donluca wrote:As much as I love and follow GM development, I don't think I've ever made such statement, LOL.
I think you did not so long ago, maybe a year or two. Well doesn't matter.
donluca wrote:Remember that while GM brought a lot of improvements over baseline MAME (although some of those have found their way into base MAME by now), it is still mainly aimed at CRT users.
In recent years Calamity brought so many improvements for flat panels use as well that it's not really the case anymore. Getting the exact rates, smooth, nearly all video/input/audio lag removed
all together, I mean it's the only build that does it, the only downside being that it is quite demanding on PC hardware and to get all aspects coverd you need a compatible panel and an AMD.
donluca wrote:MAME is an amazing project and a great starting point but to be "done right" (AKA easily useable by users, the retroarch way) it needs lots of things like an integrated clrmamepro like which checks your library and fixes your ROM library.
I meant right technically-speaking, as it covers everything and more without sacrificing accuracy.
But yeah useability-wise it's basically MAME with an increased amount of stuff to read and learn, so of course it's not for everyone.
MAME itself is a long way from being user-friendly so I understand that people are even more confused with Groovy after seeing the walls of tutorials and concepts to assimilate.
donluca wrote:In an ideal world, you should be able to get *any* ROM set, no matter how old, and this integrated clrmamepro should fix your ROMs to get them up to date with the latest revision so that everytime a new MAME is released, there will be an interface which will notify you of the new version, update it, then run the integrated clrmamepro, fix your current rom set and then present you with a nice UI to choose and start your game and proper (drop down) menus to easily access all the options and change what's needed.
That couldn't be without downloading missing material anyway, right ? so it won't happen. The problem for a while has been that practically all roms joints but two have been carrying up-to-date roms, one in direct dld, one in a strict private torrent. The requirements have also become overall stricter because of the number of bios and devices, as well as extremely frequent romname's changes, that your ability to launch a game depends on, and users can't follow.
In short MAME has become an overwhelmingly complex and unfriendly software, or the giant museum only specialists enjoy visiting. I don't think it'll improve any if at all, I think it might get even more complex with time.
Which brings us back to FPGA !
Those in my eyes are yet another side-effect of what emulators have become over time; either stuck in development, or too complex or limited in results/accuracy if you can't go the many extra miles to get them to produce their best, so it's almost certain we'll see more and more FPGAs for arcades, consoles, even old PCs maybe.
And emulators use will concentrate on the higher-load stuff FPGAs can't do, but then stuff like MAME wich was already almost marginalized by RA & Co., will become even more niche.