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the state of mame

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RandyT:

--- Quote from: ark_ader on January 04, 2011, 06:29:19 pm ---If it wasn't for Mame and the huge following (including this site), would your business be profitable or in existence?  The same goes to Ultimarc, and the many cabinet makers out there.  I wonder how much the vendors actually contributed financially to the Mame Project during all these years? Makes you think.

--- End quote ---

If you are inferring some sort of monetary link between vendors and the MAME project, then you would be joining the ranks of X with the conspiracy theories.  I can't speak for others, but as GGG is concerned, it's just not there.  Most of what I try to do is somewhat comparable in hardware to what the MAME devs do in software.  You can have the coolest arcade-style game ever made on your PC, but without the ability to use real arcade controls, it's not going to deliver a comparable experience to the one you may have had in the gameroom.

Would my business (or this site) be profitable, or in existence without MAME?  Certainly.  GGG's customer list includes many significant non-gaming related businesses and organizations.  To boot, I have been using real arcade controls to play my own games since the Atari 2600 was on store shelves, and have done it for just about every one of my game systems and computers for the last 30+ years.  I played Donkey Kong (ColecoVision), Pac-Man and Galaxian (Atari Computers) on a real WICO arcade joystick and leaf buttons long before there was even hardware capable of emulating other hardware to any usable degree.  There have always been arcade-style and classic games for consoles and PCs, and without MAME, there would be more of these released than there are now.  You would also find more very arcade faithful "re-interpretations" of the classics being made than there are now (and there are A LOT, even with the existence of MAME.)  Neither this site (if you read what Saint has publicly stated on the matter), nor my own business, revolves specifically around the existence or use of MAME, rather offering the ability to average folks to be able to play arcade-style games (wherever they come from) on their very own arcade cabinet or control panel.  Every arcade control related business saw a huge jump in sales with the release of Street Fighter 4, which has nothing to do with MAME in the slightest.  This is proof that a popular mainstream offering like that one dwarfs any market created by this much smaller group of very dedicated enthusiasts.

But the fact remains that MAME does exist and of course we acknowledge that.  Being quietly grateful that it does, along with all of the other great options out there for arcade gaming with real controls, should be a "no-brainer" for anyone not prepared to, nor capable of contributing to them.

GGG's contributions exist primarily in the form of the work we do to bring back a nearly lost gaming experience, and make it usable on your PC with any type of game, or application, one wishes to apply that experience to.  We also contribute indirectly to this site through a sizable amount of monthly advertising dollars, which pay for the ads you might see once in a while.  But for the MAME project proper, direct support from vendors would run counter to the organic and "not for profit" nature of the project, and GGG respectfully abstains from offering it.  Likewise, we have never been approached by any member of the MAME team offering any kind of support for our products in return for monetary, or any other type of considerations.....ever.

RandyT

CheffoJeffo:

--- Quote from: Hoopz on January 04, 2011, 07:57:12 pm ---
--- Quote from: Xiaou2 on January 04, 2011, 07:28:30 pm --- If YOU designed a game, spent weeks made a special controller for it... and spent several months balancing the entire gameplay off of it...  Then some PUNK KID comes along and Butchers it to bits, hacking the incorrect controller on it.. with No option for the real deal, taking away the surround sound, and the force feedback   ...How exactly would YOU Feel ?!  Whos the D-Bag in this scenario?

--- End quote ---
Let's examine this further.... What if someone designed some classic controllers, put a lot of money, time and effort into making them just perfect to be put on their cabinets where they fit perfectly, and overall made a classic setup only to find a horrendous website where some
--- Quote from: Xiaou2 on January 04, 2011, 07:28:30 pm --- PUNK KID
--- End quote ---
built some bastardized, gaudy, f'tard of a contraption that allowed for all of these specialty controllers to be built into wood, that supposedly spun around so the end use (the same punk kid, of course) could try and play these games?  How exactly would you feel?  Who's the dumbass now?

--- End quote ---

Haze:

--- Quote from: abaraba on January 05, 2011, 12:13:16 am ---
--- Quote from: Haze ---"MAME is strictly a non-profit project. Its main purpose is to be a reference to the inner workings of the emulated arcade machines." (from about MAME on mamedev.org)
The controls are on the outside, how we handle them isn't defined by this project statement.

--- End quote ---

Objection is actually exactly about how MAME fails to properly reference those 'inner workings', by omitting to provide support for authentic controls, which does very much need to be emulated from "inside". -- It does not matter who will fix it, do you agree it eventually needs to be fixed or not?

--- End quote ---

I don't consider it broken, I don't consider it to need fixing.


--- Quote from: abaraba on January 05, 2011, 12:13:16 am ---
--- Quote from: Haze ---On the contrary, if MAME was more about playing the games, why would we go the extra mile to emulate properly emulate speech chips, with a huge performance hit, when the Samples were more than good enough to just play the games?

Being able to play the games IS still a side-effect of it, because the primary goal is to figure things out and document them...

--- End quote ---

If MAME is not about playing the games, why is there so many options to process and display frames on PC monitors, why stretching, blurring and filtering, why trying to imitate arcade CRTs, why false game speeds and re-sampling hacks, but still no option to output authentic resolutions at original frame-rates at all?


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It's designed to be developer friendly, for developers to use, and easy testing on a standard PC so that we get good bug reports, for things we do consider bugs and want to fix.  We've covered this already.

The failure of projects like AdvanceMAME simply show that trying to cater for a tiny (in comparison) bunch of users, by writing code which is untestable and unmaintainable by the majority DOES NOT WORK.

Most PC hardware wouldn't even cope with authentic resolutions, mid-screen resolution changes and such.  Half the reason AdvanceMAME went into a state of disrepair is because they had no way of properly integrating new features needed once MAME started actually emulating framerate and resolution changes at run-time, even on Windows you need to manually scale lines to work with mid-screen res changes, because modern hardware simply doesn't do it.  It's hopeless, it's a lost cause, and it's not worth investing effort into.  Come the day all external devices require secure connections and signed drivers, including controllers, all your user built controls will end up the same way.  (and yes, some of the big players in the industry are pushing for this, Microsoft don't really like knock-off Chinese 360 pads on the PC while the XBOX is already locked down, and Sony already locked out a bunch of 3rd party controllers on the PS3 for similar reasons)

By catering for the majority MAME gets the biggest potential pool of both developers, and users to test the code.  By catering for the minority you get an unmaintainable mess which is prone to break with hardware updates, OS updates and the like.

If you want a team which cares more about the minority users you're going to have to find one.  MAMEdev provide the base project, one that works with the most common PC hardware.  If people want to build on that, add their own functions, make it work with real controls, make it work with real monitors then they can.  The fact that the only person maintaining advanceMAME in ANY form whatsoever right now can't even be gracious enough to share his source code with you so that you can also contribute tells me a lot.

MAME is trying to emulate things of the past on a modern platform, not drag parts of them along with it.

Firebat138:
Being new and old to mame... In and out for years...  The one thinig I would like to know, especially since I am building cabs for a couple of people right now, is that what does it take to get a NEW game into Mame...  For instance Golden Tee and etc...  Like we have GT2K2 I think...  Does a license have to expire and then the mamedevs can legally get new games to work on?  I only ask cause the client I am building this for is a huge bowling/golf fan.  and after bringing his new pc over to  his house and showing where to get mame, roms, Hyperspin, etc....He, being a NOVICE at best at computers...He seemed very confused to say the least....  :-)

I know that the Dreamcast Namoi thing has come a long way and it is either NEW to ME, or NEW to everyone, but I just got it....  So cool...

Anyways...I for one being almost 40 and my kids growing up and loving the arcade cab  is a great feeling.  Nothing better than sitting back and playing a little shuffle board with the kids...  So keep it up...

 

Haze:

--- Quote from: Firebat138 on January 05, 2011, 09:31:15 am ---Being new and old to mame... In and out for years...  The one thinig I would like to know, especially since I am building cabs for a couple of people right now, is that what does it take to get a NEW game into Mame...  For instance Golden Tee and etc...  Like we have GT2K2 I think...  Does a license have to expire and then the mamedevs can legally get new games to work on?  I only ask cause the client I am building this for is a huge bowling/golf fan.  and after bringing his new pc over to  his house and showing where to get mame, roms, Hyperspin, etc....He, being a NOVICE at best at computers...He seemed very confused to say the least....  :-)

--- End quote ---

What gets worked on is generally dictated by what is available to work on.  What progress gets made on generally depends on who is working on it, and how complex it is.

Developers tend to avoid working on 'active' platforms because it doesn't really make any sense to.

I don't think anybody is working on the newer GT games, they run on significantly more complex hardware, and if I had to guess I imagine you'd get around half the performance of NFL Blitz.

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