MAMEWorld Forums - EmuChat - Mame 162 -listxml

< machine name="elevator" sourcefile="taitosj.c" systemtype="arcade" >
< machine name="a2600" sourcefile="a2600.c" systemtype="console">
< machine name="ax150" sourcefile="msx.c" systemtype="computer" >

> Excuse me, who do you think you are? Not only are you talking yourself in circles,
> but you have no idea what you're talking about to begin with.
>
> > Same goes for the systems emulated... i will never use Vectrex, Amiga, C64 SNES
> with
> > MESS, as there are better emulators, even cycle-accurate.
>
> First, there is no better Vectex emulator than what is represented by the MAME
> driver, so you're wrong (MAME Vectrex overlays could be much better if that's what
> you mean, but they aren't part of the emulation). On the others you listed I'd agree
> with you, even documented that agreement - but to say you'll "never" use them is
> silly; and you are using three convenient examples to try to prove your point when
> you know there are many other drivers for which MAME has no real equal - and when you
> know there are some systems *only* emulated by MAME.
>
> Many years ago when there were hundreds of arcade emulators about, people who didn't
> "get it" had a similar attitude about them vs. MAME, and couldn't see that history
> wouldn't be kind to any of them given basic common sense. We will see history repeat
> itself yet again with many non-coinop system emulators and slowly, over time, they
> will fall into obscurity in light of MAME. I'm glad for that, history is better for
> that, and I honestly don't care if you disagree with me; you will be wrong in time.
>
> > your "wow, I can get Genesis too?" exists allready in some frontends, so this is
> not
> > some new holy grail found here and guess what, it took the developers a lot of time
> > and work, to have that feature, which now becomes a little useless, until it can
> work
> > again like it was once.
>
> In SOME frontends yes, which kindof proves the point I made (and that you basically
> missed) - namely that MAME's consolidation will lend more visibility to non-coinop
> systems, full stop. I appreciate a good frontend too, especially excellent ones like
> QMC2 which more people should be using. However, you seem to act as if MAMEdev need
> to play second fiddle to the frontend developers and somehow cater to THEM when the
> reality is the other way around, by definintion: without MAME and MAMEdev, there
> WOULD be no frontends.
>
> It sounds naive after all these years of bearing witness to this kind of crap, but
> for all the ungrateful whining going on here I can certainly see why MAMEdev reaction
> is the way it is.

Ok.. first, i dont want to heat up this discussion to a point, where no one listens to what somebody else has to say.

I will start with Vectrex, as ParaJVE is the best emulator for Vectrex: http://vectrex-emu.blogspot.de/

Maybe you are right, if you look at accuracy, cant test it, as i am not at home to compare it with my real Vectrex.
But there are more things to consider, especially the look and feel, this is where ParaJVE shines. It has one of the best vector shaders I have seen, a thing that i am missing in MAME or MESS in general. I am on it to change this and it will be for sure the next big thing i want to deliver to MAME.

Off course I understand the whole MAME dev philosophy thing behind it, but saying that i.e. overlays are not important (MAME Vectrex overlays could be much better if that's what you mean, but they aren't part of the emulation), is simply not true, it is just not as important as i.e. accuracy. This case is especially true, if it comes to Vectrex and the same goes for the look and feel of the presentation of Vectors in general.

Like i said, i cant compare the accuracy of MESS, ParaJVE and a real Vectrex at the moment, but I never felt that ParaJVE did the job wrong and I own a real Vectrex

and because of these facts, i can safely say, that the MESS emulation is miles away from competing against ParaJVE, which stopped development 4 years ago and it stopped not because there was no interest, it stopped because it reached a point of perfection, where the developer thought "its far enough".

This brings me to the next thing:

We will see history repeat itself yet again with many non-coinop system emulators and slowly, over time, they will fall into obscurity in light of MAME. I'm glad for that, history is better for that, and I honestly don't care if you disagree with me; you will be wrong in time.

But you could look at this statement just the opposite way.... MAME+MESS merged, to bring more attention to non-arcade-emulation that is far away from comparing to similar emulation, that existed for years. The attention brings ,"so to say", people to make maybe a wrong decision. In case of Vectrex to a emulation that is not in a nice and "true" gaming experience state.
Every single person that i send a link to ParaJVE didnt regret it and used it as their main emulator.
Evil said, MAME+MESS will help to forget about the "better emulators" and will create a new "standard", that puts better alternatives into forgottenness

.

Off course, I admit that MESS also contains examples that are outstanding. I just wanted to show a different view. There is also the thing with the lazyness of people. MESS is considered by many as a "One that rules them all" solution. Especially these people, will maybe never experience a better alternative. So MAME+MESS can become a twosided-sword, even if i clearly see the "in the long run" term and agree with it.

The frontends: I think my definition for it, differs from yours. QMC2 is for me a advanced GUI for MAME. It is not cab-friendly and it is MAME (+MESS) exclusive only.
IMHO not excellent enough. I cant tell about any exclusive feature that QMC2 has.... seems pretty basic to me.

Updates: Meanwhile MAME has a frequent update circle. A thing that devolopers need to deal with. It is work that needs no blaming to anyone. But the approach with the merge of MAME and MESS is heavy.
If it had be introduced with small steps, i.e. starting with the option that you can only compile yourself such a version, developers would have time to look into it and have the time to react for further upcoming things. At least many companys are doing it that way. This would be a fair approach and it would help more to guarantee a succesfull start, as the fontends would be working properly

.
Instead of working together, we are flaming here. We dont need a second fiddle definition, we need teamwork and treating each other with some respect. It shouldnt be "eat or die". I am for sure, not a person who is only whining and bitching, i am more in a search for reasonable arguments to deal with. Where ever i can, i try to help MAME being the ultimate experience. I had and will have projects focusing on that.

> It's very crystal clear:
>
> 1. You're looking for excuses to hate something when things are not your way. The
> typical spoiled brat behavior.

Not true, just have other thoughts about the whole thing (see above) . A forum that doesnt accept other thoughts... well

.

> 2. No one forces you to use MESS drivers in the same way no one forces you to get
> every ROM needed for the MESS drivers to work. There isn't any performance difference
> between MAMEArcade and MAME+MESS, just more options. You don't go to a car
> manufacturer to demand a smaller gas tank because you only run your vehicle a few
> blocks, just simply add less gasoline.

All of this, is not important to me

(see above) . If attention was intended (the only agument of you all), then the MAME devs could have it done better.

> 3. You talk in representation of "novice/beginner people" who can't compile and will
> use anything are handed to them anyway.

(see above)

> 4. Front-ends are made to give accessibility to specific program versions. They're
> not called in-betweens because the dependency is from the program itself they want to
> front-end, not the other way around.

True, but the merge now introduced way more dependencies. The developers are not only dependent on MAME itself anymore and additional sources/steps are now needed, with no benefit at all. More work that is less productive.

> 5. Third party development is always needed. ClrMAME needs to update constantly,
> MinGW too. A front-end is third party software.

True, but from a developer point of view, you should always try to be as independent as possible. ClrMAME is not a frontend, or a necessary tool for creating one and more important it just has one purpose. It doesnt need to deal with other world-of-emulation-news. It is not a fair comparison, i.e. to GameEx, that must deal with many other factors.
And MinGW well... it is kinda the heart of MAME.

> Wrong. There is also a third category, the biggest category, people who know of MAME
> but have never even heard of MESS. Having the two projects merged neatly solves that
> problem. More visibility for MESS, or even MAME, is never a bad thing, because it
> inherently attracts more developers to the project. Don't believe me? Look through
> the most recent whatsnew.txt files at all of the people who have suddenly popped up
> and started contributing since MAME switched to being hosted at Github.

see above.

<slot name="isa1">
<slotoption name="mda" devname="isa_ibm_mda"/>
[...]
<slotoption name="sblaster1_0" devname="isa_sblaster1_0"/>
<slotoption name="sblaster1_5" devname="isa_sblaster1_5"/>
[...]
<slotoption name="pds" devname="isa_pds"/>
</slot>
<slot name="isa1:sblaster1_0:pc_joy">
<slotoption name="basic_joy" devname="basic_joy" default="yes"/>
<slotoption name="mssw_pad" devname="mssw_pad"/>
</slot>
<slot name="isa1:sblaster1_0:mdin">
<slotoption name="midiin" devname="midiin_port" default="yes"/>
</slot>
<slot name="isa1:sblaster1_0:mdout">
<slotoption name="midiout" devname="midiout_port" default="yes"/>
</slot>
<slot name="isa2">
[...]

> Ok.. first, i dont want to heat up this discussion to a point, where no one listens
> to what somebody else has to say.

Fair enough, I'm all for civil discourse, but do understand that when you come in out of the blue, all guns blazing with profanities as you did, you can expect to be put in your place. I don't take kindly to that; you wouldn't either. Now then, irate mode off.

> Maybe you are right, if you look at accuracy, cant test it, as i am not at home to
> compare it with my real Vectrex.

Well, accuracy is precisely the best measure. Understand that it is difficult to be objective when comparing emulators; it's a sliding scale where you have to carefully balance accuracy as the main metric against lots of other criteria that factor in to varying but lesser degrees. Usually accuracy wins, though in rare cases, especially when it's a close call, it doesn't. It's not as cut-and-dried as you might initially believe.

> But there are more things to consider, especially the look and feel, this is where
> ParaJVE shines. It has one of the best vector shaders I have seen, a thing that i am
> missing in MAME or MESS in general. I am on it to change this and it will be for sure
> the next big thing i want to deliver to MAME.

I'll agree that vector shaders are interesting diversions and can improve the end-user experience (though MAME's shaders are pretty damn good these days and getting better), but they certainly don't tip the scale in favor of ParaJVE. Even with accuracy aside, MAME's long-term survivability alone factors in heavily - ParaJVE is rotting, it hasn't been updated in half a decade and will eventually stop running on future platforms that are not compatibile with its underlying input/output/video/etc. requirements. We saw this happen even faster than *I* had thought with standalone arcade emulators - go try running one of the many that were designed for Windows 98 in Windows 8 and tell me how that works out for you. In contrast, MAME sees heaps of updates every day, many of them specifically designed to increase compatibility with modern operating systems, and isn't going away anytime soon.

> Off course I understand the whole MAME dev philosophy thing behind it, but saying
> that i.e. overlays are not important (MAME Vectrex overlays could be much better if
> that's what you mean, but they aren't part of the emulation), is simply not true, it
> is just not as important as i.e. accuracy. This case is especially true, if it comes
> to Vectrex and the same goes for the look and feel of the presentation of Vectors in
> general.

Sorry, but overlays are NOT as important. For one, scanning in a set of overlays takes some effort, but not nearly the talent required to emulate the system itself, which is far more scarce. Looking at it another way, you can certainly approximate the Vectrex experience without overlays; but if ALL you had was overlays without any games? Yeah. And MAME DOES have overlays, just not good ones. That will be fixed in time I'm sure - it just takes someone willing to do it.

> Like i said, i cant compare the accuracy of MESS, ParaJVE and a real Vectrex at the
> moment, but I never felt that ParaJVE did the job wrong and I own a real Vectrex and
> because of these facts, i can safely say, that the MESS emulation is miles away from
> competing against ParaJVE, which stopped development 4 years ago and it stopped not
> because there was no interest, it stopped because it reached a point of perfection,
> where the developer thought "its far enough".

And that's exactly why ParaJVE is a bad emulator to put any faith in at all. Perhaps it's an interesting curiosity/toy (though I'd still prefer to use MAME with its suboptimal overlays), but certainly not anything to be taken seriously for historical purposes. And that reminds me - it sounds like you haven't even TRIED MAME's vectrex driver because you wouldn't be saying half the things you are otherwise.

> But you could look at this statement just the opposite way.... MAME+MESS merged, to
> bring more attention to non-arcade-emulation that is far away from comparing to
> similar emulation, that existed for years. The attention brings ,"so to say", people
> to make maybe a wrong decision.

...which is why MAME isn't the best choice for ALL systems, just for MANY of them. Obviously there are systems like certain IBM Mainframes, the PS2 etc. that MAME doesn't emulate at all, so if you have any interest in those systems you need to look elsewhere. Likewise for systems like the Dreamcast that won't be emulated to any usable level in MAME for probably many, many years to come - so again you need to look elsewhere. But for Vectrex? Nah.

> Every single person that i send a link to ParaJVE didnt regret it and used it as
> their main emulator.

I can't stop you, but you are doing both those people and history a disservice.

> Off course, I admit that MESS also contains examples that are outstanding. I just
> wanted to show a different view. There is also the thing with the lazyness of people.
> MESS is considered by many as a "One that rules them all" solution. Especially these
> people, will maybe never experience a better alternative. So MAME+MESS can become a
> twosided-sword, even if i clearly see the "in the long run" term and agree with it.

Indeed one of MAME's greatest strengths, and one that has helped it survive all these years while so many others are long-forgotten, is precisely that it's "one emulator to rule them all" - but not for reasons you cite. This approach wins primarily because it consolidates knowledge into a single area, easily-accessible by developers and users alike. And as MAME itself has proven countless times in the past, it's the ONLY approach that matters in the end. Ironically, part of the reason is due to the "emulation experience" being far less important than the "system experience" yielded by the target platforms. Features designed for the end-user like rewind support, shaders, "cool GUIs" etc. are historically meaningless when compared to the accurate, long-term preservation of the system itself.

> The frontends: I think my definition for it, differs from yours. QMC2 is for me a
> advanced GUI for MAME. It is not cab-friendly and it is MAME (+MESS) exclusive only.
> IMHO not excellent enough. I cant tell about any exclusive feature that QMC2 has....
> seems pretty basic to me.

Sorry, but you're wrong. QMC2 is the most advanced GUI for MAME specifically because it supports the entire feature-set of both MAME and the erstwhile MESS which no other FE has been able to do. And at least in my opinion, it is elegant and well-written software by someone who knows what they're doing. It also has a cabinet mode if that's your thing, though if you have a trackball on your cabinet, your cab. monitor supports a decent resolution, and you configure hotkeys in an optimal way, you can use the regular GUI just fine on a cabinet. That's the way I do it - it works well for me and I get all the advantages of the main GUI without having to downshift to a separate "cabinet mode".

> Updates: Meanwhile MAME has a frequent update circle. A thing that devolopers need to
> deal with. It is work that needs no blaming to anyone. But the approach with the
> merge of MAME and MESS is heavy.
> If it had be introduced with small steps, i.e. starting with the option that you can
> only compile yourself such a version, developers would have time to look into it and
> have the time to react for further upcoming things. At least many companys are doing
> it that way. This would be a fair approach and it would help more to guarantee a
> succesfull start, as the fontends would be working properly .

First, why are you comparing MAME to "companys" (sic)? Second, the approach with the merge was far from "heavy" - UME has been around for years now so people have had fair warning there, and if you still consider it "heavy", well I hate to say it, but too bad. It's free software, written by people who love to emulate stuff with the goal of preserving history first and foremost, which is obviously going to exhibit characteristics quite different from that of the typical commercial enterprise. So yeah, get over it.