Too close for comfort? the revival?

[Nasirosuchus]

So basically you only have yourselves to blame for the missing SH3 support.

MAME's underlying philosophy of preserving arcade games for the future should surely help the devs not to take things personally since they are fulfilling some kind of vision.
I appreciate that this isn't the case for the Demul devs but blaming the removal of SH3 emulation on others is a bit of a cheap shot and makes them sound like either primadonnas or pussys or both.
There's a lot of great work being done here which is very much appreciated but this is a real letdown considering the number of SH3 screenshots posted on the Demul forums and the build up. Maybe the delay in release was just cos they were too embarassed that they'd woosed out...

Now for the good news: Illvelo's running great thanks to the genius suggestion of BeruBeru to change the default video plugin.
Maybe the next season of Sons Of Anarchy will also be excellent

Which one did you change it to?

[IseeThings]

Controversy pot stirred. Serious mode on.

I don't see the 'insults' here being any different from say, the days of whenever x platform got emulated, for example the comments on YouTube/4chan/emucr/etc regarding Demul irrespective of the SH3 support specifically seem all the same. Furthermore, the approach with which this was taken I think aggravated the responses you got a lot more than if it was taken on a different route. If I went and showed off some cutting-edge in development game for example, and then posted more teaser videos to piss people off, people would be pissed off, of course. Posting vids with vague info definitely got on some peoples nerves which is probably the beginning of the "Disrespectful acts" you mention.

Honestly I think you're talking sense Haze, but at the same time you can't just blame a bunch of guys who you guys yourselves spurred on with what has come public and claim it had nothing to the way this was handled. Mysterious private C&D letters? Cutting-edge games getting emulated on a system meant for stuff 10years+ old? Misinformation everywhere? As if the masses alone could do it. It's like saying Julia Gillard got in government because the people voted for her - it's not quite right, she got the support of other factional powers and independent members etc. boiling down to more than one factor than just "ourselves".

Well maybe you think the developers should just be machines, but there is /always/ a human element, and they've been given enough reasons to simply not care one iota about Cave SH3 anymore, and just get on with what their core project, which was emulating the dreamcast / naomi / naomi 2.

The actual SH3 board is well within the MAME cutoff for hardware anyway, the first games are 2003, the actual hardware is a fairly low powered SD output board outperformed magnitudes over by even the most basic of smartphones and tablets these days. There are newer platforms / games already supported (later Naomi stuff for example) For MAME it's simply not being supported because Cave *asked*, it's a case of respect. They specifically asked for it to not be supported, so support was removed.

The Demul devs already made it quite clear that they don't care about said request, and even filed counterclaims on any videos which Cave had removed. There's no reason other than *the community* as to why it wouldn't be supported in the actual release. Add everything you see together, it's the only logical conclusion.

[mjclark]

Truth is they just sold out under pressure- the whole MAME phllosophy was compromised the day they withdrew SH3 support. For sure the roms themselves are illegal but an emulator can't be. They could've stood up for what they believed in but chose not to. An (unlikely) international copyright dispute might've been good for all of us and the legal support would've been there.
Of course people will continue to make and distribute illicit builds which run these games cos some people have some integrity and the courage of their convictions whilst others just don't give a fuck. All of these options are better than letting yourself be bullied by breadheads with unfounded legal claims. What was ever going to happen anyway? If it means being extradited to Tokyo count me in

Maybe an unofficial Demul 0.5.7 release with SH3 support will escape into the wild anyway (you know who you are lol)...
...In any case, hats off to the Demul devs for successful Illvelo emulation. All arguing and joking aside that's just great

[mjclark]

For MAME it's simply not being supported because Cave *asked*, it's a case of respect. They specifically asked for it to not be supported, so support was removed.

That's not respect, that's selling out what you believe in out of fear.

Now for the good news: Illvelo's running great thanks to the genius suggestion of BeruBeru to change the default video plugin.

Which one did you change it to?

gpuDXv3 is working best here though gpuDXLegacy is also good. It was the default gpuDX11 which was giving me the trouble

[BPzeBanshee]

Well maybe you think the developers should just be machines, but there is /always/ a human element, and they've been given enough reasons to simply not care one iota about Cave SH3 anymore, and just get on with what their core project, which was emulating the dreamcast / naomi / naomi 2.

The actual SH3 board is well within the MAME cutoff for hardware anyway, the first games are 2003, the actual hardware is a fairly low powered SD output board outperformed magnitudes over by even the most basic of smartphones and tablets these days. There are newer platforms / games already supported (later Naomi stuff for example) For MAME it's simply not being supported because Cave *asked*, it's a case of respect. They specifically asked for it to not be supported, so support was removed.

The Demul devs already made it quite clear that they don't care about said request, and even filed counterclaims on any videos which Cave had removed. There's no reason other than *the community* as to why it wouldn't be supported in the actual release. Add everything you see together, it's the only logical conclusion.

Okay, so according to you, the bottom line is basically: Cave *asked* for MAMEdev to remove the support from MAME's end, and you guys complied, and Demul removed the support, and you think that because they actively said they wouldn't comply they've done it because of the people who use it immorally.

Don't get me wrong, but that doesn't really add up for me. I see what you mean with MAME's side and it makes sense - the stuff's not THAT cutting edge though I was implying the games in question to begin with which is why this whole thing is controversial anyway - but in the case of Demul Team, why take extra effort to remove something if they didn't care about it, when beforehand they were quite happy to tease/promote the same end users you blame for turning their attitudes sour on the subject in question? All I'm saying is there's a bit of logic missing here which implies that *the community* is not the only ones involved. I personally think it's more likely that
A) you MAMEdevs had a bit of a conversation with them and they decided to take the same 'respectful' approach as you guys, or
B) maybe put the middle finger to whingers because they just could.

There's no way this could've been some knee-jerk reaction from the masses of people with IQs the same as their age. Surely by that logic Demul wouldn't even exist because the community poision theory could be applied to all of their projects. They get shit for running Dreamcast stuff worse than nullDC after all (guilty as charged, because I've tested them both to compare and said as much).

[IseeThings]

For MAME it's simply not being supported because Cave *asked*, it's a case of respect. They specifically asked for it to not be supported, so support was removed.

That's not respect, that's selling out what you believe in out of fear.

No, it really really isn't. Cave made the games, they specifically asked for them to not be emulated, we respect their wish. MAME is not designed to be an enemy of the manufacturers so if they have an objection to something, we listen.

Something a lot more people could do with learning.

The Demul guys already posted that they don't care about what Cave said, and have been proactive against Cave's actions already (getting videos restored) Why would they suddenly decide they do care? It's much more likely people have just pissed them off to the point where they've pulled it. Do you think developers like having beta leaked, and constant insults? The community were acting like spoiled kids who were entitled to everything. Best way to deal with such cases? give 'em nothing.

It wouldn't be the first time such has happened in a emulation, not by a long shot. Zinc / Impact is stone dead for similar reasons. Vivanono before that, the original Final Burn (although it was later reborn a FBA but the original devs were gone for good), even NeoRage due to people hacking it.... The only reason MAME remains really is because it's too big for a few kiddies to kill.

[moozooh]

They could've stood up for what they believed in but chose not to.

I'm starting to wonder if you're confusing what you believe in with what MAME devs believe in. In any case, what would that be, as per your opinion?

some people have some integrity and the courage of their convictions

At this point the post become indistinguishable from the parody of itself. See also: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Poe's_Law

[Ex-Cyber]

what the hell is WinCE games?

A few Dreamcast games are built with Windows CE / DirectX, which Sega/Microsoft offered as an alternative to using the native Katana libraries. That's why Dreamcast has the little "Compatible With Windows CE" logo on the front.

[mjclark]

They could've stood up for what they believed in but chose not to.

I'm starting to wonder if you're confusing what you believe in with what MAME devs believe in. In any case, what would that be, as per your opinion?

"MAME is strictly a non-profit project. Its main purpose is to be a reference to the inner workings of the emulated arcade machines. This is done both for educational purposes and for preservation purposes, in order to prevent many historical games from disappearing forever once the hardware they run on stops working. Of course, in order to preserve the games and demonstrate that the emulated behavior matches the original, you must also be able to actually play the games. This is considered a nice side effect, and is not MAME's primary focus.
It is not our intention to infringe on any copyrights or patents on the original games. All of MAME's source code is either our own or freely available. To operate, the emulator requires images of the original ROMs, CDs, or hard disks from the arcade machines, which must be provided by the user. No portions of the original game code are included in the executable."
I don't see a bit in there which says "Unless we're asked not to" lol

That Poe's Law is a good one though

The argument that people who have made something good should withhold it to punish their critics though is simply fuckin' stupid and (as BP has already said) I would credit all you devs with more intelligence than that. By that argument we should have no lighbulbs, antibiotics, aeroplanes or VanGogh paintings. C'mon I thought you believed in what you were doing...

[JOW]

The argument that people who have made something good should withhold it to punish their critics though is simply fuckin' stupid and (as BP has already said) I would credit all you devs with more intelligence than that. By that argument we should have no lighbulbs, antibiotics, aeroplanes or VanGogh paintings. C'mon I thought you believed in what you were doing...

...Poe's Law strikes again!

[moozooh]

I don't see a bit in there which says "Unless we're asked not to" lol

Well, I don't see the bit where it says they should do it right now, do you? SH3 didn't "stop working" or anything, what reason is there to hurry?

[IseeThings]

They could've stood up for what they believed in but chose not to.

I'm starting to wonder if you're confusing what you believe in with what MAME devs believe in. In any case, what would that be, as per your opinion?

"MAME is strictly a non-profit project. Its main purpose is to be a reference to the inner workings of the emulated arcade machines. This is done both for educational purposes and for preservation purposes, in order to prevent many historical games from disappearing forever once the hardware they run on stops working. Of course, in order to preserve the games and demonstrate that the emulated behavior matches the original, you must also be able to actually play the games. This is considered a nice side effect, and is not MAME's primary focus.
It is not our intention to infringe on any copyrights or patents on the original games. All of MAME's source code is either our own or freely available. To operate, the emulator requires images of the original ROMs, CDs, or hard disks from the arcade machines, which must be provided by the user. No portions of the original game code are included in the executable."
I don't see a bit in there which says "Unless we're asked not to" lol

I don't see a bit which says Mamedev won't drop an elephant on your house either... but you know.

[mjclark]

I don't see a bit which says Mamedev won't drop an elephant on your house either... but you know.

Haze- I think a smartass 8 year old has hacked your account.
Either that or this is cyberbullying by reverse engineers with connections at the zoo

[IseeThings]

I don't see a bit which says Mamedev won't drop an elephant on your house either... but you know.

Haze- I think a smartass 8 year old has hacked your account.
Either that or this is cyberbullying by reverse engineers with connections at the zoo

My point is simple, something so obvious doesn't need to be said...

[Nasirosuchus]

For MAME it's simply not being supported because Cave *asked*, it's a case of respect. They specifically asked for it to not be supported, so support was removed.

That's not respect, that's selling out what you believe in out of fear.

Now for the good news: Illvelo's running great thanks to the genius suggestion of BeruBeru to change the default video plugin.

Which one did you change it to?

gpuDXv3 is working best here though gpuDXLegacy is also good. It was the default gpuDX11 which was giving me the trouble

Thanks. The gpuDXv3 runs Dolphin Blue flawlessly, but Metal Slug 6 is still only running at about 40 FPS.

How do you get it to run at fullscreen with that driver?

[Nasirosuchus]

Thanks. The gpuDXv3 runs Dolphin Blue flawlessly, but Metal Slug 6 is still only running at about 40 FPS.

How do you get it to run at fullscreen with that driver?

Nevermind. Got it.

[mjclark]

And in other news: Shooting Love 2007 runs much more smoothly than in Makaron but has some bad graphical problems still.
Let's see about Radirgy Noa eh?

[Nasirosuchus]

And in other news: Shooting Love 2007 runs much more smoothly than in Makaron but has some bad graphical problems still.
Let's see about Radirgy Noa eh?

I never had a problem with either of those games in Makaron, so I didn't even try them in demul.

[mjclark]

I had a bit of stuttering on Shooting Love 2007 in Makaron and some big blocky textures. In Demul the stuttering's gone but the textures are much worse and some things like side shots just appear as rectangles of colour.
But yeah- Radirgy Noa was always good

[system11]

They could've stood up for what they believed in but chose not to.

Of course people will continue to make and distribute illicit builds which run these games cos some people have some integrity and the courage of their convictions whilst others just don't give a fuck.

I've seen enough.

I'm going to stand up for what I believe in, because I do give a fuck, and I do actually have some integrity. Integrity of the kind you didn't show when you uploaded a torrent of a new game (Fast Striker) by a small niche developer who depends on sales of their titles to stay in business. If smaller dev houses stop making arcade games because they need to switch to programming dating apps to pay the rent, we all lose.

As such, you can take your pro-piracy, pro-taking-whatever-we-can-because-we're-entitled-to-it attitude, and fuck off.

Banned.

[adversity1]

[Cagar]

Posting here too, just for the ego; how close is this for comfort?

[Ed Oscuro]

I literally read that mjclark uploaded the Fast Striker DC ISO for the first time ten minutes ago.

Whoa...you think you know people and...

So it's been quite a ride. Can't say I disagree with the decision taken.

[matrigs]

Posting here too, just for the ego; how close is this for comfort?

i'd say that's pretty far away

[Evrain]

Posting here too, just for the ego; how close is this for comfort?

i'd say that's pretty far away

Depends on the distance between your seat and the screen: IIRC from my ophthalmology classes, anything under 1,2m is too close for comfort.

Bad med school jokes aside, I'd like to just add my two cents to the entire débacle: I am not without sin, mind you, I drooled all over Progear (and even had quite a feud with Reip back in the day ) and did advocate for Ketsui to be released by Guru, but obvious CAVE-fanboy wet dreams aside, I've always found the journey to be much more exciting and fulfilling than having reached the goal already - that is, the process of board analysis, ROM dumping, driver creation/optimization/hacking/enchanting and in the end the hellish torture of combing it for bugs and even more cleaning and speedups. I am not an experienced programmer, heck I'm not EVEN a programmer (ironically, MAME had me giving up C and taking up PHP/SQL/Python), but I've (mis)used CAVE games and other big time emulation efforts as a chance to learn, discuss, grow up and fix whatever knowledge I already might have.
As a sidenote, I can't be thankful enough to rtw for all the time he spent/wasted back in the Ketsui thread exchanging ideas, opinions and technical tidbits with me; that's a prime example of what I mean as "enjoyment".

Now, I've not exactly followed the entire SH3 litigation, but from what I've read Haze is perfectly right: MAME is going on following its core philosophy and nothing more - CAVE reqested politely a driver removal? What Haze and the others did was flawless, also owing to them being polite and not jumping to the nearest law firm in Tokyo or sending a C&D letter as some more idiotics companies tend to do (*coff coff* Nintendo *coff coff*). Now, keep in mind that could've just been an attempt to make amend for their disastrous handling of the GuwangeDash matter, but whatever. So I see no fault in MAMEdev's course of actions, plus, the "elephant on your house" reply truly made my day. I still have tears in my eyes from too much chuckling like an idiot who's been thinking about a pink elephant with wings bodyslamming repeatedly on his own house. Gomen nasai.

As for Demul, I don't really have an opinion on the matter, but being pestered, having a leaked build (although I think I read they didn't care about the leak, somewhere here) and being insulted over performance and not sharing a source already removed by MAMEdev (err, WHAT? About performance? Are you kidding me?) sound like good enough reasons to me. Back when I was helping with iDeaS, it took a single comment to have me lock out Nintendogs from booting, so I can see the point :innocenteyes:
Nevertheless, I'm saddened to think how piracy and other assorted misbehaviors has led us here: true, we can simply wait (and whoever wants to play free can just buy a RGH 360), but I was starting to enjoy all the blitter discussions (plus I think Haze mentioned how the Daifukkatsu+ boards had some differences?)

Sorry for the long and boring post.

[hzt]

Everything about that man was... too close for comfort.

His outspoken views on piracy.

His non politically correct avatar.

The glowing white letters of his posts on my screen in the lonely blackness of night.

I'm... I'm sorry, I need a moment alone.

[Bananamatic]

Torquay does seem like a cool place though

[Nasirosuchus]

Everything about that man was... too close for comfort.

His outspoken views on piracy.

His non politically correct avatar.

The glowing white letters of his posts on my screen in the lonely blackness of night.

I'm... I'm sorry, I need a moment alone.

This was funny.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure everyone knows my views on peer-to-peer and unauthorized downloading and the like, so I'll get to the point.

If mjclark was banned because of his views, then that's pretty lame. If he was banned because the torrent that he uploaded, then, well, he's only got himself to blame because I'm sure he knew the rules.

[bcass]

He posted the torrent on the forum, or he was banned for uploading it somewhere else?

[moozooh]

As far as I understand it, he was banned for his militant, self-serving attitude, and not understanding some of the basic concepts of dignity. At least that's what I would ban him for in system11's place.

Here's the link to the torrent debate.