*MAME/shmups controls Question*

[spadgy]

Elvis and Necronom make some great cases for Mame, and frankly do a great job of rubbishing some of my arguments.

I admit my comments on piracy and theft might be a little substanceless when it comes to older stuff (part of the learning process I hope - I'm never afraid to admit I was wrong and take on a new perspective; that's what these forums are about for me - learning more about shmups) and I'm just a pussy with the law.

However...

I guess it all comes down to what you count as part of the experience. I really do feel all that stuff I said about the tactile quality and blowing in NESs is part of the gaming experience for me. I like the whole package of PCB gaming and console gaming, but I totally understand (admire even) people who just want to focus on the actual gameplay and nothing else.

It's shallow, but standing at an arcade cabinet just feels cooler than at a PC, and is closer to my boyhood dream, which is in part what this whole thing is about.... "One day I'll have a cab" I always hoped...

[elvis]

I find it hard to argue that using MAME ROMs you don´t own is not piracy without feeling the same way about console games that are no longer available retail.

Copyright is not selling-rights. It is ´Copy´right. You can´t copy it and make mass distributions

For starters, "Piracy" is a stupid word, and should not be used. What copyright infringement has to do with boarding a person's vessel without permission, I'll never know.

Similarly, "theft" is just as stupid. Making a copy of something is not "stealing". In order to steal, I need to remove something from someone's possession. You can steal a car. If you made an effortless molecule-for-molecule replica of that car and took it home, I'd challenge anyone to claim you've stolen anything.

Antron is correct: copyright infringement is just that. All other terms used to describe it are incorrect, and should be avoided by anyone wanting to take the discussion seriously.

But as already mentioned, "copyright law" versus "common sense" are two very different things. It begs the questions:

1) does an individual who creates an item necessarily agree with the terms of copyright? I personally don't. I'm a computer systems and network administrator by trade, and as part of my work write thousands of lines of code and scripts every year to manage systems. I happily give all of it away to anyone who wants to take it, regardless of it's commercial value. Similarly I build cabinets and mod consoles and controllers for fun. All of the information I use (CAD drawings, pinouts, schematics, etc) I give away gratis. Quite frankly the idea that any of it falls under copyright I find ludicrous. I'm sure there are plenty of developers who own the copyright to 10 year old video games who really don't care if people copy it. But it's not worth their personal or financial effort to make it publicly known that these are now in the public domain.

2) Copyright is designed to protect the owner of a product. When somebody buys Radiant Silvergun off eBay for a ludicrous amount of money from some tight-arsed collector, did that benefit the copyright owner? I understand that second hand sales are part of a product lifecycle (high new purchase prices can be offset by the knowledge that an item will attract some value when sold on second hand after use), but when it gets to 5th or 6th hand goods, it's a bit ridiculous. I have no desire to financially support some collector on eBay, and nor will I just to keep the utterly outdated *legal* concept of copyright alive. IMHO, the law needs refinement and updating. I'm 100% behind supporting original effort and paying the people who write video games. The rest of the market that sponge off the hard work of a few in the form of eBay collectors can kiss my arse, quite frankly. They do nothing to assist the game development industry as a whole, and as such have no place in it.

I have no desire to justify downloading games on the whole. But while there is no way for me to purchase a copy of some software directly from the copyright owner (or their publisher/distributor), I will not be falsely dragged into a pit of guilt for downloading it instead. Common sense needs to dictate moral direction, not out of date laws and blindly following rule makers who are out of touch with modern reality.

[Dave_K.]

But I have never seen Mame emulate any of my PCBs exactly. Never. There are always slight differences in refresh rates and control response, enough to be noticeable to me.

This style of post comes around on these boards every few months, and every few months I give the same response:

If you are playing MAME on a high res PC monitor, scaled up with a different refresh and buffering delay to the original hardware, it is not MAME that's at fault. It is your setup that's wrong.

Hi Elvis, yeah its me again, sorry for brining this topic up yet again, but I've still not found that elusive perfect Mame video emulation. I'd like very much for you to prove me wrong.

Play MAME instead through the correct type of monitor, through a MAME build that is designed for writing directly to video card frame buffers (ie: AdvanceMAME via SVGALib - NOT through Windows or Linux/XWindows), and use lag-free, kernel-driven serial inputs (ie: USB on Linux), then you will not see any difference between MAME and the original arcade hardware (assuming the driver is correct - many of which are).

I remember this is what you said last time, but I got no real detail from you. I've setup another thread here so we can document some of these details without derailing this thread further. I'd appreciate your input.

For hardware like CPS1/CPS2 and many of the older M68K/Z80 based MAME games, I can set these in such a way that even the most vocal of emulator skeptics cannot tell the difference between it and the original hardware. I've challenged some pretty huge skeptics in my home town, and they've gone home with a different opinion on what emulation can achieve given the right hardware.

Now this sounds very specific to particular games that probably do 60hz refresh and video modes that are already supported by arcadevga and/or advmame. Can you confirm that your Mame setup will run DoDonPachi - 240x320 @ 57.550645Hz on a vertical arcade monitor at standard res with no sprite tearing in the scrolling background or tearing when bosses start flashing at 1/2 the refresh rate while being fired upon?

[elvis]

As requested, I've posted in an initial response in the thread you started. To answer the question you asked, yes the modes created by AdvanceMAME+SVGALib+Linux are arcade perfect, and the refresh rates are also perfect, and there is no screen tearing.

[spadgy]

1) does an individual who creates an item necessarily agree with the terms of copyright? I personally don't. I'm a computer systems and network administrator by trade, and as part of my work write thousands of lines of code and scripts every year to manage systems. I happily give all of it away to anyone who wants to take it, regardless of it's commercial value. Similarly I build cabinets and mod consoles and controllers for fun. All of the information I use (CAD drawings, pinouts, schematics, etc) I give away gratis. Quite frankly the idea that any of it falls under copyright I find ludicrous. I'm sure there are plenty of developers who own the copyright to 10 year old video games who really don't care if people copy it. But it's not worth their personal or financial effort to make it publicly known that these are now in the public domain.

2) Copyright is designed to protect the owner of a product. When somebody buys Radiant Silvergun off eBay for a ludicrous amount of money from some tight-arsed collector, did that benefit the copyright owner? I understand that second hand sales are part of a product lifecycle (high new purchase prices can be offset by the knowledge that an item will attract some value when sold on second hand after use), but when it gets to 5th or 6th hand goods, it's a bit ridiculous. I have no desire to financially support some collector on eBay, and nor will I just to keep the utterly outdated *legal* concept of copyright alive. IMHO, the law needs refinement and updating. I'm 100% behind supporting original effort and paying the people who write video games. The rest of the market that sponge off the hard work of a few in the form of eBay collectors can kiss my arse, quite frankly. They do nothing to assist the game development industry as a whole, and as such have no place in it.

1) You're certainly right that the law needs updating (I work as a journalist and there's problems all the time in my field with ownership), and I too often don't agree with the terms of copyright on stuff I produce outside of work BUT, you can't assume the creating individual has the same liberal attitude to copyright as you. It would be nice if they did of course...

2) Bloody brilliant, simple point I'd never really considered.

You're turning me round Elvis, but I still prefer the joy of finding, receiving and hooking up a PCB, and then playing it in a form I know is as developer intended. And there's those titles that aren't emulated yet...


Oh yeah - 'piracy' is an odd term - it apparently is applied to software because of a preface to an Alfred Tennyson poem, where he says his work has been 'mercilessly pirated' as in boarded and taken. The term made sense then, and has stuck since...

[elvis]

You're turning me round Elvis, but I still prefer the joy of finding, receiving and hooking up a PCB, and then playing it in a form I know is as developer intended. And there's those titles that aren't emulated yet...

Again, I have nothing against people who want to collect PCBs for personal reasons. I too enjoy the tactile pleasure of owning a PCB. There's a nerdy satisfaction in owning the original hardware, and I don't for a moment consider that invalid. My point is that emulation and ROM downloading can happily co-exist with PCB collecting. It's not an "Exclusive-OR" world.

My personal beef is with people who don't collect for personal reasons, but rather financial ones. It sickens me that a person puts their hard work into making a game, selling it for $80 a copy, and then 10 years later because that game has suddenly been deemed a cult classic, people start hoarding copies to sell for $250 a pop on eBay. By all means collect and play games for personal enjoyment. But again, I have no desire to financially support such selfishness simply to tow the line when it comes to outdated ideas of copyright. I would much rather download the ROM, and send the original developer a cheque for the original sale price. While technically "illegal", it yields far more common sense when you think about why the idea of "copyright" first came into being.

I've been standing on my soapbox for years about this subject, and have made numerous public and direct pleas to various copyright holders to re-release their original games in emulated form. The last 2-3 years have shown that the market has responded. XBox Live Arcade and Wii Virtual Console both have proven just how popular retro gaming is, and how lucrative it can be. IMHO, the copyright holders are finally getting a clue. If someone downloads your game without paying for it, and you've given them no option to pay for it, then you're not in much of a position to scream "theft".

The music industry already went through this revolution. Apple/iTunes have made a fortune from the very simple idea that if you make paying for a legal copy of something easier than downloading an "illegal" copy, people will gladly pay. ("Make buying easier than stealing, and people will buy" as someone wise once said). Game developers are now catching on to the same principle. It's not rocket science: stop calling your target audience silly names like "pirates" and "thieves", and instead charge them for the games they want. Stop whining that people are making copies of stuff you don't sell, and start selling it. It's marketing 101: supply and demand. If you stop supply, demand doesn't disappear. If the demand is there, you may as well make a dollar from it and keep your customers happy in the same breath, rather than not supplying and calling them criminals.

Oh yeah - 'piracy' is an odd term - it apparently is applied to software because of a preface to an Alfred Tennyson poem, where he says his work has been 'mercilessly pirated' as in boarded and taken. The term made sense then, and has stuck since...

The term "piracy" is designed to strike an emotional chord in the minds of the public. People like the RIAA, MPAA and other outdated and invalid "spongers" of their various markets need to criminalize the act of sharing. From a small age children are told to share. Then when they hit adulthood, all of a sudden they are told it's not right. Calling file sharing "sharing" gives it a positive tone. Calling it "piracy" makes people think of dirty, underhanded people who are criminals to the core. The term has stuck not because the public uses it. The term has stuck because the media constantly shoves it down our throats.

The term is stupid and inappropriate, and has no place in copyright discussion. It clouds objective judgment with subjective feelings.

[exquisite_torture]

I think the fact you guys buy PCBs/have cabs, is awesome. I'd really love to, but don't have the cash or space. I use an Xarcade stick for MAME. I'd recommend it to anyone in a similar position.

[spadgy]

I think you've hit the nail on the head Elvis. The two can and should co-exist, and the rest is just a matter of personal taste.

I also agree with your feelings about people collecting PCBs for money making. I detest the whole 'it's worth this much!' kind of boasts made about PCBs. In a way I'm a little embarrassed when I spunk a fortune on one game. Enjoy them I say, and try for once to forget about bloody money.

Finally your point on the semantics of 'piracy' is great. I'm pretty sure Tennyson didn't design the word to stick as a piece of propaganda, but I'm pretty sure that you're right; it's been so widely used and maintained as a term by the copyright protection authorities because of it's power and imagery as a deterrent/negative.

[Dave_K.]

I also agree with your feelings about people collecting PCBs for money making. I detest the whole 'it's worth this much!' kind of boasts made about PCBs. In a way I'm a little embarrassed when I spunk a fortune on one game. Enjoy them I say, and try for once to forget about bloody money.

I think you are getting off into a different topic now that deserves some clarification. Don't confuse PCBs with Console games. One is an asset, and the other an expense. Sure there are anomalies like Radient Silvergun for Sega Saturn or "limited edition" runs, but largely when people buy a new console game, they are not expecting to maintain or recoup all their costs in the aftermarket when they are done playing it. PCB collecting on the other hand is a fragile limited asset which is known to maintain some sort of value after purchasing. Collectors know this, and is one of the reasons why they will actually pay so much money for said PCBs in the first place. So when you hear collectors talk about their PCBs as investments, its as in maintaining asset value, not profiting off resale. Traditional collectors by their very namesake collect not sell! If they do decide to sell its usually to leave the hobby, or to simply buy more/other PCBs. Of course there are similar PCB anomalies like Ketsui, but nobody is going to be retiring off that sale, so don't worry.

[spadgy]

I think you are getting off into a different topic now

You're right...

EDIT: In my mind though, my console and PCB collection are one and the same, and I buy both for keeps. And I'm finding PCB collecting so far not to be that much more expensive... yet...