MAMEWorld Forums - MAMEUI & IV/Play - Re: MAMEUI64 v.163

> Tafoid, all you said in your reply is right and perfectly understandable. I agree for
> example with the "no-nag" patches and so on. What I have to say is another thing:
> Ok, Developers may not be happy with critics from users but when you made something
> available for free to the public you have to be ready to receive feedbacks from your
> users base, positives and negatives. If you simply think that a "Fuck off dude, me
> I'm Developer God, you a retarded nerd!" is the answer and the attitude to use...
> well there's not much future for MAME+MESS project. I can understand that it's a
> hobby, a passion (like I guess it's for me with my MAMEUIFX) and often "real life"
> arrives with its problems to solve. It's normal. Though it's a fact that the focus of
> the development is now the 'MESS' part of the project. MAME-ARCADE (if you want to
> call in this way) is quite abandoned after the big "Raiden 2 & Zero Team working!"
> happened at least more than a year ago. I'm not criticizing the efforts on MESS, it's
> right because it's clear it needs more "attention" by Developers and surely offers
> more challenges to a talented coder. Though, if the efforts are add more and more
> skeleton computers and systems to the core instead of have a serious look to what
> it's already emulated and improve it, so, sorry to say this, I find the "there's no
> an active Developer behind that system" motivation a pathetic excuse. This is my
> opinion, wrong or right the time will say.

I cannot speak for other Devs who may or may not berate other users or protential developers. There is a certain mindset in the more experienced and seasoned Devs which unfortunately comes across as abusive given the amount of stuff the have dealt with over the years. They get a think skin and don't allow people to change or let people in sometimes. Not all MAMEDev are like this.

You are largely right about MAME (Arcade) being given less and less interest. While there are still challenges and bugs to be fixed - it boils down to motivation, desire, good use of free time. Many bugs are ones that will require a substantial rewrite to do it correctly and accurately (not using quick hacks for the sake of getting it running). MAME has always preferred to let things sit not working if they cannot be done correctly. Hacks/patches.debug tricks are last resorts when nothing else can be done.

I still believe while we have very talented people who volunteer for the project we also have dwindling numbers of people who have that dedicated interest in a game/system/machine which many malfunctioning drivers require. The move to GIT and the license reworking has brought in a small batch of new contributors and hopefully this trend will continue and the interest will come with them allowing the entire source to get some 'new eyes' on it.