before MAME can accurately emulate the late 90's custom machines.

Now... Let's see someone do this for Sega Lindburgh. :3

[Aabra]

I don't think that this will make MAME obsolete.... that's a bit much.  This emulator/hack only works on 1 system.  Mame works on a *lot*.  It is cool though - I was one of the lucky ones to download it during the window of only a couple of hours before we knew it was a leak.

Don't ask me for the link or for me to send it to you as I won't.  The people who made this requested that distribution stop and I'm respecting that.  The place I got it from took it down as well so I'm not sure where you can even get this anymore.  Regardless it's very cool and here's a quick video I made proving that it works.

[DJ_Izumi]

I don't think that this will make MAME obsolete.... that's a bit much.  This emulator/hack only works on 1 system.  Mame works on a *lot*.  It is cool though - I was one of the lucky ones to download it during the window of only a couple of hours before we knew it was a leak.

But it does run on Windows which is the majority of systems.  And 5-10 years from now you could built something equal to a Taito Type X2 for almost nothing and maybe play other games that have been decrypted.

Honestly, for the effort of emulating these PC systems, it's likely going to be easily jsut to hack them into running natively in Windows.

[SavannahLion]

I'm a little confused. Is this a new Taito emulator (as it were if I understand the Taito boards right) that currently only supports Blazblue or is this a hacked version of Blazblue (that was leaked non-the-less) made to run on Windows boxes?

[DJ_Izumi]

I'm a little confused. Is this a new Taito emulator (as it were if I understand the Taito boards right) that currently only supports Blazblue or is this a hacked version of Blazblue (that was leaked non-the-less) made to run on Windows boxes?

BlazBlue DOES run on Windows.  The Taito Type X2 is built on PC hardware with a few minor variations and the operating system is Windows XPe (Embedded).  With whatever protection was on it removed from the game data, it now runs with just a boot loader that's used to map things like controls and coin slots.  Otherwise, BlazBlue is being executed entirely natively in Windows.

So it's not really being emulated, other than a simple program intercepting PC inputs and converting them to exactly what BlazBlue expects from the Taito Type X2.

When arcade hardware started moving to contemporary PC hardware the only thing that seperated the arcade machine from being a PC was encryption features.  Remove that and you basically have a PC game.

However compatability is likely to be an issue.  While technicly DirectX is acting between the software and the graphics hardware, we've seen all the time in the PC world where some cards or combination of other hardware just doesnn't work right.  This is after the best efforts of PC developers to ensure compatability.  I imagine that Aksys never tested BlazBlue outside of the Type X2 hardware because they'd never be running it on a different platform other than the Type X2.  But a lot of people are successfully getting it to run on their PCs.

If this can be done on one Type X2 game it could be done to others if there's interest to put effort behind it.  The same could be true for other arcade games running on PC hardware.

[SavannahLion]

Well... what I meant by "Windows" boxes is the standard Windows install by a home user. I realize X2 runs a stripped and/or modified Windows, but it's an install configuration one would most likely not find on your standard.

OK, so I did a little more reading on some... less than respectable sites about it. I'd be a little hard pressed to say this would replace MAME. MAME serves an entirely different role and in all likelyhood become more like some variation-hybrid-offshoot-bastard-cousin of WINE. MAME's goal is to emulate the full hardware of the board. This is more like a thin layer to run the game. Entirely different animals.

In any case, it looks like a pretty cool game. Not really my type of thing though.

[DJ_Izumi]

Well... what I meant by "Windows" boxes is the standard Windows install by a home user. I realize X2 runs a stripped and/or modified Windows, but it's an install configuration one would most likely not find on your standard.

It seems that in the case of Win XPe, it's more that XPe has everything that XP has, it's just that XP has a hell of a lot more.  The game seems to run just fine even in Vista which a friend of mine is using it in.  I havn't tried it myself because my PC is an Athlon 64 3200 and isn't remotely comparable to the Type X2.

OK, so I did a little more reading on some... less than respectable sites about it. I'd be a little hard pressed to say this would replace MAME. MAME serves an entirely different role and in all likelyhood become more like some variation-hybrid-offshoot-bastard-cousin of WINE. MAME's goal is to emulate the full hardware of the board. This is more like a thin layer to run the game. Entirely different animals.

Today a Windows PC is the 'full hardware' of the board.  It's not cost effective to do elaborate propriatary hardware when you can just throw off the shelf PC parts in a custom motherboard at it.  MAME's technique would be absurdly difficult to apply to modern hardware, heck it's a huge issue with a lot of old 3D games already.  To imagine a modern dual core advanced graphics PC game, then attempt to emulate one hardware platform on it entirely in a CPU.  The hardware requirements would be astronomical, especially when the graphics cards are so specially designed for that kinda graphics math and CPU is a general purpose machine.  I think the majority of devs looking at Windows code that would just execute in Windows will just go 'Let's make it work in windows'.

Of course by in 10-20 years, the current Windows based platforms these games are running in could be so obsolete it wouldn't be practical to put those operating systems on a modern system.  Maybe we'll see a Windows XPe emulator akin to 'DosBox'.  'WinBox' anyone?

[danny_galaga]

Good news. Maybe soon the MAME dev team can just concentrate on getting each classic game right, one at a time. Instead of a million changes over a decade or so. I suggest they start at the beginning, and work their way, in order to the end 

[SavannahLion]

Oi. Forget it.

[DJ_Izumi]

Good news. Maybe soon the MAME dev team can just concentrate on getting each classic game right, one at a time. Instead of a million changes over a decade or so. I suggest they start at the beginning, and work their way, in order to the end 

The MAME devs certianly have their work cut out for them with the games ranging more or less from 1995-2005.  Of course some work and some don't, depends on what's been focused on but that seems to be the era where MAME starts becoming really ineffective.  Of course that is a lot of complicated and powerful hardware they are trying to emulate.

[Haze]

People 0-day warezing the latest PC-based arcades will make MAME, an arcade emulator focused on emulating older titles at hardware level in entirely cross-platform code obsolete?

Pull the other one, or get a clue.  Your choice.

[DJ_Izumi]

People 0-day warezing the latest PC-based arcades will make MAME, an arcade emulator focused on emulating older titles at hardware level in entirely cross-platform code obsolete?

Pull the other one, or get a clue.  Your choice.

The very first sentance of my post was: "Not obsolete with classic games but new ones."  Speaking of 'Get a clue' that is.

[Havok]

** Yawn **

Another fighter game...

Shame it's not something with a shred of originality...

[Gorotsuki]

It's pretty cool stuff indeed.
The cat girl is interesting.
I'm still trying to learn all her moves.

[Haze]

People 0-day warezing the latest PC-based arcades will make MAME, an arcade emulator focused on emulating older titles at hardware level in entirely cross-platform code obsolete?

Pull the other one, or get a clue.  Your choice.

The very first sentance of my post was: "Not obsolete with classic games but new ones."  Speaking of 'Get a clue' that is.

but your choice of subject was purposefully inflammatory.  It's this kind of bulls**t that gives 'emulation' a bad name.  It has nothing to do with MAME, or emulation.  It's not about to make either obsolete.  This thing doesn't document any hardware at all, and is entirely about pirating the latest games.  There are completely different goals involved and MAME will continue to do what it does regardless of platforms or systems being emulated.  Maybe it makes MAME 'obsolete' to you, but to people with an interest in the actual hardware and seeing things done properly it has no impact whatsoever.

I can tell you first hand that the only result of this is that arcade manufacturers will end up spending more money on security for their latest games, and less on the games.  The net result being that reliability will decrease (more custom tamper-proof hardware as security), cost will increase, the quality of the games will decrease, and when it comes to emulating them properly later things will be much more difficult.  This isn't like when a console gets cracked, the arcade manufacturers will simply increase their security measures for each new machine, and because they're shipping the entire hardware for the game it's not hard to do.

[SavannahLion]

Thank you Haze, at least someone sees my point.

[DJ_Izumi]

but your choice of subject was purposefully inflammatory.  It's this kind of bulls**t that gives 'emulation' a bad name.  It has nothing to do with MAME, or emulation.  It's not about to make either obsolete.  This thing doesn't document any hardware at all, and is entirely about pirating the latest games.  There are completely different goals involved and MAME will continue to do what it does regardless of platforms or systems being emulated.  Maybe it makes MAME 'obsolete' to you, but to people with an interest in the actual hardware and seeing things done properly it has no impact whatsoever.

Actually I just think it's really cool to see a modern arcade platform running at home and running near perfectly instead of waiting until the year 2025 for it to show up in MAME.  I had no intention for this thread to be inflammatory though it's too bad that you couldn't be more polite about it.  Personally the game doesn't interest me because I'm not into fighting games, but it's neat.  Type X and maybe other platform games appearing for home arcade while MAME is still catching up and trying to get the Model 3, NAOMI, System 246/256 and Chihiro running before 2015.

As for the hardware and documenting it; Modern arcade hardware isn't interesting.  It's not inovative or crazy obscure solutions that are fun to look at.  They're all just x86 PCs with custom motherboards and some flavor of Windows or Linux, every single one of them.  There's nothing to document, it's already the most documented computer hardware on the planet.  Hell, any PC developer could develop games for these arcade platforms without any needs for backward engineering the hardware, it's just like making a Windows game only with a few unique input features and security being the difference.

[Haze]

As for the hardware and documenting it; Modern arcade hardware isn't interesting.  It's not inovative or crazy obscure solutions that are fun to look at.  They're all just x86 PCs with custom motherboards and some flavor of Windows or Linux, every single one of them.  There's nothing to document, it's already the most documented computer hardware on the planet.  Hell, any PC developer could develop games for these arcade platforms without any needs for backward engineering the hardware, it's just like making a Windows game only with a few unique input features and security being the difference.

They'll usually stick with one specific motherboard for a system, and various other unique features tho.  The security systems are interesting and worth documenting too, but the people making these bootlegs won't care to document that, just strip it away and forget about it.

Just remember, when pushed the arcade manufacturers can come up with security systems that last around 12 years (Capcom with CPS2/CPS3) or 18 years and still counting (Seibu with Legionnaire, Raiden 2 etc.)  Both those security systems were a *direct* result of excessive bootlegging of their previous titles and in the Capcom case came at a significant reliability cost.  The technology to produce even more secure systems already exists and is much stronger than back then, and the only reason home console systems have any kind of security weakness is because they need to be able to run whatever commercial software the user throws at them.  Arcades have no such limitation, they can be designed to run the game they ship with only.  There really are no winners in people hacking these games.

[mh12]

not minding the title here..
if this is all so easy, wouldn't we have seen Street Fighter IV all over the net months before its console release? it's X2. and if any title were to push people to crack some security, that is it.

besides issues of encryption, i think there's just too many games now, with relatively very few in the arcades. anything that comes out in an arcade on something like the X2 is just going to be ported to the home systems in a matter of months with more features, possibly better graphics, and internet play (eg. SF4!). pirating this arcade stuff, for home use anyway, just doesn't seem worth the hassle at all.

[DJ_Izumi]

not minding the title here..
if this is all so easy, wouldn't we have seen Street Fighter IV all over the net months before its console release? it's X2. and if any title were to push people to crack some security, that is it.

The X2's encryption may have just been figured out and I suspect this early in the system's life it's pretty hard to even get access to the software to dump it.  The older it is the more likely a version will end up in the hands of a dumper to get dumped.  Meanwhile a brand new game, I doubt most people can afford a machine of their own at this point and not a lot of operators would let someguy crawling around inside their Vewlix cab that they're still making payments on.

[Ginsu Victim]

Man, look at the number of views this thread already has. That subject line, false as it may be, sure attracted attention.

[TheSlim]

Man, look at the number of views this thread already has. That subject line, false as it may be, sure attracted attention.

No doubt.  I thought there was a new multi arcade emulator (or current mame build) that utilized all the function calls of a PC processor made after 1999.

[TOK]

Man, look at the number of views this thread already has. That subject line, false as it may be, sure attracted attention.

If he named the thread "Megan Fox With A Banana In Her Ass" it would have got even more views and still been just as irrelevant to the actual content of the post.

[riley454]

Man, look at the number of views this thread already has. That subject line, false as it may be, sure attracted attention.

If he named the thread "Megan Fox With A Banana In Her Ass" it would have got even more views and still been just as irrelevant to the actual content of the post.

Perfectly described TOK, although I wouldn't mind a link to the thread you mentioned

[Jack Burton]

It's completely possible that in 20 years time MAME will still be around and it will be emulating a full windows XPe system to play these games on Micro-Google Chrome 3d 2 for sunglasses.

[DJ_Izumi]

It's completely possible that in 20 years time MAME will still be around and it will be emulating a full windows XPe system to play these games on Micro-Google Chrome 3d 2 for sunglasses.

My main problem is emulation of a system like the Taito Type X2 could easily take 15 years for Mame, we're still waiting to see System 246, NAOMI and Chihiro going flawlessly afterall.  If you can execute native Windows code instead it'd beat MAME to the punch by a decade.

[mh12]

It's completely possible that in 20 years time MAME will still be around and it will be emulating a full windows XPe system to play these games on Micro-Google Chrome 3d 2 for sunglasses.

My main problem is emulation of a system like the Taito Type X2 could easily take 15 years for Mame, we're still waiting to see System 246, NAOMI and Chihiro going flawlessly afterall.  If you can execute native Windows code instead it'd beat MAME to the punch by a decade.

yeah cos it's all about competition to see who can emulate the newest the fastest 

[ragnar]

As long as uber nerdy computer science students exist, emulators will be made.  So, that sounds like forever to me.  They do it for the fun and satisfaction of doing it, not necessarily to play the game.  To many, the fun is in getting the software to work.

[Jack Burton]

It's completely possible that in 20 years time MAME will still be around and it will be emulating a full windows XPe system to play these games on Micro-Google Chrome 3d 2 for sunglasses.

My main problem is emulation of a system like the Taito Type X2 could easily take 15 years for Mame, we're still waiting to see System 246, NAOMI and Chihiro going flawlessly afterall.  If you can execute native Windows code instead it'd beat MAME to the punch by a decade.

It might beat it to the punch, but it won't make it obsolete.  As soon as it becomes a pain  to run the code natively its MAME to the rescue.  I think that  might happen soon than we think. 

MAME is as much a concept as it is a program, and one that is fairly future proof.  Any time it becomes difficult to play games on original hardware it's MAME's job to step in and act as a intermediate.  That job is never going to go away.

[Ginsu Victim]

It's completely possible that in 20 years time MAME will still be around and it will be emulating a full windows XPe system to play these games on Micro-Google Chrome 3d 2 for sunglasses.

My main problem is emulation of a system like the Taito Type X2 could easily take 15 years for Mame, we're still waiting to see System 246, NAOMI and Chihiro going flawlessly afterall.  If you can execute native Windows code instead it'd beat MAME to the punch by a decade.

No, your main problem is you don't understand the point of MAME.

[DJ_Izumi]

Ya know, I'm not trying to argue for MAME's obsolesense, just the awesomeness of of arcade code running native in Windows without the need of waiting for MAME to emulate it in 15 years or needing a hell of a lot of CPU power to do it.  (Well, 'a lot' comparatively speaking)

I just think it's pretty damn cool.

[Havok]

No, your main problem is you don't understand the point of MAME.

Exactly - it's about preservation, not zero day gaming.

[DJ_Izumi]

zero day gaming.

Ya know, there are games 5+ years old running on PC hardware, right?

[Havok]

zero day gaming.

Ya know, there are games 5+ years old running on PC hardware, right?

Artistic license used for emphasis - and when we're talking about 25+ year old games, comparatively speaking, it holds. Besides, I like the phrase - I made it up!

 

[DJ_Izumi]

Artistic license used for emphasis - and when we're talking about 25+ year old games, comparatively speaking, it holds. Besides, I like the phrase - I made it up!

No you didn't.  The term 'Zero Day' has long been associated with piracy.  Google 'Zero Day Warez' for example.

Not all of us are interested in 25 year old games, some of us are more interested in the 90s, late 90s and early 00's which is where MAME fails hard.  In a lot of places there are very few arcades around or arcades with decently maintained machines.  I primarily use console ports to get my more modern arcade fix which works well, but then by 2003 or so a lot of arcade games didn't get any ports to console or PC.  I'm extatic to see After Burner Climax coming to Xbox Live Arcade for this reasons.

In the upcoming years I'd like to be able to play some more modern arcade games that I can't go to an arcade and play so this interests me.  It's a modern machine executing native code in Windows, it's cool and very promising.  I don't get why some of you are acting as if this emotionally threatens you or something.

That said, even if running any Taito Type X/X+/X2 game becomes possible, the game data will be hard to come by.  There are still Sega NAOMI games that no one's dumped afterall.  (One day Sega Strike Fighter, I will play you!)

[Kevin Mullins]

Figured "what the hell, I'll check it out" ... hmmm, plays slower than frozen snot on my PC.
Guess I'll have to play the guessing game as to why my hardware doesn't like it now.
 

[DJ_Izumi]

Figured "what the hell, I'll check it out" ... hmmm, plays slower than frozen snot on my PC.
Guess I'll have to play the guessing game as to why my hardware doesn't like it now.
 

Is your computer even comparable to the Taito Type X2's specs?

Also, since Aksys only had to build their game to work on one version of the Type X2, apparently one with an ATi based card as reported by people who have opened the machine, it's safe to assume that Aksys NEVER coded the game to run on any other hardware.  Sure DirectX calls and such shoudl be universal, anyone with experiences in PC gaming knows that it takes a lot of effort by a developer to get good realistic compatability on a wide range of hardware.  When developing for an arcade platform, even a PC based one, you know your hardware will NEVER change so you only have to concern with making it run perfectly on that hardware.

Though years down the line I can see people building dedicated homebrewed arcade machines for themselves that closely match the hardware of the game they want to run.

Myself I havn't tested it.  The Athlon 64 3200 in my PC is well outclassed by the Type X2 and it wouldn't have a chance at running.  If I really wanted to play it, I'd go Xbox 360 for simplicity sake, but I'm not into fighting games much at all anyway,

[Kevin Mullins]

Is your computer even comparable to the Taito Type X2's specs?

I dunno..... pretty dang close according to these specs given, except maybe video card, I just swapped out my better one that died so my temp one may not be up to par for it.

System requirements:
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Embedded SP2/SP3
CPU: Intel LGA 775 CPU. Supported CPUs include Celeron D 352, Pentium 4 651, Intel Core 2 Duo E6400
Chipset: Intel Q965 ICH8
Video output: 640x480 (VGA), or 1280x720 (HDTV 720p)
RAM: 166/200MHz DDR2 SDRAM. Supported capacities 512MiB, 1GiB, 4GiB.
GPU: PCI Express x16-based graphics. Supported GPU include ATI RADEON (x1600Pro, x1300LE) or NVIDIA GeForce (7900GS, 7600GS, 7300GS)

Either way.... it did run fine so to speak, just slow frame rates.

And I'm not much into fighting games either.

[ark_ader]

Interesting.

What about the other Taito X2 games out there?

    * Aquarian Age Alternative (2006)
    * Battle Fantasia (2007)
    * BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger (2008)
    * BlazBlue: Continuum Shift (2009)
    * Chase H.Q. 2 (2007)
    * Elevator Action Death Parade (2009)
    * D1GP Arcade (2007)
    * Eternal Wheel (2007)
    * Haunted Museum (2009)
    * Hopping Urodo (2009)
    * KOF Maximum Impact Regulation A (2007)
    * Nippon Senor! (2009)
    * Oppopo Booom (2009)
    * Samurai Shodown: Edge of Destiny (2008)
    * Senko No Ronde Duo - Dis-United Order (2009)
    * Street Fighter IV (2008)
    * The King of Fighters XII (2009)
    * Trouble Witches AC (2008)

[Grasshopper]

Personally, I think MAME is beginning to suffer massively from bloat, and a lack of focus. I wish the mamedevs would split the program in two and have one version for 2D era games and another for the 3D era.

It makes sense to try and emulate the 2D games as accurately as possible, even at the expense of speed, because modern hardware is more than capable of doing so. But 3D era games require a different approach at least for the time being. It not currently possible to emulate those games accurately at anywhere near full speed, so some compromises need to be made. Also, as others have already pointed out, "documentation" is not such an issue for the 3D games as most of them run on already very well documented generic hardware.

[isucamper]

You guys do know that the MAME devs do not care that your PC can't run newer games, just as Encyclopedia Britannica writers do not care that their descriptions of Africa cannot magically transport you to Nygeria... right?

They are not game developers.  They are documenting and preserving the hardware and software that ran these games.   

[Ginsu Victim]

You guys do know that the MAME devs do not care that your PC can't run newer games, just as Encyclopedia Britannica writers do not care that their descriptions of Africa cannot magically transport you to Nygeria... right?

They are not game developers.  They are documenting and preserving the hardware and software that ran these games.   

Especially when it comes to arcade games that run on PCs. Why document that?

[mh12]

You guys do know that the MAME devs do not care that your PC can't run newer games, just as Encyclopedia Britannica writers do not care that their descriptions of Africa cannot magically transport you to Nygeria... right?

They are not game developers.  They are documenting and preserving the hardware and software that ran these games.   

Especially when it comes to arcade games that run on PCs. Why document that?

why not? haven't they already added pirate Windows/MAME boards?

i'm just wondering why some people here are acting like MAME is the only emulator around. most of the popular 3D systems have an emulator out there written specifically for them, usually with playability in mind. that has nothing to do with MAME. i guess the thing is that many emus only last for as long as the developer(s) can tolerate people constantly asking for the latest game to be perfectly playable on whatever hardware they're running. MAME wouldn't survive if many of its devs even listened to stuff like that.

i'm quitting the scene!!

[DJ_Izumi]

Personally, I think MAME is beginning to suffer massively from bloat, and a lack of focus. I wish the mamedevs would split the program in two and have one version for 2D era games and another for the 3D era.

It makes sense to try and emulate the 2D games as accurately as possible, even at the expense of speed, because modern hardware is more than capable of doing so. But 3D era games require a different approach at least for the time being. It not currently possible to emulate those games accurately at anywhere near full speed, so some compromises need to be made. Also, as others have already pointed out, "documentation" is not such an issue for the 3D games as most of them run on already very well documented generic hardware.

I think the issue is that the hardware is progressively more and more complicated and the newer or more one-of hardwares are harder to even tinker with to start any form of emulation.  At least some platforms can derive information learned from other emulation projects.  Chihiro from Xbox, System 246/256 from PlayStation 2, NAOMI from Dreamcast, and stuff like that.  But there's lots of reasonably modern arcade platforms that are just complicated as hell and have no mass produced consumer sibbling.

The newer the game, the less access to the hardware in private collections to dump ROMs or examine the hardware too.

[Jack Burton]

You guys do know that the MAME devs do not care that your PC can't run newer games, just as Encyclopedia Britannica writers do not care that their descriptions of Africa cannot magically transport you to Nygeria... right?

They are not game developers.  They are documenting and preserving the hardware and software that ran these games.  

This is just plain untrue.   MAME dev does want games to be able to be played.  That is the single most important aspect of the documentation process.  What better way to preserve them than to play them?

What MAMEdev does not care about is using shortcuts in the name of speed.  They aim for accuracy first, speed second.  That does not mean speed none.   As long as they can maintain accuracy they will attempt to optimize performance as much as possible.

MAME is nothing like the Encylopedia.

MAME can 99.9% replicate the experience it documents under the right conditions.  Under a loose definition you can consider to not be a reproduction of the game, but simply be it.  The code is exactly the same.  

The Encyclopedia can replicate .1% of the experiences it documents.  It can show you a few pictures, or now videos and audio.  It can give you vague sense of the place.  Enough that you would recognize it if you were there, but really not much more.  

[isucamper]

Purpose
MAME is strictly a non-profit project. Its main purpose is to be a reference to the inner workings of the emulated arcade machines. This is done both for educational purposes and for preservation purposes, in order to prevent many historical games from disappearing forever once the hardware they run on stops working. Of course, in order to preserve the games and demonstrate that the emulated behavior matches the original, you must also be able to actually play the games. This is considered a nice side effect, and is not MAME's primary focus.

http://mamedev.org/about.html

[TOK]

I haven't bought that story since they added Direct 3D scanlines and other foof. 

[Jack Burton]

Purpose
MAME is strictly a non-profit project. Its main purpose is to be a reference to the inner workings of the emulated arcade machines. This is done both for educational purposes and for preservation purposes, in order to prevent many historical games from disappearing forever once the hardware they run on stops working. Of course, in order to preserve the games and demonstrate that the emulated behavior matches the original, you must also be able to actually play the games. This is considered a nice side effect, and is not MAME's primary focus.

http://mamedev.org/about.html

That's just a load of BS.  They know exactly what they are doing.  Of course they have the need to appear academic in order to preserve the integrity of the project and not let it devolve into hundreds of hacks and add-on features, so the above statement is nice to use a a guideline. 

[SavannahLion]

I haven't bought that story since they added Direct 3D scanlines and other foof. 

I don't think anybody buys the foof of downloading 4000+ games in one go for archival purposes either, but you don't see anyone arguing that point.  

[DJ_Izumi]

I don't think anybody buys the foof of downloading 4000+ games in one go for archival purposes either, but you don't see anyone arguing that point.  

I always figured having huge collections like that detracted from the machine anyway.  A lot of arcade games afterall arn't that remarkable and if you have someone walk up to a machine with such a huge collection they'll be less likely to find something they'll enjoy as they scroll through the huge list.  Better to pluck out the golden ones and make it sort of a 'best of', at least if other people are going to be playing like house guests.

Even for gaming events based on consoles that I've done, we'd have someone with a bunch of CD binders with the games, letting people select their own games.  I found it's better to setup the games in advance and just put on the best stuff.  Maybe have a short list of what good games in what genres are available.  Few people would pull Time Crisis 3 out of the CD binder, but if you have the PS2 going with the Guncon's hooked up and it bellowing out in Attract mode 'VSSE has sent in two of their best agents', suddenly it's the coolest thing in the room.   You really want to get them to go 'OHHH!  That game!  Cool!' instead of giving them a laundry list of video game history.

[Ginsu Victim]

I always figured having huge collections like that detracted from the machine anyway.  A lot of arcade games afterall arn't that remarkable and if you have someone walk up to a machine with such a huge collection they'll be less likely to find something they'll enjoy as they scroll through the huge list.  Better to pluck out the golden ones and make it sort of a 'best of', at least if other people are going to be playing like house guests.

I just have multiple lists in Mamewah:

All Games
No Mature
70s
80s
90s
Neo Geo
Lightgun
several different lists by company

[Haze]

Purpose
MAME is strictly a non-profit project. Its main purpose is to be a reference to the inner workings of the emulated arcade machines. This is done both for educational purposes and for preservation purposes, in order to prevent many historical games from disappearing forever once the hardware they run on stops working. Of course, in order to preserve the games and demonstrate that the emulated behavior matches the original, you must also be able to actually play the games. This is considered a nice side effect, and is not MAME's primary focus.

http://mamedev.org/about.html

That's just a load of BS.  They know exactly what they are doing.  Of course they have the need to appear academic in order to preserve the integrity of the project and not let it devolve into hundreds of hacks and add-on features, so the above statement is nice to use a a guideline. 

Really?  Do you think I have any actual interest in the various 8-liners I've been emulating beyond the hardware that they run in?  They offer no gameplay, are utterly mundane and I wish nobody had ever even come up with the concept of them; the hardware and various security solutions and seeing how many of them were hacked by sellers and operators to screw the customer (with the customer sometimes being the operator!) out of a lot of money is interesting tho.

In many sense it IS an academic project if you dig a bit deeper than 'It lets me play galaga on the PC' and that's the main thing that's kept it going compared to other emulators.

It's not a software engineering project (as much as Aaron would like to treat it as one) and it's not a 'games machine'.  It's a piece of research present in the form of source code, and binaries.  The smallest details that a lot of people find completely irrelevant are important to the project.

As for PC based games, sure, there were PC based games running on DOS, Windows 95 etc. etc.  Good luck trying to run them at all on a modern 64-bit version of Windows 7 / Vista; likewise, good luck trying to run these XP based things at all come the next generation of Windows.  These hacks aren't a long term solution to anything and in the shorter term are only likely to result in more drastic security measures and projects being cancelled.

[ragnar]

I want to point out something.  People emulate things like Comodore computers even though they can just use actual Comodore hardware.  Some day, people will not have x86 hardware and they will have to emulate it.

[Dazz]

I wonder if they have Battle Fantasia running yet via this same system.  I think it runs on the same hardware as BlazBlue.

[shateredsoul]

I wonder if they have Battle Fantasia running yet via this same system.  I think it runs on the same hardware as BlazBlue.

Yeah, I wonder the same thing too. Does anyone know the group responsible for this emulator? Does anyone know if they have a forum or site?

Oh yeah,

*ahem* blah blah argh mame blah blah

[Jack Burton]

Purpose
MAME is strictly a non-profit project. Its main purpose is to be a reference to the inner workings of the emulated arcade machines. This is done both for educational purposes and for preservation purposes, in order to prevent many historical games from disappearing forever once the hardware they run on stops working. Of course, in order to preserve the games and demonstrate that the emulated behavior matches the original, you must also be able to actually play the games. This is considered a nice side effect, and is not MAME's primary focus.

http://mamedev.org/about.html

That's just a load of BS.  They know exactly what they are doing.  Of course they have the need to appear academic in order to preserve the integrity of the project and not let it devolve into hundreds of hacks and add-on features, so the above statement is nice to use a a guideline.  

Really?  Do you think I have any actual interest in the various 8-liners I've been emulating beyond the hardware that they run in?  They offer no gameplay, are utterly mundane and I wish nobody had ever even come up with the concept of them; the hardware and various security solutions and seeing how many of them were hacked by sellers and operators to screw the customer (with the customer sometimes being the operator!) out of a lot of money is interesting tho.

In many sense it IS an academic project if you dig a bit deeper than 'It lets me play galaga on the PC' and that's the main thing that's kept it going compared to other emulators.

It's not a software engineering project (as much as Aaron would like to treat it as one) and it's not a 'games machine'.  It's a piece of research present in the form of source code, and binaries.  The smallest details that a lot of people find completely irrelevant are important to the project.

As for PC based games, sure, there were PC based games running on DOS, Windows 95 etc. etc.  Good luck trying to run them at all on a modern 64-bit version of Windows 7 / Vista; likewise, good luck trying to run these XP based things at all come the next generation of Windows.  These hacks aren't a long term solution to anything and in the shorter term are only likely to result in more drastic security measures and projects being cancelled.

The emulation of things like 8 liners just goes toward the eventual goal of playing other games.  You might not emulate them to play an 8 liner, but information and experience gathered might be useful later on down the road towards emulating something more desirable.  And of course there is the fact that even though you don't want to play an 8-liner, you can't deny that they are popular and somebody else will.  

In reality the notion of "I just want to play the games"  and "this is purely for historical reasons" go hand in hand.  As I said before, the best way to document the history of these games and their hardware is to allow them to be played.  

Additionally you can't discount the fact that you might think it's just fun to try to emulate the 8-liners.  Isn't that the way emulator authors usually are?  They sometimes emulate things just to see if they can do it, and don't really care to play the games.  Would you say this is partially true about  MAME?

[Haze]

Additionally you can't discount the fact that you might think it's just fun to try to emulate the 8-liners.  Isn't that the way emulator authors usually are?  They sometimes emulate things just to see if they can do it, and don't really care to play the games.  Would you say this is partially true about  MAME?

I would say that for the devs who have made the most progress over the years that's true.  Everybody has a limited number of games that they like / enjoy, and if you limit yourself to emulating those, then you don't get very far.  The devs who get their enjoyment from actually figuring things out, and completely don't care the nature of the game they're dealing with tend to be more prolific.

Of course, an intimiate knowledge of the game / system you're emulating helps a lot, subtle effects the hardware can perform are sometimes missed by people who don't know what the games are meant to be doing because they don't know the games.

Quite often that's where teamwork comes into play, and also where sites like MAMEtesters with people posting original HW videos can help.  Getting the initial work done can help ensure that the roms are properly dumped, and the hardware is mostly understood, while specific references can help fine-tine the emulation and help bring it closer to a more 'pixel perfect' level, as recently happened with the titles on the Psikyo SH2 based hardware.

I was mainly just saying that people calling out the 'it's a documentation project' as BS really don't understand what's going on behind the scenes, or the nature of the project.  Yes, it lets you play thousands of games, but the driving factor is more often just as much about the challenge of figuring out the hardware, and documenting it so that anybody else can use MAME as a reference piece than anything else.  It's a misconception that the often quoted text is just to cover the backs of the developers.

[BobbyG66]

Ya. let's piss off the MameDEV's, that's a good idea.

[Haze]

Ya. let's piss off the MameDEV's, that's a good idea.

I'd be more concerned with pissing off Taito, but that's just me ;-)

Long term you will just make the lives of the people trying to emulate the games harder tho.

[DJ_Izumi]

I don't see this hurting sales of the game that signifigantly, except in the production of bootlegs and well, some 'company' in China doesn't need some torrents to start pirating arcade games.  They have the resources to pirate that stuff on an entirely different scale.

BB:CS will be released on 360 and PS3 in the summer or so which will be a lot more accessible.  Casual players then won't have to muddle with hardware compatibility and such on the consoles.  With their Vewlix styled arcade sticks and HDTVs, that'll be what hurts the arcade operators. :3

[Haze]

BB:CS will be released on 360 and PS3 in the summer or so which will be a lot more accessible.  Casual players then won't have to muddle with hardware compatibility and such on the consoles.  With their Vewlix styled arcade sticks and HDTVs, that'll be what hurts the arcade operators. :3

It will be interesting to see if it is, often this kind of project can be cancelled for reasons like this.  Hopefully the company concerned will see that XB360 / PS3 are different markets than the PC and proceed anyway, but it only takes one person to pull funding due to this hack for the whole project to fall through and people to lose their jobs over it.

[DJ_Izumi]

It will be interesting to see if it is, often this kind of project can be cancelled for reasons like this.  Hopefully the company concerned will see that XB360 / PS3 are different markets than the PC and proceed anyway, but it only takes one person to pull funding due to this hack for the whole project to fall through and people to lose their jobs over it.

Fighting games have long been the realm of consoles, with very few fighting games ever seeing PC releases.  A lot of fighting game franchises now are released to console before arcade and some are never ported to arcade at all because it's more profitable just to target consoles.

With the lingering death of arcades, I would be shocked if BB:CS never went to consoles, especially when the original has sold almost 500 000 copies globally.

[J.Max]

I wonder if they have Battle Fantasia running yet via this same system.  I think it runs on the same hardware as BlazBlue.

Yeah, I wonder the same thing too. Does anyone know the group responsible for this emulator? Does anyone know if they have a forum or site?

Oh yeah,

*ahem* blah blah argh mame blah blah

It's not an emulator.  It's a leaked, unencrypted copy of the original code...there is a BIG difference.  None of the other games have been decrypted.  Type X2 is a Windows PC, no need for emulation on these games YET.

[saint]

It goes without saying normally, but no piracy links please. Thanks

[Jack Burton]

I think this will certainly not go over well with Taito.  However I can only see it making a positive impact on sales in the US.

Only a handful of arcades in the US bought CS boards, a teeny tiny fraction of those in Japan.  They simply can't be compared.  There are probably 10,000 CS boards in japan, and maybe 20 in the entire US.

Now there will be thousands of home users in the US who will have access to the game, and probably a couple dozen arcades will pirate it. 

This will create a scene for the game and build a community that will only increase when the console release happens.

However, as I said, I don't think Taito will see it this way.  They will simply think piracy = lost profits, and will probably take action in further hardware updates to increase security.

Imagine if SSFIV was going to be released in arcades and this happened?  The consequences would be huge.