WelshMegalodon wrote:If you're capable of grasping the concepts behind RGB
I know next to nothing about it except it looks better. If you think everyone's mentioning it is like Fudoh, marqs, Viletim etc, well...
WelshMegalodon wrote:using clrmamepro
failed at it countless times and got tired of tearing my hair out with it, it's notoriously hard to understand and master
anyway it's more for people who have large collections or roms or full sets, i guess...
WelshMegalodon wrote:or setting up a frontend
depends on the frontend, some are very user-friendly, some almost require the user to code it himself
WelshMegalodon wrote:you're capable of learning basic programming
nope, depends on who you are and what experience/skill level with the latter you have, because it's not a general culture thing, it's a specific field of knowledge.
most people used OSes, use programs, play games, but they don't make them period.
WelshMegalodon wrote:I say this as someone with a better understanding of the latter than any of the former.
I would have guessed.
WelshMegalodon wrote:Being that the MAME devs profess their intended userbase to be geeks who care about preserving and researching hardware
edit: This, was never stated by mamedev anytime anywhere in the history of MAME. And of course it wasn't, that'd be offcially giving the finger to most of their users.
There's a deep cultural rift most people skilled in computer knowledge and programming absolutely refuse to acknowledge, that video games have alway been an all-demographics pop culture thing, not reserved nor tergeting specifically real computer geeks demographics.
It's natural for the non-geek demographics to have a lambda player perpective over games, that's what they have been designed for, that's whom they've been designed for.
Now if emulation is a different thing in that it makes the general mass of lambda users and skilled geeks niche cohabitate, the communication and understanding are often broken.
But while we should mostly always get along, what goes wrong then ? the way i see it there's a ton of widespread misunderstanding prejudice against the lambda crowd, the way mamedevs perceive users is one of the most brutal examples i've ever seen, where the users are vilified and looked down upon with arguments like 'youre pirate kiddies who just want to play free games', 'this and that is wrong and cheating', 'you want to slave developers' etc.
I've said it enough those are ridiculous points, no labda user can reconcile with the idea that someone who makes the dumps and codes and distributes the emulator would charge his users guilty of piracy, no lambda user will accept a single or small group of developers who clearly lack proximity with the players and their culture would think he's entitled to state good morale practices and ethics in gaming, no lambda person who enjoys playing games should be belittled for not being a skilled programmer and not share the same kind of logic and thinking like it's the most common and natural thing and made feeling bad or guilty not to
Just be real, which demographics excludes the other the most to begin ?
I'll give you a simple example like anyone could quote a thousand if he's honest; language. My english's not the best but for my people who notoriously suck at learning foreign languages I'm comfortably above average, which compared to them significantly expands my access to information material and locations, sharing etc.
So then, do I look down on them for not being like me ? never, whether in a work environment or in every day life, where I'm asked to do or help, I'm aware that I have that skill, it took me decades to learn, many around me don't becaus they had different lives, they have their own knowledge that I ignore, most of them don't treat me like some ignorant peasant because I don't share the same knowledge they do. That's normal behaviour in a society.
Yet 'most' is not all. Some specialities have a tendency to host a number of hostile-to-outsiders, and computer science/software engineering is somewhat notorious for that, maybe it's the result of feeling excluded to begin, as this field often has very intelligent individuals whith social issues who've always suffered and felt threatened by 'normies'.
Now, in the typical pattern of reaction, they probably don't realize their own tendency to exclude, be agressive and offend those they percieve as outsiders/threats.
The cure to all that to be open-minded, a developer could realize users ask questions and expect things that are completely normal, they're not telling the dev he sucks nor are they trying to exploit him like a slave, and the dev should realize the world outside his own spcialized logic and interest is massively different, that it's normal and not some kind of design against his kind.
They should at the same time learn to speak honestly, instead of using deaf-blind, tunnel-visioned politics-heavy ugly BS narratives and dishonestly telling users they're vile, ignorant and ungrateful, because it's just not reality, it's wrong, and anyway...you naturally have to question the health of a project dedicated to video games that has his developers clashing with its userbase of video gamers so much. And no, again you cannot say it's the users fault, they're not developers. One individual or a working group of people believing they're right against maybe hundreds of thousands if not millions of users, on the same topics for like 20 years long, no need to explain which side is the most disconnected from reality there.
Honesty from developers would be telling users when they don't want to do something either because they cannot (skills/time/interest), or they could but don't want because it's too bothersome and hard to maintain, yet still consider what those users say and not close the door to the possibility of doing it in the future, and also understand the users will look for alternatives and not blame them for that, a dev has to reasonably acknowledge the legitimity of the user's needs, wishes and culture, not blame them for that or their lack of same-skills.
They also have to stop thinking users are ungrateful or ignore the incredible work developers do, because we have criticism or wishes - which again as i've said earlier generally concern the smaller portion of what the project is, like useability and playability parts - doesn't mean we don't recognize the immense value of the greatest part (dumping, coding etc) the gratefulness and recognition is immense and has been voiced countless times over decades.
But the reactions against users wishes and criticism have been absolutely overkill
and toxic, largely showing the group of developers is disconnected from the reality of users and that situation has been fueling hostility from both side for a very long time.
@gray117: you've posted while I was typing mine. I'd have a lot to say to you but that'd be for later.